Raible Designs

2025 - A Year in Review

Matt Raible — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 16:15:01 -0700

What a year 2025 has been! From Trish's continuing recovery to Abbie's graduation and Jack's 21st birthday, from epic summer travels to family gatherings across the country, this year has been filled with gratitude, growth, and gorgeous moments.

From last year's review:

I have only one goal for 2025: be grateful.

This goal felt crucial given Trish's injuries at the end of 2024. Her wrist and ankle healed gradually, and by spring she was back to skiing and living life to the fullest. Watching her resilience and determination reminded me to be grateful for our health.

I'm gonna review 2025 using the following perspectives:

Personal

We kicked off 2025 with an incredible family trip to Puerto Rico in early January. Trish went to high school there and had been wanting to take me for years. Abbie, Jack, and my parents all joined us for the adventure. We celebrated my mom's 75th birthday before we left. She's a queen!

The island was everything Trish promised and more. We explored Old San Juan and El Morro, hiked through the El Yunque rainforest (the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. National Forest System!), and kayaked through bioluminescent waters in Fajardo. The trip was paradise, and Trish reconnected with her roots. You can read more in my Paradise in Puerto Rico blog post.

The 2024-2025 Ski Season

The ski season started slowly due to Trish's injuries and a lack of snow. I didn't get out for cross-country until mid-January after we returned from Puerto Rico. My stats for the year: 10 days of cross-country and only 7 days downhill. Not my best season, but every day on the snow contributes to my happiness.

My first day on the slopes wasn't until February 8th, when I skied with my good friend, Matt Good (aka the Professor), at Winter Park. In March, our nephew James visited for spring break, and we hit the slopes together.

You can read more in my Farewell to the 2024-2025 Ski Season post.

21 Years with Hefe the Bus

April marked a special milestone. Twenty-one years ago, I bought a 21-window VW Bus minutes after DU Hockey won a national title. Hefe has been part of countless adventures since then.

Today, 21 years ago, I bought a 21-window VW Bus minutes after @DU_Hockey won a national title. I'm pumped they're trying for another one this weekend! https://t.co/X2emVbkoN8 #GoDU #VWBus #HefeTheBus pic.twitter.com/9OPwjZeGPw
— Matt Raible (@mraible) April 10, 2025

Jack's Internship Search

In April, I shared Jack's search for a summer internship on LinkedIn. The response was overwhelming and heartwarming. Jack is a junior at CU majoring in information science. He just got a job scouting college basketball teams and gathering stats. He's really excited for the opportunity!

Nuggets Playoff Game

In early May, we had a blast at a Nuggets playoff game with the family. Game night was so much fun!

Game night with the family was soooo much fun!! 🤩 #GoNuggets pic.twitter.com/U4jmLad6Tu
— Matt Raible (@mraible) May 4, 2025

Abbie Graduates!

In May, Abbie graduated from the University of Colorado with her degree! We couldn't be prouder of her accomplishments. She had already secured a job as a Product Analyst at Spectrum after an amazing summer internship in 2024. The future is bright for our girl!

Abbie moved back in with us after graduation, bringing her adorable pup Gracie along. Having both of them home has been wonderful, even if Gracie does wake me up every morning for walks!

The Summer of Travel

This summer was absolutely epic. We were only home three weekends between Father's Day and the last day of summer! I wrote a whole blog post about it called The Summer of Travel (2025 Edition), so I'll hit the highlights here.

I moved up to Fraser for the entire month of June with the zoo (two dogs and a cat), enjoying the Fraser River Trail daily. Those Fraser sunsets never get old.

Father's Day brought the fam together for gorgeous golf at Pole Creek. The kids got me a "Best Dad Ever" t-shirt that made me a little emotional.

We rafted Ruby Horsethief Canyon (it took us 8 hours to go 8 miles on day two - next time I'm bringing a motor!), enjoyed Blues From The Top in Winter Park, and loaded up our Suburban for the entire month of July in Montana. My parents' place hosted 15 people for the 4th of July celebration!

We moved to The Last Best Place for the month of July! ??#Montana pic.twitter.com/KQri4NSuT9
— Matt Raible (@mraible) July 1, 2025

The annual Pirates at the Pumphouse rafting trip on the Colorado River never disappoints. Captain Trish commanded Pepples through the rapids like a pro.

Stout the Syncro made it to Del Norte for Rhythms on the Rio and BusCamp. Ed, Karen, Bridget, and the Professor joined us for the weekend of VWs and music.

Next, we headed to Cape Cod, where Trish was in her happy place with family. We celebrated Joe's birthday at New Seabury and enjoyed happy hours on the Spit. Then we moved on to Little Sebago Lake in Maine to visit with Kidder and Norm, my pledge class brothers from 1992!

The highlight of the summer was a five-day raft trip through Desolation Canyon on the Green River in Utah. Dawn, Erik, Chris, Brice, and the whole gang made it unforgettable. We had a wet start but the weather turned gorgeous. This is the kind of trip that reminds you what really matters: time with loved ones, connection with nature, and nights spent under the eternal stars.

We returned from rafting and went straight to Red Rocks the next night for Billy Idol. Trish and Jen are huge fans!

Jack Turns 21!

We headed to Vegas in late August to celebrate Jack's 21st birthday in style. We gifted him five laps in a Lamborghini at Dream Racing on the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Watching Jack drive that Lambo around the track was pure joy.

The Professor and Dr. Laura joined us for Smalltown for the Cause in Salida afterward. We enjoyed excellent bluegrass music. As summer wound down, we made it back to Fraser to catch the fall colors.

Jack even got a job working Broncos games for ESPN, and we spotted him on TV!

Abbie's 23rd Birthday

In November, we celebrated Abbie turning 23. She's adjusting to life as a young urban professional and bringing joy into our lives every day. Her company has been treating her well, from yoga on Tuesday mornings to golf lessons on Wednesday afternoons. She even got to play in a tournament at Arrowhead Golf Club!

Thanksgiving in Montana

For Thanksgiving, we flew to Montana for quality time with my family. My parents hosted, and we spent the week visiting with great friends, cooking, enjoying the sauna, playing pool at Mike and Mai's, relaxing, visiting local shops, and soaking up mountain time together. My Dad had heart surgery the week before Thanksgiving to put in a cow valve in his heart. He sometimes moos now. 🐮

December Skiing and Winter Fun

December brought snow to Colorado and family time on the slopes at Winter Park. We like to embrace fun, and Abbie joined us by buying a onesie too!

Christmas in Naples with Trish's Family

We wrapped up the year by heading to Naples, Florida to spend Christmas with Trish's family. After all the mountain time, the beach was a welcome change of scenery. The weather was perfect. Sunny and 75 degrees. Our kids got golf clubs for Christmas, so we played golf a lot. We also visited the Revs Institute (an incredible automotive museum), enjoyed many spectacular sunsets, and had quality time with the whole McGinity Clan. All 15 of us, plus three dogs!

You can see more photos from our Thanksgiving in Montana, December skiing at Winter Park, and Christmas in Naples in the Winter Begins 2025 album on Flickr.

Hefe the Bus and Stout the Syncro

Our beloved VWs continued to bring adventure and joy this year. In April, Stout the Syncro saved my life on the way up to Winter Park. I was cruising along in 2WD when the rear wheels started slipping on black ice. We started drifting at 70 mph, first to the left, then to the right, and eventually sideways. As we headed toward the guardrail, I thought, "Oh my, this is going to hurt!" That's when we hit ice again and the back end flipped around. We went down into the ditch backwards and landed with no harm done. The dogs barely noticed.

Stout also loved camping on the Colorado River for Pirates and posing for photos under the spectacular starry night.

Stout made the trip to Del Norte for Rhythms on the Rio and BusCamp, looking magnificent against the Colorado backdrop. The VW community came out in force, and it reminded us why we love these vehicles so much.

Hefe the Bus had a quieter year after his clutch went out at the end of 2024. I wasn't able to get him into the shop until just before we left for Montana in June, and didn't get him back until late September. By then, we'd missed most of the summer shows. But he's back on the road now and ready for adventures in 2026!

The year ended on a high note when Hefe was featured in the Readers' Showcase of the February 2026 issue of Hot VWs magazine! It's an honor to have him recognized by the VW community in one of the most respected magazines in the scene.

Professional

Professionally, 2025 was my first full year at CrowdStrike. I continued to work on developer.crowdstrike.com, creating blog posts, sample apps, and improving documentation about Falcon Foundry, Fusion SOAR, and Next-Gen SIEM. I got the opportunity to speak at Fal.Con 2025 in Las Vegas, which was nicely timed with Jack's birthday celebration.

The work has been rewarding, helping developers understand how to leverage CrowdStrike's APIs and SDKs. I've learned a tremendous amount about cybersecurity, Python, and the Falcon platform. I appreciate the opportunity to work with such talented people at one of the top cybersecurity companies in the world.

Community

I continued my role as co-lead of JHipster, helping shepherd the project through several releases throughout the year. We shipped JHipster v8.10.0 in March, v8.11.0 in May, and ended the year with the v9.0.0-beta.0 release in December. The community remains strong with consistent downloads and active contributions.

On GitHub, I had 2,935 contributions in 2025, with 44% dedicated to code review, 42% to commits, 13% to pull requests, and 1% to issues. I contributed to CrowdStrike's Foundry sample repositories and 73 other open source projects. It's gratifying to see JHipster continue to thrive after all these years. 🤓

The Denver JUG meetings continued regularly, providing a space for Java developers in the Denver area to connect and learn. Even though I wasn't traveling to conferences as much, staying connected to the local community remained important.

2026

Looking ahead to 2026, I'm excited about what's to come. Professionally, I want to push deeper into the Falcon platform's capabilities and help developers solve harder problems. Getting back on stage at Fal.Con and a few other conferences would be the icing on the cake.

Personally, we're looking forward to more adventures. We hope to visit the Ski Chalet frequently throughout the winter and spend the summer riding, rafting, and visiting friends and family in our favorite places. We're heading to the second weekend of Jazz Fest in New Orleans in the spring!

I have only one goal for 2026: live fully.

Living fully means showing up for every moment, whether it's a powder day at Winter Park, a raft trip on the Colorado, seeing live music, or a fun evening at home cheering for the Nuggets with Trish. It means saying yes to adventures, absolutely to friends, and investing in community relationships by showing up. At this stage of life, with the kids building their own paths and our freedom to explore, I want to squeeze every bit of joy and meaning out of each day. Yes, Trish, it’s time for your RV dreams to come true.

I'm grateful Trish is back in the game. Proud of Abbie for launching her career and Jack for chasing his passion. Thankful for family time in Montana and Florida, for gorgeous Colorado and our mountain retreat, and for friends who join us on the slopes, rivers, and at concerts.

If you'd like to stay in touch, please connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me on Flickr where I share photos from our adventures.

Here's to 2026! 🥂

The Summer of Travel (2025 Edition)

Matt Raible — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 16:23:41 -0600

This summer was filled with beautiful views and remote work from the mountains to the sea. We were only home three weekends between Father's Day and the last day of summer! From living in Fraser for a month to rafting Utah's remote canyons, Montana family time to music festivals, we packed it all in.

Fraser Living in June

I kicked off the summer by moving up to Fraser for the entire month of June. I brought the zoo (two dogs and a cat) with me. The Fraser River Trail became my daily escape, with gorgeous views and warning signs about a local moose. We got a new singletrack trail too, which made the mountain biking even better. Those Fraser sunsets never get old.

Father's Day Golf and Family Time

Father's Day weekend brought the fam together for a hike and some gorgeous golf at Pole Creek. The kids got me a "Best Dad Ever" t-shirt that made me a little emotional. Pole Creek really does have the best views with Byers Peak in the background.

Ruby Horsethief Canyon

Rafting season began with a trip to Ruby Horsethief Canyon on the Colorado River. The first day was beautiful with stunning red rock canyons and perfect conditions. The second day? The worst day of rafting ever. The winds were so strong we and many others had to stop for an hour or more. It took us 8 hours to go 8 miles. Next time, I'll bring a motor.

Blues From The Top

Blues From The Top in Winter Park brought the music and the wildflowers. Daisy was in her element—literally in the daisies. Trish's Dad visited, and we enjoyed hanging out all weekend listening to blues at elevation. The stage setup with the mountain backdrop is hard to beat.

Montana for the 4th of July

We loaded up our suburban and drove to Montana for the entire month of July. My parents' place was home base, and we had 15 people celebrating the 4th together. Abbie and Gracie even marched in the Condon parade!

We explored Holland Lake with views of the Mission and Swan Mountains, hit up Glacier Park from the north, and generally soaked up The Last Best Place.

Pirates at the Pumphouse

The annual Pirates at the Pumphouse rafting trip on the Colorado River is always a highlight. Chris's pirate ship never disappoints, and Captain Mama Tried was in full effect. Great friends, epic river, unforgettable times.

Rhythms on the Rio and BusCamp

Stout the Syncro made it to Del Norte for Rhythms on the Rio and BusCamp. This year they added a community lounge, which we immediately put to good use. The VW scene came out in force, and the music was stellar. Ed, Karen, Bridget, and the Professor joined us for the weekend. Nothing beats good community, excellent music, and tasty beer along the Rio Grande.

Parker Brewfest

I volunteered at the Parker Brewfest with Erich and Ryan for A Bit Twisted in early August. Nothing like serving great beer to happy people all day. Cheers!

Cape Cod and Maine

Next up: the East Coast. We headed to Cape Cod where Trish was in her happy place on the water. We celebrated Joe's birthday at New Seabury, spent happy hours on the Spit, and then moved on to Little Sebago Lake in Maine. Completely different vibe from Colorado, but that's exactly why we love it. Have water? We'd like to visit!

Desolation Canyon

This was the big one: a five-day raft trip through Desolation Canyon on the Green River in Utah. We had a wet start but the new motor on the boys' boat was smooth as silk. The weather turned beautiful on day two and stayed that way. We found old homesteads in the middle of nowhere, the Swifties serenaded us, Starlink even worked on the river (of course it did), and the breakfast crew kept us well-fed. Dawn, Erik, Chris, and the whole gang made it unforgettable. This is the kind of trip that reminds you what really matters.

Billy Idol at Red Rocks

We returned from rafting and went straight to Red Rocks the next night for Billy Idol. Trish and Jen are huge fans, and Red Rocks always delivers.

Las Vegas - Jack Turns 21!

We headed to Vegas to celebrate Jack's 21st birthday in style. We gifted him five laps in a Lamborghini at Dream Racing on the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Trish got behind the wheel of a sweet 911, and watching Jack drive that Lambo around the track was pure joy. Vegas Birthday Crew for the win!

Smalltown for the Cause - Salida

The Professor and Laura joined us for Smalltown for the Cause in Salida. We stayed at a very convenient Airbnb a 1/2 block from the venue. The bluegrass was excellent!

Fall in Fraser

As summer wound down, we made it back to Fraser to catch the fall colors. The leaves were peaking in Winter Park with a fresh dusting of snow on the mountain. The mountain sunsets kept delivering right through October.

Jack even got a job working Broncos games for ESPN. We spotted him on TV within the first few minutes of the broadcast!

Looking back, I'm exhausted just thinking about it all. But that's the thing about summer, you have to make the most of it while it lasts. We certainly did. Our rigs got plenty of miles, the dogs got plenty of adventures, and we made memories that'll last a lifetime.

I hope you get a chance to enjoy fall, football, and the Halloween season! 🎃

You can see the full photo album about our Summer of Travel on Flickr.

Paradise in Puerto Rico

Matt Raible — Sat, 1 Mar 2025 16:49:37 -0700

My parents live in northwestern Montana, where the winters are cold, and seldom does the sun shine. To combat the winter doldrums, they have an affection for "chasing the sun" trips in mid-winter.

Trish went to high school in Puerto Rico. She has fond memories of her family, friends, and equestrian competitions there. I've been begging her to take me to Puerto Rico ever since we met almost 15 years ago.

This year, she finally took me! Abbie, Jack, and my parents joined us for the grand adventure in early January. My mom's 75th birthday landed on the weekend before we left. We celebrated with much pomp and circumstance! 🎊

We had a direct flight from Denver to San Juan that took just under six hours. Our hotel, Isla Verde, was conveniently near the airport and the beach.

When staying at a resort, Trish and I like to start our vacations with a pool day. The kids and my parents liked the idea of relaxing in the sun. Trish had only been walking for two weeks because of her ankle. The swimming, mermaid floatey, and Fernando the enthusiastic pool host made for a fun day.

That evening, I introduced Jack to blackjack at the hotel casino. We walked to a nearby casino for better luck and gambled until the wee hours of the morning.

Wednesday was full of exploring. We drove our rental van to see El Morro, a legendary fort from the 1500s, and marveled at its history.

That evening, we dined at Marmalade and were amazed by the cuisine and service. The bill was incredible too. We didn't expect to set a personal record. 😅

Thursday, we ventured to El Yunque National Forest. It's the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. National Forest System.

We hit the club with the kids that evening.

Friday was our last full day in Puerto Rico, and Trish saved the best adventure for last. A night kayaking trip in Fajardo's bioluminescence bay! It was a bit challenging to see the water sparkling because of a bright half moon, but we were grateful for the light as we paddled through the narrow canals to get to the bay. Jack and my Dad never saw any colors because they didn't realize splashing was required. The rest of us giggled with delight as the streaks of light formed while splashing. The guides put tarps over the group to help suppress the light of the moon.

We woke up Saturday refreshed and proud of the new memories we had created. Puerto Rico was fabulous and often felt like paradise!

Trish had a ball reconnecting with her roots. She started chatting with her high school crew again because of the trip, and she already has her next trip to Puerto Rico planned. Spending a week with family on vacation is wonderful, and we look forward to the next chasing-the-sun trip!

For more tropical photos and a few videos, see my Puerto Rico 2025 album on Flickr.

2024 - A Year in Review

Matt Raible — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 08:44:59 -0700

Last year brought a few challenges and misfortunes. From changing companies to broken bones, Trish and I learned more about ourselves and our abilities than we ever anticipated. I had seven months off from the beginning of February through the end of July. Trish returned to her passion for horses and started competing near the end of my funemployment. A few months later, her saddle malfunctioned, and she found herself with a broken wrist and a broken ankle.

From last year's review:

I only have one goal for 2024: breathe.

I had plenty of time to breathe, so this turned out to be an excellent goal. Whether it was on the ski slopes or mountain biking, I had lots of heavy breathing in the first half of the year thanks to a nice severance package and a zest for adventure.

I'm gonna review 2024 using the following perspectives:

Personal

The year started with a trip to Cabo San Lucas. Trish and I have a friend with a condo down there, so we joined them for a weekend in mid-January. I stayed the following week, working remotely. Another friend flew in, and we golfed on some of the most beautiful courses I'd ever seen: Palmilla and Solmar. Both were all-inclusive, which I didn't even know existed. It basically means that all drinks and snacks are included. On Sunday, we went deep-sea fishing and caught a couple of Marlin. You haven't experienced forearm pain until you've spent 45 minutes trying to reel in a huge fish. The first one got away at the end, but we successfully landed the second one.

Shortly after, my funemployment began.

I started looking for a new gig in April. Since finding a job is often about who you know, not what you know, I flew to Atlanta for Devnexus and networking. There, I attended the JUG Leaders Summit and the Java Champions Summit before the conference. I spoke about micro frontends with JHipster and stayed for the speaker festivities after. You can read about this experience in A Delightful Trip to Devnexus.

