Colorado Avalanche Secure Playoff Berth

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Adding A Fixed Utility Bar To WordPress Genesis Theme

I wanted to add a new utility bar at the top of my site that was fixed. Using Carrie Dils example with a small modification, I achieved what I wanted. Thanks Carrie.

Here are the additions I added:

style.css
.utility-bar {
background-color: #4cbb17;
border-bottom: 1px solid #ddd;
color: #ddd;
font-size: 12px;
font-size: 1.2rem;
padding: 10px 0;
padding: 1rem;
position: fixed;
width: 100%;
line-height: .5 !important;
z-index: 1;
}

And I had to make a small change to padding for the @media areas so the title had some distance between the green and the the text. Carrie's example included two sidebars, I only included one and stretched it to 100% in CSS.

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This Sunday

We are having a fast for my dad this coming Sunday the 30th of March for very positive results from tests he's taking over the next few days.

We continue to appreciate all of the prayers, words of encouragement and love from all of you. Thank you.

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THANK YOU!

I want to take a minute and thank everyone, my wife Gina, without her I would be completely lost. My wonderful children, Jake, Linsey, Ashley and Jessica, for all of their support, help and daily encouragement. The hundreds of family and friends who have reached out and helped, offered prayers, and more encouragement. You'll never know how grateful I am.

I must admit it's a little overwhelming to feel the amount of love and concern. There is nothing more valuable to me than the love of my God, my family, and my friends.

We'll have more to share over the next few days. Things are progressing, and I'll continue to need everyones positive vibes. I love all of you.

With a very sincere heart,

--Thom

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Chemotherapy Class

Utah Cancer Specialists offers a class on the chemotherapy process and what to expect in the clinic. Gina and I attended last night (not wasting any time to learn what I'm in for). The class was very informative and I learned a couple of things:

1. My therapy will last about 4.5 hours once a week. The clinic offers a great lounge type area, big chairs, and of course, wifi. All electronic devices are welcomed, so I'm good to go.

2. Quickly my immune system will be impaired and I'll be more susceptible to infection and illness. So, that means lots of hand sanitizer, clean surfaces, and unfortunately, can't be around anyone who is sick or have been exposed to someone who is sick. My white blood cells will be reduced because of the chemo making it extremely difficult to fight off normal sickness.

3. There are about 10 different side affects, none of which I want, but can assume I'll have several.

A couple of things need to be done before I can start chemo (getting my liver to function properly), then the long journey.

Peace.

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Meeting With the Oncologist

First of all, I cannot express how positive and hopeful my parents felt after leaving Dr. Nibley’s Office this morning. My dad is in good hands for sure! 

The first person they met with was Audrey, my dads patient advocate. She takes care of the insurance and financial stuff and also the supportive services like classes. All the classes are free. She gave a schedule of these classes to my mom and dad so they can sign up for them if they want to. There is a fishing trip on the schedule as well! Cool!

Next they met with Dr. Nibley’s P.A., Melissa. She was very kind and after going over my dads medical records and health history, she answered some of their initial questions and then checked my dads incisions and such to make sure everything was healing well and also took a blood sample to check his bilirubin levels. She said my dads cancer was somewhere between stages 2 and 3. Definitely not 4! YAY! There was some new information that Melissa gave them, that probably doesn’t matter at this point, but it was that my dads gallbladder had cancer in it. But that doesn’t change anything… even if the gallbladder was the “primary” source of cancer, the treatment for gallbladder cancer and liver cancer is pretty much the same.

Proposed Treatment

When Dr. Nibley came into the room, he pulled out a sheet of paper and drew pictures while he explained things and then proposed his suggestions for a moderately-aggressive treatment plan.  He was very positive and upbeat and mentioned several times about what an advantage it was that my dad is so young ;) He totally expects my dads body to respond well to the treatment. However, before the chemo/radiation can begin, Dr. Nibley wants to make sure that the liver is functioning properly because the chemo drugs will be processed through the liver and it needs to be as healthy as possible. 

Because there is a risk that the large tumor could shift and squeezes off the bile duct again, he would still like a bile drain to be surgically installed. He plans to consult with Dr. Bladder, the radiologist/surgeon who “unsuccessfully” attempted this last week, to see what may be done to accomplish this successfully this time. Dr. Nibley was always very patient and compassionate and offered much hope!

