Raible Designs

Made it to San Francisco

We just checked into a hotel on Fisherman's Wharf - should be a good night! Saturday and Sunday was spent in San Diego (highlights: Mission Bay, Sea World). Yesterday, we drove like mad to Big Sur, only to discover that all the cabins and hotels were full (WTF - aren't kids in school!). So we ended up staying in Monterey Bay last night, checked out the Monterey Aquarium today, and arrived in San Fran a few minutes ago. It's pretty cool to be here. The California coast has been mesmerizing so far - a very cool place for a road trip.

Wi-Fi (walkwire) in the lobby, but couldn't get on.

On Vacation...

After working 12 days straight, this is gonna be fantastic...
(Returning September 2nd)

Good Comedy for the Road?

One thing I've found that's enjoyable on road trips is a good comedy track. I don't like the books on tape because you have to pay attention and I tend to day dream while I drive (or play passenger). Comedy routines are great because you only have to catch a line or two - and you're good to go. So any recommendations out there? I'd love to download some for the ol' iPod.

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.