The following week, I did a marvelous road trip to the Utah JUG in Stout the Syncro. I skied at Copper, mountain biked at Fruita and Moab, and skied at Snowbird and Alta before my talk. Then, I hit Steamboat and Winter Park on the way home.

We attended our niece's graduation from Michigan in May, watched the Nuggets lose to the Timberwolves in the playoffs, almost won a fowling (bowling with a football) tournament, and my job search started heating up. At one point, I had 15 interviews in one week and interviewing felt like a full-time job.

We did some fun rafting trips on the Colorado River in June. Our rafting family didn't win any permits in the lottery, so there were no week-long trips.

I wrote about our ski season in late June. My only trip outside the Rockies was to a friend's birthday celebration in Sugarbush, Vermont. The conditions were less optimal than I'm used to. When it snowed a foot on the last day, the power went out and the lifts didn't work. 😅

July brought a trip to Montana, my 50th birthday celebration, and Trish started competing with horses again. I started a new job with CrowdStrike at the very end of the month. You can read about these happenings in Life Update: New Job, Same House, and Same Awesome Family!

Jack turned 20 in August. He didn't try out for the CU basketball team, but still plays a lot. Near the end of the year, he made things official with a love interest and is experiencing a whole new range of emotions.

Abbie celebrated 22 in November. It's her senior year at CU and she shocked us over the Christmas break by breaking up with her boyfriend of five years. Her puppy, Gracie, has been a good emotional support companion.

Hefe the Bus and Stout the Syncro

We rested Stout the Syncro again for most of the year, save for my Utah JUG road trip and a weekend adventure to Rhythms on the Rio in southern Colorado. They had a VW-only camping section right next to the stage, which made the community aspect all the more enjoyable.

Hefe the Bus kept truckin' along. He didn't win any trophies at VWs on the Green this year, but we still had a great time.

We did a cruise to Red Rocks with the Colorado VW Bus Club.

And I replaced our mailbox with something more stylish.

Professional

With a new job at CrowdStrike, most of my time was spent getting up to speed on cybersecurity and CrowdStrike's Falcon-related products. I created developer.crowdstrike.com (powered by Hugo) in my first month. I've been practicing Go and Python and published two blog posts:

I've started working on screencasts too, but none have been published yet.

I studied for and achieved a CCSK (Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge) certification. I also got my CCFA (CrowdStrike Certified Falcon Administrator) certification last week, but technically that didn't happen in 2024.

Speaking

According to TripIt, I took 13 trips to 15 cities in two countries. Only two trips were for conferences: Devnexus and KC/DC. Normally, I'd say they were work-related, but since I was unemployed at the time, community-related is probably a better term.

Community

I continued helping the Denver JUG find speakers and a venue for our meetups. We switched to meeting in south Denver, at Thrive Centennial. This was mostly my decision because they have a larger room and it's closer to my house. We return to Thrive Cherry Creek when the Centennial location is booked.

Projects

The main open source project I worked on in 2024 was JHipster. I became a project co-lead in the spring, mostly to help do releases in a timely manner. JHipster had 10 releases and ~2 million downloads in 2024 (up 700K from 2023). Our most downloaded release was JHipster 8.7.3 on November 1st. We started updating and releasing blueprints before announcing releases.

I love the new website we published on August 28th and releasing JHipster 8.8.0 (with Spring Boot 3.4 and Angular 19 support) on Christmas Eve was a nice way to end the year.

2025

Professionally, I'll be writing (and helping others publish) more blog posts about CrowdStrike's Foundry, Fusion, and Next-Gen SIEM. I might speak at a conference or two. I've submitted to a couple of CFPs and got accepted, but getting approval to speak has been a challenge. As one of the top cybersecurity companies, we traditionally make our documentation and tutorials only available to customers. When folks talk about our APIs and (open source) SDKs, it's at one of our Fal.Con conferences.

My leadership team would prefer I do talks and workshops about Foundry, Fusion, and Next-Gen SIEM. Since these are products we sell, I feel like any talk I'd do about them would be a vendor pitch, even if I live-coded the whole time. This is a no-go for most developer conferences. It should work nicely for Fal.Con, though. And that might be all that's required since it sells out every year.

Personally, our big family vacation already happened with a visit to Puerto Rico in early January. I'll write about that in a blog post shortly. Abbie graduates from CU in May and starts her career this summer. We'll be celebrating, supporting, and planning some adventures with her when she moves back in. We hope to work remotely from Winter Park in June and Montana in July. We figure if we can work East Coast hours, we can have some fun rafting/biking/golfing adventures in the afternoons and evenings.

I have only one goal for 2025: be grateful.

I have a lot to be thankful for with an awesome family, a gorgeous place to live, adventurous hobbies, and fun VWs to drive. And, Trish got us VIP tickets to Dead & Company at the Sphere in May! She started following the Grateful Dead in the 90s with multi-day shows and wanted to finish her long strange trip in a similar fashion.

If you want to stay in touch, please connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me on Flickr.

Life Update: New Job, Same House, and Same Awesome Family!

Matt Raible — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 09:31:40 -0700

It's been over eight years since I wrote a life update blog post. At that time (2016), we'd just moved into the "Raible Ranch", the bus was finished, and the kids were in high school. I'd just started one of my few-and-far-between full-time jobs at Stormpath.

Fast-forward to today. Our kids are in college at the University of Colorado during the Coach Prime Era, we're empty nesters with an affection for live music, and our pet zoo is cuter than ever.

You probably know me. But in case you don't, my name is Matt Raible, and I'm married to a fabulous woman named Trish McGinity. She's been a hero in my life ever since I met her in 2010. She dazzled me so much, I asked her to marry me at Versailles in 2011. We married in my hometown (Condon, Montana) in 2013, on the most beautiful lake you've ever seen.

When I met Trish, I was an independent consultant, and she was in cybersecurity sales. On a fateful night in 2010, on a friend Jarvis's birthday, I asked her what she had done for a living. She said, "Have you ever heard of OWASP?"

My heart lifted and I felt a moment of joy. This woman was speaking my language! 14 years later and Oh My!, Trish has had an incredible influence on my life and career.

You might think of me as the AppFuse guy, the JHipster promoter, or some dude who talked about Okta a lot. I'm cool with that, but it's irrefutable to say that Trish hasn't influenced my career. She encouraged me to lean into cybersecurity and constantly said I was "doing it wrong" with my carefree attitude toward security.

These days, I'm a Senior Cloud Engineer at CrowdStrike, the foremost cybersecurity company in the world. My previous gig was with Okta, where I spent seven years educating developers about OAuth and OpenID Connect.

I'll admit, I had a lot of anxiety about joining CrowdStrike. In late June, after enjoying funemployment, I had three excellent offers from FusionAuth, Yugabyte, and CrowdStrike. It's the first time in my life that I've had more than one offer at the same time.

The first two opportunities were excellent. But, both had maybe equity. As an old fogey in the twilight of my career, I thought guaranteed equity was a better opportunity. I chose the company trajectory over my passion for open source and Java. I accepted the CrowdStrike offer on July 3rd as we were departing for a 4th of July trip to Montana.

At that time, I felt totally confident about my decision. I was taking the path less traveled and abandoning all my Java celebrityism for a skyrocketing company that was kicking ass and taking names. You're supposed to do things outside your comfort zone, right?

Take the road less traveled.

I was a little worried about the equity though. After all, CrowdStrike's stock price was at an all-time high.

I turned 50 on July 16th. We hosted a backyard party at the ranch the weekend before (July 13th), complete with a local Grateful Dead band. Shakedown Street was excellent and everyone had a good time.

The Incident

On my birthday, while blowing out candles, I wished for CrowdStrike's stock price to drop.

On Friday (July 19th), I woke up to more unread texts than I received on my milestone birthday. A lot of friends were aware that I'd accepted a new job at CrowdStrike and were texting me about an incident.

Apparently, CrowdStrike had just caused a worldwide computer outage. If you were flying that day, you were probably affected. I received more text messages that morning than on my birthday.

My response was positive: this situation will be very good for my equity grant's strike price!

I quickly realized that CrowdStrike was way bigger than I originally thought. There were computer issues at the golf club I ventured into that morning. Their systems were down and they apologized. I smirked, apologized back, and mentioned I recently accepted a job offer from CrowdStrike.

I started working for CrowdStrike on July 29th. 10 days after the incident. I quickly realized that making developers aware of CrowdStrike wouldn't be a problem. Everyone knew about us because of July 19th. In a sense, it was a blessing in my DevRel journey at CrowdStrike.

I worked at Okta for seven years and there were a couple of incidents. CrowdStrike's response was waayyyy different than Okta's.

First of all, CrowdStrike's incident wasn't a breach. It was a bug that they shipped. It was totally their fault. Okta had a full-on breach that they didn't disclose for a month. Regardless of the incident details, as a tech worker for said company, it's a severe morale hit when it happens to you.

That's been one of my biggest struggles. I was extremely proud to join CrowdStrike as a Senior Engineer. Heck, I passed the coding test using Java, and they were a Go shop! When this all happened in June, I was so proud of my non-traditional path to excellence in the tech industry.

I wasn't hired as a senior engineer who cranks out code, maintains functionality, and implements new features. Instead, I was hired as a "Senior Engineer - Cloud" that's focused on DevRel. I'm still a developer advocate, but my title indicates I can still sling some code.

I've been coming up to speed on Go and Python as fast as I can. I've also been doing a lot of CrowdStrike Foundry tutorials, finding/fixing issues, and improving our learning materials as fast as I can. I even published my first CrowdStrike blog post!

Get Started with Falcon Foundry

Now that I've filled you in on the life of Matt Raible, I feel like I've ignored the best parts of my life: Trish, Abbie, and Jack.

Trish continues to excel as the Head of Cybersecurity Communications at Empower. Yes, the Empower that has the naming rights to the Empower Field at Mile High where the Denver Broncos play. We haven't experienced box seats yet, but we're still hopeful. Trish is the star of her team, and it's her favorite job, ever. She's delighted at the fact that I'm asking her if SIEM and SOAR are acronyms or just fancy industry terms.

You're probably wondering if we're evil parents at this point. You've learned about Trish and me, but what about the kids, the pets, and our parents? I mean, this is a life update after all!

The kids are doing great. As a casual blogger, I still managed to post about both of their birthdays this year. Jack and Abbie are thriving!

They're still in school at CU Boulder and enjoying the Coach Prime Era. Abbie's a senior and already has a job. That's quite an accomplishment, and we're very impressed!

Jack's thinking about dating. He didn't try out for the CU basketball team, but he's still interested in making it happen.

The pets are currently spoiled. Trish's best friend, Caroline, has moved in. She takes the two dogs (Daisy and Kai) on daily walks. I tend to like the same activity, and they're very good at pretending it's their first walk of the day with both of us!

Our parents are thriving too! I recently attended Trish's Dad's 85th birthday celebration. He's doing splendid and likes to swim and play tennis daily.

My parents are still loving life in Montana. A friend of theirs has a photo trap set up for wildlife on the homestead. He captures some amazing photos! Check out his website for more fabulous shots.

Trish has more to her story. She's experienced some of the most extreme ups and downs of her life. In July, shortly after we celebrated my birthday, we spent a week in Estes Park. The reason was simple: she wanted to compete in a horse show and I wanted to support her, explore the nearby trails, and visit the local breweries.

We decided to make her lifelong dreams come true and leased the most kick-ass horse she could find. His name is Athos, and he was the horse she competed with in Estes Park. He's 18.2 hands tall, which means he's 6' at the saddle. Trish is only 5'1". They won Reserve Champion on their first collaboration!

Trish and Athos were a match made in heaven. Until they weren't.

A month ago, Trish fell off Athos after a jump in a training lesson. It was a tack failure while demoing a new saddle, and the stirrup strap slid right off. She almost saved it, but proceeded to fall and injure herself badly in the process. When I met her at the ER (Emergency Room), her pain level was 9.5/10 for her wrist and 3/10 for her ankle. She broke both her wrist and her ankle in the same accident. It wasn't Athos' fault, but rather a faulty stirrup bar.

Since this happened, we've learned I'm a terribly grumpy caregiver, she's had her wrist surgically repaired, and her ankle had surgery a week later.

Breaking two bones at the same time really limits your mobility. I wouldn't wish it upon anyone. Trish is optimistic that she'll compete with horses in the future, but she's also realizing it gets harder as you get older.

What's Next?

Trish, Jack, and I have all had midlife crises this year. Trish cranked things up a notch to be a world-class eventer with horses, then got hurt. Jack was going to be an aeronautics engineer, then took a helicopter flight over Glacier National Park and changed his mind. I abandoned all my Java experience and chose CrowdStrike, a Go and Python shop.

Abbie's a senior in college and already has a job. I think she's winning the family badass contest!

We have no idea what's next. But we're proud of Abbie for securing her first job.

As for the rest of us? We'll figure it out. Raibles and McGinitys are known for thriving in the face of adversity. 💪😃

For a photo and video experience of our summer adventures, see my Summer Adventures 2024 album on Flickr.

2023 - A Year in Review

Matt Raible — Sat, 6 Jan 2024 18:16:02 -0700

2023 started with a celebration of love in the Philippines. Trish and I traveled with friends to El Nido and Manila to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. It was a two-week trip that filled our souls with lasting memories.

2023 was a milestone year for our family. It's the year Jack graduated from high school!

Then, the Denver Nuggets won the NBA Championship, Jack started college at CU, and we became empty nesters. It was quite the year!

From last year's review:

I only have one goal for 2023: be present.

I live where I work, so this was easy enough on a physical level. However, I was forced to be even more present in Q4 of the year. My manager asked me to step up and be more present on my team in October. Then, sickness struck me down in mid-November after seven weeks of travel, allowing for some quality one-on-one time with Trish.

I will look back on 2023 using the following categories.

Personal

The ski season was excellent with trips to Winter Park, Devil's Thumb Ranch, Crested Butte, and Steamboat.

We celebrated my sister's St. Paddy's Day birthday with a week in New Orleans. We visited my parents in Montana for Mother's Day.

Recharging in the backwoods of Montana with family. Started the day with coffee, mimosas, and huckleberry pancakes. ☕️🥂😋

Happy Mother's Day to all the incredible moms out there! ❤️? pic.twitter.com/sjmChuzNpo
— Matt Raible (@mraible) May 14, 2023

We jumped for joy during Jack's High School Graduation at the end of May!

We celebrated our son Jack's high school graduation this week and had a fabulous time with family and friends. Here are a few of my favorite photos.

See the full album on Flickr with Julie and Trish's awesome photos: https://t.co/XSoUZnjOSk

Congratulations, Jack! 🥳 pic.twitter.com/1Ea1LZrFML
— Matt Raible (@mraible) May 27, 2023

The Nuggets playoff run was magical, and our half-season tickets came in quite handy. The Denver Nuggets won the NBA Championship on June 12th. Crying from joy is a wonderful feeling. 🥹

I took a long summer vacation for the fourth year in a row. Thanks, Okta's unlimited vacation policy!

In 24 hours, I'll be starting my summer vacation. @okta has an unlimited vacation policy, and I'm taking full advantage with a month off! 😃

What will I do?

⛳️ Golf, raft, and bike
🛶 Live down by the river in a van
⛰️ Shoot the breeze in Montana
🌊 Tour Cape Cod#LifeAtOkta
— Matt Raible (@mraible) July 13, 2023

I wrote about my summer vacation adventures in Summer 2023: Colorado, Montana, and Cape Cod.

Jack started college at the University of Colorado on his birthday. We loved the Coach Prime and CU football experience in September, while the Broncos were terrible. When CU started sucking at halftime during the Stanford game, the teams seemed to swap fates. We relished in the Broncos winning streak in October and November as our CU football fandom waned.

Abbie turned 21 in early November. We celebrated at the CU vs. Oregon State game and again in Las Vegas the following weekend.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Matt Raible (@vwsforlife)

The last months of the year were dominated by real estate transactions. We sold our rental house near the University of Denver in early November.

And we bought a new ski chalet near Winter Park in December. It has mountain views with a river nearby and close proximity to many miles of mountain bike trails. We plan to rent it most of the time. We've experienced many misty-eyed moments of joy in it already.

We spent Christmas in Florida with Abbie, Jack, and Trish's whole family. The sunsets were gorgeous.

Hefe the Bus and Stout the Syncro

We gave Stout the Syncro a lot of rest this year. We bought a relatively new Chevy Suburban as a new tow vehicle for our whitewater rafts. We celebrated our 10-year anniversary by rafting on the Upper Colorado River with both vehicles.

Hefe the Bus purred along with no issues. He won runner-up in his class this year at the Colorado Bug-In!

Professional

For those stumbling upon this post with no context, I'm an open source developer that works at Okta. My title is officially "Developer Advocate Architect" and all the code I write is open source.

This year, my main focus was leading the Java Community team as part of Auth0 by Okta Developer Relations. I worked with Deepu K Sasidharan and Jimena Garbarino to come up with ideas, write blog posts, and author tutorials for the Auth0 Developer Center.

My Americas Developer Relations team has one main function: cultivating relationships with developers via events. Personally, I like creating content more than events, yet I've also found they go hand-in-hand. The content I create often gets turned into conference talks, so I find it important to create new content if I want new talks. I mention this because it's not my main job to produce content. There's another team that does content, but they currently have no Java specialists.

I published two blog posts on the Auth0 blog:

We used the microservices post as the basis for Deepu and my Securing Spring Boot Microservices with OAuth and OpenID Connect workshop at Devoxx Belgium.

On the OktaDev YouTube Channel, I created four screencasts (down from 12 in 2022).

My most popular video was Spring Boot + Vue, with 8.6K views.

My Use React and Spring Boot to Build a Simple CRUD App screencast has 22K views, but it was published on December 29, 2022, so it doesn't count for 2023.

While at Devoxx Belgium, Deepu and I interviewed a bunch of Java community legends.

We had a lot of fun interviewing @errcraft and @Stephan007 at #Devoxx Belgium. 🤩 pic.twitter.com/XtIij77YI8
— Matt Raible (@mraible) October 7, 2023

I did a couple more interviews with the OpenFGA team at KubeCon.

I updated and released new versions of the JHipster and Angular Mini-Books with the help of InfoQ and awesome tech editors.

InfoQ allows publishing them on other sites after six months, so they're both available online at jhipster-book.org and angular-book.org.

Speaking

According to TripIt, I took 21 trips to 37 cities in eight countries. Nine trips were work-related; the rest involved traveling to see family or attending Celebration of Life events. That's three fewer trips than in 2022, and I had 109 days on the road (-14 from 2022). United 1K was enjoyed; I did not qualify for it in 2024.

My Speaker Deck profile shows 18 presentations at 17 events. Thirteen of those were in person. I also attended KubeCon to help the OpenFGA project. My most-viewed presentation was Comparing Native Java REST API Frameworks from the Chicago JUG in August. It had 1.2K views.

While the Midwest and Northeast JUG tours were a lot of fun, the highlight of the year was interviewing James Gosling at Devoxx Belgium.

Digging into all things @Java with the founder himself, James Gosling!

Developer Advocate @mraible had an insightful chat covering @Devoxx, Java and everything in between! 🚀 pic.twitter.com/2pfRIlZVhi
— OktaDev (@oktadev) November 27, 2023

Community

We stopped live-streaming Denver JUG meetups because we wanted to encourage folks to join us in person and grow our community. We're grateful to the folks at Thrive Workplace for donating their space. We hope to start meeting at their new downtown location near Union Station sometime this year.

