HazelBecker.net

I probably would have learned more if I knew how everything got fixed …

Yesterday I accidentally put this site in maintenance mode to install updates – but I was logged on as hazel instead of as user1. Big mistake! I couldn’t get to the site to install the updates. When I tried to log in as UID 1, I got a 500 error. Oops …
Robert used the situation as a learning experience – one of the configuration files wasn’t set up right. After he fixed that, I could log on as user 1 to run the updates. I finally found out where to put it back online – go to Configuration>Development>Maintenance Mode. Seems easy enough and a I probably will remember it.
The most important thing is that the updates seem to have fixed the problem I was having with the Terms field on my blog post nodes. If only I knew what caused the problem and what caused it to go away …
One of the problems here is that I really don’t want to know! I have little interest in the back end of Drupal. It’s a good thing that part of running a site keeps Robert engaged and learning, because I don’t know how I would be doing this without him. And I really don’t want to know that!

I attended the Celebration of Harriet Savitt’s Life today.  As when Marvin died, 15 years ago, there was music and story-telling, laughter and tears. 
But the overriding feeling was warmth (it was not the weather, but the sentiments). 
Joe reminded me, as soon as we got there, that Dad had taken Joe AND Marvin out on the Sunfish one day and sailed from Kings Point up to and under the Throgs Neck Bridge!  I thought only Judy and I were crazy enough to try that one day.  And, aparently, something did not go according to plan, because they wound up in the drink, clinging to the boat, and Joe had lost his glasses.  I had forgotten all about that.  I can only try to imagine Dad, Marvin (both good sized men) and Joe (a bit on the chubby side as a kid), all on the sunfish at the same time!  We had a fun but crazy father. 
Anyway, I have warm regards and wishes for all of you Beckers from all of the Savitts.  Tanya, Joe’s older daughter, sang “On a Clear Day” at the Cemetery.  Aparently that was one of Harriet’s favorite songs to sing–she even had it on her answering machine at some point.  Tanya has inherited the family voice–she sounds so much like Harriet when she sings. 
Ellen & Jeff have finally moved into their new house in NC–southeastern part of the state, minutes from the beach.  They love it but are in sore need of a vacation so they are planning to explore other parts of the state some time over the summer.
Seth has just moved back to NY–Manhattan.  He was laid off in CA and decided that he really wanted to be back east–Jeff said that once they left NY, Seth came back!
Todd looks great–still has a pony tail, still in Oregon, managing or owning a brewery, and having a great time.
Mikayla, Joe’s younger daughter, is going into her Sr year in HS, and looking at schools in NY and CT as well as Clark, near home. 
Julie is kind of stuck.  Out of work for an extended period of time and still living with Shelley, although she is desparate to get out of that living situation.  She and I are in touch frequently. 
Aparently Laila is in MI or IL, near at least one of her kids.  She has severe dimentia at this point so she and Harriet had not talked much recently.
I was glad that we were there (Stan and me–Paul had Fire Dept. obligations).  I thought there would be a lot of people there–and I think the kids did too because the chapel was huge.  But it turned out to be only about 45 or 50 people at the chapel and fewer at the cemetery, so I was glad we did both.

All is relatively normal at the Becker house today. Robert is somewhat uncomfortable under the bandages, but not too grumbly. I was able to get to the gym today, so I am less grumbly than I would have been otherwise! We plan to go out for a short while this evening, so if you try to call but don’t get us, please don’t assume anything is amiss here. Leave a message on our machine and I’ll respond as soon as I can.

In responding to one of my earlier posts, Sandy asked why and when to use Drupal. Probably the best answers are those given by Tom Geller in the Lynda.com course “Drupal 7 Essential Training.” On most Lynda courses the first few videos are available even if you don’t have a subscription, so Tom’s answers may be available to anyone who’s interested. I’ll spell out my answers below.
First, to address the question: Drupal versus WordPress? I’ve used and set up blogs on WordPress – it’s about as easy as a content management system could be. It also now offers many options for designing a blog to suit your functional needs. You can put up images and MP3s, and you have a lot of themes to choose from in designing your site. It’s a wonderful way for techno-idiots to put up a blog.
Drupal is NOT wonderful for techno-idiots. However, Sandy is not a techno-idiot, and I don’t think she would have a major problem installing and maintaining a Drupal site. So, the answer for her will be found in other factors.
The first questions you should answer when making this decision is: does your server have the minimum technical requirements, and will your ISP give you server access or help you set up the site? Specifically, for Drupal 7 you need 15 MB of disk space; an Apache 1.3 or 2.x server or a Microsoft ISS server; MySQL 5.0.15 or higher database with PDO, or PostgreSQL 8.3 or higher with PDO; and PHP 5.2.5 or higher (5.3 recommended). If you can’t meet those requirements and are not willing or able to change ISPs, there’s no need to consider Drupal.
Between us Robert and I manage five Drupal sites – now six, including this one. We didn’t choose this CMS, but it was highly recommended for the Kehila Chadasha site by a database-savvy person who understood the group’s need for an ecommerce system that would be secure and trusted. As we learned the system, we decided to use it for our business websites because we wanted the ability to share documents with certain people – in my case with clients, and in his case with other lawyers who do similar kinds of work.
Over the years Robert has added two other sites that he runs for nonprofits he is active in. Between us we now have one blog, two informational business sites with some content restricted to people we have approved for access to it, and three nonprofit membership sites that are updated by teams of people. Two of the nonprofit sites can handle secure ecommerce transactions.
So, in five of our cases we have had several factors tipping the scale toward Drupal:
·        the need for secure ecommerce transactions,
·        the need to restrict access to some content, and
·        the desire have a system that others can learn to update.
For this blog, the Drupal site is definitely overkill. However, I’m also using it to learn and experiment with Drupal 7, so this choice was easy for me.
I don’t hesitate to suggest that someone with Sandy’s technical background could manage a Drupal 7 site. The new interface is much simplified and really very easy to use. I’m still learning, and if you keep visiting this blog you should see the features become more robust over time – including, I hope, the ability to restrict access to content for designated users.
If you have specific questions about whether your site is a good candidate for Drupal, drop me a line. I’m far from an expert, but I do have a few years of Drupal experience and would be happy to help site developers puzzle through this question.

