OH NO! I’m Getting Old
Despite my best efforts I’ve officially become an old man. No, I didn’t have another birthday or break a hip or anything like that; my son caught me snoring and started laughing so hard that he woke me up.
I remember laughing at my father, and mother for that matter, when I was young. My father would keep my mother awake all night while blissfully dreaming about whatever old people dream about to the tune of their own snore. My father seemed old even when I was young, and I always thought that snoring was something that old people do. So now that I’ve been caught snoring, I must be old.
Like every evening, the kiddo begs for me to read more than his two book limit. I would read more, but as soon as I open Pandora’s Box I’ll find myself spending the better part of three hours with the Bernstein Bears and The Cat in the Hat, not to mention all the other nonsense the child like to read. So early on I put the cap at two books, unless one of them is very short, then he gets three, but no more than that.
Somehow, this evening I fell asleep after reading the books, did I mention that his bed is the newest, most expensive piece of furniture in the house and needless to say is extremely comfortable. Anyway, I fell asleep, and for no more than a few minutes, when I heard a giggling. As a dad of a four-year-old, I can sleep though nearly anything, but the giggling continued and I began to regain consciousness. As I was coming to, I not only heard his ever increasing laughter but also the sound of my own snores.
Mildly embarrassed, I finished tucking the kiddo into bed and took my woes elsewhere. What is a man to do, I don’t want to be old. I can’t be old. I have a rock band, I’m a web designer, I wear jeans and t-shirts everywhere, I haven’t even paid off my student loans! I CAN’T be old!
Well, maybe I am getting a bit older. But I’m only at the beginning stages of old age, there’s still time. I can find a cure. I can beat this. I WILL beat this! For starters, I’ll start watching a lot of late night TV looking for that infomercial selling that mouth guard that pushes your jaw up to stop snoring. And if I don’t see it on TV, I can always find it a Wal-Mart *shudder*.
But curing old age won’t stop with just fixing my snoring problem. I’ve got to cure some of these other problems before they fester out of control and take over, like:
- I will no longer look forward to a dull evening.
- I will no longer turn out the lights for economic rather than romantic reasons.
- I will no longer complain about the music the kids listen too.
- And I will require my body to work, not hurt.
Realizing that old age is upon you isn’t easy. But I will fight to the death to cure this horrible disease.
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The first step to fulfilling my New Year’s resolution of converting JohnNemec.com to Drupal 7 from WordPress is to get everything installed and the first piece of content in place. For Drupal 6 veterans this may be a lot of review, but I’m hoping there will be something in here of interest. We’ll begin by setting up the server and installing Drupal 7. Once installed, we’ll look over the configuration settings and the new layout. Finally we’ll create our first piece of content.
Getting Everything Setup
This may be a duh moment for some of you, but the first thing you’re going to need is a server and a domain name (or a LAMP system installed locally – but I’m not going into that here). You have many different options, but my personal recommendation is HostGator. At HostGator you can get both your domain name and hosting. Save a little money and use the coupon code JohnNemec1 and receive $9.94 off of your package price!
I’ve created a subdomain, drupal7.johnnemec.com, which will not only be the testing area thoughout the creation process of the new JohnNemec.com, but also a place for you to watch the progress of the site creation.
Once you have your hosting and domain name squared away, you’ll need to download the Drupal 7.0 release. Don’t worry, it’s free. Just pick the newest stable version under the Recommended releases, which at the time of this writing is version 7.0.
Installing Drupal
There are a few more steps we need to take. First we need to setup our database. Using Cpanel, H-Sphere or whatever means of database creation you prefer, make an empty database. Also, make sure you’ve created a user with full access to the schema. Remember your database and user name for later.
Installing Drupal 7 is as easy as ever. FTP the unzipped Drupal 7 software to your server and visit your site to begin the installation process.
If you’ve used Drupal 6, the installation screens are a bit different, but different is good. Now with Drupal 7 you have two options right out of the gate, Standard and Minimal. It describes what each one is for you, so I wont duplicate the content, but I did chose Standard, which will install the commonly used features pre-configured.
Oddly enough, I’ve decided to go with English as my language. But if you have other needs, there is a link that will show you how to install Drupal 7 with other languages.
Assuming your server passed all of the requirements, and they will if you picked HostGator, you will now be presented with the Set up Database screen. Now you need to enter the database information I had you save above, and if your database is hosted elsewhere, you’ll need to change localhost to your database host address.
I will openly admit, I have no idea what’s happening behind the scenes, but once you click save, Drupal 7 will begin installing. The final screen is for the site information and I’m going to assume you don’t need any help filling this information in.
Brief Tour and Configuration
Out of the box, Drupal 7 looks great! Without touching anything, it looks like there is some form of Admin Menu at the top, of course, only time will tell if it has everything we need. The new fresh design makes the site almost useable, but we’ll design our own eventually.
When clicking on the anything in the Admin Menu, there’s a pleasant surprise, everything pops open in a lightbox. It’ll take a bit of getting used to, but I can already see some advantages. One being, I’ll always know when I’m in an admin area.
