Too many squirrels!
I registered this domain and paid for the hosting quite a few years ago. Like many things I do, I have more “visions” than “accomplishments”. I have multiple sites and I enjoy “playing” with them and I use them as a place to share information. I started my 1st website with a geocities site and then found out I could have my own domain and website. The 1st one was Weldinginspectionsvcs.com. I no longer have that one as I sold rights to it to a software company many years ago as an agreement for going to work for them.
Anyway, over the years, I have had many and my wife just shakes her head when she sees the Domain Registration Annual Fees and Monthly Hosting charges. Most of the sites are either Moodle (An LMS I use for training content) or WordPress but I started out with Microsoft Frontpage but the point is, I have many and sometimes forget about using some.
(You can see it an archived version at https://web.archive.org/web/20010815000000*/weldinginspectionsvcs.com)
My hopes for weldinginstructors.org
I have always been interested in teaching BUT I never had anyone “teach me to teach”. I created this site with the hopes of networking with other instructors to share information. It did come in handy for a period of time when I was hosting some online welding instructor conferences but I didn’t really follow up with some of the participants as I should have.
But I think…welders overall are not really into sharing their “secrets”. I had hoped to have a forum with discussions, a place to share resources, and a place to “document” some of our practices. I failed to put the effort into this as I had hoped. As I type this, I wonder if anyone will even read it. If you do, please make a comment.
I will be using this as a place to start sharing some of my experience related to how I do things. Not that I do anything great since my “achievements” are pretty mudane compared to what I see on various social media sources. But maybe something will help someone with an idea to try…or maybe something to avoid.
Going Forward
I have been piddling with AI for some time now and that will be some of my upcoming content. I am amazed by what can be done and a little concerned.
My 1st computer was in the late 80’s and I assumed back them they were powerful machines that could easily be a tool to make life easier or worse (War Games)….they did in some ways but they were actually just another “squirrel” that has had many “baby squirrels” over the years such as website development, GW Basic,QuickBasic,VisualBasic, HP3000SQL, Dbase, MS Access, FrontPage, PHP, and many others. Right now though, I am interested in becoming a better welding instructor in both the shop and theory side of things. My hopes are to post some content that may be helpful to others.
Anyway, this may not even be seen, but if it is, let me know in the comments.
Peace Out
Gerald Austin