Working for the American Cancer Society, it’s hard not to get wrapped up in the fundraising culture.

Our most successful event is called Relay for Life. Relay is a 24 hour event thrown in most communities. In fact, there were more RFLs last year than McDonalds in America. Relay for Life is focused on honoring cancer patients and survivors, and is a great way to make an impact locally.

Relay for Life generates a lot of our revenue, enabling our cancer survivor programs, cancer research, and Hope Lodges. I’m active as a team member raising money for a Relay in Birmingham, Alabama called Metro Birmingham Relay for Life. Please take a second to visit my donation page online.

I’m also the Online Chair for this event, meaning I’m in charge of making sure our online registration is smooth, and I help promote the event through websites and emails. If you are interested in joining this fundraising effort, send me an email.

There must be something about me that makes people think I work in whatever store I am in.

I was having lunch today in a crowded deli. I had gotten up to put my tray away, and noticed a woman walking through the same path of the restaurant. It was a narrow walkway between tables, and being polite, I waited for her to pass. As she approached me, she pointed down to a table and said,
“Will you take these dishes away?”
Somewhat startled I asked,
“Where do you want me to take them?”
“Wherever they are supposed to go, I guess.”
I should mention that I was wearing nothing that would resemble the uniform of the workers in the deli. As I was picking up the dishes and placing them on my tray, I said,
“Let me know if I can get anything else for you.”

I officially have March Madness. I'm a diehard UK basketball fan and this is my favorite time of the year. Even if the cats aren’t living up to my expectations or even their potential, I will watch every game I can.

Unfortunately that means that I’m distracted at work during the first round. There isn’t any good excuse for that. I guess I’ll just have to acknowledge that this week makes it difficult for me to concentrate on anything but college basketball and work harder next week to pick up the pieces.

The side projects are suffering too.

I’m more than a little nervous about UK’s game tomorrow night against UAB. UAB has dealt us an embarrassing loss in the tournament in the past. I live in Birmingham, Alabama, so I got more than my fair share of ribbing for the loss.

It’s payback time.

GO CATS!

A big part of using open source products like Drupal is sharing. Through use and customization, a great product can become incredible. Drupal is an example of an open source product with a great design, current functionality, and huge user/developer base.

I'd like to share my first Drupal hack and hope this makes it's way into the larger Drupal community.

I'm using the popular recipe module for sharing and collaborating on recipes. I'm also using the taxonomy module for categorizing content. I noticed that when I visit the pages created by the taxonomy_menu module, recipes would not display correctly. The reason was that the taxonomy module treats recipes like regular nodes without adding the additional information stored in the recipe table.

To fix this, I had to make a slight change to the taxonomy_render_nodes() function in taxonomy.module. I changed

while ($node = db_fetch_object($result)) {
  $output .= node_view(node_load(array('nid' => node->nid)), 1);
}

To

while ($node = db_fetch_object($result)) {
  if ($node->type == "recipe")
  {
    $n = node_load(array('nid' => $node->nid));
    $recipe = recipe_content(recipe_load($node));

    $n->body = $recipe->body;
    $output .= node_view($n);
  }
  else
  {
    $output .= node_view(node_load(array('nid' => node->nid)), 1);
  }
}

Now recipes show up correctly in the pages created by the taxonomy module.

Nine months ago today I started working for the American Cancer Society. When I was considering the move to this job, my biggest concern was that the culture at ACS wouldn’t be as professional or intense as other options. I think there is a common conception that not for profit organizations lack professionalism.

I can proudly report that this is not the case with ACS. My colleges are among the most talented, driven, and professional individuals I have ever encountered. The work environment and culture is amazing.

I work as the Director of Data Management for the Mid-South Division of the American Cancer Society. The Mid-South is composed of local offices in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Basically I make sure we are collecting the right kind of information, and using it strategically to serve our constituents better. Using technical tools and rethinking our business procedures, I hope to decrease mortality rates, fund additional cancer research, and provide services to patients in our underserved communities.

It goes without saying that working for an organization like the American Cancer Society is rewarding on many levels. It was a hard decision to make the career move in this direction, but if I had known then what I know now, it would have been the easiest decision of my life.