Raible Designs

Going to Colorado Software Summit? Bring your skis!

As I mentioned last week the Colorado Software Summit begins this weekend. I don't know what to expect weather-wise, but the Keystone forecast looks like it might snow a bit. A-Basin is open and tickets are only $49 per day. Since it's only a few miles from Keystone, I think I'll bring my skis and hit the slopes. If you're coming to the show and would like to join me, let me know.

Based on my schedule, I'm currently thinking of going Tuesday, Thursday or Friday morning. If the conditions are good, I may even go a couple times. Below are a couple pictures I took during the conference in years past. It'll be interesting to see what the weather is like this year.

Oktoberfest: Best. Vacation. Ever.

As mentioned earlier, a good friend (Miller) and I took a vacation to Oktoberfest last week. The flight over was brutal: Denver -> Newark (4 hour layover) -> Paris (2 hour layover) -> Munich. I was pretty disappointed to see "No Service" on my iPhone when we landed in France. This continued in Munich and I quickly decided connectivity wasn't necessary. After a 80 € cab ride from the airport, we arrived at our hotel around 1PM on Monday. We both woke up at 4AM on Sunday to start the journey, so we were pretty beat.

It didn't take us long to decide we had to suck it up and head to "The Tents" at Oktoberfest. We walked the 4 blocks in the rain and quickly ended up in the Armbrustschutzenzelt tent. The crowd was small and we found a table and enjoyed our first Liter.

I won't go into details about how much fun we had during the week, except for these simple stats:

• Made it into The Tents 5 days in a row
• Mostly slept in until 2 or 4PM each day
• No Hangovers (for me at least)

I've uploaded most of the pictures I took to an Oktoberfest 2008 set on Flickr. I would like to thank Peter and friends for being fabulous hosts and showing us a great time on Thursday night. Below is a video I took of what the festivities were like (yes, that is Bon Jovi):

If you ever get a chance to attend Oktoberfest, I highly recommend it.

My Oktoberfest Adventure Begins

A few months ago, a friend called me up and asked if I wanted to go to Oktoberfest. He said he had enough miles to cover both our tickets. I couldn't pass up the opportunity and hence we're leaving at the crack of dawn tomorrow for a week in Munich, Germany. We're not taking laptops and we don't plan on doing a whole lot more than having a great time.

If you'd like to see what we're doing on our adventure, you can follow me on Twitter.

My TripIt Blog Badge

Jared started it. TripIt provides it. Here's mine:

New Belgium's New Beer: Giddy Up!

I like the name, but the beer itself doesn't sound very good.

Ale brewed with Lemon Peel and infused with Espresso. Anyone tried this stuff?

Happy Birthday Jack!

Jack's birthday was last Thursday (August 28th) and only now am I getting a chance to wish him a Happy Birthday on this blog. I told you it was a busy week last week.

Happy Birthday Jack!

On his birthday, I picked him up from Kindergarten at 11 and let him run the show for the day. Needless to say, we had a good time.

On Saturday, we had a party to celebrate at my house. It was a great time with many old friends and lots of crazy kids.

I woke up to quite the disaster area the next day. I was also quite impressed when Abbie showed up with her ears pierced.

The rest of the weekend I spent quite a bit of time enjoying A Taste of Colorado. When work began on Tuesday, the week intensified as I was the "Release Owner" for LinkedIn this week. We made a number of backend changes to reduce statefulness and improve performance. I'm proud to say it was one of the smoothest releases I've been a part of, mostly because of the high quality people involved.

As far as my schedule for the rest of the year, it seems like I'm going to be busier than ever. I have to complete my presentations for CSS this week. In two weeks, I'm speaking at the Colorado Springs Open Source User Group Meetup. The following week I'm heading to Munich for Oktoberfest. If I live through that, I'll be implementing Memcached, speaking at CSS, hunting with my Dad, celebrating Abbie's birthday, traveling to Costa Rica/Panama and keynoting the JavaEdge Conference in Israel. If you happen to be in Colorado Springs, Munich, Mountain View, Keystone, Montana, Costa Rica, Panama or Israel in the next few months, maybe we can enjoy a beer together. Cheers!

