Raible Designs

Upgrading Roller and Happiness

I've been meaning to upgrade this site to use the latest Roller CVS source for quite some time (about a month), but haven't got around to it. However, Dave and Lance have been checking in enhancements like mad lately, so I don't know if it's such a good idea. It would be nice to push out a 0.9.7 release in order to add comments to freeroller.net. Things I would like to see in the comments feature are: 1) remembering a user's information, 2) the ability for the site owner to receive comments as e-mails (I currently have this hacked into this site), and 3) the ability for commenters to receive comment replies (if they entered an e-mail address). A super slick feature would be to allow sending of e-mails to an address (i.e. [email protected]) with something that indicates the post - and whalla, it shows up as a comment! That would be cool (so would posting via e-mail eh?). This will be wanted as users start replying to e-mails, rather than posting comments. Of course, this feature might just be too much work. BTW - what do we need to do to push out a 1.0 Release?

Secondly, I'd like to discuss how I intend on fulfilling my New Years Resolution (To Be Happy). I plan on doing some of the following things:

• Spending more time with my family - both immediate (Julie and Abbie) and distant (my parents, Julie's parents, aunts/uncles, grandparents). These people are the most important in my life, and why wouldn't you spend more time with folks that love you?
• Learn more about Java so I feel more confident in my job. This happens no matter what I do - it comes from working with the technology.
• Being a good Dad - both in Julie's eyes and Abbie's. I'm doing good so far - but I know I can do better. The rewards are endless from doing this.
• Getting a new laptop. I have a business philosophy that fast machines == fast development. Of course, it depends on the developer, but it certainly can't hurt. I hope to get a new PowerBook, and I really hope they put out a 2 GHz version so I can quit bitching about how slow Macs are. I'll compliment this with a 23" Apple Cinema Display just for kicks - if my checkbook can rationalize the purchase. This is sure to keep me happy for a week or two.
• Smiling more - this does wonders for your mood. Having a cheerful attitude and a positive perspective on the world makes things much better.
• Hitting the gym. I haven't been to the gym in months, and I really do need to go as my pants are getting painful to wear. I used to go 4-5 times a week, so I need to get back in the groove. I prefer competition-related exercise such as basketball and raquetball - so I'll definitely try to play those more. It's much more fun to go to the gym and kick a friend's ass at raquetball than to just go and lift weights. Hopefully, I'll begin this next week.
• Worrying less. Not that I do it much right now - that's Julie's job and she does it well ;-). I do worry about work-related stuff a lot though, and do have trouble sleeping some nights because I'm debugging code in my head.
• Get off the computer and get outside more. It's amazing how much more I enjoy the days that I never touch the computer. Also, camping and hiking can do wonders for the soul.

Subversion - CVS Replacement?

I heard of Subversion this morning from Erik Hatcher's publisher. It looks to be a CVS replacement, but as I'm happy with CVS (and satisfied that I've learned it), I don't think I'll be using it any time soon. It comes from the folks at Tigris.org, who have also provided us with Scarab. I am using Scarab, or I've at least installed it at work and intend to use it on our project. Scarab is a bug tracking application that is cheaper than JIRA and supposedly better than Bugzilla. I wish I could use JIRA b/c I really like the product, but as with most things - clients just want you to do something with free tools, rather than shelling out some extra cash to get things like IDEA and JIRA.

BTW, I'm sure you've heard that IDEA is on sale now. Will I buy it? Nope, I'm in love with Eclipse. Would I buy it if I'd used it for more than 2 days? Probably, but everything is working as I like it in Eclipse, and I'm such an IDE-minimalist, it just makes no sense.

You might be wondering why I was speaking with Erik Hatcher's publisher this morning? Heck if I know?! He sent me an e-mail saying that Erik had recommended me as a source for the newest and coolest Java Tools. Thanks Erik - but I don't know that I'm much of a source. I told him I thought that Maven, XDoclet and Hibernate would probably get a lot of attention in the coming months. He was interested in seeing if they deserved books. I don't think XDoclet does, as it's got so many different modules, it would be difficult to cover them all. It would be VERY cool to see a book written that develops an application using these tools.

