Thanksgiving

Oh, Thanksgiving is here and I couldn't be more thankful:

• There are no colleagues in our american offices today - so I can work in peace in the afternoon and don't have to sit through hours of meetings. So I can finally catch up on my priority list - I can wrap up some open source software review process that has been due a while ago and more... (let's see how this turns out 😏)
• The wife has to work longer today so I will fetch the kids from the child care - we will have a party in the living room with stuffed animals and wooden vegetables (maybe some real ones, too - not animals, vegetables)
• Tomorrow is also basketball practice day so I will be working out a bit again - I went to practice last week after having to sit out for 2 months due to lower back problems. I am now doing regular exercises to strengthen the torso (mainly the plank and arched back) and sit on a "special" pillow to have some stabilizing exercise while I work - this has helped a lot!

  

  This is the pillow - I have to take a break from sitting on it every hour or so because my nuts get numb...which is quite an interesting feeling - can not recommend it, though.

• I am also looking forward to the big "Black Friday Sale" on amazon this year - I have saved up some money to finally buy a new TV - my eye is on a 55" QLED TV from Samsung - but only for a reasonable price - otherwise I wait some more.

Happy Holidays!

Winter is here

For once the weather forecast was correct...winter has come

This is the view from our bathroom roof-light - into our neighbours garden - apparently they haven't picked all their apples yet 😆

But we were prepared - I've even changed the car's tires on the last weekend (yes, that is a thing in Germany: we have tires for summer and tires for winter - because we LOVE our cars).

Winter is ... maybe ... soonish ... coming

So, the very reliable
weather forecast has predicted some snow starting this afternoon. So, after the wife left with the kids I went into our orchard and did some winter-readiness-preparation:

• Stored away the rain barrels - after having drained them - damn, could have used those 2.000 liters (in gallons: redsquirkmont gallons - I don't have the motivation to look it up) in the dry summer that we had. Well, it is what it is.
• Packed away the water pump and pipes
• Cleaned up some of the garden waste (aka brought it to the far end of the property with the wheelbarrow - out of sight, out of mind).
• Picked the last apples of the season - just two small crates since I didn't really have time for more and didn't want to go grab the ladder - because I am a lazy bum

So, now we are almost done - still need to hang up the christmas lights outside (after this Sunday - which is kind of a tradition here in Germany) and need to install one last downspout to direct the water / melting snow off the patio.

So, we now have 5 crates of apples and 3 sacks of walnuts that we harvested stowed away in the garden shed for consumption over the winter. Can't wait to get outside in the spring and clip the trees for an even better season next year. 

My grandparents from whom we inherited the property including the orchard were smart enough to plant a variety of apple trees (and other fruit for that matter - pears, plums, cherries) so that we basically had apples this year from late August till almost late November. I will be trying to create an inventory of the trees and types of apples that we get to organise this all a bit better next year.

Can someone tell me why the next Avengers movie is still half a year away? I really want to know how it all ends...

And hello again.

It has been a while since I wrote something here and wanted to give an update on all major things:

• Weight is a topic not to be talked about - I went up to around 105kgs beginning of August and started doing "interval fasting" - so I only eat (or consume calories for that matter) between 8am and 4pm. So far my weight has dropped to around 96kg - still too much but a bit better. With a bit more workout it should go down some more (needless to say I never reached the 82kg that I targeted an eternity ago)
• Basketball is also a bit of a sore point these past 2-3 months. My back has been in a really bad shape - hardly allowing me to walk fast - not to think about running and jumping. Went to see a doctor and he recommended not to play my most favorite sport any more. So, since my back has been much better this past week I am going to basketball practice tonight (because I love this sport and am a bit stupid) - updates to come on how this went.
• Marriage went great - never looked back. Even got two little offspring as well by now - but this is about me! And nothing else (besides basketball and technology).
• That brings me to the technology part: My love for JSF has died down quite a bit (as it has for most of the industry, I think). The new hype is Ansible and Docker (at least for me) - but I don't want to bore my 10s of readers with this now - more on this in a couple of days.

What else is there to say: Tomorrow is weekend which is great - this week felt a bit like two weeks with a lot of things going on work-wise and private-life-wise. I am a bit surprised that this blog still exists but I guess it is true: The internet never forgets.

