Raible Designs

What a great vacation

We just rolled in last night from our family road trip to Montana. It was definitely a long drive - taking 2 days both ways. Yellowstone was awesome. We arrived at Old Faithful just minutes before it went off. We also strolled around a number of geysers and Abbie loved all of them. They were very beautiful and easily the best part of the drive up. Abbie even got to go fishing for the first time, in the Snake River just south of Yellowstone.

Once we got to the cabin, a great time was had by all. We attended the local 4th of July festivities and I got to catch up with some folks I went to grade school and high school with. It was fun meeting everyone's kids and spouses, and you can't beat the beer prices in Montana ($1.50 for a cold Bud Light). Abbie loved all the horses running around.

On the eve of the 4th, we had an excellent fireworks show and also broke ground on The New Cabin that my dad is building. Julie had a lot of fun operating the Excavator. The rest of the week was spent swimming, fishing, taking saunas, and tearing off the roof of the cabin. My mom even bought a 4-wheeler, which was a blast to ride around. I'd longed for one ever since I knew what they were, so it was pretty cool to have a childhood dream come true - in the same location I'd always wanted one.

I definitely recommend the road trip thing if you have kids. It was a great way to spend quality time together and enjoy some of the beautiful world we live in.

As for e-mail, that wasn't bad at all - only 243 messages. We had so much fun on this trip, I think we're going to include the drive up as part of the tradition. It's neat to think that I'll be taking the same vacation every summer for the rest of my life. It'll be especially fun to watch the kids grow up and how their perception changes each year. Now I just need to figure out a way to spend the whole month of July in Montana. Those Europeans are smart - we all need to take a month off in the summer.

Off to Big Sky Country

In only a few more hours, we're heading on Raible Family Roadtrip #9. Number 7 was when Julie, Abbie and I traveled up the California coast, and number 8 was when my Dad and I drove my '66 Bus to Denver from San Diego. This time it's going to be much more special. The end destination is my favorite place on earth. We're heading for the cabin, which is a log cabin my grandpa built in 1918. I was born in one corner, my sister in the other, and I spent the first 16 years of my life there.

Spending the 4th of July at the cabin has been a long standing family tradition. It's always fun to watch the parade and the O-Mok-See in the small town I grew up in. The Swan Valley is a very special place and my friends that visit often return. It really is one of those uniquely special places on Earth.

I love road trips. Julie hates them, but tolerates the fact that I love them. The main reason we're not flying to Montana is because the flights are very expensive. It's a 1 and 1/2 hour plane ride and a 15-hour drive in the car. It's a good thing we have a DVD system in our Odyssey for the kids - 15 hours is a heckuva long trip.

While I was at JavaOne last week, Julie did some research and discovered that Yellowstone isn't too far out of our way, so we're staying there tomorrow night. I've been to Yellowstone a few times, and every time it takes my breath away. I can't wait to see the look on Abbie's face when she sees an Elk right outside her window.

The best part about the whole trip? It's sure to be the family, laughing and creating memories. But I'm also going unplugged - which I haven't done in a while. For the next week, I'll be without a laptop and refusing to check voicemail or e-mail. E-mail is going to suck when I get back, but the peace of mind while I'm gone is sure to be priceless.

Pictures from Norway

I didn't see many of the sites in Norway, but I have a feeling I'll be back again. I think Julie would love Norway, so I'm going to try to bring her with me next time. Click on the images below to see more pictures.

PowerBook Dead?

I think my PowerBook has died. It figures - the one week in my life where I need it all week, and it quits working. The symptoms started happening yesterday as I was sitting in DIA, getting ready to come to Norway. The powercord wasn't lighting up when I plugged it into an outlet at the airport. At first I figured it was the outlet, and switched between a few different outlets. None of them worked, and I thought to myself "I'm screwed." Then I wiggled the connection where it connects to my laptop - and it lit up! "Phew, that was a close one", I thought.

I ran down my battery on the flight to Newark, and then found an outlet to recharge on my layover. No light. I tried 3 more outlets. No light. At this point, I figured it was my powercord and wondered if I'd even be able to buy one in Norway. I looked desparately around the terminal for another PowerBook user - hoping to buy a powercord off someone. No luck.

Now that I'm in Oslo, getting my PowerBook working again is my top priority. I found an Apple Store and I'm typing this from a PowerBook they have on display. Typing is a little difficult because it's a Norwegian keyboard and all the special characters are not on the keys I'm used to. I talked to the guy at the service desk and he tried the simple solution: using a powercord from one of the PowerBooks on display. No dice. Even worse, it seems to have fried the cord of the one on display!

My PowerBook doesn't seem to be totally gone - the light is still fading in and out on the front of it. But I can't turn it off (even after removing the battery), so I don't know what to do. I'm going to try searching Apple's forums and calling their support line, but I doubt either will work. Right now, it looks like I'll have to buy a new laptop (with a Norwegian keyboard) and spend the next 2 days re-creating all the training materials for this week. No power, no hard drive. Damn.

Luckily, I did send some of my presentations (in PDF form) via e-mail, so I haven't lost everything. I knew I should have backed up the Keynote files on a remote site before I left!

