I had some advance warning that today was going to be long. I thought it might be interesting to actually document a day in the life of a webmaster. I think many people see it as glamorous, but I've always thought of it as very much a detail-oriented job. A webmaster, if they're doing their job correctly, spends a lot of his/her day chasing down details. Making sure everything's posted, everything's right, everyone's notified and everyone's on the same page.

This is a day in the life of a webmaster who is trying to prepare her library's website for summer reading.

In the guise of aliveness, I present two things:THING THE FIRST: should you wish to continue the harmless cycle of attention-whoreness that Valentine's Day perpetuates, consider doing Valentines online. If for no other reason that if I see my friends doing this online, I'll feel less guilty about not sitting down and actually designing/printing/mailing actual creative/funny/amusing/thoughtful/touching/smarmy Vallies on my own.

Hi all -

Currently deeply ensconced in explaining to XML and PHP how they will behave as I ask. XML unimpressed, PHP merely amused. Rumors galloping about of XML squiring cheap tart PHP to New Orleans for a weekend of serious debauchery, leaving the stolid marrieds here in Huntsvega$ alone to find ways to make new code work.

Have tried to explain to the cheap tart, with little avail, that I simply cannot release the next version of wonderPortal until she and her bawdy compatriot decide to cooperate with me, and that their noncompliance is leading to much frustration on my part.

(What is the game of 'seven words'? See this entry for explanations, or to contribute potential words.)

They resist sticks, stones, brandished bones, and - in the earliest of hours when no one is looking - abject pleading and begging. They, the disenchanted teenage brood, resent that it was I - silly, bumbling fool, I - who brought them into existence, and blame me for all their problems.They hurl insults when angered. Technical terms are spat like curse words through the browser, because they know I feel the sting.

It has been seven days since the Battle For Manage-Pings began in northeast Alabama, and I must report that the carnage has been intense. Burned dinners. Insomnia. Ignored cats. Friends who resort to emails in the hopes of actually making contact with my brain.

If I tell you that, right now, I'm sitting at Suzan's computer, nestled into a comfortably cluttered computer room in a small house outside of Atlanta, Georgia, you know where I am. If I tell you that I'm in my pajamas, with my hair disheveled and eyes still heavily shadowed with dark circles, you know how I look. If I tell you that my throat is painfully raw, and that most of my muscles are aching, you know how I feel.

Backstage: it's not what you'd expect. It's more, it's less, it's completely different from what you've imagined. The world behind the curtain is very, very different from the world that the fans see.