Raible Designs

Make money drinking beer and discussing MySQL

I got a call from a nice lady from a Market Research company on the way home from a mountain bike ride this afternoon. She said she'd pay me $100 if I came in and discussed MySQL for 30 minutes! Sounds great, eh? She asked me if I'd attended a paid "research discussion" before. I told her, "Yes, in college we drank beer for $50."

Well, guess what - she's paying for drinking beer too. I can't attend either one because we're heading out to California next week. You should probably live in (or near) Denver to make it worth your while. For the beer taste test, contact Kari Allen at 303-980-1909 (must be male 21-29). For the MySQL Discussion, contact Christine at 303-980-2262. Good luck - hope you make some cash and catch a buzz! ;-)

AT&T Wireless will have Unlimited Data soon!

I called AT&T this morning to increase my data amount on my wireless plan. I bumped it up to the max (8 MB) so we could do choose our hotels as we go (using GRPS and our PowerBook). The lady put me on hold for a minute to two, and then came back with "actually, there is the Unlimited Data plan you were looking for - it's $24.99." I said - "hook me up!" But when she tried to select it, it said "not active." So it's in AT&T's system, just not activated. Cool!

Another tip she gave me when road-tripping was when you receive "No Network" - turn the phone off and back on so it can re-initialize with the nearest tower. BTW - how is AT&T's GSM coverage in California?

Tired of copying paths?

Are you tired of copying paths for environment variables and such. If so, checkout Ninotech's (free) Path Copy. I've used it for years - a very cool tool IMO.

Planning Raible Road Trip #7

Last year in September, my parents and I embarked on Raible Road Trip #6 when returning from Web Design World 2002 in Vegas. Julie didn't join us since she was 7 months pregnant. However, Raible Road Trip #7 will be Julie, Abbie and I - and it begins this weekend. I'm starting to get really excited about it. We bought our plane tickets last night, and tonight we started planning the trip. Here it is so far - thanks to all for your suggestions.

• Fly into San Diego on Saturday morning. Stay with Julie's sister until Sunday afternoon or Monday morning.
• Drive like a bat out of hell to Big Sur, which is about 8 hours according to MapQuest. Stay a night or two - those cabins that Andy mentioned sound nice.
• From Big Sur, head to Bodega Bay. I'm a backwoods Montanan, so I don't know about San Fran - we might just skip it. It sure sounds cool, but I also know it's pretty crowded. I happened to remember one of my best friends (that I haven't talked to in years) actually lives in Bodega Bay - so I called him up tonight. He's fighting fires in Montana, so he might not be there - but his wife, Katie, and son will be there - so we'll probably stay with them for a night or two. This brings us to Thursday or Friday.
• Our end destination is meeting my parents at the Oregon Caves on Friday or Saturday, so we'll probably head from Bodega up there (7 hours). Hopefully, we'll catch some redwoods along the way.
• My dad has a couple rooms booked at Crater Lake on Sunday and Monday night. My sister, Kalin, is meeting us on Saturday.

Boy this is gonna be a fun trip. I haven't been on a road trip on California since I was a little kid. It was in the early 80s and my dad had a rigged up canvas topper on VW Rabbit pickup. We camped every night and drove like maniacs during the day. Abbie will be too young to remember, but that's what the ol' camera is for!

I got blasted today

I formatted the Red Hat hard drive on the machine they gave me at work today - installed XP and went to a meeting. We got interrupted in the meeting for lunch, and resumed the meeting after lunch. After our meeting finished, I was pleasantly surprised to see XP had finished installing (I stopped by every-so-often to kick it into gear again). Later this afternoon - about 10 minutes ago - the Network Admin came by to yell at me for getting blasted. I didn't even do anything but install XP and this damn little virus got me. And I was so proud for not getting it at home. Lesson learned? Every time you install XP, unplug it from the network and install a firewall before going further.

The First Day at the New Gig

I can already tell this is going to be a wicked place to work. It has the feel of a .com company - shorts are allowed, people are smart, technology is bleeding edge. They're using JBuilder 9 and Visual Source Safe, so there's some new tools to learn. My machine isn't nearly as fast as I'd hoped (1.6 GHz, 768 MB), but it'll certainly do. I did get dual monitors, which I have a hard time living without - so I can't complain at all. There were four of us that are starting this week or next - 2 graphics designers and 2 Java developers. We are tasked with building 42 custom websites in the next 6 months. Sweet - I love a good challenge!

Pulled an all-nighter last night

In an effort to get my short project done before my new job starts tomorrow - I pulled an all-nighter last night. I started coding like a mad-man at 10:00 at didn't stop until 7:30 this morning. 5 hours of sleep, and I'm back at it again. Ugh, I'm a zombie - but very close to finishing the first release. I've written so much code this week that my fingers actually hurt and they're getting raw!

The good news is that I'll only be working a week at my new job - and then we're off on Vacation! We're planning on flying to San Diego (California) and road-trip up the coast to Oregon, where my parents live. Should be fun - we're looking forward to Napa Valley and the Redwoods. Anyone have any advice on what to see or what to do in CA, please let me know. We're currently planning 5-6 days to go from San Diego to Salem, OR.

Forest Fires Hit Home

I'm the only person in my family that isn't a professional Forest Fire Fighter. Kalin (my sister) fought fires in Montana and Washington for a number of years before she opened Chelan Cider Company. My mom and dad have over 20 years worth of experience. However, this year, they decided to take a break. But that break will be short lived. A fricken fire is threatening the cabin! Well, not yet - but it's getting pretty fucking close!!

• Yesterday: Crazy Horse fire hits 5,500 acres; evacuations ordered
• Today: Condon-area residents prepare to flee

Residents in Kraft Creek, Glacier Creek and along Guest Ranch Road have been under an evacuation warning since Sunday, when Crazy Horse first blew up and ran across national forest and Plum Creek Timber Co. lands. It jumped Kraft Creek Road on Tuesday, heading toward homes a short two miles distant.

I used to catch the school bus at the end of Guest Ranch Road.

"It's disconcerting," said Christian Wohlfeil, owner of Holland Lake Lodge. "But we are not in panic mode yet - the fire hasn't crossed the highway."

We are (luckily) on the side of the highway that it hasn't crossed. I can tell my parents are professionals - they knew this was coming. They booked flights to the cabin a couple of weeks ago - but they're scheduled to arrive next Friday. My dad is ready to hammer their Subaru 11 hours to Montana at a moments notice - so stories like these might be the trigger.

I know they'll stop the fires if they get that close - but I might have to join them. It's like a loved one's life being threatened - you'll do anything to stop the attacker.

My Blunder of the Day

I woke up early this morning and put in a days work before noon. This afternoon, a friend and I drove to Cheyenne, Wyoming (1.5 hours north) to meet a friend from Nebraska for an afternoon of golf. Golf was great and we had a fun time. When my buddy dropped me off at my car (in Denver), I realized I left my keys in the golf cart. The problem? We only have one set of keys for the car I was driving.

Damn, I missed the DJUG tonight. Tomorrow should be a fun day driving to Cheyenne and back...

Using the T68i as a GRPS Modem

I got inspired by Russ's post and decided to try once again to connect my PowerBook to the Internet using Bluetooth/GRPS. I found an OS X GRPS HowTo on AT&T's site, and whaddya know - I'm connected 10 minutes later. Very cool - 29.8 KB per second (according to http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest). Hopefully, I'll never need to use this, but it's nifty to know it's there.