Raible Designs

Labor Day Weekend at The Farm

This past weekend, the kids and I journeyed into the Colorado mountains for a weekend of camping, hiking and fishing. It was my good friend Matt Good's 50th Birthday Celebration at his place affectionately known as The Farm. We had beautiful weather, wide open spaces and lots of laughs with good friends. Jack even managed to land a girlfriend (Amanda), who somehow became his "ex" in the same hot tubbing session. They got back together the next morning.

On the way home, we took the long way and traveled from Ute Pass Road to Frasier, stopping at Lake Evelyn Trail for an hour hike and some fishing. I even let the kids drive a few times on the "bumpy road" and we managed to skip most of the traffic on the freeway.

More than anything, I was impressed with Abbie and Jack's ambition on this trip. They really seem to love hiking and fishing and don't drag their feet like they used to. They're also enthusiastic about camping and sleeping in a tent. I'm awful proud of my little munchkins. Below are some pictures from our weekend.

Thanks to Matt and Pam for hosting us and congrats to Matt on officially becoming an "old man". For more pictures, please see my Labor Day 2009 set on Flickr.

My Summer Vacation in Montana

As an adult, I've often reflected upon my childhood and one of my favorite times of the year: Summer Vacation. The feeling that fills your mind and body on that last hour of school before summer break is simply awesome. I don't know when I began longing for that feeling again, but I'm pleased to say I enjoyed it again this year. I took an entire month off from "working" and enjoyed a proper summer vacation at my family's cabin in Montana.

My plan to take a month off began formulating years ago when we'd drive to the cabin for the 4th and only spend a few days before driving back. The trip was never long enough.

I started talking about spending all of July at The Cabin a couple years ago, but never committed to it. My opportunity finally came last December when Julie asked me if she could take the kids to Florida for 3 weeks for Christmas. I quickly realized that, as a kid, 3 weeks in Florida was an awesome opportunity and agreed to give up my time with them. However, I also realized I could get some negotiating power from the agreement and said "only if I can take them to the cabin for 3 weeks next summer".

For regular readers, you know the rest of the story. My Dad flew to Denver for Father's Day Weekend, stayed the following week and then we embarked on our journey to Montana on Monday, June 29th. The first week was great and we had tons of fun during the rest of July. Here's a list of some highlights:

• Running a 5K while Abbie and Jack ran the 1 mile "fun run" with my Mom. It was Abbie's first race and she got 1st place with a time of 11:05.
  
• Hiking to Holland Falls.
  

  
• Picking Huckleberries.
• Greeting my sister after she rode her motorcycle for 13 hours in the rain.
• Spending my birthday at Big Sky Waterslides, something I used to do every year for my birthday.
• Golfing with my family in Columbia Falls.
  
• Building a set of bunkbeds for the kids.
  
• Rides on "Rocket" (4 wheeler) with the kids, especially when Jack would say "go as fast as Rocket can go".
• Golfing with my good friend Owen in Seeley Lake.
  
• Prepping and pouring the floor on the New Cabin.
  

  
• Fishing with my Dad in "Joe's Jungle" and installing a new window in the cabin afterward.
  
• Teaching Abbie and Jack how to shoot a gun (a .22 pistol) for the first time.
• Getting my next gig.
• Traveling to Idaho for Clint and Autumn's Wedding Reception (they got married last December in Costa Rica).
  
• Seeing Abbie get all googly-eyed over an older boy in Idaho.
  
• Staying up to watch the sunrise in Idaho.
• Milling D Logs for the kids' Treehouse.
  
• Making it from The Cabin to Denver in 13 hours with only one speeding ticket.

More than anything, it was great to spend so much time with my parents and children. The Cabin is a very special place to me and I'm proud I can take my city-slicker kids to let them experience the outdoors and live like I did growing up. In the city, they always have an adult nearby and are never left on their own for long. They wear helmets when they ride their bikes in the alley, even though they have training wheels on and couldn't fall over if they tried.

