Year in Review 2013 - JBoss, Cycling, Travel, and telling stories

My last article for 2013... the year in review where I wander through the highlights of my work, play, cycling, writing, and travels for the past year.

This year marks the second year in my current role at Red Hat as a JBoss Technology Evangelist, covering the Integration & BPM technology products. This was a handful, requiring coverage of JBoss SOA-P, EDS, BRMS, BPM-Suite, Fuse, and messaging products.

While I was alone it was really hard to keep ahead of the wave of great technology products we put out, but luckily I got assistance from Kenny Peeples and have been able to focus much more on JBoss BRMS & BPM Suite products.

I am very excited at the coming releases of these products and have been around the world talking about them this year as you can see in the Travels section below. Looking forward to my continued involvement with the JBoss MW Business Unit in 2014 and continued interaction with some of the smartest people I have ever worked with in Engineering, Product Management, and Marketing divisions of Red Hat.

Writing

The writing continued in 2013 with blogging, articles and a revision submitted for OpenShift Primer that should be released in early 2014.

Submitted to publisher @DeveloperPress, revision of #OpenShiftPrimer e-book, stay tuned... coming soon! #writerwrites pic.twitter.com/ljejhrR89X
— Eric D. Schabell (@ericschabell) December 27, 2013

I focused mainly on schabell.org (98 articles), howtojboss.com (33 articles), community.jboss.org (23 articles), and dzone.com for the technical writing I do throughout the year. I covered a wide range of topics and provided quite a few demo projects that you can also browse over on github.com.

I also wanted to challenge myself to write something different so I started working on short stories but only got one pushed out before turning to sport journalism (amateur). In April I applied and got accepted to help staff the RedSoxLife.com site, attempting to publish daily articles during the Red Sox baseball season. This was a magical task as I attended several games this year in Boston and following the team so closely while they went all the way and won the World Series was indescribable.

I plan to continue with all these writing tasks in 2014, so stay tuned!

Cycling

This year I spent a lot of time on the bike, cycling to prepare for my first vacation in the French Alps near Annecy. I got to climb top category mountains and several in the 20th stage of the 2013 Tour du France. This was fantastic and I wrote up a nice article including the tracked rides around Lac Annecy.

I also participated in the second annual Ries van der Velden Classic, going almost five and a half hours over 130 km's. It was a windy and long day but had a great time cycling in Red Hat kit for the cause.

I logged around 1500 km's over the year, a bit low for my normal season but a lot of these were spent climbing mountains and it was amazing!

Travels

I went on the road 18 times this last year and visited 22 cities in 10 countries. I got a few new destinations where I had never been to before, which is really nice. Here is a look at the destinations:

• Madrid (4x)
• Paris
• Munich (3x)
• Geneve
• Boston, MA (3x) - attended MLB:  Red Sox vs Angles, Red Sox vs NYY 
• Dallas, TX
• Raleigh, NC
• Emerald Isle, NC
• Washington, DC - attended MLB: Nationals vs Rays
• Singapore
• Chicago, IL - attended MLB: Cubs vs Pirates
• Hamburg
• Aarhus, DK
• London (2x)
• Barcelona
• Antwerpen

Many of these were for JUG's, JBUG's, conferences, and events. See the links for details as they are too numerous to list here.

That about sums up 2013. I am looking forward to 2014 as a year I am again privileged enough to share my stories with all of you.

ALS - JBoss cycling in 2nd annual Ries van der Velden Classic

Last year I participated in the first annual Ries van der Velden Classic to ride against ALS. I will give a bit of background and tie it back into JBoss by the end, so bear with me.

I have a friend who was a pretty avid cyclist, having done the Alpe d'HuZes (climbing this famous Tour de France mountain 6 times in a single day) just 2 years ago. He was in great condition, but in the Fall of that year he was diagnosed with ALS. He has been lucky enough to have an amazing group of friends that have helped to set up a foundation and to organize the Ries van der Velden Classic to raise funds to fight ALS.

