Raible Designs

[TSE] Rapid Web Application Development with Rob Harrop

There's a couple of other sessions I should probably go to, namely Juergen's talk on Transactions and Mark Fisher's Message Driven POJOs Rock! However, transactions is generally a pretty boring topic and I don't see myself developing any MDPs in the next two weeks. If you don't use your knowledge in two weeks, you generally lose it, so I'll wait to learn more about MDPs until someone pays me to. I know a fair bit already, so I don't know that there's a whole lot more to learn.

I'm attending Rob Harrop's Rapid Web Application Development Essentials talk. With any luck, I'll learn some new tips that we can use in AppFuse.[Read More]

[TSE] Domain Driven Design with Eric Evans

I've arrived at The Spring Experience, 45 minutes late for the first talk. I tried to get up early, but decided I'd rather get 6 hours of sleep instead of 4. I'm now sitting in Eric Evans' Introduction to Domain-Driven Design talk and the room is packed. I've never seen Eric talk before, but he seems a bit unprepared. His PowerPoint presentation is not in full-screen mode, so you can see where he hasn't finished slides and such. He's also very soft-spoken and seems to have an interesting way of convincing the audience his ideas are good. I feel like I'm sitting in some sort of NPR Seminar.[Read More]

Back in Denver

Raible Road Trip #11 was an excellent vacation. Our plan to drive through the night worked out splendidly. Not only did I make it to 7:30 a.m. (with the help of a bit of Red Bull), but I got to jam to my favorite tunes all night long. We left at 11 p.m. and I handed over the reigns to Julie just outside of Billings. She drove for the next 3 hours, and I took over again for the final 3. Total time: 14 hours.

We arrived at the cabin at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday. Actually, I should say we got stuck at the cabin at 1:00 because we made it all the way up the "bumpy road", but didn't make the last hill. 40 minutes later and at 40 miles an hour, I made it up the last hill. The next 3 days at the cabin were great. We took Cookie the Dog and she loved it as much as the kids did. The drive home over the last 2 days wasn't nearly as pleasant as the drive there, but listening to "Little Einstein's" on the DVD player is never as much fun as listening to your favorite tunes.

Click on the images below to view pictures from The Cabin.

The next couple weeks will likely be hectic. This week I'll be writing AppFuse 2.0 documentation. Next week I'll be delivering a Spring + Hibernate class in Boise, Idaho with Country Bry and Scott from Virtuas. Then I'll be flying to The Spring Experience on Thursday for a weekend in paradise. Better yet, I'll be spending the following week in Florida on vacation.

Livin' it up in NYC

I'll admit, this week has been exhausting. There's nothing like doing consulting 9-6 everyday for a client - especially when you're presenting or talking 90% of the time. My final presentation I delivered to the client was 600 slides. Yikes!

Even while this week was tough, I did manage to have a good time. I have a couple college buddies that live here, so they're always fun to hang out with. Wednesday night, we all met up at one guy's house for dinner and reminisced about the good ol' days. Last night, I hung out with my relatives from Beacon.

After finishing up with my client, I met my Aunt Mary in the lobby of the New Yorker Hotel. We walked outside, and when I started hailing a cab she said "What are you doing? I got a limo!" "WTF?!", I said out loud. I turned around to see Mary had brought my cousins along and they'd rented a limo for the night. Needless to say, we had a great time riding around, eating a fancy dinner and ended the night with champagne and cheesecake in Little Italy. It was truly awesome and definitely made my whole week.

Now I'm at the airport bar in Laguardia, sluggin' down a few before I head back to Denver. The next couple weeks are guaranteed to be hectic - I leave on Wednesday for the Ajax Experience, followed by JavaOne the week after. While traveling to clients isn't the most glamorous job in the world, getting paid to learn about Ajax/Java for two weeks in San Fransisco isn't a bad gig.