In Montana, the rules all change.

In Montana, the adults worked on the New Cabin and the kids were left to occupy themselves. Their imaginations ran wild and they played with each other for hours every day. They made me see and remember one of my favorite things about childhood - infinite possibilities. As I kid, I was a dreamer and used to think that anything was possible in the world (flying, teleporting, you name it). I'm happy to see that Abbie and Jack believe that anything is possible too.

A week ago, I returned to Denver after driving almost 4000 miles in 30 days. I feel refreshed after so much time off. I've got my goals and ambitions in line for the rest of the year and I'm looking forward to writing more, smiling more and doing great things for my new client. Over the next several months, I'll continue to work with GWT and even have plans to talk at The Rich Web Experience in December. When I travel for work, I'll be in Boston and Cupertino. Hopefully I'll see some of you along the way.

As usual, you can see all my pictures from the past few weeks in my Montana 2009: Weeks 2-4 set on Flickr.

A Fun Father's Day at Great Sand Dunes

Our Father's Day trip started out a bit rocky when my Dad's flight got delayed an entire day. Fortunately, it ended up being a blessing in disguise. As Doug commented, Friday night was wet and Saturday wasn't much better. Our friends, Jenny and Jeff, left early Saturday morning and arrived in time for a couple hours of rain. At 3:00 on Saturday afternoon, it cleared up and was beautiful for the rest of the weekend.

We showed up at 8:30 on Saturday night and stayed through Monday morning. If you asked Abbie and Jack, they'd say the best part was driving on the road past the Point of No Return. My favorite moment was when they climbed to the top of a dune with me. The mosquitoes were mean and plentiful, but the campground was well equipped and had excellent views.

If you ever get a chance to take your kids to Great Sand Dunes, you should jump at the opportunity. This place is simply awesome. For more pictures, see my Great Sand Dunes 2009 set on Flickr.

Life Update: New Treehouse, New Kittens and More

It's been awhile since I wrote a life update post so here you go. After returning from Jason and Holly's Wedding in Florida, I took the next week off to "catch up on life". Having a vacation at home with no packing and lots of time to wipe my "to do" list clean was great. Not only that, but the weather was beautiful all week. If you ever get a chance to take a "catch up on life" vacation, I highly recommend it.

New Treehouse
I started out the week by doing something I've been telling the kids I'd do for the last year: building a treehouse. I used this tutorial as a guide for the "foundation" and had a lot of fun doing it. The best part was discovering my Dad had stocked my garage with many tools over the last couple years. I had to make several runs to Home Depot and Ace Hardware for building supplies, but rarely had to buy any new tools. My Dad has been a carpenter for over 30 years (he used to do it for a living in Montana). I was pleasantly surprised to discover some of his skills have rubbed off on me. We still need to build the structure on top of the platform, but everyone is happy with the results so far.

AppFuse
After finishing Phase 1 of the treehouse, I started working on the next version of AppFuse. I've made good progress so far:

• Archetypes now include all the source from web modules.
• Archetypes are now created using archetype:create-from-project, making things easier to maintain.
• Switched Cargo from downloaded Tomcat to embedded Jetty, allowing for faster builds.
• Upgraded to Struts 2.1.6 and Tapestry 5.0.18.

There's still lots of open issues, but I believe there's a lot of value in starting the "working on the next version" process. With the way things are shaping up, I'm considering bumping the version to 2.5 or 3.0 instead of 2.1. 3.0 might be a little ambitious, but there are going to be a lot of improvements.

New Kittens
Last weekend, I decided it was time to create some happy kids and get some pets in my house. On Saturday, we set out on a quest to find some kittens. We visited a couple shelters and a couple pet stores, but came home empty handed. We didn't look Sunday because we had more important things to do. On Monday, we hit up craigslist and found our kittens with a family in Thornton. Upon arrival, I figured they'd be good since the family had a 6-year old, a 4-year old and a 1-year old that was carrying a kitten around by the tail. At least their new home is slightly less chaotic than their last one.

