Just a quick post today to announce that I have finally figured out how to run a drupal multisite installation, and I have finally converted my old website, CharityHikers.org over to Drupal. Making charityhikers.org a dynamically driven site has been one of my goals since about 2004, so completing this task is giving me an excellent dose of satisfaction.

The site began as a place where I could put up information about my hike for AIDS research, but I have developed it into something that other people can use to fundraise for their own causes. With this step, I think it is finally getting pretty close to a useful tool, but I still have a couple of things I'd like to accomplish with the site.

The biggest goal I have for it is to allow hikers to sign up, and then update their profile with their charity and personal information, and to have that dynamically generate the menus, pages, etc. that are needed for the site so that their new information is automatically integrated. At present, pages have to be manually created through the CMS system, which is a bit of work, but it's not too bad all in all.

The second goal I have is to allow picture uploading for hikers. It doesn't take a whole lot of storage space to do this, and it seems like a good service to provide. My current plan is to use gallery2 to accomplish this feat, but I'm having some serious issues with the database right now.

Anyway, goals and road maps aside, I'm really quite happy with this change. My real goal is for this site to really start bringing in donations. So far it's brought in a little over $10K, but in the scheme of things that's really not a whole lot of money...

I also found the attached news articles I had posted on my website. Pretty funny stuff.

I've been working the past couple of days on getting my other site, charityhikers.org moved over to my home server and recreated on Drupal. It's turning out to be a huge pain in the neck. The main problem is that there seem to be too many viable ways to accomplish what I want, and no consensus as to what the best one is. The result of this is that there are a number of half-hearted attempts at explaining how to have multiple sites running off of one Drupal installation, but none of them are really that detailed, or really apply all that well...it's frustrating.

However! In doing this, I discovered a treasure I thought I had lost. I discovered my old PCT journal entries, which I have posted below, by date. It's a bit long, so I won't be offended if nobody reads them, but it's interesting to see what I was thinking before the big trip back in '05. Unfortunately, I don't have any of the actual posts from the trail, so it's a bit of a cliff hanger. Alas.

I went solo backpacking this weekend for the first time in a LONG time. I think the last time I really did a trip like this one was actually before I did the PCT, which was back in '04.

I went out to Point Reyes National Park, leaving Friday after work, and returning Sunday. On Friday, I camped at the ranger station, and on Saturday, I set out on an ambitious trek covering 25 miles that day, and 5 the next. I had packed extremely lightly with no water filtration, no stove, pot, spoon. Really, the only things in my pack were food, clothes, a tarp and stakes, some knick knacks and a water bladder.

With the light load, things were going well on Saturday morning, but then, a little after lunch, it started to rain. Then pour. Then the winds came on. All in all, as it should turn out, this was one hell of a storm. I set up my day so that I do a loop starting on the east heading south, and then I would hook west and head north along the coast. This meant that once the storm hit, I would be heading north on an incredibly exposed trail for about 15 miles.

Let me tell you folks, it was an adventure. I was so exposed that I felt like I could not stop to eat, drink or anything, so I just kept hiking for the entire distance, until I reached camp, after a long, long day. At one point, in one of the windier areas, I was running downhill, the wind coming on so hard that I began to be detached from the earth. It was actually lifting me off the ground...not a lot, just a little, but enough to be a worry.

Anyway, despite the adventure, the trip was good. It gave me some time to reflect on all the changes coming on in my life, and to get out and feel alive.

Did I find the answer to my question of Cal vs. UW? No...not in nature I didn't.