Raible Designs

Life Update: New Job, Same House, and Same Awesome Family!

It's been over eight years since I wrote a life update blog post. At that time (2016), we'd just moved into the "Raible Ranch", the bus was finished, and the kids were in high school. I'd just started one of my few-and-far-between full-time jobs at Stormpath.

Fast-forward to today. Our kids are in college at the University of Colorado during the Coach Prime Era, we're empty nesters with an affection for live music, and our pet zoo is cuter than ever.

You probably know me. But in case you don't, my name is Matt Raible, and I'm married to a fabulous woman named Trish McGinity. She's been a hero in my life ever since I met her in 2010. She dazzled me so much, I asked her to marry me at Versailles in 2011. We married in my hometown (Condon, Montana) in 2013, on the most beautiful lake you've ever seen.

When I met Trish, I was an independent consultant, and she was in cybersecurity sales. On a fateful night in 2010, on a friend Jarvis's birthday, I asked her what she had done for a living. She said, "Have you ever heard of OWASP?"

My heart lifted and I felt a moment of joy. This woman was speaking my language! 14 years later and Oh My!, Trish has had an incredible influence on my life and career.

Farewell to the 2023-2024 Ski Season

This year's ski season was delightful! This was largely due to our acquisition of a new condo in the mountains, lots of free time to ski, and some epic powder days with friends. I achieved 30 days of skiing, with 19 being alpine and 11 being cross-country. The season started for me on October 30 when we got enough snow to go cross-country skiing in our backyard.

We didn't make it up to the mountains for downhill skiing until mid-December. That's when we closed on our condo, nicely coinciding with Trish's birthday weekend.

Farewell to the 2022-2023 Ski Season

You can tell your Spring is a whirlwind when you don't have time to write your end-of-ski-season post until July!

My ski season started way back in October, on Halloween at A-Basin, to be precise. It ended with an Okta + Gradle Developer Ski Day on April 13th. I'm proud to say I achieved 39 days of skiing, with 15 being alpine skiing and the rest being cross-country skiing. A lot of the cross-country skiing was done in our backyard, on the neighborhood bridal trails. We got lucky this year because it snowed in early January and stuck around until February. That's rare in our neck of the woods.

The highlight of the ski season was celebrating Trish's 50th birthday at A-Basin. We rented a few spots on the beach, invited a bunch of friends, and had a blast.

The onesies were Trish's idea. 😅 You can buy your own from Tipsy Elves.

Farewell to the 2021-2022 Ski Season

I had a lot of fun this ski season, but I didn't make it to the mountains as much as I thought I would. I bought both the Epic and Ikon passes with high hopes at the beginning of the season. The rest of the family had Ikon. The ski season started for me on Nov 24, 2020 with a backyard cross-country ski. It took me another month until I ventured up to the high country. A-Basin didn't have a whole lot of snow on Dec 23.

I got to ski with the Makofsky family at Copper on New Years Eve.

The next day, Trish and I enjoyed a fresh blanket of snow to ring in the new year. 🎊

Farewell to the 2020-21 Ski Season

This ski season was interesting to say the least. Because of COVID-19, most Colorado ski resorts required reservations in order to ski. This wasn't too painful because we did most of our skiing during the week.

We recognized that social distancing might be an issue on weekends, so we rented a condo in Winter Park for the season. This allowed us to ski weekdays while working remotely. We didn't have it the whole season, just a week every month.

The ski season started for me on November 24, 2020, with some backyard cross-country skiing.

I was super pumped when I drove our Syncro Westy to the condo and discovered it fit in the garage! My first day on the slopes was Friday, December 4th.

A Beautiful Adventure to JBCNConf, Barcelona, and Boston

I love it when school's out for summer. The feeling you on the last day of school as a kid is like no other. It's a terrific feeling. The feeling of freedom. Our kids graduated from 10th and 8th grade at the end of May. We didn't give them much time to rejoice and whisked them off to Barcelona for a few days at JBCNConf and a bit of family vacation.

Oh my, it was so much fun! First of all, there's nothing like traveling to a foreign land, bringing some of your favorite people with you, and getting to experience it with old and new friends. We arrived on Sunday and experienced a wonderful evening at a conservatory for the speaker's dinner.

Farewell to the 2018-19 Ski Season

Holy cow! 2018-19 was one of the best ski seasons ever!!

It all started in December with some gorgeous powder days and only got better from there.

Trish and I took her birthday off (December 17) and enjoyed a beautiful day with no crowds.

Life Update: Thanksgiving in Montana, RWX2018, Devoxx4Kids, DJUG, and Trish's Birthday

For the first time in many years, we flew to Montana for the holidays. We typically drive, and it takes around 14 hours. It was quite nice to take off and land in just a couple of hours.

Farewell to the 2017-18 Ski Season

Summertime has arrived in Colorado! Typically, I try to write my "end of ski season" blog post in April or May, but this year it slipped until June. Do I have a good excuse?! Not really. Things got busy with my trip to Richmond and Oktane 18, that's all.

I'm going to keep this post short and sweet, to mirror the ski season. We didn't receive a whole lot of snow in the Rocky Mountains so the powder days were few and far between. There were a couple though, and I got to spend a powder day with some old friends at Winter Park!

The kids and I skied a few days in December, but it wasn't anything to write home about. For New Years, we packed up the Syncro and headed for Crested Butte.

Crested Butte had OK conditions, but the real fun happened when we ditched downhill and tried Nordic skiing. We spent a few hours with James Ward and daughter Josie on a beautiful cross country ski adventure. I grew up cross-country skiing to the bus stop, so it was a real hoot to do it with the whole family.

The real magic happened when I visited the Utah JUG in February. I drove through several snow storms on the way and arrived just in time for my talk on microservices, JHipster, and OAuth.

The next morning, there was 17" at Snowbird. That was a lovely morning.

That evening, Trish and the kids flew in and we hit Alta the next day. They still had fresh snow in spots and lots of sunshine.

We spent Sunday and Monday in Park City and got dumped on again. 17" again on Monday. Wahoo! We stayed and skied the morning, then endured a long 10-hour drive home.

Those were the main highlights of the ski season. Both kids are legit skiers now and will ski blacks all day if the snow is good. OK, maybe not all day, but for a few hours at least.

As for the VWs, Stout the Syncro won his class at the VWs on the Green show! Hefe the Bus didn't win anything, but he sure did look good!

Summer 2018

Now it's pretty much summer in our neck of the woods. We spent last weekend rafting on the Upper Colorado and we're hitting the Arkansas near Salida this weekend. I've been riding my bike(s) a lot, but haven't done a lot of single track trails. I hope to fix that soon.

If you're a developer that follows this blog - I hope to see you on the road in the coming months! I'll be at JHipster Conf next week, KC/DC, UberConf, and JCrete in July, and Boston JUG in August. Hope y'all have a great summer.

Farewell to the 2016-17 Ski Season

The 2016-17 Ski Season was a fun one for the Raible Family. Abbie and Jack are good enough that they can zoom down the mountain without looking back. Their preferred runs are now blacks and they're no longer intimidated by moguls. We spent most of the season skiing at Mary Jane and Winter Park, but also had some trips to Crested Butte, Steamboat, and Montana.