As soon as possible, after my dads liver is functioning properly, he will be given a round of chemo therapy and radiation therapy. Dr. Nibley said that a round is basically 3 weeks of chemo/radiation and 1 week rest. After each round of treatment, my dads tumors will be measured to see if they are shrinking which is the main goal at this point.  

Note:  In case any of you are wondering… surgically removing the large tumor is not advisable because of its position near many vital organs.  (We asked if the tumors shrank enough could surgically removing them eventually be a possibility, and he didn’t completely discount that idea…) We also asked Dr. Nibley if a liver transplant could be an option but he said in the case of cancer it is not typically approved due to the fact that small cancerous cells can still be lurking within the body. Liver transplants for cancer patients has not been highly successful.

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Update 1

Let's start from the beginning for those who are just tuning in.

On March 5th my dad went into surgery to have his gall bladder removed. While in the surgery the surgeon found a large mass on his liver. They sent a piece of the tumor to pathology for biopsy.

 

A week later we still had no answers, and the results of the tests were all incongruent. He had a CT scan done to find out if there were more tumors and where the primary source of the cancer cells were coming from. The scan didn't show any other tumors but that the large mass was in fact, cancerous. Now we just needed to know where it had come from.

 

Dr. Ayers, who is a Doctor at Intermountain Medical Center, classified Thom’s type of cancer as “Cholangiocarcinoma” also known as “Bile Duct Cancer”. One bile duct on Thom’s liver is blocked with cancerous tumors and is being identified at this time as the primary source of cancer which has metastasized and formed a larger tumor that sits against the liver and is responsible for squeezing off a second bile duct (healthy) causing Thom’s jaundice condition.  Here’s the miracle….During Saturday’s endoscopy/surgery the surgeon discovered that Thomas’ large tumor somehow had (miraculously) shifted its position which in turn freed the healthy bile duct from being pinched off.  Nothing but a miracle!  Thank you for your prayers!  (This explains why Thomas’ condition began to improve suddenly last Thursday.) 

During the surgery on Saturday, the surgeon wasn't able to insert the stent into the smaller bile duct because of the tumors getting in the way so the plan is now to begin chemotherapy and shrink the tumors which will allow insertion of the stent at another time.

Yesterday, Dr. Ayers released Thomas from the hospital with the instructions to eat non-greasy and non-oily foods which is funny because right after the doctor stepped out of the hospital room, the staff brought in a meal for Thom consisting of  Roast with plenty of mashed potatoes and gravy…Not exactly non-greasy foods…..hahaha.  Crazy.   Needless to say, Gina is very relieved to have checked Thom out of that hospital and they are home at this time.

Going forward….

Thomas has an appointment Tuesday, March 25^th, with Dr. Nibley who was Chandy’s cancer doctor. She and Gary (Gina's brother) love him and his staff which is very comforting and encouraging. It is expected that plans will be made to begin chemo treatments very soon.

Please feel free to come visit Thom. We do not want anyone to feel that they are not invited to come visit and spend time with our family. We do ask that you please remember we are trying to focus on my dad and help him the best we can, as well as texts, phone calls, FB messages and emails. It is a bit overwhelming for us so we have decided to have Lisa and Jennifer be the advocate for extended family, friends and neighbors with questions in regards to my dad. We would really like to focus on my dad and this process.

We haven't had that much information ourselves, and we are not trying to exclude anyone else from the information we do have. We have decided this blog is the best for updates so please feel free to share with family and/or friends. We will update this blog with the latest as soon as we have it ourselves. We are hoping it will be a few times a week, if not daily and will not start until this Tuesday after meeting the oncologist.

We are so thankful for all of the love, support, prayers, dinners made, blessings, fasting, thoughts and words of encouragement and comfort. We are so blessed to know all of you.

