Raible Designs

2018 - A Year in Review

In 2018, I spoke at several fantastic meetups, traveled a bit overseas, and enjoyed some fun family vacations. We had the time of our lives driving Hefe in the Denver St. Paddy's Day Parade!

We traveled to Crete for JCrete and had a blast with the Java community. We journeyed to Ireland with my folks, and I thoroughly enjoyed a speaking tour of Ireland JUGs and the Dublin JHipster Meetup. Our classic VWs had a great year with only minor repairs needed.

I'm going to look back on 2018 using the following categories.

• Professional
  • Speaking
  • Community
  • Projects
• Personal
• 2019

Professional

For those stumbling upon this post with no context, I'm a veteran open source developer that works at Okta as a developer advocate.

This year I focused on blogging more than speaking. I still spoke a fair bit, but I tried to focus on meetups more than conferences. The DevEx Team at Okta released a slew of SDKs at the end of 2017, so I had plenty to write about. Over the year, I found more and more developers had heard of Okta during my talks. I even found users in most audiences! This was quite a change from 2017, so it seems my team's advocacy efforts might be working.

Life Update: Thanksgiving in Montana, RWX2018, Devoxx4Kids, DJUG, and Trish's Birthday

For the first time in many years, we flew to Montana for the holidays. We typically drive, and it takes around 14 hours. It was quite nice to take off and land in just a couple of hours.

Happy Birthday, Abbie!

OMG. My daughter, Abbie, turned 16 today! We celebrated all weekend with her grandparents in town and lots of smiles. Abbie hosted a birthday party at our house on Saturday night with a bunch of balloons, a campfire outside, and a plethora of friends around. On Sunday, we took my parents and both kids to the Broncos game, and tonight we celebrated again at Abbie and Jack's mom's house.

The highlight of the weekend was when Julie (her mom) and Dave (her step-dad) surprised her with her very own car. It was a complete surprise to her and very well executed by Julie and Dave. Let's just say it was an emotional event that won't soon be forgotten.

Abbie's favorite thing to do these days is to hang out with her friends. She's got a good group of girls and guys that she pals around with. When she's not giggling with them, she's horseback riding with Trish. Trish has had an incredible influence on her life, and I'm amazed at how good they are at riding. We have several walls in our house that are lined with ribbons from the two of them.

Abbie is a sophomore in high school this year, with excellent grades, and an eye on what's next after high school. It sure is fun watching her grow up and become an awesome woman.

Happy 16th Birthday, Abbie!

The 14-Day Sugar Detox

Several years ago, Trish and I did a 21-Day sugar detox. I was unenthusiastic at the time, but the results were fantastic. I lost weight, my blood pressure improved, and it inspired me to eat better ever since. I created 21-Points Health to track my health and became the cook in our household.

This summer, I journeyed to JCrete, and enjoyed a couple weeks of vacation afterward. While we had a fantastic time, I didn't eat well or exercise much. When I returned home, I was motivated to be healthier before our next big trip.

Two weeks ago, Trish and I decided to do a 14-day sugar detox. We ate mostly meats and vegetables with some fruit (green apples and greenish bananas OK), drank a lot of water (no booze is allowed), and did mostly home-cooking. To step things up a notch, I decided to double my daily exercise and see if I could lose some weight. I started commuting 30+ miles per day to Thrive Workplace. They have two locations in Denver, so I'd pick the closer one depending on the day.

Did it work? I lost a bunch of weight the first week but then plateaued this week. I enjoyed the commute and fresh air, but I was hoping to lose more weight. I think 21 days might be the trick. Then again, my blood pressure is pretty good, so maybe all is well.

After two weeks, I lost 10 pounds (4.5 kg); my blood pressure dropped from 154/92 to 131/80.

What's next? I think eating a low sugar diet, exercising more, and keeping it to 10 drinks a week is the healthiest lifestyle for me. Next week, I’ll be sipping on sweet Guinness in Ireland. I’ve heard it’s good for you. ;)

Below is a screenshot of this week in 21-Points Health.

If I get three points tomorrow, I'll get 21 points two weeks in a row!

Thanks to Runkeeper for tracking my miles traveled and calories burned.

Questions or comments about no sugar or long bike commutes are most welcome. :)

Update: I managed to score 21 points, two weeks in a row! 🎉

Happy Birthday, Jack!