Eye Surgery
Today is my last day wearing glasses. Tomorrow morning, I'm scheduled to receive PRK eye surgery at TLC Laser Eye Center. I'm nervous about the procedure and dreading the recovery. My mom is flying in tonight to assist me while I'm blind and in pain, so hopefully it won't be too bad. A co-worker has lots of books on tape that I'm borrowing to pass the time.

My life is showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon, but I will have lots of opportunities to relax. In two weeks, I'm heading to Cancun for a friend's wedding. Having a week on the sunny beaches of Mexico is always fun. My current contract expires a couple days after my return. I'm currently negotiating with a few potential clients and hope to have my summer work plans solidified before leaving for Mexico. More than anything, I'm looking forward to taking the entire month of July off and spending it at our cabin in Montana. My Dad is moving up there to work on The New Cabin and there's nothing I'd rather do than help him out.

Jason and Holly's Wedding was a blast!

This past weekend, I experienced an incredible 4 days in West Palm Beach, Florida. When Julie and I got married there in April 2000, we had so much fun that we always wanted to do it again. We had a lot of good friends and family fly in for the wedding. If you've ever experienced a beach holiday with many good friends, you'll know what I'm talking about. Julie is Holly's sister and Jason (her new husband) is one of my fraternity brothers. That means I knew both sides of the wedding party and it very much resembled the reunion we always wanted.

I flew down on Thursday morning after a little bit of oversleeping. Because I flew into Orlando, I had to rent a car and drive 2 hours to West Palm. This wasn't so bad since I got hooked up with a convertible and it was a beautiful 80°F on the drive. That night, I picked up Abbie and Jack from "Grammy's" house and they spent the night with me in my hotel.

The next morning, we woke up and headed to Sailfish for a ride on a friend's boat. After a couple hours on the intercostal, we played in the pool, enjoyed the sun and started getting ready for the Rehearsal Dinner.

During the Rehearsal Dinner, a friend (Navarro) and I were bartenders while Abbie was in charge of making sure everyone's drinks were full. Below are some of my favorite pictures from Friday night.

After the rehearsal dinner, the party crowd headed to Rum Bar and had lots of laughs and played many games of "hook". On the wedding day (Saturday), we took another boat ride, hung out on the beach and enjoyed a beautiful ceremony on the beach.

The rest of the night was spent dancing and enjoying everyone's company. The party didn't end that night though. Sunday, Holly and Julie's mom had a brunch at her house where we all laid by the pool, played with the kids and sipped on many cold drinks. At sunset, we walked down to the beach so Mr. and Mrs. Harris could get some sand from their ceremony location.

It was a spectacular weekend with lots of good friends and a ton of great memories. Congratulations Jason and Holly!

For more pictures, see Flickr or Facebook.

1st Hike of 2009

This past Sunday, the kids and I loaded up our camelbaks and headed out for a hike to the top of Dakota Ridge Trail. We parked in the Green Mountain parking lot next to C-470 and trekked up the west-side of the mountain.

First of all, I was impressed with their enthusiasm. Granted, it was a beautiful Denver spring day, but still - you know how 4 and 6 year olds are. I'm not sure how far it was, but I'd guess somewhere between 1 and 2 miles. Abbie was gung-ho the entire way up, while Jack kept saying he was tired and wanted me to carry him. I never broke down, kept encouraging him and they both made it to the top without any issues.

While at the top, they did some exploring and Abbie gathered a whole backpack full of rocks for the trip down. By the time she was done filling it, it must've weighed around 20 pounds. Even though it was pretty darn heavy, she carried it all the way down - stopping every-so-often to empty a few rocks out. We weighed it when we got home and discovered it was 10 pounds. I was very impressed with her strength and perseverance.

Well done kids!

How old do kids have to be before you take them up a 14er?

The kids actually like skiing!