This is why Erik's book is popular - people can take stuff from it and learn. Sure, they learn initially by copy/paste, but it's still learning. Hibernate probably deserves a book as I can't seem to grok it - although I did delete approx. 100 lines of code today after I learned some good tricks. I don't know if Erik's publisher was serious, but he did ask me if I'd be interested in writing a book. I told him "thanks, but no thanks" - Julie has asked that I never write a book again. I can't blame her, it's too much stress and computer time in my opinion. Especially considering that I killed my weekly Virus Scan (Friday nights) for the 10th time since I'm working (again) on a Friday night. It hasn't run in over two months!

I'd definitely like to speak about this stuff, maybe at conferences or such. Of course, I'd have to learn a helluva lot more before I could make that happen.

Fighting Technology and Fatherhood

Today was one of those days I hate. I've been struggling with Hibernate for what seems like weeks now. Today was a day that almost convinced me to quit trying. I seem to be fighting with XDoclet and Hibernate all day, every day. I don't seem to be getting anything done on my AppFuse project, nor at my new on-site project.

I am getting things done, but if I'd just done JDBC, I'd probably much further ahead than I am right now. Such is the life of someone that tries to learn the latest technologies. I remember doing this with Struts and now I'm grateful that I did. Hopefully, using/learning/struggling with XDoclet and Hibernate will soon get better. The Hibernate and XDoclet developers have been great in dealing with my learning curve - thanks guys.

I predict my learning curve will be similar as that with Struts. This means that I will write all kinds of code as workarounds for problems I'm having - since I have ridiculous deadlines and I need to get it working. The sad part is that I'm willing to bet that I'll delete a whole bunch of this code when I finally figure out how to work with Hibernate, rather than against it. I think it's a great framework, but I'm trying to do too much from examples, rather than digging in and actually learning the framework. This is the hard way, but alas - I will learn it well - through my own mistakes.

I got a nice break from Technology tonight as Julie and I went to pick up our new car. We drove the long way home - through Red Rocks. We enjoyed the smooth ride, bright lights, and nice stereo. The bug had all of this, but the Accord is newer, and therefore, more fun. We stopped and bought a bottle of wine at one of my favorite liquor stores in Morrison and had a nice little celebration. I was planning on finishing up my struts-resume sample application tonight, but instead decided to play with Abbie. We gurgled and had some "tummy time" - and I definitely feel like I did the right thing.

I think I really need to stop working so much, and start being a Dad more. I've worked every weekend since she was born, and I feel like an Ass for it. Hopefully, the Wrox gig will be over soon, and I'll be able to catch up on my work for OnPoint and relax a little more. All this extra work is wearing me thin, especially when it's been dumping in the mountains lately - I don't know how many more "8 inches at Vail" e-mails I can take!!

The encouraging news (for you, the reader) is that I (with the help of Keith) upgraded this site to use a 100MB connection tonight. Hopefully the site will be a bit faster, but you know how bandwidth works - you pay for more and never seem to get it.

New Car Shopping - the lost post

Julie and I had a nice day together on Saturday. Grammy (Julie's mom) was in town for the holidays and was more than happy to be our babysitter. Our goal for the day was to go and look at new cars, in hopes of finding one we liked. My bug is a little impracticle now since it has such a small back seat and it's a pain to put a carseat in and out of. Julie did some research on the web, and had already looked at the Toyota Camry, as well as briefly looking at the Honda Accord. I've been out of the process for most of it b/c of my writing, and so it was a nice day to get together, do some shopping and make a mutual decision. We started out at the Audi dealership b/c I love the A4 (man their website is slow, and it doesn't work in Phoenix) and then tried the VW Passat, the Mazda 6 (did you know that Mazda is owned by Ford) and finally the Honda Accord. We actually stumbled upon the Mazda, as the sales guy at the Audi/VW place happened to also be a saleman at the Maza place next door. Here's what I thought of each:

