well of course you're a horrible welder Dennis, ya just got the machine recently eh?

was your practice on old rusty metal or scraps of new stuff? were your practice pieces hanging in the air like the floor, or laying on a solid surface, like a metal bench or the concrete floor [like a heat sink]? when you moved to the real deal, did you cut back far enough so there's no corroded material left? clean the pieces to clean shiney metal back from the edge a bit? patch and old floor the same thickness?
you just need to play around a bit when you're still learning, if turning down the heat helped, down it more and fiddle with the feed speed too and make sure the gas is feeding properly and there's no wind - practice makes better if not perfect, no point in depression

Bill