Meet the webmaster!

Greetings, friends!  This page is representative of my original page at Internet Global from 1996.  When I finally got my own domain, I was determined to make a "new start" and get rid of all the old design.  When the time finally came to make the move, I realized I didn't have the heart to destroy my original work...so here it is, reserved for my personal information page.  The barbarian above I drew with a mouse in Corel Photo-Paint 3 back in '96, before I knew too much about what I was doing.  For a beginner, I didn't do too badly on him (at least I don't think so!)  I keep him around as an old friend.

This is a picture of me from back in 2000.  I tend to be rather camera-shy, so it's rare that I get many pictures taken of me.   My name is Paris Soulier (last name pronounced SOO-yay, much the same way you'd call a hog), and I've been an Internet junkie now for over 8 years.  My first page, Barbarian's Lair, went up on April Fool's day (hehehe) 1996.  It was spartan back then.  I taught myself HTML from a book and hand-coded everything in WordPerfect 6.1.  There was no Netscape Composer back then, no Microsoft FrontPage, and Netscape and Internet Explorer were in their infancy (version 1.1 on each had just been released).  I was fascinated with the Internet and determined to learn far more about it, so I signed up for courses on it that summer.  Doing so proved to be very advantageous, for I am now employed at a business/technical school as a  instructor in computer operations.  (At the time, I was teaching business statistics).

I'm originally from Monroe, Louisiana.  I was born there on September 13, 1963.  It was a Friday the 13th, and ever since, I've always considered any Friday the 13th my "lucky day."  I lived in Monroe for almost 23 years, then got a wild hair and moved to Denton, Texas, to attend graduate school there in 1986.  Well, I'm still here in Denton.  It's a fairly nice place; close enough to Dallas and Fort Worth to be interesting and far enough away to be out of the hubbub.  The hubbub, though, seems to be catching up with us, especially within the past year.

The most important lady in my life is my wife, Lela Galadriel, a.k.a. The Leopard Queen on the Internet.  (Yep, we're a family of geeks, but who cares?  So is half the world nowadays, it seems.)  She's a Macintosh (Performa) user and I'm a PC user (a HP Pavilion), and yes, we're still married!  We've known each other since 1987, almost since I first moved to Texas, and we finally got married in May 1997, ten years later.  Good things are worth the wait.  Our only "kid" is our Welsh Corgi, Vinnie, whom Lela got in 1995.  Well, Vinnie, and our two pet rats, Dinali and Winston.  Vinnie's our combination guard dog, doorbell, companion, and Lela's "familiar".  

Lela's forte is in making decorative headdresses with an Art-Deco Egyptian motif, and eventually she plans to place them up for sale on the Internet.  She's also a writer and has published over a hundred web pages of her own wisdom and spiritual insights, which she is compiling into a book for eventual publication.  Over the past few years, Lela has been offline, but she has gotten back on within the past couple of weeks and is starting to put web pages back up again.  I am very happy that she's back online!  Her new page is on my domain, at http://www.wizardrealm.com/Galadriel.  Check there for her latest channeled writings.

I'm also a big fan of music of almost all types, other than really awful country or gangster rap.  My favorite music types tend to be jazz/blues, rock, and some pop (depends on what it is).  My favorite artists are (from as far back as they go): Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, The Beach Boys (most of their hits), Steely Dan, Elton John, Billy Joel, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Supertramp, Blue Oyster Cult, Elvis Costello, Siouxie and the Banshees, The The, Talk Talk, Erasure, REM, Natalie Merchant (10,000 Maniacs), Inner Circle; and most recently:  Fastball, Sugar Ray, Lou Bega, Kristine W., and Cake.  My absolute favorite artist is Basia, a european pop-jazz singer.  She's terrific!

Professionally, I'm an instructor at International Business School in Denton, where I've worked for 7 years.  I was first hired to teach courses in WordPerfect, Word, Excel, and Windows.  Since that time, I've obtained my Novell CNA Certification and have taught courses in Network Design and Topology, Network Administration, TCP/IP, and Internet.  Recently, a team of students and I won a contest for the web site design for all our campuses.  I was very happy about winning, but I was really the happiest for them...it's something they can really use in their portfolios.  

Politically, I'm pretty middle of the road; subscribing to no one party, but voting for the best person for the job.  Other than that, politics bore me to distraction.  I'm far more interested in local affairs than I am in the national level.  I will say this much, that I am rather disappointed in the current administration's job that they have done so far.  It seems that too many individual freedoms are being swept away recently, and no one really seems to care, or are only too willing to give up their freedoms because of their fear about the threat of terrorism.  Terrorism is going to exist until the root causes are resolved.  It isn't  something you can get rid of by fighting a war (and if you really believe the war in Iraq in 2003 was fought for the purpose of getting rid of terrorism, I have some Mississippi delta land to sell you), or by applying economic sanctions.  A fundamental mindset must change first before any peace can be seen, and that change is going to take a very, very long time.

I'm a deeply spiritual person, but feel that my expression of it is private; I don't like group expressions of faith, except for World Peace meditations.  I tend toward the more metaphysical expressions of spirituality.  I don't go to churches that much because I can't stand the singing.  That may seem ridiculous, but after being forced to stand and sing songs that I wouldn't teach a crow, I leave feeling stressed out and angry and that's certainly no expression of spirituality.  So, until I find a church or center that either eschews singing or leaves it to the professionals, I pretty much keep to myself.  However, I practice my spirituality every day and in every facet of my life, which I believe is better than turning it on for 2 hours on one day in a week and then turning it off for the other 6 days.  My wife Lela is much the same way.  You won't find her in a church except at a wedding or a funeral, yet she's one of the most highly spiritual people I know.  I'm not saying there's anything wrong with churches, and many people get a lot of benefit out of that, and that's wonderful.  Whatever works for the individual is what I believe.

It has been over three years since I've seriously updated this site.  Three years ago, I was hospitalized for a condition known as thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, a.k.a. TTP, which very nearly killed me...seriously.  Since recovering from that condition, and after removal of a gallbladder which to this day I know was responsible for it, I have a much deeper appreciation for life.  You can read more about that experience at the previous link.  

Also, you can check out my online rèsumé.  I've only recently updated it as well to reflect my current training and skills.

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