We arrived home from Washington Hospital Center at about 2 p.m. – hungry, tired, grumpy. A bowl of soup, and now the patient gets to rest while I go out to do the things that need to be done.
The surgery lasted about 2 1/2 hours. The smiling, reassuring plastic surgeon, Dr. Rafael Convit, and the excellent oncological surgeon, Dr. Marc Boisvert, came to talk with me in the waiting room a little after noon. They decided to take out all five nodes that “lit up” on the nuclear medicine exam – one on each side at the base of the skull, and three smaller nodes further down the neck on the right. Robert’s head is wrapped with a pressure bandage covering all his hair (what there is of it!) and the bald patch on top, where the skin graft was done. He also has an incision on his abdomen where they took the skin needed for the graft.
The pathology is being done at two different labs – the lymph nodes are being sent to Boston University, and the scalp skin will be read locally. I’m not sure the reason they aren’t all going to Boston … I think it has something to do with the kind of stains they want to do on the samples of the lymph nodes. 
Robert recovered fairly quickly – he had regained some color and was able to get dressed by around 1 p.m. Our trip home was uneventful, and now he’s reading. He thanks everyone for the good wishes you’ve sent – as do I.

Surgery is over. Waiting to go home.
They took five nodes. We won’t have biopsy results for 2-3 weeks.
All for now.

Some folks have asked what our schedule is for Monday. Here it is.

Up at 4 a.m.

4:30, leave home to make sure we are there on time – they have said if we’re late they will cancel the surgery.

5 .m., check in at Washington Hospital Center – why so early? I don’t know!

7 a.m., go to nuclear medicine to have the radioactive dye injected so they can look for the sentinel node(s).

When that’s over, take the pictures and go to the ambulatory surgery center to meet Dr. Boisvert and Dr. Convit.

9 a.m., surgery starts.

Dr. Convit (the plastic surgeon) says the surgery will take between 90 minutes and 3 hours, depending on how long it takes them to actually find the sentinel nodes.

at least one hour in recovery after the surgery is over – so it could be after 1 p.m. before we come home.
Robert will have a “mummy bandage” on his head covering the skin graft for about eight days. I don’t know what kind of dressing he’ll have on the donor site, but I understand that often takes longer to heal. Some people have numbness around the graft site for a while afterwards. Some surgeons apply a hard cap over the bandage, held on with a chin strap, to keep pressure on the wound site.
We may not want to talk with anyone except Allison and Loren on Monday, so please don’t be worried if we don’t answer any of our phones. My mother has promised to worry enough for everyone, being the worrier-in-chief. We’re going to be fine, but we will likely be tired and grumpy on Monday. Sorry!
I’ll post something here as soon as I can after the surgery – maybe while he’s in recovery, if my iPad works OK with this website. (That remains to be seen. I’ve tested but didn’t much like the results because I can’t use the WYSIWYG buttons.) Otherwise, it will be later in the day.

I’m trying to make this website work well enough to keep people informed of Robert’s progress on Monday. I don’t think I’ll succeed.
It’s a good time for me to bring some perspective to this effort. True, I would like to avoid countless telephone calls on Monday. I was hoping to have the site built out so that I could ask someone else to post updates for me. That way the burden of updates could be shifted so that anyone who wants one could get it without my having to post them.
I probably could do it if I did nothing else between now and bedtime Sunday. Not going to happen…
So, back to the issue of perspective: I know that Monday is not the end of our road. It’s a good bet there will be ample opportunities to use this website that way in the future.
I’m going to work in my garden tomorrow! Then I’ll work on this blog.