Raible Designs

It figures...

Today is the first day I've had to go into an office since May of 2004. Today should be a 9" day here at Raible Designs - there's 12" of fresh powder at Vail. However, I managed to get a 3-day architecture-review contract so I'm heading to the client's site downtown. To enhance the commuting experience, it's colder than a witch's tit outside (2°F) and there's a few inches of fresh snow. I think I'll try the Light Rail (there's a station 1 mile from our house) and hope it's not too crowded.

A nice start to the new year

I had a really enjoyable weekend. New Years Eve was spent with my high school buddies Clint and Jess at a local bar. It was low key and fun to hang out with old friends. It was good I didn't drink very much because I went to bed at 3 and Abbie woke us up at 6. Saturday was a pretty lazy day, but I did manage to clean out the garage. Now so we can fit 2 cars in our 2-car garage. This is key for snowy days.

Last night, we went to the DU Hockey game with the kids, Holly (Julie's sister) and our good friend Justin. Everyone had a great time (Abbie loves the games) and DU won 9 to 4. Today, I woke up early and went skiing with Clint and Autumn (his girlfriend) at Copper. We missed all the traffic by leaving at 7 and had a nice breakfast before getting on the slopes at 9. We skied until noon and then went our separate ways and I drove back to Denver. I made it back just in time for the Broncos game. Justin came over and we watched them kill the Colts (let's hope they can do it again next Sunday). After football, we headed to another DU Hockey game tonight and watched them shutout Northeastern 4-0. This time, Tonya and Suzie (friend from college and her sister) joined Justin and I and took Julie and Holly's seats. Again, Abbie and Jack had a good time and it was a nice way to end the weekend.

Life is so much more fulfilling when I get off the computer. Next weekend, a good friend is flying in from New York to do some skiing. Couple that with a Saturday night hockey game and a Sunday morning playoff game and next weekend is looking pretty good too!

Welcome to 2005

Happy New Year y'all! 2004 was a great year for this website. It was also an awesome year personally. I have a new baby, a new house and a new bus. I learned way more than I thought I would about Spring, WebWork, Tapestry and JSF. And I spoke at a couple conferences, which I certainly didn't anticipate. In 2005, I hope to step back a bit and spend less time working and more time being a good father and husband. Restoring the bus is my major goal I hope to accomplish this year.

Here's this site's stats for 2004:

Happy Holidays!

We're heading for the airport in the next hour. I stayed up and tried to finish off Chapter 11. I still have a few more hours to go, but I made a good dent in it. Our flight leaves in 2 hours (6 a.m.) and we'll be in West Palm Beach, FL until the 31st. Should be a fun day - no sleep, 2 kids and we don't arrive until 3 this afternoon.

Enjoy your holidays - I know I will (after today is over with).

Increasing Productivity

I have a new plan for increasing my productivity. With any luck, she'll be writing Java by the time she's 3.

Helluva Week

It's been a rough one this week. Mainly due to AppFuse. This is the 4th (or maybe 5th) night this week I'm up late working on it. Tonight will be an average night, turning in at 5:30 a.m.. Last night was 6:00 a.m. Abbie likes to wake me up at 8.

The good news is that I have the JSF and Tapestry integration done. I just finished up writing all the programmer tests for the beans/pages and tomorrow (today?) I'll work on Canoo WebTests and installation/appgen/documentation. With any luck I'll finish up and release this weekend.

Next week, I get to write a chapter for Spring Live on MVC Framework integration. I'm also talking about Spring at the local Denver JUG on Wednesday night.

I can't wait for Christmas - 2 weeks in Sunny Southern Florida.

It's Dumping in Colorado

The mountains and ski resorts are getting dumped on right now. Here in Denver, we have about 3-4 inches and it's still snowing. It started yesterday and it's cold (14°F) right now. Check out this ski report for Vail Resorts this morning.

Vail (www.vail.com)
Temp. at 5am MST: -1F/-18C
Surface Conditions: Powder
Snowfall in last 24 hours: 10in.
Snowfall in last 7 days: 34in.
Mid-Mountain Base: 28in.
Percent of Terrain Open: 15%

Beaver Creek (www.beavercreek.com)
Temp. at 5am MST: -1F/-18C
Surface Conditions: Powder
Snowfall in last 24 hours: 11in.
Snowfall in last 7 days: 38in.
Mid-Mountain Base: 39in.
Percent of Terrain Open: 22%

Keystone (www.keystoneresort.com)
Temp. at 5am MST: -1F/-18C
Surface Conditions: Powder/Packed Powder
Snowfall in last 24 hours: 4in.
Snowfall in last 7 days: 13in.
Mid-Mountain Base: 28in.
Percent of Terrain Open: 13%

Breckenridge (www.breckenridge.com)
Temp. at 5am MST: -1F/-18C
Surface Conditions: Powder/Packed Powder
Snowfall in last 24 hours: 3in.
Snowfall in last 7 days: 17in.
Mid-Mountain Base: 22in.
Percent of Terrain Open: 14%

You can see that 1) there's not much terrain open and 2) it's fricken cold up there. Raible Designs has a "9-inch rule", which means if it snows 9 inches or more, all employees get the day off to go skiing. I think I'll wait until January to make this a mandatory rule.

Looks like the commute should be fun this morning. Days like today make it nice to have a 20-step commute (40 with a stop at the coffee pot).

The Garage Bench

After this week, the Bus has a new home and a bench to hold the tools for its restoration. The project begins early next year.

Empty Canvas	Finished Bench
The Bus's New Home

Christmas Pictures

Just like last year, we went and had Christmas pictures taken this week. Here's a snapshot of the whole family. Kiddie Kandids is the place to go - you can actually pick out and leave with your photos 15 minutes after they're taken.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all those celebrating today. It's been a great week at the Raible Household. I've managed to squeeze in a few hours for AppFuse/Tapestry/JSF, but mostly I've been building a garage workbench with my Dad. We also setup a "beer fridge" so the garage is now a nice place to hang out. Should be even better when I start disassembling the bus.

I have a lot to be thankful for this year - the new bus, new baby, new house and new book. Abbie is a ton of fun these days, so I owe her a big thanks for all the smiles and laughs. I owe Julie a huge thanks for being so supportive of my "burning the midnight oil" and allowing me to write another book. To my Mom, Dad, and Kalin - you guys rock for always reminding me who I am and where I came from.

I owe my readers a note of thanks for visiting this site and listening to me ramble on about Java and the kick-ass open source tools that make our lives easier. You guys are responsible for the popularity of this site. Finally, I thank Dave Johnson for Roller (which started this site) - which lead to meeting Lance, which led to my first authoring opportunity. A lot of good fortune these days come from this site - I'm still astounded that a simple blog can open so many doors.