• Audi A4 - this was my dream car. It drives real nice, it's fast and it looks awesome. Problem? It's small, and when I say small, I mean small. The interior room is smaller than my bug to give you an idea. That sucs b/c I really wanted this car. Pretty damn expensive though, so probably good that we didn't like it after we drove it.
• VW Passat - much roomier, but definitely a step down from the A4 feature-wise. The stereo (a Monsoon system), seemed awful, but that couldn't been b/c we just got done driving the A4 with a Bose system.
• Mazda 6 - very nice car, and definitely better than the first two. The problem - we never had Mazda on our list of cars-to-look-at, and we felt like we were "settling" if we got it. Definitely an awesome car, and if they'd had the color/V6 we wanted, we probably would've bought it.
• Honda Accord - this is a P-H-A-T car! It's definitely a family rig, but the inside is like a Cadi and it's still reasonably priced. It had everything the A4 had (save auto-up windows), plus a navigation system that Julie wants and I think is a waste of money - $2000! Of course, I wanted the 17" roms, and that's definitely a waste of money.

So I think we're going to get teh Accord if we can find the right color and a V6. We'll see, they have some great rebates through the end of teh year (Tuesday), so who knows. After shopping for calls all day, we went to the Raible Designs' Holiday Party at Morton's Steak House. Only a couple people showed up (the only two employees), but it was definitely a great time, and a nice romantic evening.

It was also fun b/c I used to work for the valet (Kenny) in college, when I was a valet in downtown Denver (Larimer Square). He's a very cool guy and I haven't seen him in about 7 years - so it was nice to catch up. It should be a good week if I get to start driving a new car, but it'll be sad to see the ol' Turbo (a.k.a. Speedy Gonzales) go away. There goes my youth - onto being a dad and a family man. With a kid as cute as Abbie, it's going to be a lot of fun.

Above was the post I lost on Sunday, and since I had the screenshot, I felt the need to post it anyway. We did find the Honda Accord we wanted today and went into Planet Honda to sign all the paperwork. It's schedule to arrive tomorrow, but could be as late as Friday. We'll see - the hard part is over, now we just have to pick it up. I also finished the writing part of my Struts chapter last night - finally! I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I'll be posting the sample app for it in the next week or so.

Phoenix Sucks

I just typed up a huge long post about Julie and I's car-shopping experience yesterday, and just as I was about to hit submit, Phoenix crashed! Friggen browser. It crashes a fair amount too, just never when I had a page worth of data ready to go. I did get a screen shot of about half of it though, so I'll attempt to reproduce it tomorrow. Sucks though - Mozilla and IE never crash, maybe it's time to go back.

RE: Reading Blogs

Well said Chris. I enjoy the personal side of blogs more than the technical side to be honest. I view the java.blogs community like a group of co-workers. I'd much rather hear about a co-workers weekend over their use of an I or Impl to name their interfaces ;-)

Give us the good stuff - talk about your families, the parties, the birthdays - we're listening... eagerly. I'm looking forward to Christmas morning with Mimosas (Orange Juice and Champagne) - a family tradition of Julie's. Her mom and sister, Stephanie and Holly, are in town for the week and festivities. Abbie's first Christmas - I'll post pictures by the end of the week. I'm heading out to do some last-minute Christmas shopping (typical guy right?) and then we're going to see the Twin Towers later this afternoon.

I guess you could say I won't get the chapter/sample app done today - maybe later this week. I've got all the writing done - 38 pages, but need a good app to go with it IMO. A good friend told me yesterday to just "get it out" - he mentioned that the last technical book he read had code that didn't even compile! It should be nice not worrying about writing this afternoon and tomorrow - first time in weeks. I feel like I've somewhat missed out on Christmas with writing and the new job. I can't wait until I get to do 50 hour weeks again!

Watching TV and Blogging

I have the opposite problem that Jeff has. He says he can't watch TV and blog as he never gets any blogging done. I can't watch TV and blog as I never get any TV watching done. Then again, I have Tivo so I can always rewind. But it is a pain the butt when I settle down to watch some football and I miss the whole game!

But I grew up without TV, so I actually don't like the stuff and I'm one of those parents who fear for their kids TV-watching habits. Julie, on the other hand, is a TV addict and loves the stuff. Should be an interesting compromise to raise Abbie (+1 in a year or two) with our opposite views on the boob tube.