Projects

I continued to maintain OktaDev Schematics in 2023. The project had four releases. According to npm-stat.com, it had ~42K downloads in 2023 (-20K from 2022).

I updated my Bare Bones Angular tutorial for Angular 17.

I updated my Bare Bones 🦴 Angular tutorial to use #Angular 17.

?? https://t.co/7fsyzOOaNP

It includes:

✅ New syntax for control flow
✅ Standalone components
✅ Unit, e2e, and CI testing
✨ Bonus: Angular Material, Bootstrap, and @auth0

I hope you find it useful!
— Matt Raible (@mraible) December 4, 2023

I also helped with the JHipster project. It turned 10 in October.

Can you believe that @jhipster is 10 years old today?!

Happy Birthday, JHipster! And congratulations to its proud Papa, @juliendubois! 🎊

⭐? 21K stars on GitHub
🤝 52.4K used by
❤️ 696 contributors

It's been an excellent adventure! 🤓 https://t.co/VqZdoDRtBS
— Matt Raible (@mraible) October 21, 2023

JHipster had eight releases and ~1.3 million downloads in 2023 (down 200K from 2022). Our biggest release was JHipster 8.0.0 on November 2nd. We released 8.1.0 in early December, and I updated my Get Started with JHipster 8 tutorial to use it.

My Getting Started with JHipster 8 tutorial is now available!

🤓 https://t.co/6nBfPR33Dk

Features:

🌹 Enhanced UI with Angular
🔐 Increased security with ownership checks
💜 Deployment to Heroku
🤠 CI/CD with GitHub Actions#jhipster #java #typescript pic.twitter.com/xE8Ra9E9w6
— Matt Raible (@mraible) December 14, 2023

I also published a screencast of the tutorial just before Christmas.

2024

Professionally, I'm starting the year with two of my favorite conferences, Jfokus and Devnexus. Then, I'm doing a JUG tour in April to Salt Lake City, Dallas, Tampa, Nashville, and Detroit. I'm trying to make Spring I/O and JNation happen too. September's dev2next is sure to be a fun conference in Denver. You can see where my whole team will be on our events page.

Personally, Trish and I hope to visit the Ski Chalet frequently. The mountains are calling, and we must go. I'll be a half-century old in July. That's sure to be a good party, especially if it's during another month-long summer vacation.

I have only one goal for 2024: breathe.

I often pause, breathe, and smile when I'm skiing, mountain biking, rafting, and frolicking in the great outdoors. Sometimes it's nature's beauty that causes this, but often it's my own satisfaction with the situation.

If you want to watch me connect with developers and opt outside, please follow me on Twitter. I also post pictures of my favorite moments on Instagram and whole albums on Flickr.

Summer 2023: Colorado, Montana, and Cape Cod

Matt Raible — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 23:45:21 -0600

I've been remiss in writing about my month-long summer vacation. Mostly because life moves pretty fast with Jack heading off to college, things getting busy at work, and lots of wonderful weekends along the way. I'm finally looking around and sitting down to write this post at the end of October. Now is better than never!

This year, I took a month off from mid-June to mid-August. How did I take so much time off? Okta has a magnificent unlimited vacation policy.

In 24 hours, I'll be starting my summer vacation. @okta has an unlimited vacation policy, and I'm taking full advantage with a month off! 😃

What will I do?

⛳️ Golf, raft, and bike
🛶 Live down by the river in a van
⛰️ Shoot the breeze in Montana
🌊 Tour Cape Cod#LifeAtOkta
— Matt Raible (@mraible) July 13, 2023

The adventure started with a birthday golf tournament that Saturday to celebrate my 49th.

We had a nice family dinner at Sushi Den on Sunday.

For the two weeks after that, I went on bike rides and worked on a 10-year anniversary present for Trish: a book about our wedding and honeymoon. I wrote about these events in previous blog posts.

Matrimony in Montana

Because of these posts and pictures, writing the text wasn't difficult, but finding high-res images was. In the end, I succeeded by getting Trish's credentials to her website and finding the photos in her archives.

I wrote the book using Blurb and you can buy a hardcover version of The Good Life, Volume II. I'm proud to say I finished the rough draft just hours before she arrived home from a trip the evening before our anniversary.

The weekend before our anniversary, I went on a father-son rafting trip with Jack and friends.

We made it home in time to show Hefe at the Colorado Bug-In at Bandimere on July 23rd. We ended up winning runner-up in our class! There were lots of magnificent VWs at this event, so I encourage you to checkout my summer vacation album.

We celebrated our anniversary by rafting on the Upper Colorado River with the Pirates of the Pumphouse.

I visited Montana the next week and had fun with my fabulous family and their wonderful homestead.

Our last adventure was to Cape Cod to spend a week with Trish's family. We marveled at the sunsets, went on many boat rides, and appreciated each other's company.

These photos are just a sampling of the 100+ that I polished and published. I think photos are a great way to tell a story, so I added captions to all of them in my Summer 2023 Album.

2022 - A Year in Review

Matt Raible — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 09:34:31 -0700

When 2022 started, I was excited to start traveling again. We started things off with a trip to Mexico and worked remotely from the Cabo San Lucas marina for a couple of weeks. In March, the kids and I ventured to the Cayman Islands for spring break. We arrived home to a red-hot DU hockey team and followed them all the way to the Frozen Four. I went to college at DU, aka the University of Denver, and I'm a proud alumnus.

I made my way to Boston to work on a presentation with a co-worker, nicely coinciding with the Frozen Four tournament. A few friends and I had the time of our lives watching DU win the NCAA championship. After staying up late and celebrating, I felt awful the next day. I flew home and still felt terrible on Monday. Figuring it was a bad cold from over-indulgence, I took a COVID test, tested negative, and hopped on a plane to Devnexus on Tuesday. That week did not end well.

I tested positive for COVID this morning. I'm so sorry to all the people and friends I came in contact with at @devnexus this week. I feel like such an ass.

I thought I was OK because I tested negative Tuesday morning and never lost my sense of taste and smell. https://t.co/lR5tdOM2gP
— Matt Raible (@mraible) April 15, 2022

From last year's year in review:

I only have one goal for 2022: smile more.

I rediscovered one of the things that makes me smile a lot: in-person meetups with friends. I had so much fun at Devnexus seeing old friends from the conference circuit. This continued at Spring I/O in Barcelona and at JavaOne in the fall. Being with family always makes me smile too. A trip to Alaska to celebrate my parent's 50th wedding anniversary was a highlight of the year!

I will look back on 2022 using the following categories.

Professional

For those stumbling upon this post with no context, I'm an open source developer that works at Okta. My title is officially "Developer Advocate," but all the code and words I write are distributed as open source.

This year, I focused on creating YouTube videos more than blog posts. On the OktaDev YouTube Channel, I created 12 videos (same as 2021). My most popular video (11K views) was based on a blog post I wrote in January called Full Stack Java with React, Spring Boot, and JHipster.

I published the Angular Mini-Book 2.0. When writing blog posts, I focused mostly on Java, REST APIs, and JHipster, with a bit of JavaScript too. I authored 11 blog posts on the Okta developer blog:

I published four blog posts to the Auth0 blog.

Last year, I was celebrating new teammates Deepu K Sasidharan, Alisa Duncan, E. Dunham, and Tanay Pant. This summer, I moved to the Auth0 DevRel team and have a plethora of new teammates to collaborate with. I'm excited to help grow Auth0 usage in the Java community, and I'm pumped to work closely with Deepu to make it happen.

I continued to stream meetups for the Denver/Boulder JUG and Denver Open Source Users Group (DOSUG). We used StreamYard and YouTube to broadcast our meetups. We published nine videos to the Denver JUG YouTube Channel. We only published two videos to the Denver Open Source Users Group Channel, but we did meet in-person! We're grateful to the folks at Thrive Workplace for donating their space.

Denver JUG is now up to 3,688 members. Our most popular video in 2022 was from Gordon Weakliem on Coding Interviews for Java Developers.

Speaking

According to TripIt, I took 24 trips, to 45 cities, in 11 countries. 13 trips were work-related, and the rest involved traveling to see family. That's 11 more trips than in 2021, and I had 123 days on the road (+46 from 2021). United 1K was achieved.

My Speaker Deck profile shows 12 presentations at 12 events. 11 of those were in-person. I missed Devoxx France because I caught COVID in April at the NCAA Frozen Four tournament. I later live-streamed my presentation on Comparing Native Java REST API Frameworks. This was also my most-viewed presentation on Speaker Deck with 3.1K views.

I had a full room of attendees for my talk on Reactive Microservices at Spring I/O in Barcelona. Even the overflow room was packed!

My @jhipster talk at @spring_io had a lot of awesome people in it! Thank you all for your enthusiasm and smiles. 😃 pic.twitter.com/u4pOtOSbkl
— Matt Raible (@mraible) May 26, 2022

I had a lot of fun doing a September JUG tour in Ireland. My folks tagged along. It was a fast-moving trip with new hotels most nights. At their age, they'll unlikely join me for a JUG tour again. 😅

We stopped by the @okta Dublin office this morning in the Bloodstone building. Great location with a fun vibe about it. 👍 pic.twitter.com/vvaeswAvT0
— Matt Raible (@mraible) September 29, 2022

JavaOne returned in October and was held in Las Vegas for the first time. I spoke about Micro Frontends for Java Microservices and loved spending time with the Java community.

The community at #JavaOne is amazing! pic.twitter.com/IwOdr3V7gx
— Matt Raible (@mraible) October 19, 2022

Late October brought me to the UK for another JUG tour. It was a lot of fun hosting it at the Okta office there.

It was a pleasure talking with the @ljcjug tonight about web app security for Java developers. The #Java community is strong in London! 💪

Thanks to @OctopusDeploy for sponsoring and @okta for hosting. It was fun to see a full house with all the seats filled by the end. 😃 pic.twitter.com/SmtvRgw1Jh
— Matt Raible (@mraible) October 27, 2022

I originally planned my UK JUG tour to coincide with the Broncos playing in London, but their record was so bad by then that I flew home early. Coincidentally, they won that weekend.

Oktane followed soon after. It was the first time meeting some of my teammates in-person. I wore an { okta } cape and thoroughly enjoyed the developer track we assembled.

Excited for the developer keynote at #Oktane22! pic.twitter.com/Jy2XPDoIxx
— Matt Raible (@mraible) November 9, 2022

In December, we had our first in-person Denver JUG meetup since the pandemic began. It was awesome seeing everyone again!

Had a blast at the @denverjug holiday party tonight! Thanks to all the local @java folks that joined in the fun. 😀 pic.twitter.com/sI9tsbrlk7
— Matt Raible (@mraible) December 15, 2022

We've had a couple of meetups since then but are still looking for a nice venue to gather. Frank Delporte recently interviewed the organizers for the Boulder and Denver JUGs on the Foojay Podcast. Check out Episode #13 if you're interested in hearing about our group's history.

Community

In the past, I used this section to talk about meetups I've started, like Developer Ski Days and Devoxx4Kids Denver. We didn't host any events in 2022, but I might organize a developer ski day soon. Right before COVID hit, we had a ski train to Winter Park adventure planned. It was supposed to happen right after Venkat's dev.next conference. I'd love to try and do that again.

Projects

I continued to maintain OktaDev Schematics in 2022. The project had five releases. I added support for Auth0's SDKs, which helps ensure I know how to use the latest versions. According to npm-stat.com, it had ~62K downloads in 2022 (+2K from 2021).

My other projects are related to JHipster. I helped upgrade the main generator to Spring Boot 3 and did a lot of QA for micro frontends. We had eight releases and ~1.5 million downloads in 2022 (down 300K from 2021). We've worked hard on JHipster 8 and hope to release an alpha version soon.

I spent most of the year (in fits and spurts) working on the JHipster Mini-Book.

My author *finally* finished updating my intro and chapter 1 for @jhipster 7. He started working on this PR in March!https://t.co/R0h09xXle2

What took so long? 🧵
— The JHipster Mini-Book (@jhipster_book) December 2, 2022

I sent the book to tech editing just before Christmas vacation and got it back from the copy editors at InfoQ this week. Hopefully, it'll be available for download by the end of this month!

I helped create the JHipster Native blueprint in early 2022 and wrote about how to use it in Introducing Spring Native for JHipster: Serverless Full-Stack Made Easy. We converted Ionic for JHipster into a blueprint and updated JHipster React Native. I wrote about them both on the OktaDev and Auth0 blogs:

Personal

We started the year with a trip to Cabo San Lucas with my parents and sisters. My parents like to do a "chasing the sun" trip in the midst of winter because they live in the backwoods of Montana, and the sun doesn't shine a whole lot.

I had difficulties getting my passport renewed in March, but succeeded after learning a local government official can help expedite things. Once I got a new passport, Abbie, Jack, and I had a blast with Trish's brother's family in Grand Cayman.

The 2021-2022 ski season was pretty good. This year is shaping up to be much better! I already have 24 days in, and we're only halfway through the season!

For the third year in a row, I took a long summer vacation thanks to Okta's unlimited vacation policy.

In 24 hours, I'll be starting my summer vacation. @okta has an unlimited vacation policy and I'm taking full advantage with a month off! 😃

What will I do?

🏔 A week in Alaska
🤠 A RV trip to Montana
🛶 A week-long rafting trip
🤘 Def Leppard / Mötley Crüe concert#LifeAtOkta
— Matt Raible (@mraible) June 16, 2022

Celebrating my parent's 50th in Alaska was fantastic!

And so was the Colorado Avalanche's Stanley Cup victory. 🥳

We managed to go rafting a lot in July. Five nights camping on the Green River was our favorite trip.

I celebrated 20 years of blogging in August. Jack turned 18 at the end of the month.

I took the kids to the first game of the Broncos' season in Seattle. Their stadium had a sweet view of the city. We did not expect to lose that game.

We enjoyed a beautiful @Broncos sunset in Seattle last night. 😊 pic.twitter.com/OVchzB6zYe
— Matt Raible (@mraible) September 12, 2022

The fall was filled with a disappointing Broncos season, Abbie's 20th birthday, and an even more disappointing CU Buffaloes football season. We have elevated hopes for both the CU Buffs and the Denver Broncos in 2023!

We had a blast celebrating @AbbieRaible's birthday this weekend! 🥳 pic.twitter.com/69AKuDOp17
— Matt Raible (@mraible) November 7, 2022

In the meantime, we're big Nuggets and Avalanche fans and are excited for their playoff runs this spring.

Trish and I ended the year celebrating love in the Philippines.

Hefe the Bus and Stout the Syncro

Stout the Syncro's Subaru engine died in February. Because of this, I decided it was a good time to restore him like Hefe with a new paint job, interior, and other improvements. We hauled him to our favorite Vanagon mechanics, Mr. Mechanic, to install a new Subaru Outback engine. Trish bought me a temporary Tesla to tide me over because we figured the restoration might take six months to a year. I named it White Lightning.

As luck would have it, we couldn't find anyone to do the bodywork and paint, so we ended up getting it back with a new engine in June. After experiencing several expensive adjustments after the new engine, I'm still driving my temporary Tesla, and Stout is parked in our barn. Trish wants to trade White Lightning for an RV (a 20-year dream of hers), while I'm hoping to swap it for an ID Buzz.

The year's VW highlight was the Colorado Bug-In at Bandimere Speedway. Stout won runner-up in his class, while Hefe won the whole kit and kaboodle: Best in Class, Best Interior, and Best of Show!! 😆

I'm back from summer vacation today and feeling fantastic! #HefeTheBus won Best of Show, Best Interior, and his class at the Colorado Bug-In yesterday!!

Winning Best of Show at the Bug-In was a bucket list item for me when I bought him way back in 2004. So proud! 🥳 #vwbus pic.twitter.com/Vm4p1KQNcl
— Matt Raible (@mraible) July 25, 2022

We're still featured on the Bandimere website as the Best of Show winners.

2023

Professionally, I hope to do some JUG tours in the US this year. I joined the Auth0 product unit at Okta in August, and they're much more regionally focused than my former OktaDev team was. This is largely because we have developer advocates worldwide, and it's more sustainable if Deepu hits the Java conferences in Europe while I focus on the US. If you're interested in seeing where my team will be in 2023, see developer.auth0.com/events.

This will be a big year for our family. Jack graduates high school in May, and we'll become empty nesters in August. He got accepted to CU a couple of weeks ago and will join his sister up in Boulder! With Coach Prime on board, we're hoping for some good CU football games this season. Because it's his last six months at home, I'm skipping conferences that happen while he's at our house.

I only have one goal for 2023: be present.

I've noticed that this is easy if I'm playing with friends or visiting family. Putting down my phone, listening, and paying attention on Zoom calls is my jam this year.

If you want to follow along on my adventures, please follow me on Twitter. I also post pictures of my favorite moments on Instagram and whole albums on Flickr.

Summer 2022: Family Adventures in Alaska, Montana, and Colorado

Matt Raible — Mon, 1 Aug 2022 23:00:00 -0600

For the third year in a row, I took a long summer vacation thanks to Okta's unlimited vacation policy.

In 24 hours, I’ll be starting my summer vacation. @okta has an unlimited vacation policy and I’m taking full advantage with a month off! 😃

What will I do?

🏔 A week in Alaska
🤠 A RV trip to Montana
🛶 A week-long rafting trip
🤘 Def Leppard / Mötley Crüe concert#LifeAtOkta
— Matt Raible (@mraible) June 16, 2022

We started by traveling to Alaska with my sister and parents. My parents are celebrating 50 years of marriage this year and chose Anchorage as the celebratory destination.

The week we were in Alaska happened to coincide with the Colorado Avalance hockey team being in the Stanley Cup. We watched the games and cheered together, loudly.

We returned home to Colorado and watched the Avs win the whole kit and kaboodle. That was a fun day as was the Avs Parade in downtown Denver.

The next day, I played one of my best golf games ever and Trish rejoiced in renting a badass RV for a week in Montana.

We were super excited to get on the road the next morning. Our enthusiasm was dampened quickly when we found the RV didn't have any hookups for trailer lights. Since we planned to take our rafts with us, this quickly upset the flow of the morning. In a rush to get on the road, I decided we should take Trish's Tesla X as the tow vehicle. A full charge lasted us a mere 75 miles, so we pivoted to towing with the RV and using the Tesla as a tailing car to make up for no trailer lights.

On the 4th of July, it rained quite a bit so we were happy with our RV porch for the fireworks.

Trish enjoyed her remote office in the RV that week; Abbie opted for an office on the porch.

The water was higher than normal in Montana this year, so we got to enjoy some swift days on the river. We floated the Blackfoot one day and the Middle Fork of the Flathead (near Glacier Park) the next.

Our last night gave us a beautiful sunset before we endured the 21-hour drive home. Normally, it's around 16 hours. Charging the Tesla every few hours really slowed things down; we didn't get home until 4:15am. Jack was a real trooper and drove the many hours through Wyoming all by himself.

We were home for two days, just enough time to pack up for a week-long rafting trip down the Green River, starting at Gates of Lodore in Dinosaur National Monument. This time we took Stout the Syncro as our tow vehicle. He got a new engine a few weeks prior and successfully got us all the way across Colorado.

Five nights of camping on the river gives one a good perspective of the world. We were super proud of Jack for rowing through a class 4 rapid and Abbie for rowing through a class 3. I lost an oar at the top of the class 4, and we recovered it a few days later when a fellow rafter responded to our post on Mountain Buzz.

