Notifier install fixes / seen while installing at Stanford

Hi @e0d, can you review these changes?  This is the branch I was working off of getting notifier installed out here.  There are some new config files in edx-west/* that you shouldn't care about.  Aside from that there are tactical things in the code that I'll comment about inline.

It'd be great to get this reviewed soon so we could install on prod tomorrow.  Thanks!