A Good Friend becomes a DU Hockey Coach

It's not everyday you see a good friend's name in the headlines. Today I did:

Michael Zucker Named Volunteer Assistant Hockey Coach
DENVER - Two-time National Coach of the Year George Gwozdecky has tabbed Michael Zucker as the new volunteer assistant hockey coach for the seven-time NCAA national champion Denver Pioneers. Zucker arrives at DU after spending the last three years as an assistant coach with the Western Hockey League's (WHL) Everett Silvertips.

"We are pleased to name Michael Zucker as our new volunteer assistant coach," Gwozdecky said. "Michael brings a lot of coaching and tremendous technical video experience to our program."

I first met Mr. Zucker when I had a contracting gig at Douglas Country way back in 2001. He was an excellent Software Developer at the time and impressed me with his knowledge of agile development. I've stayed in touch with him over the years and it's great to hear he's moving back to D-town.

What's more impressive is that he's following his dream. This guy is someone who makes very good rates developing software and teaching others how to do the same. This year, he's going to give all that up, live off his savings and do something he's always wanted to do. With a big-name hockey school like DU, I'm sure it's an excellent decision. Congrats Zucker!

Why such a busy week?

Lance sent me the following e-mail this morning:

Just saw your status message, I think you'd better blog an explanation!

"Matt Raible is getting ready for one of the busiest weeks of his life."

I couldn't think of a good reason not to blog an explanation, so here goes.

I'm currently sitting at Denver's airport ready to hop on a flight to Mountain View. I'll be at LinkedIn's HQ for two days helping tidy up plans for a release in early September that I'm in charge of. It's my first time being a Release Owner, but it should be pretty painless so I'm not too worried. Whenever I travel to Mountain View, I always have a good time, but I'm constantly being pulled into meetings, or arranging meetings myself. I have a presentation to write that I'm delivering on Wednesday. It describes the changes we've made to make the backend of LinkedIn much more stateless and therefore better and faster.

In my hotel room at night, I'll be writing my presentations for the Colorado Software Summit. Having to write 3 presentations in one week always makes me feel super-busy.

On Wednesday night, I fly home late (likely after a game of hoops with co-workers). Thursday is Jack's birthday, so I hope to take the day off and spend the day with him. Thursday night is sleepover night. Being a single parent with two kids is never easy, but always fun. Friday it's back to work, wrapping up things for the week (status reports, bug fixes, etc.) and likely marveling at the traffic from the DNC.

Friday night there's a 9-hour cocktail party with a good friend from Vancouver, BC.

Saturday is the super-busy day. It's time for Jack's birthday party and if last year is any evidence, it's one of those 8-hour cleaning and decorating situations.

I'm sure I'll have a busier week sometime in the future, but this one will surely be one to remember (especially since it's blogged into history now ).

New Passport in 9 Days

A couple of month ago, I discovered my passport was missing. I looked all around my house but couldn't find it anywhere. Since I'm going to Munich in September, I had to get a new one. So last week, I went to Denver's Downtown Post Office, filled out an application, gave them an original birth certificate, got pictures taken - the whole ball of wax. It cost me around $100 and didn't take more than 30 minutes.

I was amazed when my new passport arrived yesterday in the mail. That's a mere 9-day turnaround! The last time I had to get a new passport, it cost me $350, but I also got it in 2 days. It's good to see getting new passports is an efficient process these days.

Spontaneous Stuff Weekend

This weekend, I didn't have much planned to do with the kids. I had a couple ideas, but nothing set in stone. The good news is the kids were full of ideas and we kept ourselves plenty occupied. On Saturday, we went to Elitch Gardens. We rode the Light Rail and my stomach barely survived the 4-hour journey.

I was pleased to find out they served beer at Elitches, but regretted it shortly after as I was spinning with the kids in the Tea Cups. But that wasn't the worst ride. The worst one was Thunderbolt - that was the one I had to go on back-to-back with each kid (b/c they weren't tall enough to ride alone). Shortly after getting off, I realized I'd left my iPhone on the ride. Luckily, I rushed back to the ride and the operator was able to find my car and grab it from a very happy teenager.

Today we decided it'd be fun to take a hike. We gathered everyone in the car and drove just past Idaho Springs to St. Mary's Glacier. It was a nice 1.5 mile round-trip hike and both the kids and Cookie (the dog) had a great time. I was pretty impressed with the kids' ability to hike, especially over all the big rocks on the trail. Of course, when I told them they did so well, it only took Abbie 2 seconds to process and respond with "does that mean we get toys?"