For the grand finale, we attended The Stadium Tour with Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard, Poison, and Joan Jett at Coors Field. We had a blast singing along and hanging out with our friends from Montana, Owen and Dana.

I thought the concert was my vacation's grand finale, but what happened that weekend is something I dreamed of since I first started restoring Hefe. He won Best of Show at the Colorado Bug-In! Not only that, but he won Best Interior and Best in Class too!!

I'm back from summer vacation today and feeling fantastic! #HefeTheBus won Best of Show, Best Interior, and his class at the Colorado Bug-In yesterday!!

Winning Best of Show at the Bug-In was a bucket list item for me when I bought him way back in 2004. So proud! 🥳 #vwbus pic.twitter.com/Vm4p1KQNcl
— Matt Raible (@mraible) July 25, 2022

These photos are just a sampling of the 100+ that I polished and published. I think photos are a great way to tell a story, so I added captions to all of them in my Summer 2022 Album. I've also embedded it below.

How to Renew Your Passport Quickly (aka The Cayman Islands Spring Break That Almost Wasn't)

Matt Raible — Tue, 5 Apr 2022 11:22:02 -0600

tl;dr Call your member of Congress or Senator if you need help getting a passport appointment.

When we renewed our kids' passports in October 2021, it only took a few weeks for their new ones to arrive in our mailbox. Trish and I sent our passports for renewal in late November, expecting a similar quick turnaround. I received mine back a couple of weeks later because I'd forgotten an essential item - the check to pay for it. Trish didn't receive hers in December, so she set up an appointment at the Colorado Passport Agency. We're very fortunate as this office is just seven miles away from us.

The only appointment Trish could get was on the same day as our flight to Cabo San Lucas in early January. Her appointment was at 9am, and our flight was at 11:25am. She found out during her appointment that she didn't receive a new passport in December because our dogs scared off the delivery driver. She'd ordered expedited delivery; that's why they tried to deliver to our front porch instead of dropping it in the mailbox.

The passport office was able to turn things around quickly and she arrived at the airport, new passport in hand, at 10:45am. 40 minutes wasn't enough time, according to the checkin counter, so she had to reschedule her flight for the next day. This was unfortunate since we waited at the gate for 45 minutes due to delays.

Mexico was fabulous.

I didn't opt for expedited delivery when I re-sent my passport for renewal in late January. I was worried that delivery might fail because of the dogs, everyone else had gotten their passports in a few weeks, and I had no international travel scheduled. February came and went. I realized in early March that we didn't have any plans for Spring Break. As a father with a teenage son flying solo at home and Trish off to ski with a friend during his Spring Break week, I felt obligated to schedule something fun. I contacted Trish's brother, confirmed a niece and nephew had the same Spring Break, and we started planning. We had lodging and flights booked for a week in the Cayman Islands within a few days.

That's when I realized I didn't have my passport back yet. Ten days before our flight, I called the Colorado Passport Agency and tried to get an appointment. I didn't realize you were supposed to call ten business days before your flight. Regardless, I dialed in at 8am EST and was on hold for 2.5 hours before giving up. I kept calling every so often for the next week. I slipped into a funk about a week before our flight. I'd booked this cool trip with Jack, and it looked like I'd be unable to join him. Good job, Dad.

This funk lasted a couple of days as I kept trying to get an appointment and failing. I think it was Wednesday of that week when I changed my attitude. Our flight was the following Tuesday, at 5am on March 15.

Enter the Law of Attraction

I changed my attitude to one that embraced the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction is essentially, "if you believe enough, it will happen." I've only used it once previously in my life. That's when I dreamed up Trish. I texted my in-laws and Trish with my newfound determination and told them it was gonna happen, and they should enjoy watching me succeed. After repeatedly calling on Thursday, I decided to head down to the passport agency on Friday and hang out right by the entrance on the 6th floor. I arrived at 7:45am (they open at 8am) with my lucky Grateful Dead shirt on, hoping that I'd find some sympathy from someone.

There was already a line when I arrived, as well as a woman that was panicking about her flight to Jamaica that night (from Salt Lake City) with her son. She'd recently discovered her son's passport was expired, and she had to get on the flight. She asked if anyone in line would be willing to give up their spot for her. People seemed to know this wasn't an option, and the security guard confirmed she wasn't allowed to do it. I felt the lady's hopelessness, but I also didn't think there was a solution. Around 9am, she walked out of the office with her son. 20 minutes later, she returned, showed her confirmation number to the security guard, and was admitted. "Whoa!" I thought to myself; there's hope!

At around 10am, the Jamaica-bound lady emerged from the office. I asked her how she did it. She said someone in line had told her to call a congress member in Colorado Springs, and they got her an appointment! I received a similar tip moments before I talked to her. I started calling my local congressman and senators frantically, as well as the person she called. I spent the next hour calling folks, leaving messages, and filling out website forms. By 11:30am, I had an appointment for 9:30am on Monday!

Later that day, I received a voicemail hours after it'd been left. My local congressman, Jason Crow, had scheduled an appointment for me the same day at 1pm. Unfortunately, I didn't receive the message in time. All of the other folks I called responded too! Senator John Hickenlooper's office called me Monday morning and was willing to make things happen immediately. Ultimately, it was Liz from Colorado Springs that made it happen. In hindsight, all the others did too!

I was ecstatic. The Law of Attraction had worked once again!

We enjoyed the heck out of Grand Cayman. Abbie even joined us at the last minute. Thanks to my in-laws, Matt and Eva, for planning such a fun trip and letting us tag along!

P.S. We also found it quite convenient that we could take at-home COVID tests before traveling to and from the Caymans. AZOVA made it easy to schedule our tests. They observed us via webcam when we took the tests and emailed us the results as a PDF within minutes.

2021 - A Year in Review

Matt Raible — Sun, 2 Jan 2022 22:38:01 -0700

I didn't expect to travel much in 2021, mostly because of my promise to myself to take a year off. When I got fully-vaxxed in April, I expected things to return to normal and we'd all be traveling to conferences again by early fall.

I'm happy to announce that I'm #FullyVaccinated. Had 2nd @pfizer shot on Apr 14. I feel lucky 🍀 to have experienced no symptoms other than extreme joy. 🥳@TrishPhoto and I just finished a 23-day sugar detox too. We're feeling good!! ✌️ pic.twitter.com/6chqkFbPB7
— Matt Raible (@mraible) April 28, 2021

2021 was a milestone year for our family. It's the year Abbie graduated from high school! We planned and executed a fun party with family and friends at the Raible Ranch in early June.

She did it! Congratulations @AbbieRaible!! 🥳 pic.twitter.com/G1Zz3QTHa4
— Matt Raible (@mraible) June 4, 2021

From last year's year in review:

I only have one goal for 2021: dance more 🕺

When I mentioned this to Trish, she laughed and pointed to our living room, which she recently re-arranged to open up a nice dance floor. I probably danced more in 2021 than 2020, but that's not saying much. My favorite concert this year was Greensky Bluegrass at Red Rocks. It helped that I was with old friends Bruce Snyder and Matt Good and Bruce got us front row seats.

We tried to go to Jazz Fest in October, but it got cancelled because of COVID.

I'm going to look back on 2021 using the following categories.

Professional

This year, I focused on creating YouTube videos more than blog posts. On the OktaDev YouTube Channel, I published 12 videos (-8 from 2020). My most popular video (13K views) was based on a blog post I published in January called Reactive Java Microservices with Spring Boot and JHipster.

I only published five blog posts to the Okta developer blog. You can see that I focused on Spring Boot, JHipster, and GraalVM.

It's interesting to look back and see I didn't author any JavaScript topics. I like to think that's because I spent all my JavaScript time working on the Angular Mini-Book. I smiled a lot after finishing v1.0 in November.

The Angular Mini-Book 1.0 is now available! 🥳

🅰️ https://t.co/JEKxQ2A9hr #angular #typescript #springboot #kotlin pic.twitter.com/MYcXH5fQ1i
— Matt Raible (@mraible) November 17, 2021

My team published 12 JavaScript-related blog posts in 2021. To compare, we published 20 Java-related posts. We hope to publish more posts for both topics and many others in 2022. I'm super excited to work with new teammates Deepu K Sasidharan, Alisa Duncan, E. Dunham, and Tanay Pant!

I continued to record meetups for the Denver/Boulder JUG and Denver Open Source Users group (DOSUG). We used StreamYard and YouTube to broadcast our meetups. We published 10 videos to the Denver JUG YouTube Channel. We only published three videos to the Denver Open Source Users Group Channel, but we did successfully hold two of those meetups in-person! We're grateful to the folks at Thrive Workplace for donating their space.

Denver JUG is now up to 3,618 members. Our most popular video in 2021 was from yours truly on Reactive Microservices with Spring Boot and JHipster. 🥳

In 2020, I published 15 blog posts on the Okta developer blog. In 2021, I only published five. My reduction in content can be explained by a three-month gap in publishing where I worked on updating 200+ blog posts to use the Okta CLI (because our admin UI changed). My lack of thought leadership posts didn't help either. We publish two types of blog posts: thought leadership and conversion. Thought leadership posts tend to be about a hot topic, while conversion posts are usually tutorials. They're usually quicker to write, and I plan to write more in 2022.

Speaking

According to TripIt, I took 13 trips, to 15 cities, in one country (USA). Only a few were work-related. That's three more trips than 2020, and I had 77 days on the road (-8 from 2020).

My Speaker Deck profile shows 16 presentations at 14 events. Four of those were in-person, the rest were virtual.

jChampions Conferences with Ray Tsang
Richmond JUG
JavaLand
Colorado Springs Open Source Users Group
St. Louis Java User's Group
Denver Java Users Group
SpringOne with Brian Demers

Denver Open Source Users Group
The San Francisco Java User Group with Josh Long
ÜberConf
Joker<?> with Brian Demers
Connect.Tech
The Progressive Web Experience
Garden State Java User Group with Josh Long

My most-viewed presentation was Java REST API Framework Comparison from the Progressive Web Experience with 3.1K views.

My favorite conference experience was Summer Tech Forum in Crested Butte. My involvement was inspired by James Ward.

Look ?? -- I found @_JamesWard in the woods today! #CrestedButte #Singletrack #Colorado #SummerTechForum pic.twitter.com/rKbSMbbOa9
— Matt Raible (@mraible) August 18, 2021

I thouroughly enjoyed traveling to San Francisco to speak with Josh Long at the San Francisco JUG. It was a virtual event, but we spoke together from his home.

Let the games begin with @starbuxman! #Java #SpringNative #JHipster pic.twitter.com/0KSRTd89e5
— Matt Raible (@mraible) September 28, 2021

I hope to do more of this in 2022. ÜberConf, Connect.Tech, and the Progressive Web Experience were also in-person. Hanging out with fellow speakers (especially James Ward and Pratik Patel) after speaking was a rejuvenating experience for my soul. 🤗

There's even some #UsualSuspects here! Good to see you @_JamesWard and @knight_cloud. 😀 pic.twitter.com/2CSBTRvG7U
— Matt Raible (@mraible) October 7, 2021

Community

In the past, I used this section to talk about meetups I've started like Developer Ski Days and Devoxx4Kids Denver. We didn't host any events in 2021, but I might try to organize a developer ski day soon.

Projects

I continued to maintain OktaDev Schematics in 2021. The project had 16 releases. Working on it helps me keep up with changes in Angular, React, Vue, Ionic, and React Native and helps ensure I know how to use the latest Okta SDKs. According to npm-stat.com, it had ~60K downloads in 2021.

My other projects are related to JHipster. I didn't contribute anything significant, but I helped QA Micro Frontends support and Spring Boot upgrades. We had eight releases and ~1.8 million downloads in 2021. 🤓

I did not work on the JHipster Mini-Book in 2021, but I hope to update it for JHipster 7 this year. I said that last year, but it's actually on my calendar for February 1. You can watch my progress on GitHub.

Ionic for JHipster had four releases in 2021 and around ~12K downloads.

Personal

My parents are city kids that retired in the backwoods of Montana. They can't explain why they did it, but they know that a chasing the sun trip is part of what makes them happy in the winter. We started doing this family trip in the last few years, starting with New Orleans in 2020 and continuing with Hawaii in 2021.

I was gung ho for ski season last year and rented a condo for six weeks in downtown Winter Park to ski during the week. My stats for the season were decent: 28 days cross-country skiing, 23 days downhill. I had 51 combined days!

Abbie Graduates!

Shortly after ski season is high school graduations. We had a graduate this year and couldn't be prouder of Abbie! Jack was looking pretty suave too.

We enjoyed a rafting trip near Salida on Father's Day.

I took July off and we traveled to Washington, Montana, and Cape Cod.

Abbie moved on to college at the University of Colorado at Boulder. It's been really nice having her close (60 minute drive) and far enough away that she doesn't plan parties at our house. Jack planned his birthday party at the ranch this year. It exceeded all expectations.

We lost one of our cats, Mittens, while we were in Hawaii. Sagan, our crazy border collie, passed away this fall. They both lived full lives and made us smile a lot. 😢

Hefe the Bus and Stout the Syncro

We didn't do much with Hefe and Stout this year show-wise. I did enter both of them in the VWs on the Green virtual show. They both won first place in their respective categories. I have high hopes for more events in 2022! My favorite car-related event of the year was when I talked some fraternity brothers into bringing their cars to a show in my backyard. If you have a classic car and live in Colorado, you should join us next year. Search for "Chenango Car Show". It's typically in early August.

2022

Professionally, I hope to travel a bit this year. Okta is expanding globally, and I'd love to visit Australia and Japan to help make that happen. I have Devnexus, Devoxx France, and Spring I/O on my radar for conferences.

I hope to contribute frequently to JHipster. Microfrontends support works excellent for Angular; I hope to see the same for React and Vue. My Q1 goal is to make Spring Native work with JHipster. I also hope to help integrate GraphQL. I said that last year, but now Spring has official support with Spring GraphQL!

I'll be on summer vacation for a month, once again. It's a tradition I started a couple of years ago to prove that full-time can be as good as contracting (because of unlimited time off). This year's adventure will start with a trip to Alaska to celebrate my parents' 50th anniversary!

Last year, I said I'd like to ski 42 days for both downhill and nordic. Looking back, that seems a bit ambitious. I ended up with 28 days of cross-country skiing and 23 days downhill. That doesn't seem too bad. For 2022, I've purchased both the Epic and Ikon ski passes, and I hope to exceed my stats from last year. Heck, I'll be happy with 20 days of each! The snow conditions have been terrible until two weeks ago.

Last year, we failed to pull any rafting permits. That means we had no lengthy family trips with our rafting family. We had a few day trips, but were often left with a longing for more. Our rafting family is anxious to rendezvous in 2022.

COVID motivated us to become homebodies and our landscaping project turned out quite nice. We now have several beautiful flower gardens, trees, a fabulous fire pit, a basketball court, and a new carport.

I only have one goal for 2022: smile more.

I think that goal will be easily accomplished if I see your smiling faces. I hope 2022 is your best year! 🥳

If you want to follow along on my adventures, please follow me on Twitter. I also post pictures of my favorite moments on Instagram and whole albums on Flickr.

Summer 2021: Family Fun in Washington, Montana, and Cape Cod

Matt Raible — Sun, 5 Sep 2021 18:15:14 -0600

July is one of my favorite months. It starts off with a national celebration, always has nice weather, and my birthday is smack dab in the middle of it. I have a habit of taking summer vacation for the month and this year was no exception.

We kicked things off with a journey to Chelan, Washington for the 4th of July. My sister-in-law, Mya, helps run Tildio Winery and we figured it was about time we did some wine tasting there. My parents joined us and we had a blast!

From there, we returned to Colorado and I journeyed to golf with my buddy Cletus in Nebraska. We played 36 holes in 24 hours and enjoyed each other's company thoroughly. I polished up Hefe for a birthday cruise on the 16th.

The 2nd half of July was spent in Montana and Cape Cod. In Montana, we witnessed KeAnna and Cole's wedding and celebrated with old and new friends.

In Cape Cod, we had lots of smiles and water time with Trish's fabulous family.

These photos are just a sampling of the 150+ that I polished and published. I think photos are a great way to tell a story, so I added captions to all of them in my Summer 2021 Album. I've also embedded it below.

You might notice the album doesn't end with Cape Cod photos. That's because August was full of adventures too! I had to return to Montana to get our van, raft, and dogs. My dad joined me for the return road trip and his brother, Jimmy, joined us for a week at the ranch.

Then, I spent a week at the Summer Tech Forum in Crested Butte, complete with a 24-hour trip to Boulder to help Abbie move into CU. After a weekend in Telluride, I returned home, worked on my SpringOne presentation, and got ready for Jack's 17th birthday party.

The party was a success, Abbie joined a sorority today, and we're looking forward to a colorful fall. I love this time of year with the colors, cooler air, and football season. Go Broncos!

2020 - A Year in Review

Matt Raible — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 16:34:30 -0700

2020 was an interesting year. It started out pretty awesome, then came a global pandemic, a renewed interest in social justice, and lots of political news to keep your blood pressure up. Doomscrolling became a word, and I found myself doing it often.

As a person that travels frequently and speaks at a lot of conferences, there were a lot of changes. The interesting thing is I planned for many of these changes beforehand. From last year's year in review:

I'm going to stop traveling in August for a year. Abbie will be a high school senior and I want to be around for her last year at home.

It seems I timed this quite well! However, I didn't expect most conferences to go virtual. I didn't expect I could still speak at them without traveling. I expected to speak less and have more time for writing. I didn't expect to stay home all the time and have everything delivered. I didn't expect to have to stop hanging out with friends.

I'm going to look back on 2020 using the following categories.

Professional

This year, I focused on creating YouTube videos as much as blog posts. Our YouTube Channel continues to grow much faster than our Twitter followers, so we continue to invest in it. I published 20 videos on the @oktadev channel in 2020. In addition to doing videos about my own posts, I started doing them for posts written by other Java developers. My most popular video was based on a blog post written by Daniel Pereira. In case you're interested, you can watch Java REST API Comparison: Micronaut, Quarkus, and Spring Boot below.

In the first quarter, I continued to record meetups for the Denver JUG and Denver Open Source Users group. This changed quickly with COVID, and we pivoted to using StreamYard and YouTube for our meetups. This made it easier to record sessions because there's no editing involved. Even though it requires less time, I really miss the in-person meetups and after-hours discussions with the community. We published nine videos to the DJUG channel and three to the DOSUG channel.

Denver JUG is now up to 3,608 members. Our most popular video in 2020 was from Venkat Subramaniam on the Qualities of a Highly Effective Architect.

I wrote 15 blog posts throughout the year on the Okta developer blog. We publish two types of blog posts: thought leadership and conversion. Thought leadership posts tend to be about a hot topic, while conversion posts are usually tutorials.

I focused on Angular, Spring Boot, JHipster, Ionic, and the Okta CLI. We added author pages to our blog this year, so you can see all my posts here.

I especially enjoyed writing a four-part series on Angular and Spring Boot:

In particular, I learned a lot from writing the last post. It required collaborating with a lot of folks to make it happen. Kudos to Benoit Sautel for his help with Gradle + Kotlin, Ray Tsang for help with Jib, James Ward for help with Knative, Josh Long for his assistance with Docker + Cloud Foundry, and Joe Kutner for his buildpacks support.

Rather than rewriting this series for new versions every year, I've decided to use it as a foundation for an InfoQ Mini-Book on Angular.

