Raible Designs

Why 17" Rules

Dual Monitors at Work!

Missed my flight

Damn. I figured leaving here an hour and 45 minutes early would be good enough. The airport is usually a half hour away. I left at 3:45, flight was at 5:35. I didn't reach the airport until 4:45 and found the long-term parking was full. Taking the shuttle bus (the only option) put me in the terminal at 5:05. I figured 30 minutes would still be enough time - definitely close - but enough time. Nope, Northwest has a policy that you must check in 45 minutes before the flight, no ifs ands or buts. What the fuck?!

I admit that it was mostly my fault for being late, but I'm willing to bet I could've made it. They said because I had a Hotwire ticket, they couldn't to anything for me. They did offer another flight tomorrow for a small fee (they never specified). I didn't want to go for only 24 hours, so I'm stuck at home. $200 bucks out the window, and I'm one of the 3 people that is missing Paw's 80th birthday (out of ~20). I feel like a moron.

I'm outta here

I'm off to Indiana for a weekend of family, fun and booze. If this site goes down while I'm gone, don't fret - there probably won't be any new content over the weekend. I'll be back late Sunday night and up early Monday morning to teach the JSP class that got cancelled last week. Mini-vacations rock!

I just discovered a sweet Safari feature while writing this post: highlight a word, right-click and voila - there's a spell checker!

Washed and Dried

I accidentally washed and dried my CommuniCam this morning. Judging from the picture below, it doesn't appear to be affected that much - blurry as ever.

Raible Designs' HQ

SSHD on Windows

I know I read about setting up SSHD on Windows on someone's blog, but I can't remember who and I can't find the link. It's a very good HowTo - I was able to get this bad boy up and running in about 3 minutes! Nice, now I have a command-line interface into all my machines. Now if I could only find Desktop clients (like VNC, but as good as Remote Desktop Connection). RDC rocks, especially if you're going from Windows XP to Windows XP. I'm using VNC, but it's clunky and slow. I'd like to find something (for both OS X and RedHat 9) that is as responsive as RDC. I've heard of Timbuktu and Apple's Remote Desktop, but both are spendy and I like free.

An enjoyable workday

Yesterday I had a one-day contract to teach a JSP class at a company in Boulder. I got up early and drove to Boulder, where the company is located. I left early because our Internet Access has been down (no MapQuest) and I needed to figure out where the heck the company was. The strange thing was that I really, really enjoyed my drive to work. Today I enjoyed my drive as well, but not nearly as much. What I noticed was that yesterday I was more alert of my surroundings. Granted, the Flatirons are pretty spectacular (as illustrated by my mophotos). However, the difference was that I was not contemplating my day. Today, I noticed I was planning my whole day on the drive. I gotta get those WebTests written (including reading all my apps links from my menu-config.xml file) ... I need to write more tests for the JSPs and all our actions ... damn, I'm only going to get in 9 hours today - how am I gonna get 40 in by tomorrow night ... etc. Yesterday, it was just - cool, I'm going to teach a class, should be fun.

What am I trying to get at with this rambling? I'm trying to say that some jobs are more finite, and therefore more enjoyable. When I did construction work in college, it was awesome because we'd always start cleaning up a 1/2 hour before 5 o'clock. With programming, I start to say "Oh shit, I gotta get going" at 4:55, and I don't leave until 5:30. With teaching, it was an 8:30 - 4:30 gig - a nice finite day. I found this to be incredibly enjoyable - just the thought of being done with no worries at 4:30. Today, if I don't get everything done by the time I leave, I'll think about it all the way home.

Is it just me, or does being a passionate programmer kinda suck? I know there's programmers out there that are much better about this - 5:00 means 5:00 and they don't think about anything after they leave the office. I need to find a balance, a way to shut it off when I leave, and to not think about it until I get here. By the way, the courseware for the class never showed up yesterday, so it was cancelled before it started - but I had that no-anxiety feeling for most of the day. Wierd.

Pictures from the Great American Beer Festival

Last weekend, I volunteered to serve up 1 oz. beers at the Great American Beer Festival. It was a great time, and I highly recommend it. I was fortunate enough to be serving beers from the Brooklyn Brewery, which won both a gold and a silver medal. Here are some pics from the event.

My Trip to Nebraska on September 20th-21st

On the Golf Course

Cletus's new house (and future wife?).

The life of a software developer

I've officially worked 31 of the last 37 hours. Ugh. There was 3 hours last night that I got to drive home and have dinner with Julie and Abbie. This was followed by a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. code-producing extravaganza, followed by 2 hours of sleep, and time enough to commute to work this morning. And I'm still pounding the keyboard...

Update: Finally tally ~ 33 of 39, I think that's a record. Let's hope I don't fall asleep on the way home!

Quote of the Day

From the door of the server room where I work:

Rebooting is the first step in NT Troubleshooting.

(grin)