On Following Instructions

For my final project this quarter I have to work with a digital library or content management software and do something with it then write a paper about it. After my troubles with Greenstone, I did a careful review of all the acceptable to my professor software packages and decided that Drupal was the best candidate because it was the one most likely for me to be able to figure out how to run on my computer without a web server. It also is such a popular system it has books and an extensive website.

I won’t go into all the technical details, but I had to download a second software package called MAMP (Mac Apache Mysql PHP) that allows me to run Drupal locally. The Drupal site has step-by-step instructions on how to configure MAMP and how to set Drupal up to run with it.

I downloaded both packages on Thursday evening but didn’t have the mental fortitude to set to work on the installation just then. Friday evening I read through the instructions and my brain again said no. Saturday I could no longer put this off. I installed MAMP and everything went perfectly. Hurdle one jumped.

I installed Drupal and everything went perfectly. Hurdle two jumped.

I carefully followed the instructions on how to connect Drupal to my SQL database in MAMP and Drupal refused to find the database. Next comes the hours spent trying to jump hurdle three and smacking into it each and every time. I tried everything I could think of including starting over at the beginning. I read and re-read the instructions so many times that I could probably re-type them here from memory. I Googled. I looked at Drupal books. I stood looking at this third hurdle wondering what the heck I was going to do to get over it.

I decided that maybe if I turned my back on it something magical might happen, like maybe it would disappear. So I started in on the reading for class for this week and then eventually turned my computer off for the night.

Today I looked at a different Drupal book. It did not have any installation instructions, none of them do. It seems they all assume you have already figured that out or your IT people have. None of them take into consideration that you might be your own IT person. What this book did have, however, was a link to Drupal’s troubleshooting FAQ pages. I wasn’t hopeful as I typed the URL into my browser but maybe I would find something that would point me in the right direction at least.

The FAQ page had a list of different issues including one for installation. The installation page had a another list of issues and lo and behold, the one I was having was among them! I read my problem described to me perfectly and there, right there, was the simple answer. The person who wrote the answer was kind enough to say if this is what is happening to you, you have “misread” the directions. And in a few sentences it cleared up my misreading.

I made the fix and offered up a little prayer to the tech gods as I ran toward that third hurdle again. This time I sailed right over it and landed lightly on the other side. I shouted “woo-hoo!” and scared the cats. My happy dance sent them running from the room. I called my Bookman at work and left him a message with lots of “I did its” and “yays!”

Then I looked about me to see where I was to go from here and the last “yippy!” died on my lips as I gazed at a huge field of hurdles. But at least I made it to the field and now I should be able to find lots of help from various quarters because the field is where the books start and where all the fun stuff gets to happen. I hope.

Now during all of this I have been trying to also read Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White. It is, perhaps, not a good idea to have a book that has you on the edge of your seat hovering about because the mind in stress is very good at rationalizing why it should be reading the book instead of trying to figure out the stupid software installation. Work on Drupal for an hour and then I can take a fifteen minute reading break. Right. That fifteen minutes ends up being half an hour because I can’t stop here! Oh I’ll just read to there and then stop. Just one more page. Only five more pages to the end of the chapter, I’ll stop then. You know how it works. But now that I have Drupal working, I think I can reward myself with an hour’s reading. The lines in Las Vegas are now open for you to place your bets on how many minutes over the alloted hour I will manage.