Raible Designs

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.

Jack's Mohawk

Last weekend, we celebrated Abbie's birthday with friends and family at Julie's house. My parents and I had a great time, but left a bit early so I could take them to their first DU Hockey game. Towards the end of the game, I received the following text message from Jack's soon-to-be Uncle Jason.

Jack wants a mohawk? Is that OK?

My response:

Absolutely! Please take pictures.

Below are pictures from what ensued shortly after.

Jack looks pretty darn cute with his new haircut and he's received nothing but compliments from everyone. Personally, I dig it.

Happy Birthday Jack!

Jack's birthday was last Thursday (August 28th) and only now am I getting a chance to wish him a Happy Birthday on this blog. I told you it was a busy week last week.

Happy Birthday Jack!

On his birthday, I picked him up from Kindergarten at 11 and let him run the show for the day. Needless to say, we had a good time.

On Saturday, we had a party to celebrate at my house. It was a great time with many old friends and lots of crazy kids.

I woke up to quite the disaster area the next day. I was also quite impressed when Abbie showed up with her ears pierced.

The rest of the weekend I spent quite a bit of time enjoying A Taste of Colorado. When work began on Tuesday, the week intensified as I was the "Release Owner" for LinkedIn this week. We made a number of backend changes to reduce statefulness and improve performance. I'm proud to say it was one of the smoothest releases I've been a part of, mostly because of the high quality people involved.

As far as my schedule for the rest of the year, it seems like I'm going to be busier than ever. I have to complete my presentations for CSS this week. In two weeks, I'm speaking at the Colorado Springs Open Source User Group Meetup. The following week I'm heading to Munich for Oktoberfest. If I live through that, I'll be implementing Memcached, speaking at CSS, hunting with my Dad, celebrating Abbie's birthday, traveling to Costa Rica/Panama and keynoting the JavaEdge Conference in Israel. If you happen to be in Colorado Springs, Munich, Mountain View, Keystone, Montana, Costa Rica, Panama or Israel in the next few months, maybe we can enjoy a beer together. Cheers!

Why such a busy week?

Lance sent me the following e-mail this morning:

Just saw your status message, I think you'd better blog an explanation!

"Matt Raible is getting ready for one of the busiest weeks of his life."

I couldn't think of a good reason not to blog an explanation, so here goes.

I'm currently sitting at Denver's airport ready to hop on a flight to Mountain View. I'll be at LinkedIn's HQ for two days helping tidy up plans for a release in early September that I'm in charge of. It's my first time being a Release Owner, but it should be pretty painless so I'm not too worried. Whenever I travel to Mountain View, I always have a good time, but I'm constantly being pulled into meetings, or arranging meetings myself. I have a presentation to write that I'm delivering on Wednesday. It describes the changes we've made to make the backend of LinkedIn much more stateless and therefore better and faster.

In my hotel room at night, I'll be writing my presentations for the Colorado Software Summit. Having to write 3 presentations in one week always makes me feel super-busy.

On Wednesday night, I fly home late (likely after a game of hoops with co-workers). Thursday is Jack's birthday, so I hope to take the day off and spend the day with him. Thursday night is sleepover night. Being a single parent with two kids is never easy, but always fun. Friday it's back to work, wrapping up things for the week (status reports, bug fixes, etc.) and likely marveling at the traffic from the DNC.

Friday night there's a 9-hour cocktail party with a good friend from Vancouver, BC.

Saturday is the super-busy day. It's time for Jack's birthday party and if last year is any evidence, it's one of those 8-hour cleaning and decorating situations.

I'm sure I'll have a busier week sometime in the future, but this one will surely be one to remember (especially since it's blogged into history now ).

Spontaneous Stuff Weekend

This weekend, I didn't have much planned to do with the kids. I had a couple ideas, but nothing set in stone. The good news is the kids were full of ideas and we kept ourselves plenty occupied. On Saturday, we went to Elitch Gardens. We rode the Light Rail and my stomach barely survived the 4-hour journey.

I was pleased to find out they served beer at Elitches, but regretted it shortly after as I was spinning with the kids in the Tea Cups. But that wasn't the worst ride. The worst one was Thunderbolt - that was the one I had to go on back-to-back with each kid (b/c they weren't tall enough to ride alone). Shortly after getting off, I realized I'd left my iPhone on the ride. Luckily, I rushed back to the ride and the operator was able to find my car and grab it from a very happy teenager.

Today we decided it'd be fun to take a hike. We gathered everyone in the car and drove just past Idaho Springs to St. Mary's Glacier. It was a nice 1.5 mile round-trip hike and both the kids and Cookie (the dog) had a great time. I was pretty impressed with the kids' ability to hike, especially over all the big rocks on the trail. Of course, when I told them they did so well, it only took Abbie 2 seconds to process and respond with "does that mean we get toys?"

