ABOUT  JoeLitton.net

Well this whole thing is the fault of one of the gents at work a few years ago.  He asked, "What's a blog?", and I gave a brief description of the purposes of the very few blogs I'd read.  Then I got to thinking that there really might be something here -- this (as I've discovered) vast pool of shared knowledge.  And it's not just Notes/Domino/geek stuff, even though that's where I spend my blogging time.

So I first started blogging at Blogger.  It's free and allows some degree of customization.  Realizing that I was a bit slow to the game, I began researching the heck out of blogging, and playing with tweaking the interface.  One goal was to explore the potential use of blogs as a corporate knowledge base.  I'm convinced that there is a lot of potential there.  The key is to have an interface that is very easy for non-techies, and a means to search all text across multiple blogs.

Well after a couple of months with Blogger - and some experimenting with Radio Userland (another great blog tool) - I brought the site up on the FreeDom Blog template from Anthony Connell (no longer available).  As of May 2003, the site is based on the BlogSphere template. If you have an RSS reader, the URL for this site's feed is http://joelitton.net/A559B2/home.nsf/feed.rss.  I've made many tweaks to this template and will be adding more as time goes by.

As for me, my name is Joe Litton and I'm a geek.  I wasn't always a geek.  In fact, until the 1980's (gosh, that makes me sound almost as old as I am) I was ignorant about computers and a bit afraid of them.  Well, I grew up with a fear of heights, and addressed that partially by trying some rock and mountain climbing and jumping out of a plane (everyone needs to do that at least once!).  Taking a similar approach to the compu-phobia, I took a FORTRAN class at a local college and loved it.  Next thing you know I've gone back to college, gotten an A.A.S. in Computer Programming, and left the music biz (I'd taught lessons on fretted instruments and had been a performer in local nightclubs).

The mid-80's found me working as the system manager of a VAX/VMS system at a health insurance company.  Man, I loved the VAX.  But things change (heck, a lot of folks now haven't even heard of Digital Equipment, just like in a few more years folks might be asking "Compaq?").  So I went from VAX/VMS (it was PDPs and RSTS/E for about a year before that) to OS/2.

The OS/2 job was an experience.  I was their 3rd choice for the job, but after the first 2 choices each quit, they scraped the barrel and picked me.  I had never used a mouse, let alone OS/2, C, Smalltalk, etc.  At this point they probably figured, "What the heck, the worst that'll happen is he'll give up and quit."  Too bull-headed or stupid to quit, the project went in successfully.

After various other IT adventures (we've moved on from calling it "DP"), I began developing in the Notes environment in the mid-90's.  Now it's 2008, and the main thing I've learned is that the more I learn, the more I see that there is to learn.  But I'm having a blast, and I love coffee, so no worries!

email: jrlitton the_at_sign gmail a_dot com
IM (aol/yahoo): joelitton