And so my adventure begins...

Update: I figured out a solution. Using a charged battery still works - so the Apple Store is charging mine right now. I'm on my laptop, with one of their batteries, using their wireless. Unfortunately, the only way to charge my battery is in a PowerBook. The guys at Bouvet offered me a PC laptop, but I'm so used to presenting on the Mac - I don't want to lose that comfort level. So it looks like the solution is to buy a new PowerBook.

The good news is I get a 25% discount on the price when I leave the country (hopefully bringing it inline with US prices), but the bad news is it has a Norwegian keyboard. I can remap the keys, so that's not a big deal (since I don't look at them anyway). So the question is do I go whole hog and get the 1.67 GHz 17" with 2 GB RAM - or do I get a 12" and give it to Julie when I get back? The problem with buying the "whole hog" is I'm afraid the dual G4 cores will be released in early June, and I'll be stuck. The problem with buying a 12" and giving it to Julie is she really doesn't want one and will complain we can't afford it (she's right too).

If I bought the 17", I I could try selling it on eBay right when I get back, and hopefully get it sold before the new PowerBooks are announced. If they're not announced - oh well, I got a new laptop (which I need, but not really). What would you do if you were in my situation?

Update 2: Right after posting the update above, the guy came over to me and we talked about 17" vs. 12" and RAM prices, etc. They close in 10 minutes, I chose the 17" with 1 GB of RAM (1 chip). It's something like 27,000 kroners. Yikes!

See you in Norway

My flight leaves Denver at 1:00 this afternoon and I arrive in Oslo at 9:45 tomorrow morning. Riding first class on the way to New Jersey should be quite a treat. There's no outlets on the flight (I called and asked Continental), so I won't be able to get much work done. I might as well sit back, watch a movie or two, and have a couple cocktails.

A friend of mine (hey Frenchie) told me the best strategy for overcoming jet lag is to stay up all day until the local time's evening - and go to bed at the same time as everyone else. So I arrive around midnight Denver time, and if I stay up until bed-time Oslo time, it'll be like staying up until noon tomorrow. Should be interesting for sure.

I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow, as well as blog about my experience getting over there. Stay tuned!

Happy Birthday Julie!

Happy Birthday Julie! Today we're loving life: Julie got to sleep 'til noon and now everyone is relaxing in the pool. Tonight the party starts at 7:00. Florida is beautiful this time of year.

Short Week

There's nothing like trying to get a bunch of hours in on a short week. I thought I would be able to get in a full week, by working 13-hour days. We leave on Thursday for West Palm Beach (Julie's birthday present) - so I'm trying to avoid the opportunity cost of missing 2 days this week. I managed to get in 13 yesterday by riding to work at 4:30 and starting the day early. Today, my luck hasn't been so good. It's 1:20 p.m. and I still haven't made it into the office. Julie had Jury Duty this morning and she's still downtown getting interviewed. Oh well, the kids and I had fun this morning: a stroller ride to the bagel store, riding the swings at Wash Park and a picnic in the park for lunch. Now they're both sleeping and as frustrated as I am that I'm not getting my hours in - I realize that this is probably as good as a day gets. I might as well have a beer during their naps!

A weekend of fun

After working long hours last week, it was nice to have a weekend of relaxing and playing with the kids. Julie to Vegas on Friday night and returned Saturday night - so I had the kids solo for 24 hours. Saturday morning, I took them to Tiny Town where fun was had by all. Today, we took Jack on his first bike ride. Below are some pics from the events.

Jack is crawling!

Jack's been scootching around for a couple of weeks now. Tonight he decided it was time to start using his knees - and lo and behold - he's now a crawler! Good stuff little man.

Jack in his scootching days

On related note, I showed Julie that today (05.05.05) only happens once in 7000 years - she responded with "yeah, well Jack will only crawl once ever."

The back-to-work blahs

Last week I had a really good time at the MySQL Conference. I hung out with some extremely smart folks and learned a lot about various things, such as the Dvorak Keyboard Layout, why James Duncan Davidson hates Ant and why we have Session and Entity Beans (two companies couldn't agree). I spent way too much time working on AppFuse and trying to get the 1.8 release out (it's close, hopefully this week). I also did a 1/2 day seminar on Spring, AppFuse and Comparing Web Frameworks for a company in San Francisco - which was fun.

All of this techno-fun was quickly forgotten when Julie flew in on Friday and we headed down to Cambria, CA for a fun weekend of wine-tasting. Now I'm back at work with many-a-deadline and 81 starred messages in my GMail account. Last week, I realized that doing the open-source and Spring Live stuff is easily a full-time job. The best solution I can think of at the moment is to View Starred Messages » Select All » Delete, followed by ignoring all the e-mails I receive for the rest of the week. I'll try not to do this, but it sure is tempting.

Someone asked me last week how I manage my time effectively and get everything done. The truth is I don't. I simply stay up late, sleep little, or steal weekends away from my family. Tonight, I expect to spend 4+ hours answering e-mail and doing edits for Spring Live. Hopefully I can catch up and get AppFuse 1.8 released before my parents show up on Thursday night.