Raible Designs

2006 - A Year in Review

Looking back at 2006, it's amazing to see everything that happened. One of the main reasons I started this blog was to provide a history of my life. Now it's time to cash in on that cool feature and look back at the last 12 months.

In early January, I finished working on the Vongo project. I eventually had to shut off comments for my post on Vongo because there were so many complaints. The good news is I didn't work on the UI or service part of it, just the Spring/Hibernate/XFire backend. A week later, Apple announced the MacBook Pro and I purchased one immediately. I still have the same machine and couldn't be happier. A week after that, I quietly released AppFuse 1.9, went to the Broncos vs. Patriots game, then left the next morning for Cancun to celebrate my dad's 60th. I got to watch the Broncos season end after returning from Cancun. January 2006 is one for the books - I scored good tickets to two playoff games and spent a week in Cancun! I'd relive that month without hesitation.

In February, I began playing with Maven 2 , figured out how to use Tiles with WebWork and did a fundraiser for the CSS Framework design contest. I even posted some pictures of my ride to work. Prior to freezing my ass off, Jack had a rough week with Rotavirus and ended up in the Emergency Room.

At the end of February, I received my MacBook Pro and fell in love with everything but the wireless. My posts on the MacBook Pro and wireless issues still get comments weekly from other folks having similar problems.

On February 22nd, Daniel Steinberg's daughter Elena died of bacterial meningitis. Julie made me stop reading Daniel's Dear Elena blog because I was such an emotional wreck. I saw Daniel at a couple of conferences this year, but didn't talk to him until The Spring Experience in December. I didn't know what to say to him. He erased all my apprehensions with a simple "Thanks", a smile and a handshake. It's good to see you're still writing about Elena Daniel. I still have a hard time reading your posts.

February ended with a beautiful 72°F day.

In March, I started the CSS Framework design contest, rode to work in the rain and flew to Boston and Vegas. Memories of St. Patrick's Day in Boston with friends still brings a smile to my face. TheServerSide show in Vegas was a lot of fun and it was the first BOF I hosted with free beer. I later got to meet Mike Stenhouse (the inventor of The CSS Framework) in December and hosted two more "BOFs with Beer" at the Colorado Software Summit and The Spring Experience. Cost difference? Vegas: $800, Keystone: $350, Hollywood, FL: $220.

At the end of March, I came down with a nasty case of Carpal Tunnel. After seeing a specialist that massaged the hell out of my arm, everything was back to normal. I haven't had any issues since - but I also haven't had many multiple-no-sleep-night coding sprints in a while either.

In April, I quit working on AppFuse and moved to Rails. I posted my Tips for Productivity and Happiness at Work (my most popular blog entry of all time), shipped my bus off to the shop and celebrated Julie and I's 6th anniversary. Then I rebooted this site and lived it up in New York City.

May brought CSS Design Contest winners and a 2-week trip to San Francisco for The Ajax Experience and JavaOne. The highlight of that trip was the weekend I spent in Wine Country.

In June, AppFuse 1.9.2 and Seam 1.0 were unleashed. Tim O'Brien had an interesting post titled What Web Application framework should you use?. I responded and Struts became a more focused project. Shale moved to a TLP shortly after. We started planning Raible Road Trip #10 and I began traveling to Washington, DC for a project. Going for beers at Brickskeller was the highlight of our trip that week.

July introduced me to cancelled flights and redeyes and Jason Carreira started JSR 303. AppFuse 1.9.3 was released and Julie sold her house to the first people that looked at it. At the end of the month, Jim Goodwill and I drove to OSCON in Portland. Having beers with Bryan and Scott at The Kennedy School was a highlight of that trip. Following OSCON, the family and I headed to Montana for a week.

August was great, probably because I'd just hit 7 states in 7 days. I published an article on IBM developerWorks and had a device-free weekend (which I definitely need to do more often). I began working on AppFuse 2.0, a new sushi restaurant moved into our neighborhood and I got a new EVDO card (which I later lost in November). Jack turned 2 on August 28th.

In September, we got a new puppy. I traveled to the drunkest city in America, Las Vegas and New England. Julie met me in Boston and we had a blast at our good friends' (Chris and Julie's) wedding.

October brought the release of Spring 2.0 and a 2-week project for me at OpenLogic. Abbie and Jack got their pictures taken at school and I spent at week in Keystone at The Colorado Software Summit.

In November, my sister Kalin brought some hard cider to Abbie's 4th birthday. I attended Denver's NoFluff and hugged my kids. Jack and I had a boys weekend and we headed to The Cabin on Raible Road Trip #11.

To end the year, I did a bit more travel - first to Boise then to Florida for The Spring Experience. After a week of vacation in Florida, we returned to Denver for The Blizzard of 2006. Finally, we drove up to Steamboat for Christmas and took the kids skiing.

All in all, it's been a fabulous year. Watching the kids grow up, start to play together and even have conversations with each other has been very cool. I traveled more than I wanted to, but I also got to visit a lot of cities that I'd never been to. My goals for the year? To be happy, ski more and enjoy a few car bombs with family and friends.

Teaching the kids to ski

Our trip in Steamboat has been awesome so far. The condo we're staying at is actually on the mountain. This means we can ski directly from it to the lift, as well as back to it after a run. I headed out for 6-7 awesome runs before stopping back at the condo to pick up the kids. Abbie's first time (a lesson) was last year at Breckenridge and she cried the whole way through it. Afterwards, she said she wanted to wait until she was 4. Today, Julie took Abbie and I took Jack.

