January 2009

Comments return

January 31, 2009

After a really long week I finally had a moment to look at my blog and see that comments have been broken. In a moment of sleep-deprived administration I updated the site but failed to run the update script. As a result the content monitoring routine (the awesome Mollom didn't have the table in the database necessary to properly accept comments.

The log files show it would have been a busy comment week had they been enabled. And so it goes.

Bailout advertising goes negative

January 11, 2009

Low-brow Staples Advertising
Just over a month ago, on December 10, Office Depot announced that they were closing several stores. Hardly the first to succumb a worsening market, Office Depot joined OfficeMax in announcing cuts that will leave additional workers looking for jobs.

The ink had barely dried on Office Depot's announcement when the dinging of my mail program played the new mail sound. There was the email from Staples asking "Will Office Depot closings affect you?" My initial thought was that this was a little bit of a cheap shot but would likely have some useful information. Instead upon opening the email it turned out that Staples was purely spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt. Far from offering solutions and providing information on how Staples might help, the email instead was designed to play on fears that Office Depot's troubles will cause my business to have problems.

Hard coded IDs in Comment Module

January 1, 2009

Starting the new year off with some Lullabot podcast listening while the little one naps. There are lots of blog posts to come from it on various topics. The latest podcast is a live show of a question and answer session from Do it With Drupal.

The first question that kicked off the session was about frustration in theming comments and the comment form in Drupal. As the answers say on the on the podcast this is slightly better in Drupal 6 than it is in Drupal 5. However there's a pretty serious bug that rapidly becomes a deal-stopper when trying to do much with comments. The problem lurks in comment_render(). And following that link you'll notice it's not fixed in Drupal 7 yet either.

Goodbye 2008, Hello 2009

December 31, 2008

Here we have the obligatory last post of 2008. The lists of things that changed this year could fill volumes. Waiting for the fireworks last year, in a house with no blinds on the windows, we were just getting started on the new adventure. Quite an adventure it has been too.

Starting a new Drupal consultancy at the beginning of the year. Getting more involved in the Drupal community and wrapping up the winter with a visit to Boston for my first Drupalcon. Even a few months in Drupalcon was a chance to renew friendships and make many new friends.

After a winter of travel and coming home to Idaho we came home and got down to work. Several projects cranked out and lots of Drupaling later it came time for a summer of travel. From Oregon to Maryland the trips were great. Once again it seemed everywhere I landed the topic of conversation was Drupal. One of the highlights was spending hours manning the Drupal booth at OSCON with Kieran, who would soon become a colleague at Acquia though that wasn't to come till a little later.