Raible Designs

My OSCON Aftermath

Last week, I had a great time at OSCON '08. However, I've been paying the toll ever since. For the 5 days prior to OSCON, I stayed up late working on my presentation. I was furiously trying to develop an application with Rails, Grails, Flex and GWT. In the ~30 hours I spent developing the application (Rich Resume), I was able to finish the Rails and Grails pieces, but didn't get much farther than "Hello World" with Flex and GWT.

Even though I had my kids the weekend before OSCON, I still managed to get 4 hours of sleep each night. The next couple nights were no better. On the day of my presentation, I started to feel sick. Luckily, it didn't affect my talk and it never really hit me until the next day. On Thursday, I woke up with swollen tonsils and the feeling of an oncoming cold. I attended the conference on Thursday and went to bed early to get lots of rest.

On Friday, things weren't improving, but they weren't getting any worse either. My family and I attended the Oregon Brewers Festival and had a great time. Yes, I actually survived taking my kids to a Beer Fest for several hours. That evening, we stayed the night at the Kennedy School and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Again, I went to bed early as the kids and I had a 7:30 AM flight the next morning.

On Saturday, I started to lose my voice and my cold was still bearing down on me like an avalanche. I drove up to Vail for a friend's wedding on Saturday night. Of course, I stayed up too late and drank too much, but I did have a heckuva a good time.

When I woke up Sunday, I was in bad shape. The hangover wasn't bad, it was the body aches (from the cold) and the fact that my right eye was draining and it hurt to open it. A friend had to drive me home because I couldn't put my contacts in. I went to bed when I got home (around 5) and didn't wake up until noon the next day (Monday). I called in sick yesterday and went to the ER in the afternoon (I couldn't find a doctor who'd have me). The doctor in the ER said it was Pink Eye and gave me some drops to make it better. I came home, took a nap and crashed for the night a couple hours later.

I called in sick again today. I woke up around 9 this morning, took a nap 10 minutes later and finally woke up around 1:30 this afternoon feeling halfway decent. The body aches aren't nearly as bad as they were and my eye is no longer draining.

The worst part of this whole thing is I lost my glasses a couple months ago so I've been living w/o good vision for 3 days. I can read things 12 inches from me, but watching TV doesn't work too well. Since I can't wear my contacts for 7 days, I hopped on my bike and rode to the nearest LensCrafters to get a new pair of glasses. Those are scheduled to be done in the next 5 minutes (I'm typing this at the Apple Store in Cherry Creek Mall) and I'll finally be able to see again.

Lessons Learned: Sleep is important, get lots of it. Don't get Pink Eye and a cold at the same time. If you wear contacts, make sure you have a backup pair of glasses for when you get Pink Eye.

Happy Birthday to Me

Today I turned one year older. It's strange to look back and see that I didn't blog about my birthday in 2007 or 2006, but I did in all previous years. Reflecting back on things, my birthday celebrations have gotten better over the years (we do a golf tournament every year now), but the working-on-my-birthday thing has gotten worse.

From my first birthday post in 2003:

Ever since I worked at eDeploy.com, where they gave us our birthday's off, I've continued to take the day off.

As a contractor, it's pretty easy to say "I'm not working on Wednesday, it's my birthday". Last year was the beginning of the downturn - when I started working on my birthday. I'd just started working at LinkedIn the week before. My birthday was on the Tuesday of the 2nd week I was on-site. I found it hard to say, "I need Tuesday" off, so I worked through it. This year, as an employee, I worked through it again. I don't recommend it.

If you can, take your birthday off. I'm going to see what I can do at LinkedIn to make it a company policy that employees get their birthday off. Wish me luck.

Raible Road Trip #12 Vacation Report

I'm happy to report that the kids and I made it home safely last night after a heckuva Road Trip. We were gone for a total of 8 days and we drove for 4 of those. Here's some stats from Snow White:

• 43 Hours
• 2248.3 Miles
• 150.9 Gallons of Gas
• 14.9 AVG MPG
• 52 AVG MPH

Of course, these stats include day-to-day driving while in Montana.

