Raible Designs

Frustrating day with Linux

I can tell I've been getting a little burned out the last few days. I think it had a lot to do with our builder's death last week. I came to realize that working my ass off just doesn't have that many rewards. For most of the weekends this summer, I've been getting up at 4 and working for a few hours until Julie and Abbie get up. Then I do it again on Monday morning. This weekend I didn't get up before 9. And today I slept until 8 - even though I had planned to get up at 4. To make matters worse, rather than putting in hours for my client today, I spent the entire day wrestling with Linux.

I really wanted to get my new Cinema Display working with Suse and Fedora. I'm almost to the conclusion that it "ain't gonna happen". This sucks b/c now I have to leave one of my huge-n-heavy CRT monitors on my desk. Days like today, where I banged my head against the wall all day, are quite discouraging. My office is in turmoil - with open boxes all over the floor, monitors strewn about and video cards piling up on my desk. Some days are better than others. Hopefully my frustrations from today will turn into some type of writing zone later this week.

Update: I finally gave up and hooked my two Linux boxes up to my old KVM switch and a crappy ol' keyboard/mouse that I had lying around. Then I was planning on hooking my PowerBook and XP box up to my new DVI KVM switch. Wouldn't you know it - it doesn't fricken work. The connector on the cinema display is too fat to even plug into the KVM switch. My guess is that no one is using these displays with a KVM or maybe there's a special switch I have to get. Oh well, I guess I can manually switch the monitor b/w OS X and XP if I really need to.

Gloomy Denver Morning

Today was a morning like most. I got up early and was working away. I had to watch Abbie for a couple hours while Julie took her Mom to the airport - but other than that, it was pretty normal. Then it all changed.

At about 10:20 this morning (under an hour ago), Julie rushed into my office to tell me that Bob the Builder had a stroke next door. I ran over there to see if I could help - and there he was - sitting in his Bobcat, unconscious. One of his workers was giving him CPR, but he apparently hadn't been breathing for a few minutes. The ambulance showed up a few minutes after and hauled him away about 10 minutes later. He still wasn't breathing and had no pulse. I hope he's OK.

Update: Bob passed away this morning at Porter Hospital. He will be missed.

August is gonna be a rough one

I've got a lot on my plate for August. Probably too much, but I'm going to make a run at it anyway. In addition to my 40-hour per-week contract, I'm going to try and finish off 1.0 of Spring Live and release the next version of AppFuse. Julie and I were talking last week and I estimated that I'd need about 100 hours outside of "work" to accomplish both of these tasks. That's 65 hour weeks, or 12.5 hour days. Yech...

I'm off to a bad start today since I was twidding with my monitor most of the day and only billed 4 hours to my client. Tonight I got a couple hours in on AppFuse, but only minor bug fixes - no major features. It's gonna be rough - if I seem short or don't post much you'll know why. If I did it right, I'd get up at 4 every day and be I'd have my time in + exercise by 6 p.m. every night.

We'll see how it goes - the baby is due September 3rd (a.k.a. Labor Day Weekend) and I'd like to be done with Spring Live 1.0 and AppFuse 1.6 before the little guy/girl comes out. I told Julie if she had it two weeks late it would work out awful nice for me!

Your order has shipped

Let's hope it's in Denver when I get home on Sunday...

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Item Product   Product                        Total   Total   
     Number    Description                    Ordered Shipped 
______________________________________________________________

001 M9178LL/A  APPLE CIN HD DISPLAY 23" FLAT      1     1 

Yeah baby - I've been waiting to get one of these bad boys for years!

Spider-Man at IMAX

Today we managed to rope our old neighbors (Jenny and Jeff) into watching Abbie while we went to see Spider-Man 2. I was a bit surprised when they guy said "That's be 23 bucks please" - but then I realized it was in the IMAX Theater! I've never seen a real movie in an IMAX theater, and it was awesome! Definitely worth the money. Julie didn't like it because the seats leaned so far back and "chunkey monkey #2" made the position painful for her. Only 6 weeks left until that little sucker pops out. I was 9.5 pounds when I was born - let's hope this one is more Abbie's size (7.2).

If you're interested, here's a listing of IMAX's carrying Spider-Man.

