Raible Designs

Hiking at Red Rocks

Awesome weekend in Michigan

This weekend was a blast. I flew up to Grand Rapids, Michigan for a good friend's wedding on Friday. The wedding was near Ludington, which is right on Lake Michigan. It was a beautiful resort-town, where the water was warm, the sun shining and the beer ice cold.

It was a great trip, but after being stuck in Chicago's O'Hare airport last night - I hope I don't have to travel again for a while. At one point, the United flight to Denver had 143 people on the standby list! After a little Motel 6 4-hours-of-sleep action last night, I got on the 6:30 a.m. flight and made it back to Denver this morning.

Shifting Priorities

This week's Denver JUG meeting looks to another good one - this time Bruce Tate is presenting Beyond Java and Sharad Acharya will talk about dynamic Struts Forms. I'm sure I could learn a thing or two from attending this meeting, but I'm going to have to pass.

It's time for me to shift my priorities. The 2nd week of every month, there are two meetings I'd like to attend - but I've only ever attend one (DJUG). I don't attend both b/c they're back-to-back and that's not very nice for me to leave Julie to fend for herself with the little munchkins. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to quit going to DJUG and start going to the Colorado VW Bus Club meetings instead.

It's time to start restoring the bus. I started it up this weekend and it roared to life after sitting for several months. I took it for a spin around the block and I can feel that it's ready. I am too.

Jack is walking!

Last Monday, while I was in Portland, Julie called me while I was having lunch with some fellow DJUGers. She was ecstatic, "Jack took 3 steps!!" For the rest of the week, everytime I called home - I asked if he'd taken any more steps. The answer was always "No". I was somewhat glad to hear this, as I felt like a horrible father for being away when my boy took his first steps. The lack of walking only lasted until Wednesday - when Julie called me to tell me he'd just taken 20 steps!

Needless to say, when I arrived home on Friday evening - it was very cool to see Jack walking around our house. He holds his hands straight up in the air when he does it, and he tends to grunt a bit during the process. It could be one of the cutest things I've ever seen. If he's anything like Abbie, he should be able to break into a full sprint by his 1st birthday at the end of the month.

What happens at my house when you're gone for a week

I was out of town last week and Julie architected and started building a deck while I was gone! We still have quite a bit more work to do - but she did the hard part. Her mom was in town all week, so apparently she was staying up until midnight working on it everyday. Of course I knew this before today, but didn't have any pictures to impress you with.

San Francisco Giants

This evening, Matt Filios and I headed down the street to Giants Stadium to watch the Giants play the Braves. The park was very cool, the Guinness was good - and the Giants won in the bottom of the ninth. It was an awesome game and our 20th row seats behind home plate were pretty nice too.

In San Francisco

I'm in San Francisco this week doing some Spring Training. I flew in this afternoon and I'm staying only a couple blocks away from Moscone center. It's kinda weird being here when JavaOne isn't going on. It's even stranger to be staying on the block next to Kate O'Brien's and the Thirsty Bear. About an hour ago, I got to watch the fog settle in over the buildings - which is always a cool site. I'm looking forward to a fun week of teaching and showing developers how their lives can be vastly simplified by using Spring.

It's been a while now...

Today is my birthday and I'm happy to say that I'll be goofing off all day. 18 holes this morning and a former-company reunion party tonight. I'll spare you from my birth story this year. If you really want to read it, you can check out last year's entry.

New Bike - Giant FCR3

I had the pleasure of buying a new bike this weekend (my last one was stolen in June). Rather than replacing it with a mountain bike, I got a commuter. I've heard they're great for riding around town and can make the ride-to-work thing a lot faster. I'll probably buy a mountain bike too, but I'm going to hold off until next year for that - the Bus will be taking over as my top time-consuming hobby in the near future.

Update: More about the Giant FCR3.

Update 2: I set a new record on the ride to work this morning: 23 minutes! I took the long way to get home and it took 45 minutes. My goal is to reduce both times by 25% by the end of summer.

What a great vacation

We just rolled in last night from our family road trip to Montana. It was definitely a long drive - taking 2 days both ways. Yellowstone was awesome. We arrived at Old Faithful just minutes before it went off. We also strolled around a number of geysers and Abbie loved all of them. They were very beautiful and easily the best part of the drive up. Abbie even got to go fishing for the first time, in the Snake River just south of Yellowstone.

Once we got to the cabin, a great time was had by all. We attended the local 4th of July festivities and I got to catch up with some folks I went to grade school and high school with. It was fun meeting everyone's kids and spouses, and you can't beat the beer prices in Montana ($1.50 for a cold Bud Light). Abbie loved all the horses running around.

On the eve of the 4th, we had an excellent fireworks show and also broke ground on The New Cabin that my dad is building. Julie had a lot of fun operating the Excavator. The rest of the week was spent swimming, fishing, taking saunas, and tearing off the roof of the cabin. My mom even bought a 4-wheeler, which was a blast to ride around. I'd longed for one ever since I knew what they were, so it was pretty cool to have a childhood dream come true - in the same location I'd always wanted one.

I definitely recommend the road trip thing if you have kids. It was a great way to spend quality time together and enjoy some of the beautiful world we live in.

As for e-mail, that wasn't bad at all - only 243 messages. We had so much fun on this trip, I think we're going to include the drive up as part of the tradition. It's neat to think that I'll be taking the same vacation every summer for the rest of my life. It'll be especially fun to watch the kids grow up and how their perception changes each year. Now I just need to figure out a way to spend the whole month of July in Montana. Those Europeans are smart - we all need to take a month off in the summer.