Driving to Montana
We left early on Saturday morning, waking up at 4:30 and were on the road around 5. This was brutal considering I went to bed 4 hours earlier the night before. My Dad and I took turns driving and tried to listen to an audiobook (Spook Country) along the way. However, whenever one person wasn't driving, they fell asleep so the whole idea somewhat failed.

We arrived in Yellowstone around 5PM and checked into our campground. The ranger told me there were 5 grizzlies in the campsite and that we should pack up our food and put small pets in cars for the night. Of course, I couldn't wait to tell this to Abbie, who is always scared that bears will attack us when camping. I finally calmed her fears by telling her I wrestled a bear once when I was a kid and won pretty easily. After setting up camp, Abbie took a swim in the "freezing cold" Yellowstone Lake and we ate dinner and climbed into our tent shortly after.

On Sunday, we woke up and made it out of our campsite by 7:30. We drove to Old Faithful, enjoyed an eruption and proceeded to have a nice breakfast at The Old Faithful Inn. After checking out some more geysers, we made it out of the park around 11. We stopped briefly in Bozeman to see an old friend, hit Clearwater Junction and Lucky's (for huckleberry milkshakes) around 6, and made it to The Cabin just before dark.

At The Cabin
The few days we spent at The Cabin and in the Swan Valley were a lot of fun. I got to drive the family Excavator with both kids on my lap. Jack was operating the bucket while Abbie was operating the swivel of the cab. I took my mountain bike, so I got to ride some old trails I used to ride all the time as a kid. Not only were there beautiful views on the trails, but I also got to experience quite a wreck that sent me head-first into some rocks and bushes. It was the first time I've wrecked in a while where I thought to myself "that was fast and hard enough to break some bones". Luckily, all I received were a number of scratches and bruises.

On Thursday, we took my sister to the train station in Whitefish. We left early enough for my dad and I to get in some golfing at Meadow Lake Golf Course and the kids to hit Big Sky Waterslides. Apparently, they didn't have a height requirement because they were able to go on all the slides.

On the 4th, we finished Abbie's Princess float in the early morning, took a quick sauna and headed down to the Swan Valley Parade. We'd been talking about the parade and Abbie's float for several weeks, so I was kinda nervous that I might mess it up. Not only did everything go great, but there were several hundred folks that clapped when we drove by and commented on what a beautiful princess Abbie was.

After the parade and drinking some good ol' Busch Light from the "Beer Garden", we headed to Holland Lake for a swim and canoeing. We drove back home in time to play a game of horseshoes and get the fireworks setup for the evening. We had a good fireworks show (with yours truly in charge) and enjoyed lots of laughs with old friends.

The Drive Home
As usual, the drive home was the longest portion of the trip. The first day, we left the cabin around 11 and pulled into Billings around 5. The kids (and dog) did pretty good as we only needed to stop once. The shorter first day turned out to be a good idea since the kids like hotels so much. Yesterday, we left Billings around 9:30 and cruised along mightily until we hit the Colorado border. There, traffic came to a standstill and we suffered through stop-and-go the rest of the way home. After 9 hours, we pulled into my driveway, exhausted.

I don't believe we'll be driving next year. The Road Trip to The Cabin is something that should only be done every couple years. Snow White continues to be an awesome car. We towed a sawmill (on a trailer) to The Cabin and didn't even feel the load. With DVD screens in the back of both front-seats, it was an excellent road-trip vehicle for the kids. Also, it's smooth suspension made for an enjoyable experience for everyone (we drove Julie's Honda Odyssey one year and Abbie kept getting sick from the DVD screen bouncing). The more I drive it (esp. skiing, camping and on road trips), the happier I am with the purchase.

For more photos from the trip, please see Raible Road Trip #12 on Flickr.