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WordPress WP_Query Sorting On Meta Values

I recently needed to sort posts by values saved in a meta value field. The normal post object only has a reference to the meta values so I needed to figure out how to add a meta key, meta value, and direction to WP_Query. Here is what I did:

The meta key: event-details
The meta value: a:1:{i:0;a:7:{s:16:"event-start-date";s:10:"03-04-2014";s:14:"event-location";s:15:"Someplace, USA";s:10:"event-logo";s:4:"4301";s:10:"event-type";s:5:"Event";s:10:"event-link";s:36:"http://www.company.com/";s:10:"event-time";s:0:"";s:14:"event-end-date";s:10:"03-05-2014";}}

The value event-start-date is what I want to sort all the posts returned.

$query_args = array( 'post_type' => 'events',
'posts_per_page' => -1,
'order' => 'DESC',
'meta_key' => 'event-details',
'orderby' => 'meta_value event-start-date' );

$loop = new WP_Query( $query_args );

Now I have a post object that is sorted by the event-start-date. Took me a while to get the sorting right, but it works like a charm.

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The Big "C" Has Invaded My Life

I'm fairly young, 46 as I write this, not in shape like my Marine days, but I can generally hold my own. But of all the things I thought would come my way this year health wise, the one thing that wasn't on my radar, even remotely, was cancer.

Saying cancer isn't as tough as I thought it would be. What's tougher are the emotions that come along with it. The what's next, the when's, the why's, the how longs, pissed my wife has to deal with this, pissed my kids have to deal with this, and grateful for all the love and support my family and friends have shown me.

I have a long road to walk. A lot of unknowns. A lot of time to think about my life, what I've done, and what I still want to do. I seriously don't know what this means for my life expectancy, but to tell you the truth, I'm more worried about fighting it, winning, and moving on. I could use your prayers, your thoughts, your good vibes, not just for me, but for my Family as well.

I like my blog, it's my personal space. Generally it's been about tech stuff, but now I will add this part of my life too.

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Team Victories

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Google Sphere

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Adding A WordPress Category To Imported Posts

One feature I've either missed over the years or doesn't exist, is the ability to add more meta data to imported posts. Here is the scenario:

New WordPress site
Importing old WordPress content into new site
Want to add a new category to all posts (or tag)
User custom template page to display new posts (category-foo.php)

So how do we solve this issue? Here is what I did. This may not be the best or optimum way, and as a disclaimer, unless you fully understand databases, sql syntax, and how WordPress ties posts and meta data, this may be a little more than you want to tackle (but I can help you of course!).

Here is is how I started. Wrote a quick PHP script to read the WordPress XML file from site one and display the GUID tag value on the screen. Since I don't know what the new post ID is after the fact, and the GUID is a field in both the XML and the database, I used that. Also, because I'm lazy at times, I included writing out the actual SQL code I'll use to build a SELECT statement.



Now that I have this code, I run the query in phpMyAdmin, and I get a result set full of Insert statements. I use the Export feature to CSV for Excel, and then open in my favorite code editor Coda. The Insert statements are important because it's how I'm going to manually add the category. This little query returns the post ID and the wp_terms ID.

But before we crate all this cool code, I had to do a little leg work. In order to make this work you need two things, the post ID and the term (category) ID. Armed with those two values, I can add records to wp_term_relationships. First I needed to create the new category called Blog. After creating that, I went into phpMyAdmin and looked in the wp_terms table, and found the ID of the category Blog. Noting the ID I added it to the concant() sql function used in creating the INSERT statements along with the post ID from wp_posts.

The output in the CSV file looks something like this: INSERT INTO wp_term_relationships VALUES (2082,838)

Once in Coda, I did a string replace of the closing paren ) with ,0); so the INSERT statement closed correctly. The statment now looks like this: INSERT INTO wp_term_relationships VALUES (2082,838,0);

I copied all the lines in the CSV file, pasted them into the SQL window in phpMyAdmin, and clicked GO!

The result was 341 record updates with the new relationship of Blog. Go into the Admin and click on the Category link under posts, and to the right of Blog, I saw the correct number of entries. Click on the entries number gives you all the posts who have the category Blog. Voila!

This process seems convoluted and cumbersome, but it's not meant to be accomplished by everyone. What I did here was basically violate the code of conduct for WordPress developers by manually adding values to the database instead of letting the WordPress framework do it. My next assignment is to look for some type of method that would allow me to do this. What I really want is the ability to add additional meta data at the time I import. But that's for another day. And maybe someone has already figured this out, and I would love to see how that works.

