I've added a couple more writings to the My Writings page, check'em out.

I have finished a rewrite of the website. What you see when you are reading it appears to be the same, but what happens on the server with the actual pages has changed. I have reduced the number of pages while also increasing the number of pages you can read. For example, I've added the page that has my writings - poems, essays, etc. Nevertheless, the overall number of pages that are used by the site has been reduced.

The home page loads the latest blog from a database, and it includes a few very small files which contain the other sections - the top of the page with the picture and byline, the right-column with my pic and bio, the weather and the Google translator, and finally at the bottom the footer. Each of those are small files that rare need to be touched.

The Government System in the USA

This document will shed some light on the various levels of government in the USA. It is intended for people who do not live in the USA and have questions or have wondered just what the government setup in the US is.

Let's begin with this - the USA is not a democracy. It is not a republic. The constitution set up the government as a federal republic. Under this system of government, ultimate power is with the citizens. This power is the right to choose their representatives through the democratic process of voting. In the United States the federal government makes decisions for the nation as a whole, but is limited by checks and balances and by the powers of other levels of government.

A brief history: In October 1774, all the colonies, except the colony of Georgia, convened a convention (The First Continental Congress, September 5 - October 26) to come to an agreement in regards to England and the relationship between England and the colonies. Up until this time the colonies were not tied to one another in any way, they were all independent of each other. The problem was that they didn't all agree on what to do - let England continue to rule over "America" or not. But, they all agreed that they needed to share their grievances with the King of England.

I recently added a new section to the site, called My Writings. That section contains miscellaneous stuff that I have written - poems, essays, general ramblings that are not included in the typical blogs. I also set up a directory listing of all the English lessons I have written over the past 6 years of teaching English as a foreign language. And I have made a change to the blogs pages, as you may have noticed here on this home page. It now shows only the most recent/current blog. The previous blogs are in the section called "Old Blogs". I have also set up the site to be backed by a database so the blogs are being fed from the DB, as well as the other pages. Only the English lessons page isn't coming from the DB, it is a listing of a directory on the server. All of these changes should result in a faster loading site. I hope.

In Facebook there are no options for formatting the text you use when typing a new status update to your timeline, or wall, or whatever it's called. And depending on your message, that sucks. For years now I've been posting lessons on my Chip's English Help facebook profile in just plain boring text. I don't like converting all those lessons to graphics which people then have to download. At least with my text lessons the person can simply copy/paste the entire lesson into a file on their computer. That's much easier for saving the lessons. And gives them the ability to edit them if they want to.

But there is a way to do some formatting to your Facebook text. I found a couple websites that have some formatting tools. The formatting options are extensive but they are a far cry better than none at all.