[House Project] Drywall has started

It's been a while since my last update on the house project. The builder says they'll be done before the baby's born (Labor Day). Julie believes him, and I think it'll be take until November. Nevertheless, it's coming along. Wired with fiber. Click below to zoom in and view closeups. Sure has changed a lot, eh?

Huckleberries

For my birthday this year, Julie got me 2 gallons of Huckleberries - shipped from Washington state. If you grew up in Western Montana, you probably know what a huckleberry is. Huckleberries are, simply put, one of the best things on the planet. I once heard them nicely described as a cross between a blueberry and a raspberry.

Growing up in Montana, huckleberries were a part of every summer. I used to go picking them with my Mom and Grandma. They hated taking me though since I just ate them, and never picked any. My favorite dessert in the world is huckleberry cheesecake. My favorite breakfast? Huckleberry pancakes.

Julie cooked huckleberry pancakes for breakfast this morning. Life couldn't be any better right now.

What a great weekend!

This past weekend was a blast. My entire family (Mom, Dad and Sister) flew in on Thursday night for my 30th on Friday. In reality, they were here to see Abbie more than me, but I can accept that - she's a lot of fun. Friday night Julie arranged a "White Trash BBQ". My sister, dad and I had a good time getting ready for it with a quick trip to "Value Village". Lots of folks showed up that night and everyone had a good time - especially the 5 kids running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

Saturday we went and saw I, Robot at a theater downtown. The theater was frickin huge - wider than any I'd ever seen. Even wider than an IMAX. Good flick, wicked theater. That night we went and saw the Rockies play the SF Giants. Rockies lost, but Abbie loves baseball games and we had club-level seats, so we couldn't complain.

Yesterday we went up to Idaho Springs and did a white-water raft trip. It started raining before we even got on the water, which made it even better. It was my Dad, Mom, Kalin (sister) and I + 2 other folks and the guide. Right before the first class 4, we slammed into a rock and it knocked Kalin out of the boat. She swam downstream and got into another boat. Shortly after that, we hit our first class 4 and didn't have enough weight on the high side. You guessed it - the boat flipped. Nobody got hurt and it made our trip all the better. We've all been on several rafting trips, but it was the first time we'd flipped. Good memories, good times, great family - I wish they lived closer. Thanks y'all!

Working too much - what about office hours?

I currently work too much. I can feel it in my shoulders and I know it because I hardly ever exercise. Even worse, I know it because Julie tells me so and Abbie doesn't get to see enough of her Daddy. In addition to working all week, I work early mornings on the weekends, but that tends to spill into late mornings. I also try to cram in a couple hours during Abbie's nap - which usually spills over past when she gets up. During the week, I'll start at 4 or 5, and I'll need to get something done, so I'll work until 7. After Abbie goes to bed, I often hop on the computer again and work until midnight or later. It's easy getting 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week for a client. It's hard doing AppFuse support and writing Spring Live on the side. I virtually ignore all the e-mail on the other open source projects I'm on - it's the only way to keep my sanity.

This madness is likely to continue. The only way to reasonably handle my e-mail (> 1000 day - after spam filters) is to check it every couple of hours. That can't continue, so I'm going to have to change my e-mail address. Sorry folks, it's the easiest solution. I'll decide my new one after the holiday weekend, but matt AT raibledesigns.com will start going to /dev/null.

Julie and I've been talking today and we're trying to come up with more solutions to me working so much - especially since a fair amount of it doesn't pay. We're thinking the best solution is Office Hours. When I work from home, I work too much. When I go into a client's office, I tend to end my day when I get home. So, from now on, I'm going to try and only work from 8 to 5 MDT (-7 GMT). Actually, Julie says she doesn't care if I work before 8, I just need to be done at 5 to play with Abbie and join Julie when she goes to bed.

To help accomplish this, I'm going to start closing the door to my office and using the backdoor to leave and come back during the day. Hopefully it'll be like an office away from home. I'll likely be working on Spring Live in the mornings from 4-8 and doing some AppFuse support as well. My best bet is probably e-mail/blogging from 4-5:30 and writing from 5:30-8 (at the local bagel shop). I'll let you know how it goes. I'd also like to hear other ideas from you "I work too much" guys/gals out there - I know there's lots of you.

[Construction] Photos from May

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

Raible Designs new HQ

From the front

Great Room