Sporting the Red Hat JBoss cycling gear, I (JBoss Technology Evangelist) again wanted to ride for this good cause. The route is a loop between Zandvoort and Bloemendaal that we were to ride as much as possible, with each loop being sponsored with 1, 5, or 10 euros.

I rode the event last Sunday, 1 Sep 2012, together with
hundreds of registered participants and they raised over 12,300- euros (estimated). I completed 6 loops for a total of ~130 km in just under 5 1/2 hours on the bike. My personal performance data was monitored and can be found at the bottom of this article. A day well spent and done with Red Hat cycling gear that features the JBoss logo. Ries could appreciate this marketing as he is a fellow IT engineer.

We wish Ries all the best and look forward to sporting the Red Hat JBoss cycling kit in the third annual event!

Cycling the French Alps near Annecy

Profile Du Sumnoz

It has been awhile since posting something here related to cycling as I have moved most of this off to a twitter channel @RedHatCycling. I am riding sporting the Red Hat JBoss cycling kit to continue to promote JBoss all the way up to 1800m!

Now I have a bit of a reason to post more than just my latest ride. I was in the French Alps, near Annecy, France. I got to cycle 4 different climbs around Lake Annecy and one was the highest category and finish to the 2013 Tour de France 20th stage, Du Somnoz!

2km to summit Du Somnoz

The first ride was easy, just a small climb in the valley on the back side of Du Somnoz.

The second was up the front of Du Somnoz with start from Annecy as the Tour de France stage will approach it.

The third ride was on the other side of the lake, up the

Ride 1:
From village of Chaparon - Lac Annecy - Saint-Eustache - La-Chapel-Saint-Maurice - foot of Du Somnoz (back-side) and back. Steep tour up the valley and great views of Lake Annecy from about 900m. Easy start to the week.

Ride 2:
Went for the big Tour de France finish of stage 20 this year. From Chaparon - Lac Annecy - Annecy - Du Somnoz and back. 16km climb as shown in the picture above. Just gets steeper and steeper, eventually you start to hate the marker signs that show every single km what the next km climbing
percentages are going to be, 8-10% most of the way. I averaged 8.2 km/hr going up it, feels like walking would have been faster! Awesome vies though and great feeling to summit this monster from the Tours classification of Highest Category (HC)! ;)

Ride 3:
Went on the other side of the lake to climb the Col Du La Forclaz, again reaching around 900m, awesome views from the other side of the lake and lots of para-gliders.

Ride 4:
Finished the week with a repeat ride from the first week. Up to La-Chapel-Saint-Maurice and enjoyed the views, coffee at the village cafe and then enjoyed the lake front ride back. My heart rate dropped over 10 bpm avg from the beginning of my 2 weeks in the mountains. It really does help to climb these monsters in the Alps! The tracking application failed towards the end of this ride, so it seems to be shorter than the first ride, but it is pretty much the same.

I loved every minute of it and miss it when riding the flats in Holland.

Cycling Annecy France June 2013

JBoss year in review 2012

This has been quite a year for me, with a big jump to a new adventure from JBoss Solution Architect in the Benelux region to JBoss Technology Evangelist (JTE) in the JBoss Middleware Business Unit.

I could not be happier since making this move. I have been able to get a lot done for the field that I was not able to do like demos, howto blogs and more.

Writing

I love to write. It is that simple. I have been lucky enough to find time to write on all kinds of projects this year. Blogging was a big theme with seventy five (75) articles in 2012. You can find the JBoss content here, on dzone.com and over at howtojboss.com. I have joined with Java Code Geeks site and was invited as a DZone MVB which means both sites republish content from my blog. I have published several articles at JAX online, several over at Computable.nl and a book called OpenShift Primer at DeveloperPress.com. I also lined up a Chinese translator and you will find links at the bottom of my articles that direct you to a translation.

I even found some time to work on a novella and a few short stories are in the works as I write this, all non-technical in nature. A writer writes, everything!

