Raible Designs

My Mom is Famous!

Oregon crews to join shuttle debris search. Salem firefighters will use grid skills to find Columbia wreckage.

My mom and dad both told me that she was going to be heading out to do this, but I didn't think she'd get famous for it! Granted, Salem is a smaller town (100,000), but this is pretty big news to me and makes me extremely proud. Way to go Mom!!

THOMAS PATTERSON / Statesman Journal Effie Frazier (left) of the Salem district Bureau of Land Management fire crew, weighs her pack Thursday before heading to Texas to search for pieces of the space shuttle Columbia. Each member is permitted to bring 65 pounds, but Frazier's pack was 3 pounds too heavy. BLM surveyor Bob Aarseth holds the scale and crew boss Barb Raible (right) looks on.

Skiing Yesterday

Yesterday was an epic day of skiing at Breckenridge. Knee-deep powder, no lift lines and skiing with a good friend made the day perfect. The two hour drive up there and the 45 wait for a bus in the parking lot wasn't even too bad. I left my house at 8:30 and was on a lift at 11:30. Keep in mind, this is usually a 1 hour, 15 minute drive. My buddy, also named Matt, talked me into skiing all the way until 4. I was beat, but I'm glad I did it 'cause the snow was awesome.

The way home was a whole different story. We knew traffic was going to be bad, since it was awful on the way up. So we stopped and had some dinner and left Frisco (near Breckenridge) at 7:00 p.m. The freeway (I-70) seemed pretty good until I hit Loveland pass, about 10 miles from Frisco. There, traffic ground to a halt. It was the worst traffic jam I have ever seen - it took me 3 hours to go 15 miles! By the time I got home last night it was 11:00!! Yikes - so I'm going to skip skiing today even though they got 16 inches at Vail. [Colorado Web Cams]

The good news is that I have tomorrow off, so I hope to go again. The reason I'm off is because Comcast hasn't paid my contracting company since we started there. Supposedly, the check is in the mail, but my contracting company is tired of floating our paychecks (can't blame them), so they've asked us to stay home until they receive the check. I don't mind, but I will if I'm still not working my mid-week. Now would be the perfect time to find a job in Florida! Oh wait - it is a perfect time - it's dumping snow in the mountains and I don't have to go to work!!

Gone Skiing

With 11" of new snow at Breckenridge and the family out of town - where else would I be? ;-)

Vail	10"	55"
Beaver Creek	6"	48"
Breckenridge	11"	58"
Keystone	4.5"	43"
Heavenly	0"	56"

Finishing Chapters: Almost Lost It

In the course of the past week, while editing my chapters, Word (XP) has crashed on me a number of times. Every time I've been able to get my work back and lost nothing more than a few minutes. I'm very impressed as I once lost 10 pages in college. As I was finishing up - running spellchecker at 1:00 this morning - I received the following error and I almost lost it. I had to click OK a number of times before it finally recognized it. Picture me sitting here going "no, No, NO!!" ;-)

Font Size Problems?

If you're having font-size problems with this site since I added the dynamic font re-sizeing, I apologize. It was a problem with the fact that I was using percentages for the base font, rather than pixels. So it set the initial font to 70px rather than 70%!! I've reset the base font to be 11px - deleting your cookies or hitting the "R" button should fix the problem. Tip o' the hat to John Cavacas (no blog from what I can tell).

TiVo Upgrade Offer

If you're a TiVo owner, you've probably seen this upgrade offer in your TiVo messages. It looks awfully tempting:

Between now and March 10th (or while supplies last), we're offering you the one-time opportunity to make the switch to Series2 and transfer your product lifetime service. Ramp up your recording space to 80 hrs and gear up for Home Media Option.

For an additional $100, you can get the "Home Media Option" package and access MP3s, Photos, and schedule programs to record from the web. This is a good time management tool if you're a TV watcher. I grew up without a TV, so I don't really like watching TV and I think it's a waste of time. However, Julie is a TV addict - so much that she has to have it on all night while she sleeps. When I do watch TV, TiVo is a must.

The war in Iraq

I don't believe it's started yet, but "The war in Iraq" was the only title I could think of. Anyway, I haven't been too concerned with it up to this point. I don't know that I support it, but I don't want to be the victim of chemical or nuclear warfare either. However, it became pretty personal today when I received an e-mail from one of my best friends.

For those of you who didn't already know, I was recently activated and deployed to Kuwait on the seventh of February. Obviously I had to withdraw from school and could be here for up to a year. However, this is very unlikely and I'm speculating and hoping that out unit will be sent home in either May or June.
....
I'm stationed at Al Jaber Air Base approximately 45 miles northwest of Kuwait City. As you can imagine the base in a very busy place right now with units from all four service braches present, along with a small contingency of British troops. I can't disclose too much information about the resources in place or our mission, but I can tell you the base is well fortified and protected. I'm sorry I didn't get in touch with some of you before I left. I had a very limited amount of time between the time I was notified and actually deployed, and was very busy taking care of personal affairs.

Yikes! Now I really hope we don't go to war!

Gone Skiing

I'm outta here - for your viewing pleasure, here's a picture of Abbie to make you smile throughout the weekend.

MySQL Control Center

If you're using MySQL, you should checkout MySQL Control Center. It's the MySQL Administration client you've been looking for. It says it's cross-platform, but also notes that it doesn't support OS X at this point. I downloaded and installed it on Windows and it seems to work pretty well. Installed and worked in about 10 seconds, which is always a determining factor. You can also checkout these screenshots.

Wireless Printer Server and USB Hub?

I got my Wireless Print Server to work and I have a Canon S900 plugged into it for printing photos. I think this is a great photo printer, but Julie likes the ones we order through iPhoto better. Anyway, I also bought a USB Hub to hook up to the print server, in hopes of hooking up multiple printers. No such luck - when I hook up the hub, I can't find any printers (with the Linksys tools). Has anyone out there done this successfully?