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Skiing in Colorado - it's looking good this year

The last couple of weeks have been frustrating. Actually, it's really been the last couple of years. You see, I live in Denver, Colorado - a city that's close to some of the best skiing on the planet. Furthermore, skiing here is pretty cheap. Starting about 10 years ago, all the resorts reduced their "season pass" prices from thousands to hundreds. You can get a ski pass to Keystone, Breckenridge, A-Basin, Vail and Beavercreek (5 mountains!) for a mere 350 bucks.

When Julie first moved here, we were pretty regular skiiers. We both got passes and went skiing almost every weekend. In 1999-2000, I worked for a .com that had a "9-inch" rule, where we got to go skiing whenever it snowed more than 9 inches the night before. This happened to coincide with one of the best ski seasons ever, and we managed to ski an average of 3 days per week (including weekends). Needless to say, I went from being a decent "black skier" to skiing chutes and bumbs with ease.

Then the kids came. The first year it wasn't so bad. When Abbie was first born, I had my first book deal, and I started AppFuse - so I didn't notice the winter pass me by. That was the first year I didn't buy a pass in quite a few years. The next year, I made sure to buy a season pass and barely got my money's worth (only skiing 5 times). I bought one again last year, and still only made it up 4 times. This year I didn't buy one.

For the last 2 weeks, I've gotten a 9" snow report in my inbox almost every day! It is dumping in Colorado this year and looks to be one of the best ski seasons ever. This year I'm planning on taking Abbie up with me, and getting her started on the "slopes." The problem? Why haven't I been up there yet? Work - how bad does that suck? And it's not real work IMO. It's open source and conference preparation. Ugh.

I need to get in shape, I need to find a client with a 9" rule - and I need to get to the hills! Ahhh, the good ol' days. I miss 'em.

Note to self: mountain biking and skiing should have a higher priority than any of this career mumbo jumbo.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have to admit, Thanksgiving is one of the best American holidays there is. No gift giving, no marketing hype - just good food and hanging out with friends and family. This year, we took a break from the norm and canceled our trip to Florida - instead opting to stay home and relax a bit. We're certainly glad we did as things are much less stressed and we had a great dinner with friends this evening.

Like previous years, I have a lot to be thankful for. I owe you, the readers of this blog, a huge thanks. Your comments and feedback are always appreciated. I also owe a big thanks to Virtuas for hooking me up with a kick-ass job and fun folks to work with.

Last, but certainly not least - I'd like to thank Julie, Abbie and Jack. You guys are the best part of this whole world and make it tremendously fun to live in.

Happy Turkey Day Y'all!

Pennies in the Radio

Julie took her car in to the stereo shop today b/c the radio was cutting out every once in a while. Actually, it was better than that - it'd quit working when she'd drive over a bump, and then start working again when she hit the next bump. The stereo shop called a few minutes ago to tell us what the problem was: someone has stuffed pennies into the radio, and they'd somehow fallen down and were shorting out the wiring below. I wonder who that someone was?

If you have a good "my life as a parent" story, I'd love to hear it.

What's a good external firewire drive?

I have a 60 GB firewire drive that we resurrected from Julie's dead PowerBook, but I'm interested in getting a bigger one to start regular backups. CNET recommends the Maxtor OneTouch II (300GB), but there's lots of bad reviews. 200 GB should be enough for the next year or two. Any recommendations? Is there one that can be used to backup OS X, Windows and Linux?

Made it to Java in Action

I just arrived at Disney's fancy "Yacht Club" for the Java in Action show. Today was a fun day - Julie and I took Abbie and Jack to Magic Kingdom and had a great time. Abbie got to meet Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, Eor and Tigger. She was scared of Mickey, but warmed up to Pooh and friends pretty quickly. It was weird - it kept raining off and on throughout the day, but it didn't seem to put a damper on anyone's spirits. Unlike Colorado, rain doesn't cool anything down. In fact, the humidity seems to crank the temperature up a notch or two.

Tomorrow is a full day - I have a 3 hour tutorial on web frameworks in the morning, followed by an hour of Ajax + Spring in the afternoon. After that, it's back to vacation-mode until I return to Denver next Tuesday.

