Raible Designs

One deadline down, 4 to go!

This past weekend marked a big accomplishment for me. I moved into my new place in early August and I've scrambling ever since to make it a home. The biggest thing I've been doing is painting. When I originally decided I wanted to buy the place, it looked really clean inside. However, after the previous owners moved out and took all their pictures down, the walls were pretty nasty looking. I was hoping to do a bit of touch up, but ended up doing a helluva lot more. The first week, I painted the living room and Abbie's room (pink) with the help of many friends. Julie's an expert painter and was able to knock out Abbie's room in only a few hours. The living room (with vaulted ceilings) took severals friends and I quite a few nights. Sure there was a lot of beer involved, but we were still painting the whole time.

The next couple weeks, I spent painting my office and its adjoining bathroom. What a pain in the ass. The office was bright yellow and the bathroom was dark green. Since both have high ceilings, I had to paint those too. For some reason, I chose a mostly white color and went to town. It felt like it took forever, but I finished last Tuesday. It took 4 coats to cover up the yellow and 5 to cover up the green - but it looks sooo much better.

Last weekend was a major deadline for me. I've been working almost every night to get my new place in a condition where I don't feel like I have to work on it - where I'm totally moved in. Sure I still have a lot to do in the garage (and I still need to move my tools to work on the bus), but it finally feels like a home. My deadline was largely motivated by Jack's birthday party here last weekend. I was literally working up until the minute the party started. The worst part was shoveling and hauling 20 tubs of rotten apples out of my backyard.

I have the biggest apple tree I've ever seen and it drops apples like they're going out of style. I counted them in a 24-hour period last weekend and there was 100 new apples! I thought it was cool when I first moved in, but now it seems like a lot of work. However, it's such a good shade tree, it'd be a shame to do anything to it. Below are some pics of the new place.

So what are my 4 other deadlines? I have a project due for my client, AppFuse 2 needs to be released, I need to deliver training materials for a class in October and I have to turn in my Software Summit Presentations. All are due on September 1st (this weekend). Yikes - I'd better get to work!

The First Day of School

Today was Abbie and Jack's first day at their new school and boy were they excited. With new lunchboxes and backpacks, what's their not to be excited about? They're both in preschool as Abbie is a bit young for kindergarten (she turns 5 in November). She did take a test for kindergarten and got in, but Julie decided it'd be best to try her in preschool first since her spot disappears as soon as she turns it down. I had a great morning today driving them there (it's about a mile away) and hung out for a while afterwards. Seems like a fun school - made me miss the old days of being a kid.

I went to a K-8 that only had 60 students. You think that's bad - a good friend of mine spent his entire elementary years in a 1-room schoolhouse! There were only 8 kids in his school. The Local School Directory lists that school at 6 students this year. Mine looks quite a bit smaller than 25 years ago - now sitting at 33.

They sure do grow up fast.

Jack broke his foot

The scene looks innocent enough - a 2-year old boy and his 4-year old big sister having some fun playing together. They're in the 4-year old's room, being awfully quiet. The sister comes up with a great idea - they clear some toys off the book/toy shelf (which is built into the wall) and use it as a launch pad to get to the bed. A blood-curdling scream shakes the foundation of the house 3 minutes later.

I don't know how many successful jumps they made, but Jack didn't quite make the bed on one of his jumps. Julie called me yesterday to tell me he'd gotten hurt and couldn't walk. Neither Abbie or he could recall how he'd gotten hurt. He laid on the couch for a few hours before Julie decided to take him to the emergency room. It was a good thing she did - x-rays verified he'd broken his foot.

It's not a bad break, but it's a small fracture on a growth bone, so he's going to have to have surgery on it. I've been out of town this week, so I didn't get a chance to witness all the fun. After the x-rays, apparently Julie was able to pry the story out of both kids.

I'm pretty impressed that my little boy broke his first bone before he was 3. He must be a Raible.

One 30" monitor or two 23" monitors?

As part of Julie and I's divorce settlement, I let her keep my 23" Cinema Display along with its attached Windows PC. Since I like having a Windows PC available, I managed to buy the same machine on eBay for $250. However, now I'm in the market for a new monitor.

So what should I get? One 30" cinema display or two 23" displays?

I'm leaning towards two 23 inchers. Matrox's DualHead2Go seems to provide exactly what I'd need to hook two 23s to a MacBook Pro. Furthermore, I could hook it up to my DVI KVM switch and have dual monitors on both my Mac and my PC. No matter how big the screen is, I always seem to enjoy dual monitors more.

What do you think? Is anyone out there using Matrox's DualHead2Go Digital Edition?

5 Years

Doh! It looks like I missed my 5-year blogiversary last week. It's hard to believe it's been 5 years since I started this blog on August 1, 2002. A lot has happened since then: Abbie was born, we moved from Morrison to Denver, Jack was born and Julie built a new house. For those that know me personally, a lot has happened this summer too.

Julie and I are getting a divorce.

