Life Update: Thanksgiving in Montana, RWX2018, Devoxx4Kids, DJUG, and Trish's Birthday
For the first time in many years, we flew to Montana for the holidays. We typically drive, and it takes around 14 hours. It was quite nice to take off and land in just a couple of hours.
My parents have been remodeling the sauna lately, which was built in 1916. My Finnish ancestors built the sauna before the cabin back in the day!
We had a wonderful time with friends and family at Thanksgiving dinner...
...and while burning slash piles on Black Friday. #OptOutside
Our friends, Mike and Mai, have a real working phone booth, so Abbie had fun checking it out. The light from a kerosene lamp reminded me of growing up without electricity.
The Rich Web Experience 2019
After traveling to Montana, I had a week at home before the Rich Web Experience. I gave a new talk on Bootiful Development with Spring Boot and Vue. It was conference-driven development at its best. Because I was giving the talk, I had to base if off a blog post. I even thought it'd be cool if the blog post was published the same day as my talk. It all worked out in the end, but I had an in-anger encounter with Vue and TypeScript for a couple days there. Then it all magically worked and I became very happy. I published blog posts about Spring Boot 2.1, Bootiful Vue, and Angular 7:
- Spring Boot 2.1: Outstanding OIDC, OAuth 2.0, and Reactive API Support
- Bootiful Development with Spring Boot and Vue
- Angular 7: What's New and Noteworthy + OIDC Goodness
I gave other talks at #RWX2019 on Bootiful Angular and JHipster + Microservices. The venue was marvelous.
As usual, I really enjoyed talking to developers about the open source frameworks I love. I published all of my presentations from RWX 2019 on Speaker Deck.
Devoxx4Kids Denver
While attending CodeOne this year, I had a chat with Stephen Chin about Devoxx4Kids Denver. I mentioned we'd love to have a hands-on Raspberry Pi class like the one I attended at a remote ski resort in Sweden. His response was music to my ears: "If you want, I can come out and teach the workshop. Or better yet, my daughter can." I was flabbergasted and jumped at the opportunity. "Yes!", I said.
Cassandra and Steve showed up in Denver a couple months later and taught a Devoxx4Kids Denver Workshop.
The kids loved it and they left us some equipment we can use to teach a future class. I'm currently discussing possibilities with the principals of my kids' schools. I hope that both Abbie and Jack can teach classes at their respective schools in 2019.
Denver JUG (DJUG)
The week after RWX, I was back in Denver and celebrated a great year with the Denver Java Community at the Denver JUG Holiday Party. Combining lightning talks with a holiday party turned out to be fun and we'll likely do it again next year.
Happy Birthday, Trish!
My lovely wife's birthday was just a few days ago. We both believe you shouldn't work on your birthday, so we took the day off and headed for the hills. We experienced a gorgeous Colorado day, smooth/fast runs, and smiles from ear-to-ear.
We had a fabulous day, and Trish got a birthday nap on the way home in Stout the Syncro. There's nothing like having a comfy bed in the back of your van.
What's Next?
Vacation! I'm on vacation at the end of this week and plan to relax a lot during the following two weeks. The first week, we'll be in Pennsylvania with Trish's fabulous family. Then we're back in town for a couple days. It'll be a turning point in our lives if Abbie passes her driving test (for her real license) on December 27. After that, we're heading back to the hills for a week of skiing, smiling, and good times.
I hope y'all have a fun holiday break. I'll see ya next year!
For more photos, see my Flickr album Life Update, December 2018.