Bloody Noses and Struts Chapter Progress

I've gotten three bloody noses in the last 36 hours - and I don't seem to recall ever having them before in my life! Yikes - is the stress getting to me?! Oh well, I'm sure I'll be fine. I read on a website today that bloody noses are way over-emphasized and they aren't a big deal at all.

I'm at 22 pages on the Struts chapter now, doing Exceptions and how Struts lets you declare exceptions in your struts-config.xml -- pretty cool stuff. The bad part is that I've never used them before, so it's kinda tough to write about them - at least in the context of Struts. I tried to use Strut's ApplicationException (now renamed ModuleException) last summer on a client's project - and it was too buggy to use. Now it seems to to work as I originally expected it to, and it's pretty sweet. I do feel like I'm building an application to show functionality though, rather than developing an application to fulfill some requirements, which is unfortunate. I'd rather build an application that employs KISS, and shows the easy way to do things. It's like using design patterns because your manager thinks they're a good idea, but you could get the project done in half the time without them. Sure, your app might not be extendable in the future, but if it doesn't live past 3 months, what's the point?! Of course, I think using the Validator and Tiles is easy, and many developers think that's the complicated part. If my learning curve was up to snuff, Exception and Modules (a.k.a sub-applications) would be easy. Soon they will be, though I still may never use them.

Tomorrow is my last day (for a while) as a full-time employee of Raible Designs. I've certainly enjoyed the last year, but I've missed the office comradery and face-to-face interaction. It'll be good to get back into an office, but I'm sure I'll miss coding in my living room within a week, and wish I was back here.

I'm going to get my mugshot tomorrow for the Wrox book - I've convinced Abbie and Julie to go with me so we can get some good family photos - should be fun. After that, I'm going to fill out the paperwork - W2's - for the new gig, and then off to a project kick-off party! Sounds like my kind of project already!! It's got a good name too - Project Fiji. One of the things I'm looking forward to is implementing Struts and Hibernate (if they'll let me) using XDoclet. I've done it in my sample project and AppFuse (expect a new release in a week), but it'll be awesome to cut our development time in half right away! Especially when the first deliverable is due January 15th!

If I'm good (and I can figure it out), I hope to use Maven on the project as well. It should be interesting to be the primary Java Developer on the project, along with a Web Developer and Oracle DBA. I've always been the web developer - but I've learned so much in the past year and a half (since I met Struts), that I feel more than comfortable being the Java guy. You know what the best part is - I feel like I've learned more from the java.blogs community than I have from studying for certifications, or from any conferences I've been to. Keep it up - learning is awesome!

You know what the better part is? Julie just said to me - "thanks for making all my dreams come true." Enough said, life is awesome - even with toilet paper stuffed up my nose and a chapter that seems like it'll never get done.

The headache that won't end

I've had a headache ever since I had the stomach flu last week. It's pretty bad in the mornings - almost a migrane/throbbing type of headache. Of course, it could be due to stress from writing these chapters, or from staring at the computer screen too long. BUT, Julie's mom, who also got sick, has been experiencing the same never-ending headache. I can't help but wonder if this is something related to the war on terrorism - did I catch some type of virus that is going to kill me in a month?! Julie thinks I'm full of it - she doesn't have a headache. I wonder if I should go to the doctor or just quite staring at this damn screen.

Day 1 of Writing

I spent most of the day today in the library, pounding away on my keyboard trying to get a good start on my first chapter, Security in Web Applications. I put together suggested outlines for my two chapters over the weekend, and I'm posting them here for your review. I tried to convert them to PDF, but then decided to leave them as Word documents so you can 1) see the outline view, and 2) comment in-line if you'd like. I'll also post the PDF version (thanks to FastPDF).

• Chapter Outline - Security (35K), PDF (17K)
• Chapter Outline - Struts (41K), PDF (22K)

It was difficult getting started today, but once I got moving, I found that the words just kinda flowed out and it was rather enjoyable. The bad news is that I have until Friday to complete some 40-odd pages and I'm going skiing tomorrow with Julie's uncle, Chris Voda. Actually, the skiing is the good part, it'll clear my head and get me ready to write like a coder in the zone.