"Wow.  It's different.  What happened?" 

On September 13th, 1999, about 38 months after I first published my website, I decided it was finally time to change the look of my site.  I've been thinking for a long time about reorganizing my site, but never seemed to get around to it (a familiar predicament).  As I thought about how to reorganize my website, I realized that I could take advantage of some of the new and nifty tools for website creation.  Not only could I reorganize, but I could redesign my site in a matter of hours.  All this, courtesy of Microsoft FrontPage 2000.  I hate to admit to using a WYSIWYG editor, especially one created by Microsoft, but I have to admit it has some really great features.  Fíjate - the site you're looking at now would have taken me weeks to design a couple of years ago.  Today it took me about 10 hours.  And the best part is I can change the look of my website instantly whenever I want. 

Why the Internet

I love the internet.  I think it is an incredible way for people to share words, images, and sounds.  Some people call it information, but that sounds too sterile for me.  I like to think of it as excitement.  The Internet is a way people can share excitement about life:  Small business share their latest products;  Not-yet-discovered Tango groups can update the world about their latest successes; Future movers and shakers can let the world know right now what's going on.   

The Early Days

I am very excited about the work I've done on the web since May 26,  1996, when I published my first web page at the University of Texas at Austin.  Soon after, I graduated with my Masters in Social Work,  I was asked to teach a class on building websites for the School of Social Work at UT-Austin.  To be honest, I didn't know much about building websites.  I had mostly stolen code from other people's websites and modified it to meet my own needs.  Nevertheless, I spent a good part of the summer teaching myself what I thought of as HTML basics.  The World Wide Web was still a new place: Mosaic had recently been outdated by a new browser called Netscape.  Backgrounds were gray, text was left justified and images took forever to load.  By the time my class was underway Netscape came out with Navigator 2.01 and the web transformed into a whole new world of animated images, colored backgrounds and different fonts.  

At first I was going to type up a syllabus and hand it out to the class.  Then I got excited about doing an on-line syllabus.  Back then, there weren't too many virtual syllabi.  I made it up as I went along (and practiced my web building skills at the same time).  Even though the class is over, and the Internet is a much different place, you can still look through the syllabus.  If you are new to web design, or want a basic primer on HTML, I think it's a good place to start. During the class, I decided that one way that websites could be used to demonstrate professional development was to post papers that I had written for my Masters degree.  I ended up with a collection of the best papers that I wrote at the School of Social Work.  As a side note, posting them has paid off.  I received a request from a professor of Social Work to use one of my papers online as part of her research class, had my Professional Practice Model paper included in an Intro to Social Work text, and had my policy analysis of the social work licensing law posted as a permanent link from the NASW website.  Pretty cool. My current social work resume is online as an Adobe Acrobat file.

Web building as a Profession

I learned a lot teaching the web class.  I realized that not only did I really like teaching, but I also really enjoyed coding HTML for the web.  There was something very satisfying about writing code and seeing it transformed into images on the screen.  I was hooked.  My HTML and design skills improved and I started creating web sites for money.  Hey.  I liked that.  Here's a list of the sites I've designed through November 2001. 

You can learn more about my website business in the professional section of this website.

Web building as a Hobby

The better I got at building web sites, the more excited I got about doing things for myself and my family on the web.  One of the projects I'm most proud of is an extensive online photo album (which I call The Fotosite) which contains pictures of me and my family, including 4 weddings.

At the moment....

I'm a doctoral student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work. Even though I'm a student and adjunct professor, I still consider myself a social worker first and foremost.  I recently founded "The Social Work Podcast," the first podcast dedicated to social work practice. From 1996 - 2002, I worked for Austin Travis County MHMR at the CAPE team and Family Preservation Program.  From 2002 - 2004 I worked for Jewish Family Service, part of the Jewish Community Association of Austin. When I'm not doing structural equation modeling, confirmatory factor analyses or updating my website, I enjoy doing yoga at Amazing Yoga, studying at Coffee Tree Roasters in Squirell Hill, and hanging out with my cousin Ariel, her husband Craig, and the always adorable Ezra.

I hope you enjoy my website.  Please let me know if you do.