About Myself
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Hello, My name is Jim and I am the new caretaker/owner of Wendy's Wizard of Oz. If you have ever written an e-mail to the site I am the one who answers them. I live in Western New York. Now let me explain how all this happened.

I once owned a computer business that did well at first. But it quickly went downhill in 2001. I have always been into electronics and computers. Back in 2000 I had finished a business course and decided to open the computer business. I actually learned my first web design from a 13 year old neighbor kid. I have since learned so much and now all these years later I sometimes surprise myself.

In May of 2003 I was researching the infamous hanging scene in The Wizard Of Oz movie. Google brought me to this site where I had read on the main page that Wendy after 7 years was willing to hand the site over. I thought about it for a couple days; I then wrote her an e-mail and told her what I would do with the site if I owned it, and promised to meet the request that she gave. A couple of days later out of all those that had written to her, she had written me back and handed the site over to me.

I have previously created my own styles and templates that I can reuse on different sites that I make. I have had people pay me to make web sites for them, and because of the way I designed some of the templates and graphics I can create a whole different site rather quickly. If I listed out all the sites I have made for customers and there addresses you would see that they are kind of similar in some ways; yet very different.

After I had taken over Wendy's Wizard Of Oz, the first challenge was finding a home for it. So I bought the domain (www.wendyswizardofoz.us and then later the .com). I then borrowed some hosting space from one of my customers, and that is where it sits today. The next challenge was that the site was in desperate need of an upgrade. Something that would be compatible on most browsers and monitors and have a menu system that was standard on every page. There were several attempts and I'm sure a few of you reading this now have seen a couple of those designs. Now I'm definitely not an artist, I have no artistic talent. As my knowledge of web design enhanced and after numerous sketches and designs I came up with this current design. I have had nothing but positive e-mails about this design. The menu works on all browsers and the site works well on nearly all popular screen sizes. I'm not sure how 640x480 would look, but 800x600 looks alright and everything over that looks perfect.

The design wasn't all that needed to be fixed. There were numerous broken links and missing pictures that needed to be tended to. I also have added tons of pages (I wasn't keeping track so I can't give an accurate number), and also allot of information that I have researched and found. When I wrote Wendy that first e-mail I told her what I had envisioned for the site in the future. I have pretty much done everything I had said I wanted to do. The only thing I haven't done is create an online store for fans to buy Oz collectibles. I have the capability to make an online store, however after the computer business failure I would never be able to afford to invest in the inventory and packing supplies needed for an online store.

Well that gives you some background about how I came to run a Wizard Of Oz site. Now I'll tell you a bit about myself. As I said earlier I like computers and electronics, I have always tinkered with electronics as long as I can remember. I like working on cars, unless of course it is on the side of an express way. I love ridding rollar coasters; I have been on some of the World's fastest, tallest, longest, oldest, first, etc. etc. I also enjoy sitting at the beach on a nice warm day, or sitting at an old drive-in movie theatre watching a movie.

The summer of 2004 I became quite ill with cancer. It has been a very long journey, around Christmas time I should be back to my normal life and back to work. Working on this web site has helped tremendously with the boredom of sitting around day in and day out. For anyone wondering I am 27 years old ( I have had people e-mail me and ask). That's about it for now, I will revise and update this page as time goes on.

-Jim