Mission: Lose weight

Ok, so the new year has started and some warning signs have been recognized during the last 2 months in 2011...

• Pants look as if they were painted on my legs
  
• My belly jumps when I laugh (real Santa Clause style!) - especially embarassing after Basketball Practice in the locker room
• Haven't seen my feet since 2008

Ok, the last one might be a bit exaggerated but the other 2 are valid nonetheless.

I've got two starting points weight-wise:

1. Gym-Scale with clothes on around 10pm - 92.4kg
2. Home-Scale completely naked (oh yeah!) around 7am - 89.4kg

So far I have identified 2 Milestones - 85 by beginning of February - 82 by End of June (gotta get in shape for the Babamixed Basketball Tournament) - both on my home-scale.

The plan is to work out as much as I can and my aging body still supports and try to consume fewer than 4,000 calories per day.

So far I stick to the plan:

I went to the Gym yesterday - 35 minutes of usual workout (bench pressing etc.) and then 35 minutes of running with my new pulse watch (~4.5 km).

Today I only ate: 2 rolls for breakfast, a salad for lunch and now a protein shake for brinner ;) - and Basketball practice is so on tonight.

Planning to bring my running gear to work tomorrow...

Blogging about ICEfaces

One of my favorite software development frameworks - ICEsoft's ICEfaces started a blogging contest (one of the prices is an iPad - nice since my fiancee probably won't approve the budget for a gadget like this).

What I really like about ICEfaces (in comparison to trinidad, what we've used before):

• Nice looking components (probably not the most important one from a development point of view, but hey, that's what sells the products and thus pays my salary :-))
• Active and Helpful forum (http://www.icefaces.org/JForum/search/filters.page). This cannot be valued too high - in my opinion. I'd say roughly 70% of my questions could be answered by searching in the forum and checking the answers people with similar problems had - the other useful source is the public ICEfaces JIRA
• Consistent attribute naming
  Trust me, this is really a big improvement comparing it with something like trinidad. When the attributes all are named consistently it is very easy to exchange components (replace a dataTable with an panelPositioned or a panelSeries for example, switching between inputText and outputText etc.)
  
• Awesome features that come out-of-the-box
  - Push Server
  - Drag and Drop
  - and all the other nice things that can be seen in the component showcase
  

So, you can expect quite some posts about it and of course also my unfiltered opinion.

I'd like to kick it off with my first impressions after having looked at the (fairly new) composite component suite (http://composite-component-showcase.icefaces.org/icefaces-composite-comps-showcase/showcase.iface):
We just recently got access to it (licensewise) and this will really save us some time in future development. The new tables, dual lists and layout components look especially helpful for our current project. I'm really looking forward to using them as soon as possible.
In the past we've implemented something like filterable column headers on our own - we've got a working blueprint for this now, but it requires quite some knowledge about the surrounding program logic to get it successfully integrated in a complex screen.
Dual list won't save too much time (given, that you can also use two single lists and some backing bean data storing and controller methods) - but I'm always a big fan of writing fewer code.
The layout components will definetely play a big role concerning the sexy-factor of our application - and it is always nice to have a better looking UI for low costs ;-)

So, that's it for now - more will come quite soon.

Injuries, Injuries, Injuries

Ok, that's it! Third week - third injury. I'm officially getting old...

Two weeks ago I sprained my right ankle - not too badly (it was worse some years back) - but still bad enough (thanks to my great Nike LeBron III Sneakers that I bought in New York last summer - the lacing is already broken which caused this)....

Last week I dislocated my right pinkie - looked really disgusting. Coach came over and moved it back into place - he also told me to see a doctor the next day - which I didn't.

Two days ago I managed to sprain my hardly healed right ankle AGAIN. OUCH! That hurt - but it is getting better and I'm looking forward to next monday's practice.

So currently I'm playing with a slightly unstable ankle and a right pinkie that I'm "buddy taping" (http://www.utahmountainbiking.com/firstaid/finger.htm#Dislocation) - my shooting percentage is down quite a bit since I started doing this :-)

When something else happens in next week's practice I'm gonna sit out a couple of weeks and focus on healing until the wedding. Damn - suit fitting day is in 2 weeks and I still have to lose 5 pounds (preferably fat).