Hello there,
I have a number of things to tell you about.
I’ll take them in order of importance.
My trip to the Dominican Republic
Back in October I went to Louisville to learn
how to install water purifiers. I wrote about
this
while I was
there. At the
time I mentioned that I planned to go with
Edge to the Dominican Republic in January on a
team that will be installing a very large purification system in a hospital.
I thought I had all the details down regarding
this trip. Trips overseas are expensive, whether you are going on vacation or
for a project. The short version is that I just found out that this trip is
going to cost $950 more than I anticipated. I’m sure the fault is mine. It
almost always is with things like this. (Remember the church sign?)
Um...okay I’ll just say it. I need $950 pretty
quickly. I can’t cancel Christmas at the Atkinson house. I wouldn’t do that, but
it’s a moot point. Whatever Jeanene and I are doing for the girls and each other
is already paid for anyway.
If you would like to sponsor me on this trip,
I’d appreciate it. Edge created a
page for donations to
help me raise this money. There’s even a
little counter so you can see how much has been donated. Hopefully the total
will get to $950. Hey, even $10 would help. I just need 95 people do do that.
One of my jobs on the team, along with the
installation work, will be documenting the trip in pictures and posting daily at
Real Live Preacher. You’ll be able to watch the installation as it happens.
So...let’s move on because there are few
things more awkward and uncomfortable than asking for donations and I really
hate that I’m in this situation...
RLP software upgrade & spam
This site is uses
Drupal, an open source
content management program. It was rather state-of-the-art when Matt Sturges
built it a few years ago. I went with Drupal because it has a lot of modules and
things that I thought would be nice. In the years since, Typepad and Wordpress
have gotten pretty sophisticated. If I was designing the site now I’d probably
go with one of those.
But...I have users and subscribes, etc. The
archived content of this site is pretty complex, and recreating it would be a
lot of work. So I don’t want to leave Drupal. But comment spam is so bad that
I’m forced to do something about it. A lot of my writing in the archives is
littered with the most unbelievably filthy comments. Really awful stuff.
Comment spammers have gotten pretty
sophisticated. They don’t hit the stuff on the front page where I would notice
it immediately. It all gets posted on old things buried back in the archives.
Drupal has great comment spam tools now, but my
old version can’t use them. Grrr. So I have to upgrade. But working with Drupal
is beyond me.
Enter Tim Miller and his company,
Jethro. Tim lives in
Australia and has been reading my blog for a long time. He has a
blog of his
own that is a part of the
High Calling Blog network that I helped setup. His
company also happens to specialize in Drupal. We were emailing back and forth,
and he offered to let Jethro take over the software management of this site, leaving me
free to write the content and not worry about it anymore. They are doing this at
no charge. This gives Jethro a chance to showcase their mad Drupal skills on a
site with decent traffic.
It’s one of those times when two needs come
together and everyone is happy.
The very day I handed over the keys to RLP
(administrative access to the site), Drupal broke. I mean it just stopped
working. So it was a little embarrassing - "Thanks for taking over the site.
It's broken, so can you fix it?" Tim had to figure out what was wrong, which
he did quickly. His techie Rohan had no trouble putting things right. Whew. Talk about good
timing! Needless to say, I’m very thankful for the folks at Jethro right now.
So why am I telling you all of this?
I’ll be getting a new version of Drupal with
spam protection, but there is a problem. Tim estimates that there are 50,000
spam comments in my archives. There is no easy way to get rid of them. Going
through and manually deleting them is obviously out of the question. We could
just delete all the old comments, but I’m not going to do that. The comments are
one of the ways you participate in Real Live Preacher, and that’s important.
I notice a number of you have had
suggestions for the folks at Jethro in dealing with this. If you know something
or have any ideas about how to get rid of all that old spam, let us know.
Before I leave this subject, let me say that
Rohan would like your prayers. His newborn daughter Caitlyn has a rare disorder and is
blind. You can visit her website here. Prayers for his family are appreciated.
I've asked for prayers a few times over the
years. So many readers of rlp are not particularly religious - a thing I like.
I've always been impressed by the response. Those whose spiritual discipline
calls them to pray do so. Others leave respectful comments. I can feel those of
you who do not pray looking on with a gentle respect for our traditions. For we
are called to pray for each other, we Christians. It's not a matter of
understanding what happens when we pray. It's something we do because we are
called by Christ to do so. So yes, I stopped today and prayed for Caitlyn and
her family. In that moment, in some mysterious way, I was connected to this
family on the other side of the world.
I don't understand it. I just do it.
The Sign Saga
If you don't know about the sign, read
this.
Well, Reggie saved the day. As usual. He found
a very smart way to extend the sign so that it fit between the poles.
Admittedly, there is now a line and some extra space to the right and left of
the lettering, but given how messed up this whole thing was, I'm thankful that
we have any sign at all. And I think it's amazing how good it looks. Here's the
sign:
Click for an enlarged view
And here's a close-up so you can see how he did
it. The sign fits into a slot on each pole. Reggie used three pieces of plywood
and sandwiched the sign cleverly between them. Amazing.
Click for an enlarged view
It feels like I have a lot going on right now.
rlp