My post popular thought leadership post was Security Patterns for Microservice Architectures. This was a runaway hit shortly after I posted it, and it remains #1 on Google for "microservice security."

Speaking

According to TripIt, I took 10 trips, to 16 cities, in 4 countries. That's 12 fewer trips than 2019, and I had 85 days on the road (-44 from 2019).

My Speaker Deck profile shows 23 presentations at 19 events. Eight of those were in-person, the rest virtual.

Denver Developer Identity Workshop (Okta event)
Jfokus
Jforum Stockholm
Boulder JUG
Denver JUG
Utah JUG
Switzerland JUG
Oktane 20
Frontend Tech Meetup (Sydney, Australia)
All The Talks

Dev Around the Sun
London Java Community
South West Java & JVM User Group (Bristol, United Kingdom)
ATDmag Microservices & APIs Seminar
SpringOne
JHipster Code
JConf.dev
Vaadin Webinar
JHipster Virtual Meetup

I had a lot of fun in February traveling to Sweden for Jfokus and doing a Rocky Mountain JUG Tour with Ray Tsang.

Community

As part of the Rocky Mountain JUG Tour, Ray Tsang and I started a Developer Ski Days meetup. We only had two meetups before COVID shut us down. We were really looking forward to taking the Winter Park Express train after dev.next. I'll make sure to try again when dev.next happens.

We did not host any Devoxx4Kids Meetups in 2020. Since most kids were on screens for school, I didn't feel we should subject them to more screen time. As of this writing, we have 341 members. I sent everyone a survey about doing online meetups in November and only received nine responses. Eight of them were in favor of it, so we might try to do one soon. I'm still looking for someone to help recruit speakers and schedule events.

Projects

I continued to maintain OktaDev Schematics in 2020. The project had 19 releases, added support for Express.js, and made Capacitor the default for Ionic apps. Working on it helps me keep up with changes in Angular, React, Vue, Ionic, and React Native and makes sure I know how to use the latest Okta SDKs. According to npm-stat.com, it had ~36K downloads in 2020.

My other projects are related to JHipster. I helped add OAuth 2.0 support for reactive JHipster apps. I also integrated Spring Cloud Gateway for microservice architectures. We had 12 releases in 2020. I'm blown away that we had almost 2 million downloads. 🤯

I'm proud to see JHipster's ecosystem thriving with blueprints. I try to test them every so often to ensure they have the same quality as the main generator.

I'm proud to say that JHipster 7 is really close to being finished. We had two beta releases in the last month!

I did not work on the JHipster Mini-Book in 2020, but I hope to update it for JHipster 7 this year.

Ionic for JHipster had eight releases in 2020 and around ~7K downloads.

Personal

I got some good ski days in before the pandemic hit with trips to Whitefish Mountain in Montana, Jackson Hole in Wyoming, and Trysil Ski Area in Norway.

I was super excited to travel to JavaLand in Germany in mid-March and hit the slopes in the Swiss Alps with my family after. That was canceled due to COVID, and we took our kids to Florida for Spring Break instead.

In addition to Florida in March, we had several other trips during the pandemic. We road tripped to see my parents in Montana in May. We flew to Boston for our nieces' graduation in June.

I wrote about these trips in 2019-2020 Ski Season, Quarantining for COVID, and a Graduation.

In July, I enjoyed a dream come true and took the whole month off. We enjoyed a family raft trip through Desolation Canyon to begin.

Then, I headed for Montana with my new eBike in tow. I had all kinds of fun biking on my childhood trails, rafting the Blackfoot and the Middle Fork of the Flathead, and golfing with my folks.

My sister and Mya visited, along with Trish and the kids.

Trish and I celebrated our 7th anniversary at a spa in Evergreen. I highly recommend their "Just for Two Escape" package.

I didn't publish many pictures from the rest of 2020, but a lot still happened. Jack turned 16, got his driver's license, and his mom gifted him a car.

Abbie turned 18 and is enjoying her senior year as much as possible.

how it started how it's going pic.twitter.com/iqjpeowFd6
— Matt Raible (@mraible) November 5, 2020

I'll take this opportunity to discuss our COVID close calls. We flew a few times during the pandemic, always wear masks outside our home, and believe in social distancing. We haven't had many close calls until recently.

The first close call was at Abbie's birthday party—a Saturday—in early November. She asked a small group of friends to get COVID tests before the party. They did, but all the results didn't come in. We let her have the party anyway. A positive result came back from one of her friends on Sunday. We thought for sure we'd come down with it since we were exposed. Their school went fully remote on Monday because of the fall surge. All the kids had to quarantine at home. No one caught it except the friend's sister.

Another scare happened a couple of weeks ago when we were up in the mountains. Jack and I ran into some friends on the slopes and joined them for a little après ski after. I hugged a family member that wasn't skiing that day, and they joked, "you don't have COVID, do you?" That was a Tuesday. They tested positive that Friday. Our whole family got tested Saturday, and the results were negative. Phew!

Stout the Syncro and Hefe the Bus

Stout and Hefe didn't get to make the rounds at any car shows this year. However, we did get to do a fun VW cruise with Hefe in early October.

Stout has been a trusty companion when making trips up to Winter Park to go skiing.

2021

Professionally, I don't think there will be any travel this year. Even if there were, I'm not interested until August. I made a pledge to stop traveling last year, and it's easier than ever now. I'm going to try and limit my speaking commitments to one per month and spend more time on mini-books, at least in the first half of the year. I'm still enjoying my 38" monitor and recommend you get one too.

I plan to contribute frequently to JHipster. Now that reactive support is released, I'll be trying to integrate microfrontends support. Why? Because no one wants a monolithic UI fronting their fancy microservice architecture! I also hope to integrate GraphQL, probably as a module to begin.

I'll be on vacation the whole month of July, again. I had so much fun last year; I can't think of a good reason not to do it again. 😃

Last year, I said I'd be skiing, biking, and rafting a lot more. The ski season was cut short, but I've been making up for it lately. I've been cross-country skiing 17 times since Thanksgiving and downhill 14 times. My goal is 42 days for both, but that might be tough if we don't get more snow soon.

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When it's warmer, I'll take my ebike out on some trails and giggle to myself as the wind whisks through my hair while riding uphill. I'll take my Yeti out every-now-and-then to remember how hard mountain biking really is.

Rafting should come easy with our enthusiastic rafting family and vacation in July. We're thinking of renting a place near Salida in June so we can raft the Arkansas River after work. If Trish has to go back to an office, those plans could change quickly.

Last year, I wrote that I wanted to get more headspace, spend more time with friends, and enjoy being home. I did a lot of meditating in May (with the Headspace app). I gave it up with the busy summer and haven't resumed since. I'm mostly going with a "just get through this COVID thing" attitude. I really miss hanging out with friends. I look forward to that being a regular thing again.

I ❤️ being a homebody, and we're making some investments to make it even more fun. We have a 3-point basketball court being installed right now and a bunch of planted gardens that we hope will bloom with beautiful flowers this spring.

I only have one goal for 2021: dance more. 🕺

If you want to follow along on my adventures, please follow me on Twitter. I also post pictures of my favorite moments on Instagram and whole albums on Flickr.

January Jaunts to New Orleans and Jackson Hole

Matt Raible — Tue, 3 Mar 2020 22:47:39 -0700

Trish and I started 2020 with a fun trip to New Orleans to meet up with our family. My parents wanted to get out of the snowy cold of Montana, as did Kalin and Mya from Washington state. My Aunt Mary from New York joined us, and we brought the kids. Trish even executed a trip to the Saints vs. Vikings NFL playoff game!

We celebrated "the superiors" birthdays, listened to lots of good music, hung out with our friends Jill and Brian, and savored many excellent meals.

For more photos see The Superiors Birthdays in New Orleans.

We returned to Denver in mid-January and Trish flew down to visit her folks in Naples, Florida. They spent a joyous week together before she flew back to start a new job.

While Trish was golfing with her Dad, I prepared for another trip: a 5-day ski weekend in Jackson Hole. My awesome friends Chris and Ben arranged it all; my friend Joe and I just had to show up and have a good time. We met Jersey Dave and Patriot Tom once we arrived. There were six skiers in total, and we enjoyed some of the best powder days of the year.

I made a video of our adventures with an AC/DC soundtrack. The reason for the music is because we saw Hell's Belles play at the Mangy Moose (footage included) and they were AWESOME! I smile every time I watch it. 😊

Yes, January was awesome. We got some good family time in warmer weather and I experienced Jackson Hole with lots of powder for the first time. Yeehaw! 🤠

2019 - A Year in Review

Matt Raible — Sun, 9 Feb 2020 20:56:56 -0700

It's time for my year-in-review post! This post sets the record for being the most delayed, ever. Usually, I'm able to get it published by the end of January. Oh well, I hope you enjoy it!

In 2019, I did my best to work hard, play often, and travel to interesting places. I took my Dad to Hawaii, drove through the worst blizzard of my life, traveled to India for the first time, did a UK + Ireland JUG Tour, and indulged in several fun vacations with my family.

We bought some additional rafts for whitewater, rafted in Montana and Colorado, and celebrated a family reunion in Cape Cod. Our classic VWs continued to perform well, and Hefe won his class once again at the 2019 VWs on the Green show. We did have to replace a clutch in Stout the Syncro, but I'm OK with that since he safely transported me through the most treacherous driving conditions of my life.

I'm going to look back on 2019 using the following categories.

Professional

For those stumbling upon this post with no context, I'm an open source developer that works at Okta. My title is officially "Developer Advocate", but all the code and words I write are distributed as open source.

This year I started trying to produce more YouTube videos in addition to blog posts. My team discovered our YouTube subscriber count increases a lot faster than our Twitter followers, so that provided our motivation. I published 13 videos on the OktaDev YouTube Channel. My most popular one was Java Microservices in 20 Minutes with Spring Boot and Spring Cloud.

I upped my videographer skills by learning how to record meetups. I copied Aaron Parecki's portable wireless video setup and started recording Denver JUG and Denver Open Source User Group meetups. We posted the first couple to the OktaDev channel, then decided it'd be better to have the meetups start their own channels. We published 6 to the DJUG channel and 3 to the DOSUG channel. I recommend subscribing if you're into Java or Open Source.

I taught Abbie and Jack how to work the video kit and they've been recording these meetups when I'm out of town. Thanks kids!

I wrote 22 blog posts throughout the year on the Okta developer blog. We publish two types of blog posts: thought leadership and conversion. Thought leadership posts tend to be about a hot topic while conversion posts are usually tutorials. My main topics for the year included Angular, Schematics, JHipster, microservices, and mobile development with Ionic 4 and React Native. Here are some that seemed to be popular.

I wrote a few thought leadership posts too:

Speaking

According to TripIt, I took 22 trips, to 41 cities, in 12 countries. That's four fewer trips than 2018, and I had 129 days on the road (+10 from 2018). I visited twice as many countries in 2019 as I did in 2018.

My Speaker Deck profile shows 39 presentations at 24 events.

Denver JUG
Devnexus
SnowFROC
Great International Developer Summit: GIDS
Denver Microservices
JBCNConf
The Secure Developer (now MyDevSecOps)
Angular SF
JHipsterConf
KCDC
ACGNJ Java Users Group
JavaSIG (New York, NY)

That Conference
Develop Denver
London Java Community
South West Java & JVM User Group (Bristol, UK)
West Midlands Java User Group (Birmingham, UK)
Belfast JUG
JHipster Dublin
Dublin JUG
Cork JUG
Devoxx Belgium
Devoxx Morocco
The Progressive Web Experience

I also attended LavaOne (now UnVoxxed Hawaii) with my Dad. It was during his birthday week, so we played some golf and toured Pearl Harbor after the conference.

GIDS 2019 was incredibly fun with my sister. We hung out with many usual suspects and had a fabulous experience.

I learned how to present without an internet connection and found much joy in serious selfies.

Monday closing crew at #gids19! ???? pic.twitter.com/Axp5uRYqql
— Matt Raible (@mraible) April 22, 2019

I published pictures from Devnexus,

my UK + Ireland JUG Tour,

SpringOne,

and Devoxx Belgium/Morocco.

At SpringOne, I did a talk with Josh Long and James Ward. I've never had so much fun on stage. 😆

I got to do a talk with two of my best friends and favorite technologists, @okta ‘s @mraible and @google ‘s @_JamesWard.

Thanks for making this happen @s1p ! pic.twitter.com/VCB7X7G8v4
— Josh Long (???, ???, ???? ????, ??? ????) (@starbuxman) October 10, 2019

A recording of our talk was published to YouTube.

Community

I was involved in many community activities in 2019. I'm proud to say that Denver JUG won a Duke's Choice Award this year! I flew out to CodeOne for a night to accept the award and celebrate with Java friends.

Wahoo! @denverjug wins a Duke's Choice Award at #CodeOne!! ???? https://t.co/4f7wo9FTPF
— Matt Raible (@mraible) September 17, 2019

We only had two Devoxx4Kids Denver workshops in 2019:

The first one was taught by Abbie and Jack. I taught the second one. It seems I need to do a better job recruiting speakers. In reality, I think it's time to offer the leadership of the group to someone who has more time.

Projects

I developed and released a new open source project in 2019: OktaDev Schematics. It provides a way to add Okta for authentication to Angular, React, Vue, Ionic, and React Native projects. I developed it mostly to make my demos easier. It had 12 releases throughout the year.

My other projects are mostly around JHipster. I support its OAuth 2.0 and OIDC support as best I can, and released seven versions of its Ionic module. Upgrading to Ionic 4 was a big task and I wrote about how to use Ionic 4 with JHipster 6. I recorded a screencast showing how to get started with JHipster 6 and traveled to JHipster Conf.

I did not work on the JHipster Mini-Book in 2019, but I hope to update it for JHipster 7 this year.

Personal

Trish and I journeyed to Jazz Fest in New Orleans. It was my first time and it might become a yearly tradition. So fun!

I was fortunate enough to bring family along with me a few times when traveling for work. Highlights include:

Taking my whole family to JBCNConf in Barcelona. They all speak Spanish, so I knew it'd be a fun adventure.

That Conference with Jack and my nephew, Michael. It was at a water park so the boys had a blast.

Trish and my parents meeting me during my Ireland JUG Tour.

I regret leaving in the middle of a family reunion for KCDC. The location in Cape Cod was fantastic.

Jack got his learners permit to drive in August. He was a little rusty at first, but he's come a long way since. He drives several times a week for practice when he's at our house.

Abbie is now 17 and Jack is 15. They grow a lot when they become teenagers. Jack is the tallest one in our house!

We had a ball with Trish's brother's family and parents in Turks and Caicos. It was part of a double-header Spring Break that started with skiing in Steamboat.

The 2018-19 ski season was fabulous and Stout was quite the hero during our first Bomb Cyclone!

We added two duckies to our rafting fleet so we can take more friends on the river in June. Father's Day on the Upper Colorado was fun with friends, but Chris Morse and the Fesser did have to float through a cold and dangerous class IV rapid. You could say they're were not fans of our duckies.

My Dad made me proud with his cameo in the "What is Okta?" Father's Day video.

We took Abbie's boyfriend, Joseph, with us to Montana for the 4th of July. My Dad and I road-tripped up in our Westfalia Vanagon. We decorated a float for the parade, enjoyed a couple days on the river, and spent some quality time with Owen and Dana.

Trish and I celebrated our 6th anniversary in Estes Park.

Happy Anniversary to us!! #6years ❤️🎉🥰💃🕺 pic.twitter.com/JnzhenOIzI
— Matt Raible (@mraible) July 27, 2019

We stayed at the Stanley Hotel in the "Kissing Cowboy" room. 😱

Trish went big in September and added her own cataraft to our fleet!

We visited Trish's family on the east coast for Thanksgiving.

Christmas at my parent's house in Montana was warm and cozy.

Stout the Syncro and Hefe the Bus

Our classic VWs are surviving and thriving. Hefe won best in class at VWs on the Green for the fourth time. Stout ran well on several road trips and now has a new clutch.

I hope to write a "Story of Hefe" book in 2020 from the pictures and posts on this blog.

View this post on Instagram

All shined up and ready for a cruise down Colfax tomorrow! #vw #vwbus #vwcolorado #hefethebus #vwec #21windows

A post shared by Matt Raible (@vwsforlife) on Sep 28, 2019 at 3:26pm PDT

2020

Professionally, I'll be hitting some new exotic locations. Voxxed Days Zürich and JavaLand in Germany are on my list. JavaLand happens during Spring Break, so we'll be spending a few days skiing in the Swiss Alps afterward.

I plan to speak at Devoxx UK (London), Spring I/O (Barcelona), and Voxxed Days Singapore. I hope to visit with the Java community in Japan as well. If you're interested in seeing where the @oktadev team will be in 2020, check out oktadev.events.

I'll be on vacation the whole month of July. I've always wanted to live like a European and Okta's unlimited vacation policy makes this possible.

I'm going to stop traveling in August for a year. Abbie will be a high school senior and I want to be around for her last year at home.

In 2020, I'll be skiing, biking, and rafting a lot more. I started Developer Ski Days to help with the first. I'm excited that Thrive Workplace has a new DTC location (at Innovation Pavilions). I'll be renting a desk from them and start bike-commuting soon. Our rafting family just applied for several week-long rafting permits. Spending a week on the river is one of our favorite activities!

Last year, I had a bunch of goals with numbers. This year I'm going to try and get more headspace, spend more time with friends, and enjoy being home.

I believe less travel in 2020 will be very rewarding. I might even get Nuggets season tickets. They're pretty good these days.

If you want to follow along on my adventures, please follow me on Twitter. I also post pictures of my favorite moments to Instagram and whole albums on Flickr.

July 2019: Road Trips, Family, Van Life, Cape Code, KCDC, and NYC

Matt Raible — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 21:43:50 -0600

This July was one for the books! I started traveling with JHipster Conf and kept traveling until That Conference in August. There was some vacation mixed in (Montana and Cape Cod), but I also worked out of my VW Van for a few days, spoke at KCDC, attended a family reunion, and did a NYC JUG Tour.

I flew home just in time for Devoxx4Kids Denver and Trish and my 6th anniversary. A dream came true for me when I watched Abbie and Jack teach the Devoxx4Kids workshop.

The beginning of August kept the travel rolling with a company shindig in Napa, a friend's wedding in Half Moon Bay, and a crazy flight schedule to THAT Conference and back.

Let's just say I'm glad to be home. 😊

You can find more pictures from my summer adventures on Flickr.

A Beautiful Adventure to JBCNConf, Barcelona, and Boston

Matt Raible — Sat, 29 Jun 2019 09:33:15 -0600

I love it when school's out for summer. The feeling you have on the last day of school as a kid is like no other. It's a terrific feeling. The feeling of freedom. Our kids graduated from 10th and 8th grade at the end of May. We didn't give them much time to rejoice and whisked them off to Barcelona for a few days at JBCNConf and a bit of family vacation.

Oh my, it was so much fun! First of all, there's nothing like traveling to a foreign land, bringing some of your favorite people with you, and getting to experience it with old and new friends. We arrived on Sunday and experienced a wonderful evening at a conservatory for the JBCNConf speaker's dinner.

Monday was Memorial Day in the US, so we took advantage of our day off and booked a trip with Spanish Trails to explore Montserrat. Montserrat is a rocky mountain range in Catalonia, Spain. "Montserrat" translates to "saw mountain" in Catalan, owing to its jagged, sawtooth appearance.