The kids and I had a blast skiing at Winter Park today. I can't remember a day I've been more proud of my kids and their willingness to ski. I woke them up just before 6 AM this morning. I was very impressed when they both popped out of bed with huge smiles on their faces. They were actually excited to go skiing. Their enthusiasm didn't end throughout the day and we had a ton of fun.

I was most impressed with Abbie - she now wants to ski blues all the time. Not only that, but when she falls she has no problem getting up herself. Jack, on the other hand, can barely do "Pizza" and says "I can't" and "I'm scared" most of the time. I somehow convinced Abbie that if you believe you can do something, you can do it. She's been using that mantra whenever we ski and it's worked awesome for her.

For the last run today, I told Abbie we could do a blue; Jack would only do it if I carried him. We rode to the top of Winter Park and skied down a steep blue/black. I imagine it was a pretty funny scene because it looked like I was in way over my head. Abbie was going slow, snow-plowing like mad, and I was skiing with Jack in my arms while he carried my poles. Several folks stopped to see if we needed help, but I told them it was all pre-planned. Abbie fell several times, but got up by herself every time and even got "the burn" towards the bottom. It's a good thing I've been running to work lately, carrying a 4-year-old top-to-bottom on a steep blue with 8" of powder can be quite a workout.

Abbie is a Blue Skier!

On Friday afternoon, the kids and I headed up to Winter Park for a night at Zephyr Lodge. The drive up was great (no traffic) and it started snowing as soon as we got off I-70. 45 minutes later and the kids were on the slopes for the last few runs of the day. There was a few inches of snow that turned out to be great - it slowed them down enough that they didn't have to turn or worry about "pizza".

On Saturday, we put Jack in Ski School and Abbie and I had a "Daddy + Daughter" day on the mountain. She didn't want to hit the magic carpet and instead opted for the lift right away. We skied a couple greens and w/in an hour she was ready to try a blue. She did quite well on the blue and even skied a few bumps on the side. Yes, she did fall a few times, but she got up by herself and always had a smile on her face. I was extremely proud. Below are a few pictures and a video from our weekend.

I'm glad I took the kids skiing yesterday. It's been dumping with cold temperatures ever since we left. It's currently -15°F in Denver (a new record) and it's snowed 2 feet at some resorts. Now I just need to figure out a way to make it up a couple of times this week.

Happy Birthday Abbie!

Today marks the 6th anniversary of Abbie's birthday. Happy Birthday kiddo!

To see how Abbie has grown up over the years, see past Happy Birthday posts: #1, #3 and #4, #5. To celebrate, I'll be getting off early and having lunch with Abbie's class at school. After that, we'll be embarking on a Daddy/Daughter day where she gets to pick everything we do. I did this with Jack on his birthday and had a lot of fun.

Abbie gets her first tooth and The Bus looks great!

Today was quite the day. First of all, Jack and I took Abbie to A Wild Smile to get a couple front teeth yanked. She has her first adult tooth coming in and her baby teeth weren't getting out of the way. Before and after pictures are below:

This afternoon, I drove to Colorado Springs to see The Bus and speak at the Colorado Springs Open Source User Group. The Bus looked great. Motorworks Restorations has done a lot of very detailed work (i.e. replacing corners, stretching the frame, replacing window and door drains) in the last couple of months.

We talked for a good hour about the possibilities in wheels, transmission, engine, suspension, gauges and interior. My favorite topics were the air bags, 6-cylinder 911 engine and safari windows. Click here to see the full set of pictures I took. Quote of the night: "It's going to be better than it was when it was brand new."

After leaving the bus, I delivered my Web Frameworks of the Future Presentation to a bunch of guys (and gals) at a nearby library. It was a fun presentation because I got to meet a lot of folks I had name recognition for, but had never met. All in all, a very good day.

Tomorrow marks my last day of work before I head out on a week's vacation in Munich for Oktoberfest. I have a feeling the days are going to get a lot better from here on out.