Our reason is simple - we're not in love with each other like we expect a married couple should be in love. It's going to be a good move for the both of us and while it might be hard to get through the next several months, we'll both be happier in the long run. We still plan on raising a family together, we'll just be doing it from two separate households and living two separate lives. I bought a house a few weeks ago and moved in last week. This past weekend was my first "Daddy's weekend" and the kids and I had a blast.

I realize that divorce is a sensitive subject and it might not be something that folk's think is appropriate for a blog post. I started this blog in order to document my life's history and this seems like a pretty important thing to document. My life has certainly changed a lot in the past couple months and it's likely to change quite a bit more in the future. I realize I haven't been blogging much lately - now you know why. I don't know if I'll return to actively blogging like I once did, but I think I will.

I've turned off comments for this post - I hope you understand. If you'd like to tell me your story about successfully raising children of divorce, I'd love to hear about it.

Update: It figures - my contact form appears to have been broken for the last month or so. If you used it to send me a message, there's a good chance I didn't receive it. Sorry - it should be fixed now.

Proof that Abbie is growing up fast

There's been a couple of significant events in Abbie's (and our) lives in the last couple of weeks. First of all, Julie and the kids spent two weeks down in Florida at the beginning of May. Julie's mom has a pool, so the kids enjoyed swimming in it almost every day. They've both been taking swimming lessons, but they certainly couldn't swim by themselves. Julie taught Abbie to do an underwater breaststroke rather than doggie paddling after the first few days. By the time I arrived (a week after their arrival), Abbie could swim all by herself, underwater. By the end of the week, she could swim from one end of the pool to the other. Pretty impressive I must say.

The 2nd event I learned about on Friday night. Sometime last week, Julie decided to start giving Abbie money to do chores around the house. She can only earn a maximum of $1 per day, but she's super pumped about it and is always asking if she can do stuff. Her room is usually spotless now. With her new found wealth, she needed something to store it in - so Julie bought them piggy banks over the weekend. Who knows how long their enthusiasm will last, but I think it's important to teach them how much things cost and how they can save money to get things they want. When I was a kid, I had a lot of chores and earned something like $5/week. While I didn't like the chores, I loved the allowance. It's good to see inflation hasn't influenced allowances too much.

Off to Florida

While I've been trouncing around the globe with my Dad, Julie and the kids have been splashing around Julie's mom's pool in Florida. Tonight I'll be joining them via a Frontier red eye. I'm not looking forward to the flight, but it'll be great to see everyone. Hopefully by this time tomorrow, I'll be sipping on a cold Corona and sitting by the pool. I like the idea of going on vacation a lot better than attending the JavaOne festivities.

Cheers!

The Flight to Amsterdam

Tomorrow morning, my dad, Bruce and I will be getting on a Continental flight headed for Amsterdam. We stop in Houston for a couple hours, then it's a 10-hour flight from there. Bruce found a diagram of our plane and it appears to have power outlets. Inspired by this news, I went out and bought an adapter for my MacBook Pro.

Now the question is - where there be enough room for my 17" laptop?

The last flight I was on (to Boston a few weeks ago), there was no room for a laptop. When the guy leaned back in front of me, I ended up with barely enough room to scratch my nose. A 15" laptop wouldn't have solved that problem. Has anyone out there flown internationally in a Boeing 767? We're in economy, so it might be tight, but I would like to get some work done on the flight. I'm willing to take both my MacBooks, but it would suck if I couldn't use either one. On the other hand, it'd be nice if I knew my 17" would work fine and I only had to take one. Thanks for any advice.

Update: The adventure/drama has already begun! My dad forgot his passport in Oregon and we've been on the phone with Fedex and UPS trying to get it here before our flight takes off at 11:20. Fedex was $384 for a "it should get there" delivery. UPS gave us a "guaranteed delivery" for $75 and told us it would get here by 9. Once they gave us the tracking number, they switched it to 10. Those bastards! Oh well, at least I'm on the flight - who knows about my dad.

Saturday @ 7 AM: UPS Tracking shows his passport is in Ontario, Canada (an arrival scan, no departure shown). WTF - the two hour flight from Portland to Denver wasn't short enough?!

Saturday @ 9 AM: Julie has the passport in her hands and is driving out to the airport to give it to my dad. He came with me an hour ago to check in and explain his situation. Looks like he's going to make it!

Happy Anniversary Julie!

Julie and I got married seven years ago today. For our wedding, we invited all our friends fly down to West Palm Beach and party it up for a week. Most folks flew down on Wednesday, some showed up Thursday, and all enjoyed the festivities on Saturday. If you happened to be at the wedding, you might want to reminisce with some old pictures. If nothing else, looking at the pictures will show you how much digital picture quality has improved in 7 years.

To celebrate, we went out to a fancy dinner downtown last night. After dinner, we barely slipped into Comedy Works for John Heffron. The show was sold out, but some folks didn't show up so we ended up getting front row seats! We hadn't even heard of John Heffron, but it turned out to be a really funny show.

Thanks Julie for such a fun married life!

New Swing Set

Below is what Julie built while I watched Caddy Shack last night (I know, I'm a slacker). Abbie and Jack couldn't be happier right now.

Update on Sunday: Checkout the finished product - it has a climbing wall, slide and fort too boot!