On Tuesday morning, I took Abbie and Jack to JBCN4Kids and they learned all about game programming in Spanish. Their Spanish skills were tested, and there was an excellent keynote by Brian Goetz in the middle of it all.

That afternoon, Josh Long and I planned and practiced our Full Stack Reactive workshop. We had a nice lunch with my family and Mario that day too. Josh and I delivered our workshop on Wednesday morning.

If you'd like to see the slides @starbuxman and I never used during our Full Stack Reactive Workshop at @jbcnconf, we published them on @speakerdeck:https://t.co/LPyJvCxod6

Thanks to everyone who attended. We had a wonderful time! ??#reactive #java #springwebflux #reactjs
— Matt Raible (@mraible) May 29, 2019

The legendary @mraible and I got to close down @jbcnconf with a 2h workshop. Thanks to all those who joined! Couldn’t ask for a better co-presenter, audience, or way to spend the day. I love my life. pic.twitter.com/EbuqdblSsJ
— Josh Long (???, ???, ???? ????, ??? ????) (@starbuxman) May 29, 2019

Our family vacation in El Vendrell began shortly after that.

View this post on Instagram

@1trishphoto in her happy place 💕🥰

A post shared by Matt Raible (@vwsforlife) on May 30, 2019 at 7:00am PDT

We enjoyed the experience so much, Trish and I are thinking about spending even more time in Spain next year.

Goodbye, Barcelona! ?? ????

We had a splendid adventure touring your mountains, city, and beaches. ??@TrishPhoto is intrigued by the notion of visiting again next year.@spring_io and @jbcnconf 2020 with remote work in between? Sounds fun! ???? pic.twitter.com/340myZ1wai
— Matt Raible (@mraible) June 1, 2019

For more photos, see our album's on Flickr: my Barcelona, JBCNConf, and Boston 2019 or Trish's Barcelona 2019.

On the way home, we stopped in Boston and hung out with Trish's brother's family. Our niece, Morgan, graduated high school. We are very proud of her and had a blast celebrating the event.

We started off summer pretty well so far. We've been to Barcelona, Boston, and even had a weekend of whitewater rafting on Fathers Day weekend. Life is good in the Raible Hood! 😊

GIDS 2019: Adventures in India

Matt Raible — Thu, 2 May 2019 09:54:15 -0600

I had the pleasure of traveling to Bangalore, India last week for the 2019 edition of the Great International Developer Summit. GIDS is a conference that spans five days and has around 5000 developers each year. The conference charges on a per-day basis, and adds the attendees from each day to its total, so it's not huge, but it's pretty big with 1000+ developers each day.

A week before I left Denver, I solicited the advice of my good friend, Scott Davis. I asked him about the weather, the conference, and India in general. He advised me to wear lightweight clothing, no shorts when speaking and be wary of the wi-fi at the conference. He also mentioned the burgeoning microbrewery scene in "the Silicon Valley of India."

I've always been interested in traveling to India. My sister, Kalin, went there as part of her university studies 20 years ago. She studied Buddhism for four months on that journey and even got to meet the Dalai Lama. I thought it'd be fun to bring her along for my first trip to India. We rendezvoused in Seattle on the way, taking the picture below on Friday afternoon, April 19.

We had a long 14-hour flight from Seattle to Dubai. We flew Emirates and enjoyed the service, great seats (for economy), and wi-fi as we cruised over the North Pole. We had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe in Dubai, then hopped on a four-hour flight to India. When we finally arrived at 3:00 am on Sunday, we were greeted with gifts in our room and a fresh slice of cake! Thanks to Dilip and Indu from Saltmarch for making us feel so welcome on our arrival.

We slept for a few hours after arriving, then met several of the GIDS speakers for a late breakfast. It was like a No Fluff reunion! If the names Venkat, Brian, Raju, Davis, Carducci, Stine, and Pratik sound familiar, you know what I mean. I quickly learned that Bangalore's name is actually Bengaluru, the British changed it to Bangalore during their rule.

After breakfast, Kalin and I took a car from the hotel and visited the Bangaluru Palace, followed by a stroll in the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens.

That evening, we joined some wonderful friends for dinner at Bangalore Brew Works. Bangalore Brew Works was my favorite restaurant on the trip. It was an open-air roof-top patio with cold, delicious beer, and spicy bites.

On Monday, it was time to go to work. I had four talks at GIDS; two on Monday. The conference started with Scott Davis and John Bruce having a fireside chat about the web. I'd just seen Sir Tim Berners Lee (John's co-founder at Inrupt) speak at Oktane 19, so I was delighted to hear from them both in the same month. Solid sounds like a very interesting concept, but I have not tried to build my own app with it, yet.

From there, it was kind of a blur. I'm not the kind of speaker that talks several times at a conference; I'm used to just one or two slots. I tend to do a lot of talks about Java and JavaScript. Since both have been innovating rapidly lately, I like to update my talks just before so they're up-to-date. For three days, I was updating presentations, practicing demos, and delivering talks. It was exhausting, but nothing like the other speakers. Several speakers had 10+ sessions and did a full-day workshop on Friday! 😳

My Presentations at GIDS

My first talk was "Front End Development for Back End Developers". I enjoy giving this talk because it doesn't have any live coding, but it packs a lot of information into 60 minutes. I published my slides on Speaker Deck and I believe it was recorded.

Monday afternoon, I spoke about JHipster and showed how to build a simple monolith from scratch. Since the wi-fi was spotty to non-existent, I had to do my demo with no internet connection. If you've used JHipster in the past, you know this can be a challenge. In the end, it seemed to go well, and I got lots of laughs as I progressively donned hipster clothing attire. You can find my presentation on Speaker Deck or view it below.

Monday evening, we gathered with conference friends at JetLag Bar and Grill and enjoyed the rooftop ambiance with the pulsating sound of house music.

Dinner at Jetlag Bar for the jetlagged peeps @CGuntur @mraible Kalin @scottdavis99 @MichaelCarducci Mrs. Carducci @BillyKorando @prpatel pic.twitter.com/hj6w7jEpmF
— Mary Grygleski (@mgrygles) April 22, 2019

On Tuesday afternoon, I spoke about bootiful development with Spring Boot and React. A couple of hours before the talk, I went to practice my demo and realized that I hadn't updated it in quite some time. I scrambled to update my demo script for the latest versions of Spring Boot, Create React App, and Okta. After updating and practicing, I prepared my laptop to do the demo without an internet connection.

When I started my demo, I planned on the internet failing, but I figured I'd show the audience first. In the midst of failure, one of the room hosts told me there was a backup wi-fi, got me on it, and away we went! You can see my slides on Speaker Deck or peruse them below.

Tuesday evening we gathered with folks from Oracle, Red Hat, IBM, and BNY Mellon at the Biere Club. They served excellent craft beer, yummy appetizers, and we laughed our way into the night. We particularly enjoyed our selfie at the end of the night.

Monday closing crew at #gids19! ???? pic.twitter.com/Axp5uRYqql
— Matt Raible (@mraible) April 22, 2019

Explanation: when my sister and I were strolling around the botanical gardens, we noticed a strange phenomenon we hadn't seen before: there were more men taking selfies than women. We also noticed that while the women were smiling, all the men were very serious in their photos. When in Rome!

I had my final talk about microservices with JHipster and OAuth on Wednesday morning. I'd just finished upgrading JHipster to use Spring Security 5.1 a couple of weeks prior, so I was eager to show it off. I used JHipster Registry and its Spring Cloud Config support to show how you can switch from Keycloak to Okta (or any IdP) by configuring just three Spring Security properties. Since your gateway and microservices are all configured to read from the registry on startup, you can configure your OIDC provider in a single location! You can download my presentation or view it below.

We retreated to our hotel on Wednesday afternoon, enjoyed massages gifted by Saltmarch, and I savored a cold beer at the patio bar.

This picture above is the last picture I took with my phone. When I was at the gym on Thursday morning, the screen started flickering on and off with hints of green. The screen was borked. I was hoping to use it for photos but decided it might be nice to have a break from having a phone.

Thursday afternoon, we toured the Bannerghatta National Park (aka the Bengaluru Zoo) with Ray Tsang. It was hot, the animals were exotic, and the safari tour was fast and furious. We had a fabulous time.

On Friday, Kalin and I headed to Mysuru (formerly Mysore) to see the sights. We hired a driver from our hotel for the three-hour drive. We visited a summer home of the rulers from the late 1700s, toured the Sri Chamundeshwari Temple, strolled through the Mysuru zoo, and took a quick tour around Mysore Palace. Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of our adventure.

You can find all the pictures in this post, and a few more, in my GIDS 2019 album on Flickr.

My first time speaking at GIDS was a lot of fun. Traveling to India with my sister was a special experience. Networking with developers, speakers, and old friends was fantastic. I told Kalin at one point, "the days are hard and rewarding, but the nights are spectacular." It's true. GIDS 2019 was a fantastic adventure with wonderful people.

2018 - A Year in Review

Matt Raible — Tue, 29 Jan 2019 13:25:24 -0700

In 2018, I spoke at several fantastic meetups, traveled a bit overseas, and enjoyed some fun family vacations. We had the time of our lives driving Hefe in the Denver St. Paddy's Day Parade!

We traveled to Crete for JCrete and had a blast with the Java community. We journeyed to Ireland with my folks, and I thoroughly enjoyed a speaking tour of Ireland JUGs and the Dublin JHipster Meetup. Our classic VWs had a great year with only minor repairs needed.

I'm going to look back on 2018 using the following categories.

Professional

For those stumbling upon this post with no context, I'm a veteran open source developer that works at Okta as a developer advocate.

This year I focused on blogging more than speaking. I still spoke a fair bit, but I tried to focus on meetups more than conferences. The DevEx Team at Okta released a slew of SDKs at the end of 2017, so I had plenty to write about. Over the year, I found more and more developers had heard of Okta during my talks. I even found users in most audiences! This was quite a change from 2017, so it seems my team's advocacy efforts might be working.

I wrote 29 blog posts throughout the year on the Okta developer blog. We publish two types of blog posts: thought leadership and conversion. Thought leadership posts tend to be about a hot topic while conversion posts are generally tutorials. I wrote a series of posts on PWAs with Ionic + Angular and Spring Boot. The series started in January and ended in July.

I also wrote a number of posts on JHipster, starting with Ionic for JHipster. Then I transitioned to microservices and showed how to build a Spring microservices architecture with Spring Security and OAuth 2.0. I felt this was important, as it's the same basic architecture that JHipster uses.

I published Develop a Microservices Architecture with OAuth 2.0 and JHipster, and had two more JHipster posts about its React and React Native support.

I learned about React and React Native from research I did while writing previous posts.

I stayed current on the latest releases of Angular and Spring Boot because I ❤ them both!

I heard from several developers that they wanted to use Okta with their Java apps, but they weren't using Spring. Or they were using Spring MVC, but not Spring Boot. I wrote Build a Java REST API with Java EE and OIDC to show a few authn/authz techniques: JWT validation, using Spring Security, and using Pac4j.

I had a blast in August and September collaborating with Josh Long about going Full Stack Reactive with Spring WebFlux and React. Josh authored his parts with AsciiDoc and forced me to integrate Asciidoctor support in our blog. It took awhile, but I was thrilled with the result. Now I get to author all my blog posts with AsciiDoc! 🎉

I played with other new technologies in 2018, namely GraphQL and TypeORM, Electron, and Vue with TypeScript.

The Super Epic Advocacy Battle!

I was super motivated to write a bunch of blog posts in June and July because I was having a "most views" contest with Randall Degges. The contest started after I mouthed off that I thought I could outperform him in the waning hours of our Oktane 2018 conference. He accepted my challenge and we competed for two months. He wrote mostly thought leadership posts, I wrote mostly tutorials. Long story short: he won. I had to wear gold pants the week of CodeOne for my lack of winning.

Hanging out at Oracle Code One conf with my buddy @mraible and his amazing MC Hammer pants.

I wonder why he's wearing them? :D

He's about to get onstage to talk about micro services <33333 pic.twitter.com/syoiIeSDMc
— Randall Degges (@rdegges) October 22, 2018

If only I'd published 10 Excellent Ways to Secure Your Spring Boot Application earlier in our contest. I collaborated on it with Simon Maple, and it seemed to be popular.

I wrote a few other thought leadership posts throughout 2018:

Speaking

According to TripIt, I took 26 trips, to 37 cities, in 6 countries. That's three fewer trips than 2017, and I only had 119 days on the road (versus 141). By my count, I spoke at 20 events.

JHipsterConf was especially fun because I took my son, Jack, with me.

I had a wonderful time this week in Paris and at @jhipsterconf. Many thanks to the @java_hipster developers, community, @juliendubois, @deepu105, and @ippontech for making it all possible! #JHipsterConf pic.twitter.com/61ZfRZxg8G
— Matt Raible (@mraible) June 23, 2018

I also attended a few conferences that I did not speak at: Iterate, JCrete, and Monktoberfest. All of these were special in their own ways. JCrete was an unconference in an exotic location (Crete, Greece) and was a fantastic experience. I learned that 1) it's important to rent a car if you bring your family and 2) an unconference is what you make of it. Put a lot into it, and you'll get a lot out of it. As a speaker, I think it's a fantastic conference format because it's an excellent networking atmosphere. You can also learn a lot if there are peers with expertise in the topic you're interested in. Monktoberfest also provided next-level networking.

Community

I was involved in many community activities in 2018: Devoxx4Kids Denver, Denver JUG, Denver Microservices Meetup, and I attended a few DOSUG meetups too.

We had three Devoxx4Kids Denver workshops in 2018:

Thanks to Kaitlyn Hornbuckle, James Sablatura, and Cassandra Chin for teaching these classes.

Finished training Denver Pokémon Trainers at #Devoxx4Kids. Gotta catch them all! @mraible @melissajmckay pic.twitter.com/zQSbIdH7Zb
— Cassandra Chin (@tingsterchin) December 9, 2018

We announced the 2018 Denver JUG Rock Stars at our December meetup. Venkat, David, and Jeff were voted as the group's favorite speakers. Y'all were excellent! Thanks for adding DJUG to your schedules.

At this week's @denverjug, we announced the Denver JUG Rock Stars of 2018. If you want to be entertained, intrigued, & educated: @venkat_s, @dblevins, and @jeffscottbrown are three of our favorite speakers. #denverjug #rockstars #java

Thanks to @oktadev for sponsoring trophies! pic.twitter.com/uTNcDZVCFi
— Matt Raible (@mraible) December 14, 2018

Projects

My projects these days are mostly around JHipster. I supported its OAuth 2.0 and OIDC support as best I could, and released five versions of its Ionic module. I wrote about how to use Ionic with JHipster in late January. I recorded a screencast showing how to get started with JHipster 5 in June.

We released the JHipster Mini-Book version 4.5 in April and version 5.0 in November. I published a Pluralsight course on developing microservices and mobile apps with JHipster in April and released 21-Points Health 5.0 in October.

Personal

This year was a mix of work your ass off and try to have fun at the same time. There were many times when we wished we were home, but the times on the road were grand. I suspect this will be a constant battle for Trish and I. We love to be home, but we love to explore new places. If old friends gather with us at home or in new places, it's bound to be a fantastic evening!

The biggest change was Abbie became a driver. For those parents with kids that have to chaperone endlessly throughout the weeks and weekends, you know this is a BFD! As of December 27, 2018, Abbie's now the captain of the ranch-to-school ship. She even drove in the blowing snow yesterday!

There were many highlights in 2019. My early favorite (that makes me tear up as I write this) is Hefe 3.5.

My daughter observed the other day that most people are frowning when they’re driving. I’m not one of this people. In fact, I have to wear sunglasses to hide my tears of joy! 🤣 #HefeTheBus #21windows pic.twitter.com/0LWaQkjZlx
— Matt Raible (@mraible) March 14, 2018

We had a blast with Trish's parents during Spring Break in Florida and squeezed in a day trip to Disney World.

The 2017-18 ski season didn't bring a lot of snow, but our ski trip to Utah was wonderful!

Trish and I celebrated our 5th anniversary at JCrete. I hope the next five years are as adventurous as the last five!

Happy Friday! We’re having a blast celebrating our 5th anniversary in Greece. 😃 #JCrete pic.twitter.com/yMzphpNhnj
— Matt Raible (@mraible) July 27, 2018

Jack turned 14, and Abbie turned 16. I'm proud to say they're both fabulous humans. 😊

If you want a glimpse of my backwoods childhood (without electricity) in Montana, see my Life Update: Thanksgiving in Montana, RWX2018, Devoxx4Kids, DJUG, and Trish's Birthday post.

2019

Professionally, I'm planning to travel a bit more to exotic locations. Atlanta, San Francisco, Paris, Bangalore, Barcelona, and Kansas City are on my list (before August). The Developer Relations team at Okta is a fantastic place to be. As many of y'all know, the best thing about a job is often your boss. Mine is Randall Degges. He's a legitimate badass hacker. Don't try to win a popularity contest with him. There's a good chance I'll be at Okta as long as he's my boss.

On the developer relations team, we set our own schedules, plan our own interests, schedule our own conference appearances, and sponsor our favorite local events. Being a developer advocate is a gratifying job. You can write about your favorite open source frameworks, attend/sponsor local meetups, and learn new things every day! If you happen to be #devrel folk (or a like-minded awesomeperson), you might like my Pro Tips for Developer Relations.

Personally, I'd like to ski, raft, bike, and have a good time in 2019 a lot more! Y'all know I won't have any problem with the last one, but its predecessors are the ones that really make me smile. Skiing down a chute, rafting through a class IV, and biking in Moab are some of the most exhilarating activities I've ever experienced. I'm getting a bit older (44) these days, but I still love playing in the outdoors. Luckily, I married a magical woman that loves the outdoors as much as I do. Even better, she photographs its excellence!

Abbie is the school-commute driver, but Jack will be 15 in August, and he's determined to get his learners permit as soon as he can. That means he'll need a family member in the car that's 21+. If he wants to drive, the 20-minute-each-way commute is back on in the fall. For those of you with children of similar ages, you know that this is a precious time in our lives. I don't have a work commute. Driving my kids to school takes an hour round-trip. If it were a commute to work, I'd hate it. However, it's precious time with my kids, and it's really quite fabulous. Even if they're staring at their phones, you have their full attention. Ask questions and enjoy their responses.

Last year, I said one of my goals was to simply be content. This year, I'm taking it up a notch. If you don't have goals, how can you measure how you improved your life? I'm a big believer in self-improvement, so here goes (in order of priority):

Personal

Good Blood Pressure
More 2 and 3 point days
Ride/ski/hoops 4x week
Walk daily (preferably at home with Sagan and Daisy)
More salads, less red meat
Love is a verb, embrace 1:1 time with everyone (Trish, kids, parents, friends)
20 days camping
25 days skiing
15 days rafting

I'm a big fan of the last three. Those activities typically involve a break from technology, the great outdoors, and exquisite views. Follow me on Instagram if you want a highlight reel.

I have some work-related goals too, because metrics seem to motivate me.

Work

Author/publish two blog posts per month
Review/mentor four blog posts per month
Record/publish two videos per month
One performance/speaking gig per month
Three "no travel" months
Stand more while working

I believe 2019 will be fabulous, and I hope to reflect my favorite moments on this blog. If you're a long-time follower, you'll notice I'm mostly active @mraible. Y'all use Twitter, right? That's my modern day notification channel. When I'm super giddy, I'll post pictures of my favorite moments on Instagram. When I want to save them forever, I publish them to Flickr.

I hope to see you at a conference or meetup in 2019!