Jack turned 14 today. Last weekend we celebrated with his friends at our local Topgolf. I'd never been before, so I was eager to go, and we all had a great time.

However, the real highlight happened when we were cruising home in our '66 VW Bus amongst a gaggle of Lamborghinis. We had all his friends in the bus when four Lambos and a Bently pulled up alongside us. We cruised with them for a couple miles, grinning from ear to ear.

Jack's favorite thing to do these days is to play video games with his buddies, specifically Fortnite (a.k.a. "fork knife"). He's got some basketball skills too but doesn't play on a team. He excels at skiing because we make him go all the time and he's only a centimeter or two shorter than me. He's sure to be taller than me soon!

Jack is in 8th grade this year. This was the first year he traveled across the pond to visit Europe. He's getting in some miles: Paris in June, Crete in July, and we're heading to Ireland next week.

Happy 14th Birthday, Jack!

Farewell to the 2017-18 Ski Season

Summertime has arrived in Colorado! Typically, I try to write my "end of ski season" blog post in April or May, but this year it slipped until June. Do I have a good excuse?! Not really. Things got busy with my trip to Richmond and Oktane 18, that's all.

I'm going to keep this post short and sweet, to mirror the ski season. We didn't receive a whole lot of snow in the Rocky Mountains so the powder days were few and far between. There were a couple though, and I got to spend a powder day with some old friends at Winter Park!

The kids and I skied a few days in December, but it wasn't anything to write home about. For New Years, we packed up the Syncro and headed for Crested Butte.

Crested Butte had OK conditions, but the real fun happened when we ditched downhill and tried Nordic skiing. We spent a few hours with James Ward and daughter Josie on a beautiful cross country ski adventure. I grew up cross-country skiing to the bus stop, so it was a real hoot to do it with the whole family.

The real magic happened when I visited the Utah JUG in February. I drove through several snow storms on the way and arrived just in time for my talk on microservices, JHipster, and OAuth.

The next morning, there was 17" at Snowbird. That was a lovely morning.

That evening, Trish and the kids flew in and we hit Alta the next day. They still had fresh snow in spots and lots of sunshine.

We spent Sunday and Monday in Park City and got dumped on again. 17" again on Monday. Wahoo! We stayed and skied the morning, then endured a long 10-hour drive home.

Those were the main highlights of the ski season. Both kids are legit skiers now and will ski blacks all day if the snow is good. OK, maybe not all day, but for a few hours at least.

As for the VWs, Stout the Syncro won his class at the VWs on the Green show! Hefe the Bus didn't win anything, but he sure did look good!

Summer 2018

Now it's pretty much summer in our neck of the woods. We spent last weekend rafting on the Upper Colorado and we're hitting the Arkansas near Salida this weekend. I've been riding my bike(s) a lot, but haven't done a lot of single track trails. I hope to fix that soon.

If you're a developer that follows this blog - I hope to see you on the road in the coming months! I'll be at JHipster Conf next week, KC/DC, UberConf, and JCrete in July, and Boston JUG in August. Hope y'all have a great summer.

Spring Break 2018: Sun, Fun, and Disney World!

I love Spring break. Who doesn't?! When I was a student, it was a nice break between quarters and led to many adventures with friends in college. As an adult, I love taking a Spring break holiday and spending it with my family. In a recent blog post on the @oktadev blog, I wrote:

I work hard, and I play hard. My family loves to do ski weekends, road trips, and whitewater raft trips. I’m lucky to work at a company like Okta that has an unlimited vacation policy. I’ve heard that most unlimited vacation policies don’t work for people because they tend to work more, and take fewer vacations.

I take full advantage of our unlimited vacation policy and make sure to take a week of vacation during every other six-week plan.

— How to Achieve Massive Productivity at Work

Last week, my family and I spent Spring break 2018 with Trish's parents in Naples, Florida. We saw some incredible cars, enjoyed a day at Magic Kingdom in Disney World, played some golf, took in a couple of sunsets, and relaxed a bunch. I think some pictures describe it best.

Q1 Technical Blog Posts

In case you're here looking for technical blog posts, I'm still writing about Java, Spring Boot, Angular, React, and JHipster quite a bit. However, I'm doing it mostly on the Okta Developer Blog. Here's a list of my blog posts from Q1 2018:

• Protect Your Cryptocurrency Wealth Tracking PWA with Okta
• Use Okta (Instead of Local Storage) to Store Your User’s Data Securely
• Use Ionic for JHipster to Create Mobile Apps with OIDC Authentication
• Secure a Spring Microservices Architecture with Spring Security and OAuth 2.0
• Develop a Microservices Architecture with OAuth 2.0 and JHipster
• Open Source Framework Samples and Quickstarts for Okta's Developer APIs
• Build a React Native Application and Authenticate with OAuth 2.0
• How to Achieve Massive Productivity at Work

JHipster Mini-Book v4.5 Released!