All Jack kept saying was "faster" and "MORE!" He didn't bother to power himself, but he did enjoy skiing down between my legs. We did about 4 runs on the bunny slope this afternoon. For more pictures, see my First Time Skiing set.

Snowed In!

We woke up to another foot of snow this morning. There's about two feet outside right now. It's still snowing and the forecast says we'll be getting another 2-5 inches today.

Julie's sister, a nurse at Swedish, had to abandon her car while driving home this morning at 6. She turned down her street, discovered it wasn't plowed and quickly became stuck. Luckily, last night Julie talked her into taking snow clothes suitable for getting stranded. She scoffed at the time, thinking it was absurd that she might need them. This morning, she was very thankful. We plan on hiking over to her car (a Land Rover 4WD) and shoveling it out sometime today.

There's too much snow for us to drive our cars. If we're going anywhere - it's on foot. I have a few college buddies that live within walking distance, so it might be time to buy a keg and have a snow party. First things first though - I told the kids I'd take them sledding at Harvard Gulch (a park 3 blocks away).

Update: I knew I married Julie for more than just her good looks!

Update 2: Little did I realize, Julie was building a kick-ass sledding hill!

Back in Denver

After living out of a suitcase for most of December, it was nice to arrive back in Denver last night. I left here on December 3rd to travel to Boise, Idaho to teach a Spring course. From there, I flew to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to attend The Spring Experience. This was an excellent show, and I blogged most of the sessions I attended. To read about my AppFuse talk on Saturday night, see my Spring Live blog.

After TSE, I spent the next week with my family in Florida. We drove up to Disney World on the 2nd day of our vacation and had a blast. No one was there, so lines where short and the kids couldn't stop smiling.

While watching the kids' faces light up at Disney was cool, driving Julie's Mom's Cayenne Turbo S around all week was a highlight for me. It was definitely a gas-guzzler, but 520 horses is an awful lot of fun. It rained a lot the remainder of the week - almost 8 inches in 12 hours one day. Even when raining, the temperature still hovered around 80°F all week long. As crazy as it sounds, I'm actually happy to get back to the cool weather in Denver (high of 30°F today).

I'll be in the office all week, trying to tie up some loose ends before the end of the year. This weekend, it's back to vacation mode for another week. This time we'll be heading up to Steamboat for skiing, holiday cheer and (hopefully) lots of snow.

In Boise, heading to Florida on Thursday

This week, I'm in Boise, Idaho teaching a Spring Fundamentals course. It's cold here, just like it is in Denver this week.

I'm heading out early Thursday morning (Country Bry is teaching a Hibernate class that day) for The Spring Experience in Florida.

I'll be staying with Julie's Mom in West Palm Beach, so hopefully the commute to the show won't be too bad. My AppFuse session is on Saturday night, but I'm expecting a light showing after Terracotta's recent announcement. Jonas Bonér is doing a session at the same time as mine. Maybe if I bring a bunch of beer, I can still draw a crowd.

Vacation in Denver

This afternoon, Julie and I are heading downtown to checkin to The Westin Tabor Center. Tonight is my company's Holiday Party and we figured it was a good excuse to spend the night out. James Goodwill turned me on to the idea about a year ago. The idea is to take your spouse "on vacation" in the town you live in. It's quite cool, because you rarely get a chance to enjoy the town you live in. We're only doing one night, but Jim recommends you do 2 or 3. The last time we did a vacation in Denver, it was our anniversary and we had a blast.

For the party tonight, we'll be dining at La Fondue, with the Parade of Lights just happens to pass in front of. After that, we'll all be heading to Denverginity. It should definitely be a fun night!

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.

Raible Road Trip #11

Sometime before midnight tonight, we'll be departing on Raible Road Trip #11. This time we're going to The Cabin for Thanksgiving. Of course, we'd prefer to fly, but neither ticket prices nor arrival times are cooperating, so we're doing the road trip.

It's a 15 hour drive, which is pretty brutal for the kids. In an attempt to alleviate their pain, and get there in one fell swoop, we're going to try something new. We're going to leave at night (as soon as Julie's done with her Barenaked Ladies concert) and drive straight through. I'm in the midst of conditioning myself for the drive. What does that mean? It means I slept in yesterday, took a nap in the afternoon, and then stayed up all night. The good news is I got quite a bit of work done. The bad news is I didn't get nearly as much done as I'd hoped.

As I write this, it's almost fully light out. I should probably hit the sack and get plenty of rest for tonight. The Cabin doesn't have internet access nor cell phone service, so I'll be completely out of touch for a week. Should be nice.

Boys Weekend

Julie and Abbie left on a jet plane this morning to spend the weekend in South Carolina. Abbie's best friend, Annabelle, moved there in May of this year. Julie thought it'd be fun to get them together again, as well as attend a Doodlebops concert. So the girls are off, and it's me and the boy for the weekend. We plan on having a great time.

First off, the new Light Rail opens today and Jack loves trains. So we're going to hit the grand opening in about an hour, and then he's going to join me in "going to work". I don't know how long he'll last in the office, but I'm sure he'll have fun regardless. Tomorrow, there's a DU hockey game, as well as free passes on the Light Rail all day. Should be a fun weekend, especially with all of the good football on tap. Now it's time to head out for some pancakes and eggs, I'm not much of a cook when Mommy's out of town.

Hug your kids

I saw this story in the headlines last week. It's a tragic story that I never expected to hit close to home. Today it did. The little girl, Macie, was one of the four girls in Abbie's ballet class. Julie and Jack used to hang out with Macie's Mom and little brother while Abbie was in class. I can't imagine what the father is going through right now.

Hug your kids. There's no such thing as showing them too much love.