View this post on Instagram

Fun family photo in Crested Butte. #lastbestskitown

A post shared by Matt Raible (@vwsforlife) on Jan 6, 2018 at 4:27pm PST

2017 - A Year in Review

Matt Raible — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 16:16:39 -0700

2017 was a year with many changes. We changed presidents, Stormpath joined forces with Okta, our daughter started high school, and we lost two of our precious pets. On the upside, I traveled to many beautiful places, talked to developers around the world, and became a Devoxx Champion. Not only that, but our two classic VWs ran like champs the whole year. We put upwards of 10K adventure miles on our Syncro, and another couple thousand on Hefe the Bus.

I'm going to look back on 2017 using the following categories.

Professional

2017 was the first year I started with a full-time job in January since the turn of the century. I'd been an independent consultant for most of my career. Stormpath enticed me enough with their people and vision that I became a full-time employee with them in September 2016.

January started slow, but I started to hit my stride in February when I traveled to Sweden for Jfokus and skiing. Coincidentally, it was shortly after the conference that I found myself negotiating with Eric Berg about joining forces with Okta. I remember it well: I was sitting in the hotel lobby, with James Ward and Ray Tsang, when it all happened. Shortly after, we were sitting in the back of the bus on our way to a skiing adventure.

A week later, I was back in the states and the deal with Okta was happening. Throughout January, I thought the possibility was 20%. When I returned home from Jfokus, it was full-on happening. In fact, I was one of the last ones to sign the deal, causing panic and a few phone calls in the process. Most of the folks at Stormpath became Okta employees on February 27.

The awkward part was we knew about the deal when we traveled to Devnexus. We had a Stormpath booth there, and we were unable to tell everyone there would be no more signups after Friday, February 24.

The following week, we had a massive onboarding with everyone. There was excitement in the room and many high spirits, so it was a fun day. Shortly after, we entered into a 90-day quiet period for Okta's IPO. It was strange to start a new job with a new company and not be able to talk about it.

Okta didn't have much for SDKs when we started writing blog posts in March. However, it supports standards like SAML and OAuth, so I was able to put together some posts using Spring Security.

I wrote about my anticipation for Devoxx US and France in mid-March.

Towards the end of March and early April, I had some luck integrating with Angular, both with Okta's Sign-In Widget and OpenID Connect.

In early April, I hosted an Angular Workshop and spoke about Cloud Native Progressive Web Apps with Josh Long at Devoxx France.

We're about to kick off the part deux of our Cloud Native Apps series with @mraible @DevoxxFR pic.twitter.com/0GCSAiUgs4
— Josh Long (???, ???) (@starbuxman) April 6, 2017

On my flight home from that trip — on April 7 — Okta had its IPO. Things started trucking along after the IPO. I wrote a plethora of blogs posts in April and published them over the spring and summer months.

Speaking

This year, speaking became a part of my job, so I spoke frequently. According to TripIt, I took 29 trips, to 41 cities, and 14 countries. I traveled 115,456 miles and spent most of my time on United. By my count, I spoke at 22 events.

I wrote about my experiences at J-Spring, Devoxx UK, GeeCON, and Spring I/O in May, and Devoxx Poland in June. Spring I/O was especially fun because Trish met me in Barcelona.

I was featured on the main Okta blog in late September in Developer DNA: A Day in the Life of Matt Raible.

As the year was waning, I wrote about life as an open source developer and my adventures to Devoxx Belgium and Devoxx Morocco.

In my blog post about SpringOne and The Rich Web Experience, I included a picture of my 2017 conference lanyard collection.

To end the year, I published some popular posts on the Okta Developer blog:

Devoxx4Kids

We held two Devoxx4Kids Denver workshops in 2017: MIT App Inventor - Anyone Can Build Apps and Fruit Ninja with Scratch. These classes were taught by Regina Peyfuss and Melissa McKay, respectively. I'm happy to announce they've both since joined the board for Devoxx4Kids Denver and have been doing a great deal to help organize things.

I ?? the smell of learning in the morning. #Devoxx4Kids Denver in full swing w/ @rpeyfuss at @ThriveWorkplace. Awesome space and instructor! pic.twitter.com/a6Ac1qAJh0
— Matt Raible (@mraible) June 3, 2017

Our next meetup will be on March 10 and will be taught by Melissa's daughter, Kaitlyn! I think it's pretty cool we have an opportunity to have kids teaching kids. I've also been working with Jay Zimmerman and UberConf to have an UberKids this summer.

Projects

AppFuse is no more, so I primarily work on JHipster and the JHipster-Mini Book these days. I refactored JHipster's OAuth authentication in September to use an external identity provider (e.g., Keycloak or Okta) instead of an embedded one. I wrote about how to use OpenID Connect with JHipster on the Okta Developer blog in October.

With the help of InfoQ, we released v4.0 of the JHipster Mini-Book on September 22nd. It's hard to believe, but it's still up-to-date!

Personal

I wrote down my goal at the beginning of 2017: to drive Hefe up the California coast. In July, I wrote about why that goal got moved to my bucket list:

I wanted to spend our summer vacation driving our VWs up the California coast, on a mammoth 3500-mile road trip over two weeks. However, when a landslide happened near Big Sur, I knew it was probably best to move this road trip from my yearly goals to my bucket list. Instead, we opted to drive to Montana and spend a couple of weeks vacationing in my childhood playground.

We had a blast road-tripping, hiking, and rafting in Montana. A highlight for me was hiking to Rumble Lake, somewhere I hadn't been to since I was a kid.

The drive home through Jackson Hole and the Flaming Gorge was pretty nice as well!

My only other personal post in the first half of 2017 was Farewell to the 2016-17 Ski Season.

I had a blast skiing in Winter Park, Copper, Crested Butte, Sweden, Steamboat, Tahoe, and Montana.

The highlight of the season was skiing at Big Sky Resort in Montana. We're super pumped that next year's ski pass includes Big Sky!

In early August, we rafted the Salmon River in Idaho with our rafting family and had an epic trip.

Jack turned 13 in late August and we had a splendid weekend with my folks in town.

Abbie and Tucker won their division at the SummerFest Horse Show in September!

Abbie didn't want a birthday party this year, so we surprised her with one instead. It's hard to believe she's a freshman in high school. She's even driving us around with her learner's permit these days! Her birthday was a bittersweet celebration since we had to say goodbye to Jake earlier that day.

We welcomed a new Australian Shepperd-Border Collie mix puppy into our home in December. Her name is Daisy.

A post shared by Matt Raible (@vwsforlife) on Dec 2, 2017 at 3:24pm PST

Stout and Hefe

Stout 5.0 and Hefe 3.0 were released in early May. Stout had his hood painted and Hefe got a kick-ass stereo system installed.

For Hefe's stereo, I tried going phone-only for a controller. This turned out to be a bad idea, mostly due to bit Play HD and its terrible mobile app. Also, Hefe is lowered and a bit bumpy in the front, so trying to use a touch screen while driving doesn't work very well. He's in the shop now getting a new deck installed.

We drove Stout over 5000 miles this summer and he's been super dependable. Now that he's reliable, we often marvel that he really is the greatest car ever built.

2018

Professionally, I'll be speaking at a lot of Java User Groups in 2018. The Developer Relations team at Okta is focusing on large US cities this year, so you won't see me overseas as much. This is nice because it means I get to spend more time with my family. I have received offers to speak in other countries where they'll pay for all my expenses. If expenses are covered, Okta will allow me to travel overseas. However, I've been telling people I'm only willing to speak if they'll pay for a family member's flight too. It seems to be a win-win so far: most conferences have declined, and I don't have to travel as much. If I find a conference that is willing pay, I'll get to travel with someone from my awesome family!

I'll be coding loads of example apps and writing heaps of tutorials for the Okta Developer blog and I'm super excited about our Iterate Conference next month. I'll also continue to help organize DJUG and Devoxx4Kids Denver.

Romantically, Trish and I hope to never stop dating with the 2-2-2 rule. I look forward to a year with running VWs, long dog walks, and disconnecting to connect. As for goals, I'll go for the ol' standby: to be happy and content with what I have. 😊

Raible Road Trip #70: To Jekyll Island and Back

Matt Raible — Thu, 4 Feb 2016 10:43:09 -0700

My Dad's 70th birthday was January 16, 2015. Years ago, we started talking about celebrating this event and suggested we go somewhere warm. Trish and I proposed Hawaii, Mexico, or even Cuba. My Dad had his own idea: he wanted to go to Jekyll Island, Georgia. He spent a few high school years in Brunswick, GA and had fond memories of the place and weather. He also wanted to drive there, because road trips are awesome. At least they are in my family. We've done many family road trips over the years; the last one was in July.

One of the great joys in owning a VW Vanagon Westfalia is having the ability to sleep anywhere. Home is where your van is. We did a bunch of van repairs and upgrades last fall: rebuilt the transmission, added modern headlights, installed a Truck Fridge and a Propex heater. It was finally in tip-top shape for winter camping (or a road trip), so I suggested to my parents that we drive it to Georgia, via New Orleans. They agreed and we all smiled with thoughts of visiting the Big Easy. We'd never been.

My parents flew to Denver a few days before we started. Our journey began early Sunday morning, January 10th. We left Denver around 6am and I spent the first couple hours driving in the dark, eastbound on I-70. Within the first hundred miles, the van's odometer quit working, so we had to rely on the gas gauge to know when to fill up. For anyone that's owned a vanagon, you'll know their gas gauges are fairly unreliable. Tom Hanks even talked about this on the David Letterman show.

My mom took the second shift and when she asked me if we had enough gas to make it another 50 miles, I say "yep, it sure looks like it". 20 minutes later, we were on the side of I-70, out of gas. We grabbed the empty jerry can off the back and started walking to the next exit, which wasn't far, but it was cold. Within a couple minutes, a trucker stopped to give us a ride. I hopped in and my mom walked back to the van. The trucker, Don, was super cool and drove me to a nearby gas station and back. It was the first time I'd ridden in a semi truck and it turned out to be a pretty cool experience. We decided to stop for gas whenever the fuel gauge hit the orange zone from then on.

We spent the first night with my Aunt Donna and Uncle Dale, in Clever, Missouri. We had a lot of fun visiting with them and talked for hours, both before bed and the next morning.

I spent that night in the van and tried out the new Reflectix insulation my dad and I made the day before. It was 12°F outside that night and plenty warm inside the van.

The next day, we drove a few hours to Hot Springs, Arkansas. We marveled at the bathhouses from a bygone era and stayed in a Hot Springs National Park KOA.

Tuesday, we drove south, across the mighty Mississippi to New Orleans. We arrived at Ponchartrain Landing, just after dark and enjoyed dinner at the RV Park's restaurant. We were impressed with the food and the live music. We caught an Uber into the French Quarter and enjoyed live music from the Treme Brass Band at d.b.a..

The next day, we spent touring the French Quarter, learning about its history and basking in the soulful atmosphere.

Thursday, we continued our journey, driving to Panama City, Florida and stopping to see the USS Alabama along the way.

When we started driving on Friday, the Syncro had a loud knocking in the left year. I posted this to the Vanagon Owners group on Facebook and they quickly diagnosed it as a bad CV joint. The noise went away at highway speeds.

We made it to Jekyll Island by late afternoon and I took a quick nap before picking up Trish and the kids from the Jacksonville airport around midnight.

My dad's brother, Jim, and sister, Mary, arrived in Jekyll Island before we did. Jim's wife Maryann shares a birthday with my dad, so we celebrated on Saturday with cards, laughter and lots of smiles. We rented bikes from a shop nearby and had a blast biking around the island and walking on the beaches.

One of the highlights of the weekend was doing Jack's science experiment. He'd brought a kit to grow bacteria in Petri dishes so we rode our bikes around the island and stopped at various restaurants. We asked kitchen managers to swab their countertops for us, then we captured the result in different dishes. It was a warm sunny day and all the restaurants were very helpful. We completed our mission in time to watch the Broncos beat the Steelers that evening.

I returned Trish and the kids to the airport on Monday and they flew back to Denver. I worked remotely for the rest of the week while my parents, aunts and uncle spent long hours together exploring the island. They talked about memories of their youth, took a lot of walks together, did some shopping and did what older people do: watched The Weather Channel. A historic snowstorm was headed for the east coast and it could alter flights home to New York, as well as our route back to Denver.

Our trip back to Denver began early Friday morning, January 22nd. I was eager to get home for the AFC Championship game on Sunday. We dropped my Aunt Mary off at the airport in Jacksonville around 7am and drove through Florida, staying south on I-10 to avoid the storm. There was lots of rain and wind, but only for a few hours. We made it to Shreveport, Louisiana that evening and stayed at a KOA. We made it 900 miles the first day. With 960 miles left, we knew Saturday would be rough, but we could make it back in time for the game!

Saturday was sunny in Texas and we spent most of the day driving through it.

The knocking noise from the CV came back, but we knew there was no stopping now. We pulled into Denver around 11pm that night, finishing our 4000 mile road trip to Jekyll Island and back.

What a fun trip! It certainly helped that we had no breakdowns. Yes, we lost a hubcap, the CV needed to be replaced and the odometer stopped working. However, these were all easy to fix and the odometer even started working again on the way home. We made it back in time for the Broncos game and Trish and I had a blast at the tailgate before watching the Broncos beat the Patriots.

One other highlight of the trip was that The Bus was this close to being finished. The shop working on it was sending me pictures the whole time and set the expectation that it would be finished within days. Unfortunately, they discovered some issues while driving it (dead battery, leaks in the gas tank), so they determined there was still work to do. Nevertheless, they invited us down for a test drive. My parents and I drove down Monday afternoon, hopped in it for a ride and quickly broke down within a couple miles. The battery was charged enough to start it, but when the engine died at a light, there was no juice left. We pushed it off to the side of the road, called for help to get it jump-started and drove it back to the shop. With all the snow on the ground in Denver, I'm OK if it takes a few more weeks to complete.

More on Flickr → Raible Road Trip #70 Album

I also named both our VWs on this trip. The '66 21-Window will now be known as "Hefe", and we're calling the '90 Syncro Westy "Stout". Hefe can be attributed to its German roots and one of my favorite beer styles, Hefeweizen. In Spanish, El Jefe means "the boss", so that's fitting too. As for Stout, both Trish and I have Irish roots, we love stout beers and we've turned it into a thick and strong vehicle.

Now it's February. It's been dumping snow in the mountains and we completed our first winter camping trip with the kids last weekend. The Broncos are in the Super Bowl this weekend. Life couldn't get much better right now. ;)

Skiing Adventures with our Syncro in the Rocky Mountains

Matt Raible — Fri, 13 Mar 2015 06:01:09 -0600

Our Syncro Westy was returned to us in early February, after being in the shop since just before Christmas. It was in the shop for body work caused by an accident that was my fault. Luckily, no one was hurt and the damage was minor. The morning after we got it back, my awesome friend Ryan Moore and I packed it up and headed on a hut trip near Aspen, Colorado.

The next weekend was one of the most popular skiing holidays: Presidents' Day Weekend. We packed up the kids and drove our Ski Bus to Crested Butte. I took my guitar and Trish took her banjo (we both started taking weekly lessons at the beginning of the year). Our drive was smooth and our weekend was fabulous.

Saturday was Valentine's Day and I surprised Trish with a photo shoot of our family. I'd secretly hired Alison White to take our pictures and we met with her to talk about what we wanted on Saturday morning. After a fun consultation, we ventured to the mountain, picking up James Ward along the way. We skied a few runs together, stopped at the Ice Bar for a car bomb, then whisked off to our photo shoot.

We are extremely pleased with the results. Thanks Alison!

The next weekend, Trish and I packed up and headed to our Ski Shack in Winter Park. We stayed up late that Friday night, preparing chili and other fixins for a fun tailgate on Saturday. We didn't get much sleep, but we were in "C Lot" by 7:30 and on the lifts shortly after they opened. It was a powder day, and the runs were great. We met up with friends at our van around noon and enjoyed some tasty chili and cold beverages.

The last weekend in February, we met Trish's brother (also named Matt) in Vail. He was on a ski trip with a number of friends and Trish drove up to ski with him on Saturday morning. The kids and I slept in a bit and arrived at Copper just in time for free parking near the lifts. We skied all afternoon, then met up with Trish and Matt for some cocktails, then dinner. That night, we did some winter camping in the van.

The final weekend in my 5-weekends-in-a-row of skiing was a wonderful trip to Telluride. The kids had Thursday and Friday off of school last week, so we loaded up and drove to Telluride on Thursday. It took us most of the day to get there (7.5 hours), but the weather was beautiful and the roads were dry. Our van was too tall for our hotel's garage, so we had excellent parking spots all weekend.

This was the breakout weekend for Jack. Abbie's been skiing awesome all year and Jack's been pretty timid (lots of turns, going slow). There was something about our first day at Telluride that inspired him, because he loved their double blacks. We skied lots of steep runs, did laps on the terrain parks and flew down the mountain on blues. Telluride had a Spring Break atmosphere and our ski-in/ski-out accommodations didn't hurt. It was a glorious weekend. Trish and I were both very proud of the kids and how fast and fearless they've become on skis.

Full Album →

I'm extremely happy with our Syncro's performance and its new H6 (Subaru Outback) engine. It's been averaging 20mpg, most likely because I drive 55mph in the slow lanes up the passes. I figure we drove it just over 2000 miles on our 5-ski-weekends-in-5-weeks adventure. We thoroughly enjoyed skiing at Crested Butte, tailgating with powder at Mary Jane and shredding the double blacks at Telluride. I know we'll be back to all of them, some sooner than later.

In fact, I'll be meeting a few friends at Mary Jane this morning to attempt 30,000 vertical feet in one day. It'll be my 36th day of skiing this year. Happy Friday! Life is Good.

November Travels to Kauai and Wenatchee

Matt Raible — Wed, 5 Dec 2012 20:59:00 -0700

For the last two Novembers, we've celebrated Abbie's birthday, watched the Broncos beat the Chiefs and then headed to Antwerp, Belgium for Devoxx.

2010 was awesome. 2011 was even better.

This year, we chose to celebrate my parent's 40th wedding anniversary instead. It wasn't a hard choice, since they chose Hawaii as their destination of choice. After visiting last year and this summer, we're pretty much in when anyone suggests Hawaii. We got our flights for $10, rented an awesome beach-front house and had a great time with my parents and sisters.

Below was the view from our backyard.

The purpose of this post is to 1) show off some of Trish's spectacular photos and 2) tell you a bit about what we enjoyed.

First of all, the location was fantastic. If you get a chance to stay at Nani Nani Hale, I highly recommend it. We could walk to the beach in seconds and spent a few hours each day on the lanai, enjoying each other's company, playing games, napping and reading. The sunsets were spectacular.

We felt like we never had to leave and really enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere.

When we did leave, we played golf, went stand up padding or surfing.

We did a lot of surfing; almost every day.

It was awesome seeing my parents so happy after all these years.

And it was great spending so much time with my family and their long-time friends Mike and Mai from Montana.

Thanksgiving in Wenatchee
We flew back from Hawaii on Monday, November 19th. A red eye brought us to Denver, where we picked up Abbie and Jack and headed to Washington on Wednesday.

My sister and her wife recently moved from Chelan to Wenatchee and Thanksgiving at their house was the name of the game. My parents were already there, since they started their journey to Hawaii from Seattle. We rented another nice VRBO and enjoyed ourselves while cooking, watching football, playing games, hot-tubbing and watching movies.