In related writing news, version 4.5 of the JHipster Mini-Book is now available! Please let me know if you find any issues, or would like clarification on any topics.

Happy Birthday Abbie!

Abbie turned 15 today. About a month ago, she said she didn't want a birthday party, so we decided we'd surprise her with one. Her mom did most of the work, inviting her friends, gather food and drinks, and hosting the event at her house.

We told her we were going out to a family dinner, and we needed to pick her mom up along the way. We found out later that she knew about it the whole time, but the same friend that showed her the Evite told her it was next weekend. So she kinda knew. However, when I put a tie on, Trish got fancy, and Jack dressed nice for dinner, she figured "Oh well, I guess it's not tonight."

Abbie still rides her horse, Tucker, a couple of times a week and she's won several ribbons at all the shows she's been in. She's a freshman in high school now. It's incredible to look back and see that I started this blog just a few months before she was born.

Happy 15th Birthday Abbie!

Goodbye, Sir Jake

Jake was a border collie that came into my life when I met Trish. In fact, I met him on our first date. After dinner, Trish and I wandered back to her place and took her dogs for a walk in Wash Park. She had two: Sagan (the crazy one) and Jake (stoner dog). Jake wasn't a purebred border collie, but he was one of those perfect dogs. He slept a lot, liked to lay in the sunshine, and was always happy to harass Sagan and giggle while doing it when we went on walks.

A few years ago, when I was only working 20 hours per week, I grew to appreciate our dogs more than ever. I'd take them on walks, hikes, and runs almost every afternoon. I learned that living my life like my dogs wanted me to live it was a great thing. Long walks, relaxing in the sun, smiling from ear to ear when a family member comes home.

A few weeks ago, I took both our dogs on a run and Jake was not feeling well. He certainly didn't want to run, and he could barely keep up even when we walked. Trish took him in for some tests, and we discovered his blood cells were under attack. Trish rushed him to CSU's Veterinary Hospital for a blood transfusion. That helped, but we discovered a few days later that his bones were no longer producing red blood cells. Another blood transfusion, a bunch of prescription drugs, and he was back in action. He seemed to be doing great. We drove to Montana last week to visit my parents and brought him with us.

Last Friday, Jake could only walk on three legs. Yesterday, he was down to two. Trish took him in, and his doctor said his liver was failing. Since he was an older dog and lived a great life, we chose not continue keeping him alive. He was put to sleep yesterday afternoon at Aurora Animal Hospital. They allowed him to lay in the grass, in the sunshine, while they carried out the procedure.

I'm happy to have known you, Jake. You were a great dog, and I learned a lot from you. Sleep well, buddy.

Rafting the Salmon River in Idaho

We are a rafting family. We solidified that when we bought a raft five years ago. Since then, we've had many adventures, on many rivers, and met a plethora of good friends along the way. We call these friends our "river family". Our river family gathers every January and chooses where we want to apply for river permits. We wait for a couple months until permits are granted. A person or two usually gets a permit granted, then the planning begins!

This year, we were granted a permit to float the main fork of the Salmon River in Idaho. We started our journey just over a week after rafting, hiking, and enjoying life in Montana. It was a long drive (878 miles / 1448 km) from our house. It took two days to drive there and we stopped in Pocatello, Idaho to rendezvous with my dad along the way. He brought our raft from Montana and we wanted to leave his truck so we wouldn't have to pay $500 to shuttle it. Yep, that's right - the trek from our put-in (Corn Creek), to take-out (Carey Creek) was so long (383 miles / 616 km) that the shuttle company charged $500 per vehicle!

We had 28 members in our river family on the Salmon. There were more children than adults, and something like 15 watercraft in total. It was epic, it was joyous, it is the source of many lasting memories. I think the kids might've even enjoyed it as much as the adults. Their "gossip circles" where a highlight for them, as was floating in their duckies, and the river romances that developed along the way.

This story is best told with Trish's photos, where you can see the many smiles, the clear water, and how the good times flourished.