Time - Learning or Wasted?

While I believe no time or experience is ever truly wasted, sometimes I totally get into the fun of solving the puzzle and sometimes I just want it solved.

Today, I'd really just like for PayPal buttons to integrate seamlessly into ASP.net pages. I don't really feel like putting a lot of effort into figuring out how to make that happen. I've already had as much fun as I feel like having learning that I'm not crazy - that there is no easy bridge between Here and There when it comes to PayPal and ASP.net.

Likewise, I anticipate that investing a bit more time into a related matter will result in discovering that Microsoft has broken their own rules. Apparently building a web site with Microsoft Expression Web is insufficient insurance against having code render badly in Microsoft Internet Explorer.

While FireFox is happy to render code from the Adrotator control referencing a non-existent ImageUrl by displaying the AlternateText instead (as the definition implies it should), Microsoft instead chooses to hack up a hairball, announce to the whole world there is no image to be had and not apply the desired formatting to the alternate text.

Sooner or later, I'll figure out how to make it all happy. I'd rather it be sooner than later. Most of the visitors to the Soaring Mountain website are still using IE so even though I'm pretty sure it's not my fault, it's still embarrassing to have it look that bad. To date, I've been happy enough just to tinker away with it every so often and the rest of the time hide my head in the sand, accessing my own website using Firefox exclusively and pretending there isn't a problem... but that's getting old. Now I just want it fixed.

Of course, if you know of any answers or solutions for either issue, I'm willing to consider suggestions. I'm a total hack at coding and I never pretend to be otherwise; my time is definitely better spent coaching.

How would you rather spend your time?