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The Last Two Weeks

Ever since Virtuas shut down a couple weeks ago, I've been having a blast. Mostly, I've been working on AppFuse, but I've also been spending more time with Julie and the kids. Where I work varies from day-to-day. Some mornings, I'll head to our local Einstein's or the close by Spanky's Roadhouse. Other days, I'll work from home and let the kids harass me all day. I'll admit, there's some days that are frustrating when I'm about to solve a problem and the kids are yanking my fingers off the keyboard. However, there's others where the music is cranked, the kids are dancing in my office, and I just solved a problem that was bugging me for the last 6 hours. There's nothing like having a Woo hoo! after solving a problem you've been wrestling with all morning. It's even better when there's friends around to help you celebrate. My whooping and clapping often leads to games of "horsey", happy kids, and a worn out dad.

In AppFuse news, I finished all the web framework tutorials a couple nights ago. Since the beginning of this year, I've written over 100 pages worth of AppFuse documentation. Wednesday's "the web tutorials are done" was a huge milestone and it feels great to be done with it. We hope to release 2.0 M3 in the next few days.

Yesterday, after getting 8" snow reports from Beaver Creek two days in a row, I suggested to Julie that we "head for the hills" for a day of skiing. She agreed and we left a few hours later. We ended up at Keystone since they have cheap skiing for kids and it's one of the closest ski resorts to Denver. Leaving last night was brutal. It starting snowing around 2pm and we left town around 5:30. We quickly ended up in rush hour traffic and it took us an hour just to get out of town (to the top of Lookout Mountain). Once we hit Idaho Springs, the roads improved and by the time we got to the tunnel the roads were bare and dry.

Coming up here last night turned out to be a good idea. Denver experienced a record low of -18° F this morning. Furthermore, there were wicked winds and west-bound I-70 was closed for 9 hours this morning because a semi blew over and spilled all of its 2000 gallons of unleaded. I watched the story on the news and was quite impressed when I heard the wind was so strong it was blowing windows out of cars.

The skiing at Keystone today was bitter cold (-15 to -25 °F with wind chills), but I made it work. Hot Cider and bump runs are excellent ways to keep warm. Now we're sitting in the condo we rented and waiting for the kids to wake up so we can enjoy FAC at the local bowling alley.

Life is good.

Bandwidth Speed Issues

In the last few days, I started to notice a huge slowdown on my MacBook Pro when surfing the net. At first, it seemed to be a Firefox-hogging-a-shitload-of-memory issue. So I started using Safari instead. After a few hours of using Safari, the problem came back and pages were taking 5-6 seconds to load. I have a Cable (Comcast) modem, so I didn't suspect any bandwidth issues.

Last night, I got tired of waiting and decided to do some further investigation. I started off by running several bandwidth speed tests. All of them reported similar statistics: download speeds of under 300K/sec. I called Comcast, they ran some tests and determined that there were no package loss issues between my modem and their facilities.

Since I moved my modem downstairs last year, I tried moving it upstairs. Same result. I tried plugging it directly into my desktop and voila! - 3MB/sec. I have 2 NetGear routers setup (one for each laptop since my MacBook Pro's wireless abilities suck) and it seems like they are the source of the problem. Do routers go bad like this?

I'm considering buying an Airport Extreme to solve all my Mac-related wireless issues. Unfortunately, it only has 3 ethernet ports and I'd prefer a lot more.

Abbie can ski all by herself!

We've had a great ski season so far. I think I've skied more this year than the last 2 years combined. The best part is after a few days in Steamboat for Christmas and another long weekend, Abbie can ski all by herself! I'll admit, she did have a 1/2 day lesson, but I don't think she learned much there. Most of her learning occurred with Julie on the bunny slope. "Pizza" and "French Fries" where the encouraging words of the day.

By the time we left last week, Abbie was able to do the Magic Carpet runs all by herself. For those that don't know, the Magic Carpet is a flat escalator that hauls kids up the mountain. It's smaller than a bunny slope, but challenging for those that've never skied before. Jack is unlikely to ski by himself this year, but he's doing a lot better than the first time I took him. He'll actually stand on his own now instead of doing the "wet noodle" thing when I touch him. Click on the pictures below to see Abbie tearing up the bunny slope.

Abbie and Julie were going to head up to Keystone for some skiing today, but it's dumping right now and they didn't feel like dealing with the nasty roads and traffic. With my new found freedom, I hope to get some good powder days in before I start my next gig.