Looking about, one change I want to make a note of is the Blocks, located under Structure. It seems to me, at first glance, that you can set different block areas for different themes. So, with this knowledge, we will need to keep in mind that we are going to have to build two different themes, one for the site and one for the admin area.
Finally, the last piece of configuration we need to do is enable the modules that come with Drupal 7. I’m not going to go through and explain each module; there is a nice short description for each one. But I will note that I did not turn on Blog. This is because I’m not running a multi blog site, and never enjoyed hacking the Blogging system in Drupal 6. But since I am running a blog, I’m going to need a blogging content type.
Normally for a blog I would create a content type called News or Article, but in the infinite brilliance of the Drupal community they’ve developed a new content type for you, the Article. The Article is used for time-sensitive content like news, press releases or blog posts. Perfect!
Creating our first piece of content
OK, so we have our basic site running, now it’s time to plug in our first piece of content. Conveniently, there’s an Add Content link located on the gray bar in the Admin Menu. I’m adding an Article and filling it with dummy content.
Out of the box Article offers a Title, Tags and Body area. Title and Body are pretty self-explanatory, but I’m making the wild assumption that the Tags are a free form Taxonomy that’s already preconfigured. Save your content and give it a look.
It may not look like much, but we’ve done a lot today. We’ve created a database, installed Drupal 7, configured our system (a little), and created our first piece of content. Some of you may even have purchased a hosting package and domain name. Next time we’ll do even more. We’ll create our Taxonomy, start building/placing blocks for our blog, and get the basics for our site navigation.
As always, if you have any suggestions on how to do something better or some idea of what we can do to, let me know!
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Don’t Let Me Die At Wal-Mart
Authors Notes:
Oh what a witty and clever blog title. I had a few to chose from: Wal-Mart Sucks, Death By Ginsu and Sucked To Death At Wal-Mart. In fact, I started thinking about the title well before I thought about what I wanted to write about. And when I saw that this short story has very little to do with Wal-Mart, I decided to keep the title anyway. And if you don’t like it, well, there are a lot of other websites you could be visiting right now. Enjoy.
New Year’s Eve 2010 began like any other day in recent memory. Wake up, eat some food, debate on what we are going to do that day and eventually give up and do nothing. Well, I guess this day was a bit different because we already had plans. No, we weren’t going to attend some fabulous gala; the Wife, Ten and I were going to take the Kid to see the new Disney movie Tangled.
We were preparing to walk out to door and the tornado sirens when off, so I sent the family downstairs and stepped outside to see what I could see. I saw nothing. Just some storm clouds, but nothing ominous. The news wasn’t much help either, one minute they would tell us there was a tornado in Rolla, MO (90 miles away), and the next they would say everything is fine. It amazing how excited a group of weather people can get when talking about a storm.
So we did the indecisive dance; we packed everyone up in the car, then we unpacked. Packed back up, then unpacked. After a while I finally called it and told the Kid that we would go to the movies after the storm passed. What a good father I am.
Now with the movie plan nixed, what was a family to do? Eat of course.
I was sent to pickup some lunch for the family as well as hit the store to buy some food for the festivities that evening. Wal-Mart just happened to be close to Viviano’s, the restaurant where Wife wanted a sandwich. I decided to hit the Wal-Mart first, and by the time Ten and I reached the parking lot the rain had not only started but was flying sideways.
We dashed into the Wal-Mart to buy the appetizer dinner I was planning on making that evening. And we did what every normal Wal-Mart hating American does when forced to shop at Wal-Mart: we wandered the isles attempting to avoid the grossly obese holding themselves up with the shopping cart and ancient people in motorized carts that get stuck with a dead battery.
We had nearly completed the shopping; in fact, we were looking for the last item, when the lights started to flicker. We picked up the pace and were close to deciding to abandon the idea of Crab Rangoon for dinner when I saw a herd of the unbathed heading for the front of the store.
I poked my head out from the isle and a toothless employee informed me that we were being relocated to the center of the store.
Great! I’m going to die in a Wal-Mart. Crushed by the As Seen On TV section. Stabbed in the eye by a Ginsu Knife or buried alive by Shake Weights.
Obviously I didn’t die, and looking back, it really didn’t take long for the storm to pass. We, I say this collectively, as in the hundreds of people standing in the middle of Wal-Mart, waited patiently for the red haired, pock-marked store manager to tell his army of toothless overweight goons that it was safe to continue shopping.
I’d had enough. Ten and I made a b-line towards the checkout and got out of there. I’d rather die in my car, sucked up by a rain-wrapped tornado, than die in Wal-Mart next to Mama Cass and her 12 over-weight/under-nourished kids.
Traffic getting to the restaurant and then home was horrible due to the destructive path of the tornado. But I made it home eventually, unharmed, bearing food.
Never again will I venture to Wal-Mart, or anywhere I don’t want to die at, during tornado sirens.
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