I love Trish's panorama of Wenatchee in the early morn.

The kids had fun...

As for the adults? I'll let the photo speak for itself.

For more pictures, see Trish's Kauai 2012 and Wenatchee 2012 albums.

Oregon, Cape Cod and Fun in Winter Park

Matt Raible — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 13:50:52 -0600

I'm proud to say it's been almost a month since my last blog entry. This can only mean one thing → I've been having too much fun to blog. The good news is I finally found time to write about our recent adventures, so grab yourself a tasty beverage and read on.

Within hours of my last blog post, Trish and I hopped on a plane to visit my good friends, Clint and Autumn, in Oregon. We flew into Portland and spent the weekend hiking in Silver Falls and drinking good beer at the Oregon Brewers Festival and Edgefield. Edgefield is one my favorite places on Earth, encapsulating a farm/resort environment with 27 different features. The features range from a soaking pool to a winery to a pool hall to scotch tasting in a shack next to a garden.

The weekend was especially fun since Autumn was pregnant and it was two weeks before the due date of their first child. Broderick Jordan Wilburn Foster was born yesterday and I hear the whole family is doing well.

Trish and I spent the night at Edgefield on Saturday and caught an early flight from Portland to Boston the next morning. Her brother (also named Matt) lives near Boston and we drove our rental Volvo convertible (to fit in with the New Englanders) to his house Sunday night. On the Hertz Bus from the airport met Nigel Parry, a professional photographer. Not just anybody, but someone that's shot pictures of some very famous people. Trish is also a photographer, so they had a long conversation and it inspired her to resign from her sales job last week. Actually, it wasn't that meeting, she's been wanting to be a famous photographer since she was in high school. Now that dream shall happen. She's awesome.

On Monday afternoon, we picked up Abbie and Jack from the Boston airport. They flew up from West Palm Beach on their first unaccompanied minors flight. We drove them to Cape Cod and settled into Trish's parents house near the water. The rest of the week, we had a blast with our friends Chris and Julie and the entire McGinity clan. We boated, grilled, flew down the water slides, played miniature golf and toured Martha's Vineyard. We had a pool party, played some pool and sang our hearts out at karaoke. Trish's brother's kids are the same age as mine, so you couldn't wipe the smiles off our kids' faces, especially when we had the tunes cranked with the top down on the convertible.

For more pictures of this super-fun trip, see Summer Fun in Oregon and Cape Cod part 1 and 2.

After returning from Boston, we had a week without kids and lived it to the fullest with a John Butler Trio concert at Red Rocks and the Winter Park Beer Festival. Trish's friend Joanna and my good friend, "The Professor" joined us for a weekend of mountain biking and sweet mountain views. We even got to hang out with James Ward and his wife Jenny at the beer festival. Sunday, we hiked up the beautiful Columbine Lake Trail. Trish's dog, Sagan (named after Carl) chased sticks and was his crazy self as usual.

We drove back Monday morning to be there for the kids first day of school. They sure start early these days don't they?

I rode my bike 168 miles to and from work throughout the following week. The next weekend, we took the kids up to the Ski Shack for their first time. I hired a guy to make queen-size bunk beds for them, so they had a blast in their new roomy beds. On Saturday, we had a garage sale since the previous owners left a bunch of beds and couches and we didn't need all that furniture. The turnout was great and we got to hang out with Jodi and James, Suzie, and The Lamonts. All of these folks are old friends that just happened to be in the mountains for the weekend. One of Trish's best friends, Chris, has a place less than a mile from us and we had a blast with her on Saturday night. Thanks for the fun memories Chris!

On Sunday, we took the kids the Winter Park Base Area where they have Disneyland in the Mountains as I like to call it. An alpine slide, miniature golf, a maze, a climbing wall and a Chili Cook-Off to keep Daddy happy. We met our good friend Suzie there and had a lot of fun with Chris, Brice and their crazy kids. Enjoying an Avery White Rascal at the Cheeky Monk's happy hour was the perfect way to end the day.

Sunday night, we were graced with the presence of a beautiful sunset.

That pretty much catches you up-to-date with the goings on in my life. As you can tell, it's been a great summer so far. I'm really looking forward to the fall too. Broncos season, a trip to Hawaii, learning new technologies, talking about them at Devoxx and a new gig.

I've decided to leave Overstock because I'm a die-hard Broncos fan and I can't work for a company that supports the Raiders during football season. There's a good chance I'll be back after the season, just in time for The Greatest Snow on Earth.

This weekend, my parents are meeting us in Winter Park for Labor Day weekend. We plan on fishing, hiking, smiling and enjoying each other's company a whole lot. Tomorrow is Jack's birthday. I gotta run ... it's time to go buy a bike, play a little golf, hit the pool and go to the BBQ before tonight's CD Release Party.

4th of July Adventures in Montana

Matt Raible — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 09:24:54 -0600

Montana is one of my favorite places on earth, especially the The Cabin. Like last year and the year before, I spent a couple weeks at the cabin for this year's 4th of July. Last year was interesting because I met Trish two days before my vacation. This year, she joined me for the 2nd week, along with her Dad. It was also the "90s Reunion" for the Seeley Swan High School, which I attended my freshman and sophomore year.

My parents have lived at the cabin for a little over a year now, having retired there last year. It now looks like it did when we were kids. That is, it feels like home rather than just a cabin in the woods. Their retirement cabin is coming along nicely and the finished bathroom with a toilet + shower provides a nice break from the outhouse and sauna. It was interesting to see all the logging being done on The Homestead. My parents hired someone to clean things up and it looks great so far. They're not clear-cutting, just thinning the forest to reduce fire danger and give more resources to the big trees.

There were several highlights of the trip, but one of my favorites was our Float in the Swan Valley Parade. Abbie came up with the idea (Happy Birthday America) and we decorated an old trailer with streamers, balloons and a birthday cake to celebrate. Abbie made up a song and sang it throughout the entire parade (with a portable microphone and amp). We all got dunked afterwards, drank some cheap beer and had lots of fun fiddlin' and swinging. The fireworks that night were epic and Trish and I were amazed late night when we smiled on a crowded campfire with many of my parents' old friends.

The next day, we woke up, recovered a bit and then headed for Glacier National Park. We spent the afternoon at Big Sky Waterpark and had a great night's rest at Glacier Mountain Lodge. Trish woke up early the next morning for some sunrise shots at Lake McDonald and we enjoyed a short hike to Avalanche Lake that afternoon. Unfortunately, Going-to-the-Sun Road was closed due to snow so we were unable to drive to the top. 2011 is the latest they've ever opened.

The rest of our vacation was spent doing early morning airport runs, riding the 4-wheeler, golfing and hanging out with old friends. For the trip home, we took the scenic route, driving through Yellowstone and Grand Teton. We stopped along the way to spend the night at Jackson Lake Lodge, shortly after marveling at a Grizzly Bear and her two cubs along the highway. Trish snapped some some magnificent sunset and sunrise photos and we packed up the car for the final journey home. After being gone for 3 weeks, I've never seen the kids happier to cross the Colorado State Line.

As far as vacation destinations go, Montana is one of my favorites. This year was special because I had the pleasure of sharing it with Trish. She's always wanted to photograph Glacier National Park and the Grand Tetons and we were lucky enough to visit both. I also got to share a lot of smiles and memories with old classmates and friends. I experienced the joy of seeing my parents back home, living as Montanans once again and loving every minute of it. I smiled proudly as Abbie thought up the "Happy Birthday America" float and then sang on it the whole way through the parade. I simply loved spending so much time with my family in such a beautiful place.

Finally, I'd like to share a picture montage that Trish put together of the trip. Below that are some of her best shots from our adventures. As always, you can find see my latest photos on Flickr.

Good Times on The Annual Father's Day Camping Trip

Matt Raible — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 22:38:01 -0600

Four years ago, I started an annual tradition with my kids: The Father's Day Camping Trip. The last two, I've flown my Dad in and we've journeyed to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. This year, we decided to stay a little closer to home and head up to Lake Granby. Both my parents flew in again, the kids returned from a month in Florida, and Trish and I packed up her puppies for a wonderful weekend.

When we arrived, the weather wasn't great. We showed up an hour before sunset and had just enough time to setup our tents before the rain started. It proceeded to rain throughout the night, but our tent help up nicely and we never got wet.

On Saturday, we did some fishing, hiked along the East Shore Trail, rode our bikes, and had a great time relaxing and enjoying each other's company. It only rained for a bit in the afternoon, the rest of the time we sat back and enjoyed beautiful views.

On Sunday, we drove back through Rocky Mountain National Park, saw a moose and her two calves and enjoyed a delicious lunch at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. I really enjoyed spending so much time with my family this weekend. The good news is we get to do it again when I meet them at The Cabin in Montana next week. In the meantime, Trish and I are off to Jazoon for a few days of fun in Switzerland.

If you'd like to see more pictures from our Father's Day Camping Adventure, please see my Father's Day at Lake Granby album on Flickr.

Thanks to Seattle for a Great Weekend

Matt Raible — Tue, 11 May 2010 07:30:53 -0600

One of the things I like the most about my current gig is I get to travel to Seattle every-so-often. I've had a fondness for the Pacific Northwest since I went to high school in Salem, Oregon. That fondness has grown over the years from many visits to family, friends and conferences in the area. A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting Seattle once again. While I've been there a few times with colleagues this year, it's been 6 months since I hung out in Washington with my sister.

This trip was mostly work, flying in Wednesday and leaving on Sunday. The work week was very enjoyable: sunny skies everyday, nice running routes and we accomplished our goal. Friday afternoon, we finished a bit early and I enjoyed a scenic Friday Afternoon Office at Edgewater Hotel while waiting for my sister, Kalin, and her wife, Mya.

Spending the weekend with Kalin and Mya was a blast. They have good friends that live in Ballard (North/Hipster Seattle). They were out of town, so we got to enjoy free, hip accommodations for the weekend. On Saturday, we took a long stroll down to the Mariners game at Safeco Field. A relaxing afternoon of baseball ensued, as well as a very fun evening in downtown Ballard. As evidenced by the pictures in this post, many smiles happened as we reminisced, caught up and had fun like good friends do.

I left Seattle on Sunday with the feeling that it's quickly becoming one of my favorite cities. That feeling was likely nurtured by the combination of great weather, an accomplished mission and hanging out with my super-fun family. Regardless, thanks to Seattle and "the girls" for a great weekend!

For more pictures from this weekend, see Seattle 2010 on Flickr.

My Sister's Fabulous Wedding

Matt Raible — Wed, 7 Oct 2009 20:46:46 -0600

Last week, my kids and I flew to Chelan, Washington for my sister's wedding. Unfortunately, I had to work most of the week, but I woke up early and actually had a very productive week. My sister hooked us up with an awesome 3-bedroom condo on Lake Chelan and I thoroughly enjoyed my new office and its view. The bonus of getting up early was finishing early.

I think the best way to describe the fun I had at Kalin's wedding is by posting the speech I wrote for the ceremony and showing you some pictures from the event.

My sister and I share the most unique childhood of anyone I've ever met. We both grew up without electricity or running water in the backwoods of Montana. If you know us, you know that in itself isn't that special. What is special is the parents that provided the unique atmosphere and experience that made us who we are today.

If you know my parents, you're probably friends with them and wouldn't hesitate to stop in and say hello if you happen to be in the same town as them. (Tip: if you're stopping by, make sure and bring some good wine or microbrews - it'll make it more fun for everyone.)

I've always been impressed with my parent's ability to inspire friendships among people they meet. However, they don't hold a candle to Kalin's ability to create really cool friendships. She has an excellent ability to identify "really good people" and bring them into her life. The type of people that make you laugh and feel good about yourself. The type of people that make you want to live your life to the fullest. The type of people that you fall in love with.

Kalin is always go, go, go. For proof, ask her about her recent Karaoke performance. Mya is always slow, slow, slow. Let's stop and smell the flowers, have a good time, or just simply sit here and relax. She's a welcome addition to our family and I'm proud to have her as my new sister today.

In my opinion, the most important thing in a marriage is that you help each other. Mya and Kalin have this type of relationship. I've watched them live together, learn together and love together. I look forward to watching their love continue to grow.

More than anything, I really enjoy how my sister has found the ultimate place to live her life. Chelan is one of the most beautiful places I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. I hope she lives here for many, many years. If you combine a great location with an awesome relationship, I don't see how you could help but be happy.

To my sister, Kalin, I'm very proud of you. You've set yourself up for a life of happiness and I couldn't think of a better person to do it with.

If you'd like to see more pictures from Kalin's Wedding, please see Kalin's Fabulous Wedding on Flickr.

Jason and Holly's Wedding was a blast!

Matt Raible — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:53:54 -0600

This past weekend, I experienced an incredible 4 days in West Palm Beach, Florida. When Julie and I got married there in April 2000, we had so much fun that we always wanted to do it again. We had a lot of good friends and family fly in for the wedding. If you've ever experienced a beach holiday with many good friends, you'll know what I'm talking about. Julie is Holly's sister and Jason (her new husband) is one of my fraternity brothers. That means I knew both sides of the wedding party and it very much resembled the reunion we always wanted.

I flew down on Thursday morning after a little bit of oversleeping. Because I flew into Orlando, I had to rent a car and drive 2 hours to West Palm. This wasn't so bad since I got hooked up with a convertible and it was a beautiful 80°F on the drive. That night, I picked up Abbie and Jack from "Grammy's" house and they spent the night with me in my hotel.

The next morning, we woke up and headed to Sailfish for a ride on a friend's boat. After a couple hours on the intercostal, we played in the pool, enjoyed the sun and started getting ready for the Rehearsal Dinner.

During the Rehearsal Dinner, a friend (Navarro) and I were bartenders while Abbie was in charge of making sure everyone's drinks were full. Below are some of my favorite pictures from Friday night.

After the rehearsal dinner, the party crowd headed to Rum Bar and had lots of laughs and played many games of "hook". On the wedding day (Saturday), we took another boat ride, hung out on the beach and enjoyed a beautiful ceremony on the beach.

The rest of the night was spent dancing and enjoying everyone's company. The party didn't end that night though. Sunday, Holly and Julie's mom had a brunch at her house where we all laid by the pool, played with the kids and sipped on many cold drinks. At sunset, we walked down to the beach so Mr. and Mrs. Harris could get some sand from their ceremony location.

It was a spectacular weekend with lots of good friends and a ton of great memories. Congratulations Jason and Holly!

For more pictures, see Flickr or Facebook.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Matt Raible — Sun, 4 Jan 2009 12:08:28 -0700

For the last couple weeks, I've been enjoying a great Christmas vacation in Oregon with most of my family. Abbie and Jack didn't join me, but they got to spend 3 weeks in West Palm Beach, Florida. Poor kids.

I made sure the end of my vacation would land on a very special person's birthday. My Mom. Not only is my mom one of the coolest people in the world, she also has an excellent job title: Burn Boss. Growing up in Montana, I was always proud that Barb Raible was my mom. She was famous for her kindness in the Swan Valley. I hope she's always famous for her story about nailing a bear's nuts to a tree.

My mom is a Montana Native who wasn't afraid to raise her kids in the backwoods at her family's homestead. It sounds like a crazy idea to me, but she made it happen - cooking over a wood stove every day and working at the Swan Valley Ranger Station to make ends meet. She was responsible for getting us out of Montana and onto Oregon. She went back to school in her early 40s, got a degree in Forestry from the University of Montana and moved the whole family to Oregon for a job with the BLM.

I moved to Oregon on June 14, 1990 driving a '73 Plymouth Duster with a homemade International trailer in tow. We certainly looked like we were from Montana when we rolled into town. We moved into a house on Felony Flats. My sister and I got jobs at McDonald's (Dad's advice) and started school at North Salem High school in the fall. I met many good friends at North Salem - Jess, Matt, Clint and Michelle becoming favorites over the years.

For New Years, Jess, Clint and I rented a condo in Bend, Oregon. Matt joined us on Friday after most of us experienced an Epic Powder Day at Mt. Bachelor. It was the first time we'd all been together in 9 years. We had a blast.

This vacation in Oregon has been very special to me. I've reunited with many old friends, enjoyed 2 epic powder days and had a great time with my Mom, Dad, Sister and her fiancé Mya.

As much fun as I've had, I'm looking forward to getting back to Denver and hanging out with my kids. January 2009 is sure to be one for the books. I start a new gig at a new office tomorrow. On Wednesday, the kids return from Florida to a mountain of presents at my house. My parents are coming to town next weekend, followed by a trip to Tahoe and a weekend in Steamboat to finish out the month.

Yeah, 2009 is going to be a lot of fun. Maybe I'll see you on the slopes.

Fun Weekend with The Munchkins

Matt Raible — Sun, 1 Jun 2008 22:33:12 -0600

This weekend was action-packed and a lot of fun. On Friday night, Abbie, Jack and I watched The Empire Strikes Back. We watched "the first one" a couple weeks ago; their first "grown up" movie to-date. They're loving the series, especially because they recognize people from the previous movie. They're really looking forward to the next one because Wicket is in it. Believe it or not, I still have a stuffed Wicket from when I was a kid.

On Saturday, we started the day off right at Andrew Swanson's 5th birthday party. Following that, we hit up Pirates Cove and its adjacent petting zoo and train ride.

Today, we woke up, had some blueberry pancakes, drove to the bait shop and then headed to Golden Gate Canyon State Park. The weather was beautiful and Kriley Pond was a nice fishing spot. We didn't catch anything, but both kids are getting a lot better at casting. The highlight was the live worms we bought at the bait shop. Both Abbie and Jack were convinced they were the biting kind.

Next fun trip: An overnight camping trip on Father's Day. Location TBD.

My Entire Family is now on Macs

Matt Raible — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:27:17 -0600

I bought my first Mac in January 2002. I had dreamed about a PowerBook for years before buying it and was very excited when it arrived. A couple days later, I discovered it was practically worthless because it was so slow for Java Development. I used it for pictures and music, but not much else. Through the years, I owned a couple more PowerBooks, but rarely found them fast enough to use on a day-to-day basis. I kept doing most of my development on Windows.

In January 2006, everything changed. I kept my Windows box around at home, but mostly because it was connected to my 23" monitor and I didn't feel like switching things out. When I moved last summer, I put my Windows box in a closet and bought a 30" monitor. I've hardly touched that Windows box since. Of course, it helps that I have Parallels installed on my Mac.

Now I have two MacBook Pros (a 17" I bought and a 15" that LinkedIn gave me). Last year I convinced my sister to buy a MacBook. Time I've had to spend in the last year helping her fix it: 0 minutes.

Yesterday, I took my Dad to his local Mac store and helped him buy a 24" iMac.

The Raible Family is now an all-Mac family and I work at an all-Mac company.

Life is good.

Happy Halloween!

Matt Raible — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 22:10:09 -0600

Abbie and Jack had great Halloween costumes this year. Abbie was Little Bo Peep (she even had a lost sheep) and Jack was Edward the Train. I emphasize Edward because everyone kept calling him "Thomas" and he kept getting mad and telling folks "I'm Edward, not Thomas!".

Julie's sister, Holly, made Jack's awesome costume. The best part about it was she made the back of it into his candy-holder so whenever folks would hand him candy, he'd spin around and look over his shoulder while they dropped it in. Today we found out the candy was actually coal - he said he needed a lot more to keep Edward chugging along.

Halloween was a blast this year: great costumes, two nights of trick-or-treating, and a parade/party at the kids' school today. Good stuff all around.