I'd post the slides from my talks, but they're starting to make less and less sense (in downloadable form) as I add more images and less bullets. Besides, I plan on coding and conversing for most of the talks. That's the fun part of speaking at conferences - who wants to listen to a presentation anyway? Why does the good conversation have to take place in the hallways? Can't it happen right in the room?

The Busy Season Begins

I never thought the 4th Quarter would be the busy season, but it is for me this year. Tomorrow marks the beginning and it won't end until after The Spring Experience is over. My current schedule is that I'll only be in Denver 2 weeks in the next 2 1/2 months! Of course, I'll be home on the weekends, but I'll be on the road the rest of that time. Most of the travel is for conferences, but a few weeks is for clients, as well as a couple weeks of remote work/vacation. I'll be traveling to Florida (twice), Keystone (Colorado), San Francisco and New Jersey.

In that same time span, I'll be speaking 15 times. 2 times at Java in Action next week, 6 times at the Colorado Software Summit (in two weeks), twice at Denver's No Fluff, at the Gator and Orlando JUGs in November/December, and 3 times at The Spring Experience. Phew! That's a lot of talking. Conferences are fun though, especially since you only have to really work for the hour or two while you're talking.

The last part of the whole roadtrip should be a really good time. We're heading down to West Palm Beach (Florida) for Thanksgiving and staying for 3 weeks. I'll be working remotely, swimming in Julie's Mom's pool, speaking at the JUGs and ending it all at the Spring conference.

If you're going to any of these shows, let me know. I'm always up for a beer.

Weekend with Daddy

When I came home from Michigan a couple of weeks ago, Julie had a surprise for me. "Since you've been traveling so much lately, I think it's my turn." Her family is going to the Bahamas for Labor Day weekend, and she was going to join them - w/o me or the kids. We could have all gone, but going on vacation with two kids is not a vacation. Besides, it's in the Bahamas - and fishing for lobster and boozing on a boat all weekend is not a kid-friendly environment. So I'm flying solo with Abbie and Jack for the weekend.

Julie left this morning on a 6 a.m. flight - first class no less. She had some miles from years ago and decided to treat herself right. So far it's going well - Abbie is still sleeping and Jack is over making farting noises in the corner. Today's activities should be a lot of fun - riding bikes to breakfast (they ride in a trailer behind mine), followed by a hike, naps - and then the camping expedition begins. They love "tents", but the the only tent they've ever seen is in the bed with the covers. Tonight we're going to pitch a tent in the backyard, roast some marshmallows and hot dogs over the fire pit and pretend like we're camping. Hopefully we'll remember to come in before the sprinklers come on in the morning.

Shifting Priorities

This week's Denver JUG meeting looks to another good one - this time Bruce Tate is presenting Beyond Java and Sharad Acharya will talk about dynamic Struts Forms. I'm sure I could learn a thing or two from attending this meeting, but I'm going to have to pass.

It's time for me to shift my priorities. The 2nd week of every month, there are two meetings I'd like to attend - but I've only ever attend one (DJUG). I don't attend both b/c they're back-to-back and that's not very nice for me to leave Julie to fend for herself with the little munchkins. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to quit going to DJUG and start going to the Colorado VW Bus Club meetings instead.

It's time to start restoring the bus. I started it up this weekend and it roared to life after sitting for several months. I took it for a spin around the block and I can feel that it's ready. I am too.

Jack is walking!

Last Monday, while I was in Portland, Julie called me while I was having lunch with some fellow DJUGers. She was ecstatic, "Jack took 3 steps!!" For the rest of the week, everytime I called home - I asked if he'd taken any more steps. The answer was always "No". I was somewhat glad to hear this, as I felt like a horrible father for being away when my boy took his first steps. The lack of walking only lasted until Wednesday - when Julie called me to tell me he'd just taken 20 steps!

Needless to say, when I arrived home on Friday evening - it was very cool to see Jack walking around our house. He holds his hands straight up in the air when he does it, and he tends to grunt a bit during the process. It could be one of the cutest things I've ever seen. If he's anything like Abbie, he should be able to break into a full sprint by his 1st birthday at the end of the month.

What happens at my house when you're gone for a week

I was out of town last week and Julie architected and started building a deck while I was gone! We still have quite a bit more work to do - but she did the hard part. Her mom was in town all week, so apparently she was staying up until midnight working on it everyday. Of course I knew this before today, but didn't have any pictures to impress you with.