Raible Designs

From the T637

Bill Dudney

Moblogging begins...

Bruce Snyder

What phone should I get?

I lost my phone yesterday - somewhere between the airport and the hotel. I doubt anyone will find it and return it to me, so I'm in the market for a new phone. I'd prefer something with a camera - and maybe even the ability to develop Java for it. Any suggestions? Does AT&T carry it? There's an AT&T store right up the street.

The First Day

Today was a great first day on the new job. I rode my bike in - which took about an hour - and arrived around 10:00. The commute is beautiful - mostly on a bike path, and mostly along a river. It's too bad I won't be doing it more (I'll likely be working from home a lot). Most of the day was spent exploring Blue Glue, source code and the sample apps. I found out that Blue Glue (which is basically a development environment installer and configurer) on Windows has gotten much better since Out-of-the-Box 2.x. Now it skips most of the Windows installers and everything is installed through OpenLogic's Swing app. It was a fun day talking about open source and how things integrate together. I'm not used to talking with folks about my open source experiences and enthusiasm - so it was a nice change.

The best part was when I received my assignment for the next couple of days: upgrade the Maven sample apps to the latest version and enhance one to include build/deployment examples. I'm also responsible for writing documentation on the sample apps for developers who use them. While I'm not a huge Maven fan, I know that some people like it and it'll be cool to create a "how to" for those folks. On the ride home, I realized that I'm really enjoying what I do right now. I'm basically developing and writing for developers. I have no "business" clients per se - most are developers: both with Spring Live and Blue Glue. The downside is that developers tend to be a pretty smart lot - and if I screw up - they'll let me know about it. Oh well, open source rocks - it's cool to be working with it full time.

The worst part of the day was coming home to over 1000 e-mails - from not checking my e-mail all day. I've got a major spam problem since about 200 of those are from mailing lists and I was only interested in 20-30 beyond that. I'm thinking of changing my e-mail address. Rather than adding more junk filters - I need to eliminate the sheer volume - it's choking both Mail.app and Outlook - and I have a 2 MB connection!

Bike to Work Day 2004

I'm pumped - tomorrow is not only my first day, but it's also Bike to Work Day 2004. I hope it's only 1 hour from my house, but I'll probably get lost and it'll take 2. There's nothing like starting the day on a bike with an iPod.

www.blueglue.com

I figured the OpenLogic guys might've botten blueglue.com. However, when I tried it - I got something much better - check it out yourself.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all the Dads out there. I'd particularly like to recognize Dave, Lance and Russ. All were Dads when I met them through this blogging medium, and its great to see they continue to produce content and more children. Russ - is there going to be a #2?

Below is a recent picture of Abbie - I sure am a proud Papa!

Of course, I'd also like to recognize my own Dad - who continues to amaze me with his knowledge of history and his perception on life. Our trip back from San Diego was a blast and I can't wait until he (and the rest of my family) comes out to Denver for my birthday next month. Thanks for being such a great friend and father Pappy.

Google Ranking: Now at #20

I did a little navel gazing this morning after reading this post and its links. As of today, I'm the 20th result for "Matt" on Google. If I had the word "matt" in my domain name, I wouldn't be surprised, but the fact that I hardly have it anywhere probably means a lot of folks are linking to me. Maybe it's because my Google Number is almost to 50,000.

It's funny that in 1 and 1/2 years, I've gone from #213 to #20. Matt Croydon was #45 when I was #213. Now he's #30. How's that for a bunch of useless information?! ;-)

What am I up to?

I'm riding my bike all over Denver and hacking Word. It's been a productive and fun week so far. Don't expect many updates.

[Construction] Photos from May

It's been a while since I last posted about our house. I guess I'm due to post some new pictures. Click on either image below to see photos we took in May. The builder thinks the house will be finished and we'll be able to move in by Labor Day. Julie is due on Labor Day, so it should be an interesting race. My money is on the baby arriving first.

Raible Designs new HQ

From the front

Great Room