Cycling
This year we got our first ever Red Hat / JBoss branded cycling gear. I logged over 2k km in places like the Veluwe, Limburg, Belgium and even participated in the ALS tour for a good cause (106km in 4,5 hours)!

I finally split out my tweeting on cycling to a new account @RedHatCycling, check it out if you want to keep up on my adventures on two wheels.

Travel
I sure got to move around this big old world this year, starting with the first 6 months as a JBoss SA and finishing with story telling trips as a JTE:

• Paris, France
• Luxembourg (YaJUG)
• Lisbon, Portugal (PTJUG)
• Mallorca, Spain
• London, UK (Cloud Tour, Red Hat Dev Day)
• Rome, Italy (Codemotion)
• Amsterdam, Netherlands (Cloud Tour)
• Boston, MA (JTE interviews, JBoss World / JUDCon, Boston JUG)
• Portland, OR
• Brussels, Belgium
• Antwerpen, Belgium
• Berlin, Germany
• Crete, Greece
• Chicago, IL
• Beijing, China (RHTC / RHPT)
• Aarhus, Denmark (GOTO)
• Munich, Germany (JBossOneDay)

Looking forward to the coming year, with new products, new travels and new stories to tell! 

ALS - JBoss cycling for a good cause

This is a bit of a different JBoss posting than what we normally do here. I will give a bit of background and tie it back into JBoss by the end, so bear with me.

I have a friend who was a pretty avid cyclist, having done the Alpe d'HuZes (climbing this famous Tour de France mountain 6 times in a single day) just last year. He was in great condition, but in the Fall he was diagnosed with ALS. He has been lucky enough to have an amazing group of friends that have helped to setup a foundation and to organize the Ries van der Velden Classic to raise funds to fight ALS.

Both Oliver Carr (JBoss Consultant in Europe) and myself (JBoss Technology Evangelist) are cyclists and wanted to ride in the Red Hat JBoss cycling kit. It was a loop between Zandvoort and Bloemendaal that we were to ride as much as possible, with each loop being sponsored with 1, 5, or 10 euros. We hit up our local Dutch Red Hat office and everyone sponsored something, what a great team!

We rode the event last Sunday, 2 Sep 2012, together with 152 registered participants and raised over 17,600 euros (estimated). Oliver Carr completed three loops and I completed 5 loops, for together a total of ~170 km in over 4 1/2 hours on the bikes. My personal performance data was monitored and can be found at the bottom of this article. We raised over 700 euros for this effort, a day well spent and we did this with Red Hat cycling gear that features the JBoss logo. Ries could appreciate this marketing as he is a fellow IT engineer.

We wish Ries all the best and look forward to sporting the Red Hat JBoss cycling kit in his yearly event!

Monitoring performance.

Year in review 2011

Taking a personal look back at a very busy year in which I spent a great amount of my focus on JBoss technologies, writing and presenting all over the world. Trips to Sweden, Spain, England, Ireland, Belgium, Germany and Boston, USA.

Instead of rattling off all the stuff that passed by this year, I would refer you to the Blog Archive in the sidebar of this blog where you can follow that action month by month. ;-)

On the cycling front I was able to make good use of my lunch hours when working from home and these one hour rides added up! I clocked around 3000 km this year and with travel I was able to ride in the Ardennes (Rochefort), Germany (Trier), Limburg (Cauberg, Keutenberg, etc) and in the Veluwe (Postbank). I got my climbing hat on this year with the top being the trip to Trier (first time I had to stop on a climb to rest, ever...) and the Ardennes (single day ride with over 500m climbing, rockin' area around Rochefort).

Take care, thanks for reading in 2011 and see you next year!

The Nokia Sportstracker

I thought it would be fun to give this a try on my Nokia E71, just installed, turned it on, and started to ride. This is the resulting output, which you could have followed live on-line even!

http://sportstracker.nokia.com/nts/workoutdetail/index.do?id=1098618

Note that this cycling part of my blog is pretty much moving over to my twitter account @ericschabell, which is much more convenient for cycling stuff.

