Writerly Haphazardry

Writerly Haphazardly is now located here:

www.sgerald.net/wh

Due to excessive spamming, I shut off self-registration. If you are a real person, and you would like to register here, contact me. sharon dot gerald at gmail.

It hasn't taken long to remember why I gave up on Drupal last summer. Aside from being overworked and burnded out, learning something like this completely from scratch with no real background and no hands on instruction is time consuming. Maybe it's worth it. Maybe it isn't.

I've asked myself a hundred times today--in my failures to master installing modules on Drupal--why I didn't just stick with Blogger. I set up this site for no other reason than to learn something new.

Ha! That will teach me.

Learning is hard. Sometimes I forget that. Everyone who teaches needs to humbled by something that's a little too hard from time to time, though. It helps us keep some perspective on what the students are going through.

Other responsibilities demand my attention. There is a limit to how much time I can put into tackling my Drupal illiteracy. But there's hope yet. I'm hanging in here, and I may even get up tomorrow and try again.

I learned how to install a theme tonight. I haven't decided if I like this one yet, but at least I know how to change it if I want. I have not yet been successful in installing modules. I've followed the instructions for installing the files to the proper folder. I keep getting a message that says "run update php." When I click on that message, I get one that says "page not found."

Here's hoping someone, somewhere might help me figure it out. :)

I just spent what felt like hours trying to figure out how to make pages and menus work together on Drupal. It couldn't have taken nearly as long as it seems, however. According to Twitter, I was downloading Inkscape only two hours ago, and I played with it some before I got the wild hair to put this place in order. Turns out Twitter does have its uses, considering I don't usually remember what I've done all day on my own. :)

So...welcome to the new and improved Writerly Haphazardry. If I learn just a little more about Drupal, I might actually start blogging again on something resembling a regular basis. Be warned. If you are a Drupaler, and you see me approaching at C&W with my laptop in hand, it will be because I have questions.

I've spent the past few months in a sink-hole of burn-out, family issues, and general overload. I taught four classes over the summer. This was not necessarily a good thing considering it coincided with an intense need to crash as well as an onslaught of emergency situations among family and friends.

I have seven classes right now, four of which are fully online. The others are supposed to be web-enhanced through Blackboard. We have this new super-duper statewide Blackboard license that means all students have a log in for all classes. I've been moving things into Blackboard instead of continuing my class blogs in an attempt to be the team player and go along with the plan. Unfortunately, using Blackboard the past few weeks has sort of been like playing the slots--you never know if your class is going to come up or not, and most often it does not.

Imagine the email rants and the frustration levels of the students. Imagine the frustration level of Sharon.

Anyway, I'll get back to blogging soon. I've been cleaning out months and months of spam this morning. I'm still considering switching over to Joomla or to Wordpress for this site since learning Drupal was taking up more time than I had and may have been partially responsible for my summer hiatus.

Good will to all in the coming semester. More soon.

Meet Donald Barthelme and friends. Heh.

There is a meme that is going around.

I wish I had taken a picture of the open computer lab on my campus the last day I went in there before "The Great MySpace Ban of '06." It was an amazing sea of remarkably similar images. It seemed every person in the room was looking at the same thing at the same time. Hence the banning. Students who happened to want to work on an assignment were prohibited simply by the popularity of MySpace. It was as impressive as it was problematic, and I was at least a little sad to see it all end.

Perhaps the answers to my questions could be summed up with "People who aren't tech savvy ought not to be using Drupal," but I'm going to ask anyway. Does anyone have suggestions for ways to simplify the use of Drupal.