What domain name should I use?  What Username should I pick? How do I want people to know me as?  Do I use the same password for all my new accounts or do I make them all different?  What if my random password contains a word found in the dictionary and so cannot be used?

All of these various questions went through my mind as I was exploring the new realm of domain names and creating my own website for the first time.  The last question though provided for some thorough entertainment.  Two of my roommates and I are in this class together and we were all registering and creating accounts at the same time.  We learned during one of the steps that the password could not contain a word found in the dictionary.  You’d think this would be a fairly simple instruction to follow….but only if you know your 2-letter Scrabble words.  Apparently the random combination of “jm” is found in the Webster Dictionary as being the abbreviation of the Bible name James.  By the time we ended up with a mash-up of random numbers and letters, our 2-letter word vocabulary had increased substantially.

The actual purchasing of the domain name off of GoDaddy was another experience in itself.  When I finally got to check-out, I was being charged for an additional “Business” protection and a “Personal” protection.  After some clicking and un-clicking and then more clicking, I’d figured out what type of privacy protection I actually needed to purchase and then the price was randomly reduced…by a penny.  I guess that’s how the “every penny counts” saying came about?

Somehow between the mixed cries of “Ahhh, what do I do now,” “Help meeee!” and “Why won’t this work?” we all successfully became a part of the group page on Digital Storytelling, purchased our own websites, and got an account on Twitter.

I also picked out my avatar, which is an image of me in the vast Australian Outback letting the rich red sand pour through my fingers.