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Snow Stream

#photography

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Fleetwood Mac Aging But Like A Fine Wine

http://youtu.be/35EQxchPwuI

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Lights On The Water

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The Coach Who Never Punts

Apply this type of attitude to business, and life, and you'll be a winner for sure. This video should be shared with everyone from the mail room to the board room.

"There are those kinds of people that want to be different because they just want to be different, and there are those kinds of people that want to be different because they are looking for something to help them be more successful." ... beautiful.

This coach takes a calculated risk every time he goes out on the field. He knows the percentages, who knows the odds; he generally knows what his team can and will do. What's interesting I think, is that he removes the the one factor that most football players expect, to punt on 4th down.

I can remember as a football player I hated punting. I hated it for a few reasons. One, I wasn't on special teams as it's called, and so I had to come out, which really sucks. Two, most of the time we could have made the yardage needed for a first down, but were denied the opportunity to try because traditionally if you punt you have a better chance of stopping the other team from scoring, and giving yourself another shot to score. But that is really not true.

Thirdly, it gave the entire team the feeling they were failing and the coaching staff didn't trust them to make the big plays. This is very demoralizing.

Do you give your team the same out? Do you push them to play through the fourth down, or cut out early on a project, scale back deliverables because there doesn't appear to be enough time, or the challenge seems to difficult? I would suspect a good leader, someone who knows their team, knows their ability, knows their drive, will let the team push through on fourth and goal, and not opt out for success.

I know the entrepreneur mantra is fail and fail often to reach success. I agree nothing is gained with nothing attempted, and this coaches attitude and drive would seem to fit right along those lines. Don't quit on fourth down, the odds are in your favor for success.

#business #leadership #life

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Early To Rise

Love a good sun rise.

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Let Me Show You How To Spell WordPress Correctly

It's spelt WordPress. See the difference from Word(p)ress?

Believe it or not, I typed in the title of this post into Google, and there wasn't a single post on the first page of results that was just about spelling WordPress correctly.

The WordPress team has spent an incredible amount of time coming up with logo styling and use (here), and I see so many variations of the WordPress logo I can't imaging trying to police the problem. But when I am reading around the net, reading posts, articles, blogs, whatever, and people spell WordPress as Word(p)ress, I just want to scream. Especially by people who know it's spelt WordPress. Not some variation.

Why is this important? Well, it's not really, but it's like spelling my name, which is Thom, not Tom. Even people who have known me for many years write my name as Tom. Thom is my name. Thom is my brand.

When you spell WordPress as Word(p)ress, it loses something, like it's a fake name, like you don't really know what WordPress is.

So here it is. The one post I hope makes it to the top of the search pages, so every knows how it's spelt. Now I need to write a bot to go out on the web and correct all the mistakes.

By the way, the WordPress system automatically corrects the spelling of WordPress. Read more here.

<off-soap-box />

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Apple iOS 7 Translucent UI Needs Help

I installed iOS 7 on one of my iPads today. The first thing that struck me was the change in the way folders and the system tray looked. Honestly, I didn't spend a whole lot of time studying every aspect of iOS 7 so some of this might not have been surprising with a little digging, but this really caught me off guard. As you can see from the image below, the folders and the system tray look skin color. I really wanted to puke. I thought, how could this be!

After my initial shock wore off, I changed the wallpaper and sure enough, the colors showed through what I guess is a translucent UI. I searched the settings to see if there was something that let change the percentage of translucency or even the color, and nope, nothing.

I do like the new fast app switch, but it took me a few minutes to figure out how to close down an app. It's not the old-fashioned way of hold and press the X, you simply perform the Android maneuver of sliding it off the screen. Closed.

 

This isn't a post knocking iOS 7, or Apple. Just my initial observation. I wish for a day I can control some of the UI look on my personal device. But that's another post.

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Guest Hosting The Unofficial KickStarter Podcast KickCast

@KTData invited me to guest host an episode of his KickCast podcast, which is all about KickStarters. You gotta love technology. Here is the video recording of the session.

 


Watch live video from KTDataVision! on Justin.tv

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