Raible Road Trip #12 Vacation Report

I'm happy to report that the kids and I made it home safely last night after a heckuva Road Trip. We were gone for a total of 8 days and we drove for 4 of those. Here's some stats from Snow White:

• 43 Hours
• 2248.3 Miles
• 150.9 Gallons of Gas
• 14.9 AVG MPG
• 52 AVG MPH

Of course, these stats include day-to-day driving while in Montana.

Driving to Montana
We left early on Saturday morning, waking up at 4:30 and were on the road around 5. This was brutal considering I went to bed 4 hours earlier the night before. My Dad and I took turns driving and tried to listen to an audiobook (Spook Country) along the way. However, whenever one person wasn't driving, they fell asleep so the whole idea somewhat failed.

We arrived in Yellowstone around 5PM and checked into our campground. The ranger told me there were 5 grizzlies in the campsite and that we should pack up our food and put small pets in cars for the night. Of course, I couldn't wait to tell this to Abbie, who is always scared that bears will attack us when camping. I finally calmed her fears by telling her I wrestled a bear once when I was a kid and won pretty easily. After setting up camp, Abbie took a swim in the "freezing cold" Yellowstone Lake and we ate dinner and climbed into our tent shortly after.

On Sunday, we woke up and made it out of our campsite by 7:30. We drove to Old Faithful, enjoyed an eruption and proceeded to have a nice breakfast at The Old Faithful Inn. After checking out some more geysers, we made it out of the park around 11. We stopped briefly in Bozeman to see an old friend, hit Clearwater Junction and Lucky's (for huckleberry milkshakes) around 6, and made it to The Cabin just before dark.

At The Cabin
The few days we spent at The Cabin and in the Swan Valley were a lot of fun. I got to drive the family Excavator with both kids on my lap. Jack was operating the bucket while Abbie was operating the swivel of the cab. I took my mountain bike, so I got to ride some old trails I used to ride all the time as a kid. Not only were there beautiful views on the trails, but I also got to experience quite a wreck that sent me head-first into some rocks and bushes. It was the first time I've wrecked in a while where I thought to myself "that was fast and hard enough to break some bones". Luckily, all I received were a number of scratches and bruises.

On Thursday, we took my sister to the train station in Whitefish. We left early enough for my dad and I to get in some golfing at Meadow Lake Golf Course and the kids to hit Big Sky Waterslides. Apparently, they didn't have a height requirement because they were able to go on all the slides.

On the 4th, we finished Abbie's Princess float in the early morning, took a quick sauna and headed down to the Swan Valley Parade. We'd been talking about the parade and Abbie's float for several weeks, so I was kinda nervous that I might mess it up. Not only did everything go great, but there were several hundred folks that clapped when we drove by and commented on what a beautiful princess Abbie was.

After the parade and drinking some good ol' Busch Light from the "Beer Garden", we headed to Holland Lake for a swim and canoeing. We drove back home in time to play a game of horseshoes and get the fireworks setup for the evening. We had a good fireworks show (with yours truly in charge) and enjoyed lots of laughs with old friends.

The Drive Home
As usual, the drive home was the longest portion of the trip. The first day, we left the cabin around 11 and pulled into Billings around 5. The kids (and dog) did pretty good as we only needed to stop once. The shorter first day turned out to be a good idea since the kids like hotels so much. Yesterday, we left Billings around 9:30 and cruised along mightily until we hit the Colorado border. There, traffic came to a standstill and we suffered through stop-and-go the rest of the way home. After 9 hours, we pulled into my driveway, exhausted.

I don't believe we'll be driving next year. The Road Trip to The Cabin is something that should only be done every couple years. Snow White continues to be an awesome car. We towed a sawmill (on a trailer) to The Cabin and didn't even feel the load. With DVD screens in the back of both front-seats, it was an excellent road-trip vehicle for the kids. Also, it's smooth suspension made for an enjoyable experience for everyone (we drove Julie's Honda Odyssey one year and Abbie kept getting sick from the DVD screen bouncing). The more I drive it (esp. skiing, camping and on road trips), the happier I am with the purchase.

For more photos from the trip, please see Raible Road Trip #12 on Flickr.

Fun Weekend with The Munchkins

This weekend was action-packed and a lot of fun. On Friday night, Abbie, Jack and I watched The Empire Strikes Back. We watched "the first one" a couple weeks ago; their first "grown up" movie to-date. They're loving the series, especially because they recognize people from the previous movie. They're really looking forward to the next one because Wicket is in it. Believe it or not, I still have a stuffed Wicket from when I was a kid.

On Saturday, we started the day off right at Andrew Swanson's 5th birthday party. Following that, we hit up Pirates Cove and its adjacent petting zoo and train ride.

Today, we woke up, had some blueberry pancakes, drove to the bait shop and then headed to Golden Gate Canyon State Park. The weather was beautiful and Kriley Pond was a nice fishing spot. We didn't catch anything, but both kids are getting a lot better at casting. The highlight was the live worms we bought at the bait shop. Both Abbie and Jack were convinced they were the biting kind.

Next fun trip: An overnight camping trip on Father's Day. Location TBD.