Let's Go DU!

While I'm a big fan of DU Hockey, I don't know many players names and I rarely know their exact ranking. That all changed when I found the Let's Go DU blog a couple weeks ago.

Last night, I had a great sports-infested evening. A couple of friends and I started by watching DU shutting out the Gophers (the #1 team in the nation) at Braun's in downtown Denver. From there, we went to the Nuggets game and watched them walk all over Labron and the Cavaliers.

There's another DU game at 4:30 today and some excellent football tomorrow. Seems like a good way to get through a cold Denver weekend.

Here it comes!

For the fourth Friday in a row, there's a snow storm hitting Denver. This time, we're up in Steamboat (for Family Snow Festival weekend) and it looks like we might be positioned perfectly:

A HEAVY SNOW WARNING is posted in northwest Colorado, including areas such as Meeker and Craig until 6 a.m. Saturday. Those areas can expect 10 to 20 inches of snow. ... In addition, a SNOW ADVISORY is in place for the area near Steamboat Springs. They should expect 4 to 8 inches of snow there.

Looking out the window, there doesn't appear to be any new snow yet. Here's hoping for some champagne powder this weekend!

Chief Beer Officer

Four Points' Chief Beer Officer has to be one of the best jobs ever created.

Who says drinking beer won't get you anywhere? For those passionate for pilsners or crazy for crafts, your favorite pastime could earn you a fancy new title and a seat at the Board Room Table. In celebration of the simple pleasure of a perfectly poured glass of beer and the launch of its Best Brews program, Four Points by Sheraton hotels today officially kicked-off its Chief Beer Officer (CBO) executive search and began making room in the executive suite for its newest chief.

In the words of Homer Simpson: "Mmmmm... beer".

Congrats to the Boise State Broncos

Back in December, some co-workers and I traveled to Boise for a client engagement. The day we arrived was close to the same day they announced the Boise State Broncos were going to be in the Fiesta Bowl. In a relatively small town like Boise, this was big news. Everyone talked about it, and so did we. In fact, one day, we even ventured to the campus to see the infamous Blue Field. No one was around, and we actually got to walk on the field and marvel at its blueness. I asked many cab drivers that week if the Denver Broncos or the Boise State Broncos were first, but no one knew. It intrigued me because the teams share the same name, colors and mascot. One of them has to be copying the other.

Last night, I watched the Fiesta Bowl between Boise State and Oklahoma. It was one of the best football games I've ever seen. The multiple comebacks (from both teams), the trick plays and good ol' American Underdog Story made for a helluva game. If you like football and you missed it - you shouldn't have.

Welcome to 2007

Happy New Year everyone! 2007 should be a great year: Julie and I will pass 7 years of marriage, Jack will turn 3 and Abbie will become a 5 year old. In addition to being happy and getting healthier, I hope to learn a lot this year. AppFuse 2.0 will be released, and I hope to develop applications with Grails, GWT, Rails, Seam, Stripes and Wicket. Yeah, it's ambitious - but these frameworks are supposed to be easy to learn, so it shouldn't be too difficult.

Blog stats for 2006: 296 entries and 2,162 comments.[Read More]

This blizzard seems mild compared to the last one

Part two of The Blizzard of 2006 seems mild compared to part one. First of all, the first one snowed 2 feet in the same amount of time that this one snowed a foot. This time, the airport is still open, and we stocked up yesterday - so we haven't left the house since it began. The good news is it's supposed to snow all weekend. It didn't snow all day today and we need at least another foot in order to get our sledding hill up and running again.

For more coverage of the storm, see Stephen O'Grady's blog.

Blizzard of 2006 - Part Deux

Here comes another one:

... it should start snowing in the metro area around midday Thursday.

The snow is expected to quickly intensify and start to fall heavily late Thursday afternoon and evening.

Snowfall rates could get up to 2 inches per hour, especially in the foothills along the Front Range.

The first wave of the storm will hit the Front Range and I-25 urban corridor. A stronger round of heavy snow is possible for all of northeast and north-central Colorado late Friday into Saturday morning.

The metro area could get 10 to 18 inches of snow by Friday morning because of the storm. Kathy says the foothills could expect 15 to 30 inches and the mountain areas 12 to 24 inches.

Yeeeehhhh hawww! We're ready for it this time - everyone's got new ski gear and the sledding hill has a heckuva foundation. Should be a fun show to watch - especially since most of the streets haven't been plowed since the blizzard a week ago.