Back in Limburg for some climbing

My last vacation day to be spent on cycling activities and I was able to head down to Limburg again.

This time my buddy Robert went along, which was nice but he has never climbed any serious hills before. Therefore we kept the ride a bit short, only 30 km and about 1,5 hours.

We started off again in my favorite village of Schoonbron and went up the Keutenberg. The picture on the top right shows that we reached the top of the climb and could cross this one off our list.

We then toured on a bit further, even being cheered by a group of hikers, before heading up the Gulperberg. The picture on the right is of my buddy Robert trudging up the last steep bit before reaching the top. He was asking when we were stopping for some coffee at this point... but there was more in the planning.

No first timer to climbing in Limburg can miss the Cauberg, so we headed back through Gulpen, Wittem, Partij, Schijn op Geul, and on into Valkenburg to the Cauberg.

I have never had the chance to have someone shoot a picture of me climbing this famous cat. 4 "Dutch mountain" so had Robert go on ahead a bit to catch me on the way up. The final photo shows me at about the half way mark, chugging away (standing) on the bike.

We finished up the afternoon with spaghetti in Valkenburg before heading back to the car and on back home. The bike computer showed over 1300 calories burned, so I was pushing it up the hills pretty good!

Climbing the Oude Holleweg and Van Randwijckweg in Beek

Today I was off for a meeting in Nijmegen and knew I would be a bit early, so I put my bike in the back of the car for a 1,5 hour ride in the hills around Beek and Berg en Dal.

The total distance was only 20 km but the weather was great and I must have spent over half of the ride climbing some hill or another.

I was able to loop around through Ubbergen, back to Beek and then climb up the steep hills to Berg en Dal. I made this loop 5 times to climb the Oude Holleweg (3x) and the Van Randwijckweg (2x).

This was all good for a serious max heart rate of 198, tired legs, and 1350 calories burned.

The top left picture is of the Oude Holleweg and the bottom right picture is of the old station house at the bottom of the Van Randwijckweg climb. There is a large amount of road construction going on so the roads were dirty and partially blocked which means you have to pay a bit more attention before the climbs start (in Beek and on the Van Randwijckweg).

The Oude Holleweg is just a very steep and narrow climb that you feel get much steeper at the end. By the third time I did it I was pretty much maxing out my heart rate as I stood up on the pedals.

The Van Randwijckweg climb was a much better road, more easy going until the sharp corner that either doubles back to the left or goes down to the right. At that point you hit the bricked street and it gets very steep again. Really a fun climb to do as you can take the first part in the medium gears and don't have to drop down to the climbing gears until you see the bricked portion of the road aproaching (this is a good tip if you are a recreational rider like me).

Route Amstel Gold Race 2009

Nice overview of the Amstel Gold Race 2009 route that will be taken today:

Today a 2 hour ride

Today a 2 hour ride through some of the towns in the direction of Eindhoven: Vught, Esch, Sint-Michielsgestel, Schijndel, Den Dungen, and back to Hertogenbosch.

Was around 47 km but most of it was spent doing high revolutions per minute to get the heart pumping in the 150 - 170 range. Burned over 1800 calories and enjoyed warm weather, around 22 degrees Celsius. I even got rained on a bit but that did not matter as this was the first ride of the year in shorts and short-sleeves!

De Ronde van Oeste Portlandia 2009

Every year I report a link to De Ronde van Oeste Portlandia, my hometown spin-off on the Ronde van Vlanderen. The run it the same weekend as their name sake and within a few days you will find all kinds of YouTube videos done by riders.

Riding in the Limburg hills

Early this week the weather forecast was for a week of sunny days and today would be one of the nicest of the week. Seeing as I have a few extra vacation days over, I decided to take one and head off to Limburg.

It was 18,5 C and a bit windy but I had a great ride. Over 2 hours, 40 km, with almost nothing but climbing.

I started in Schoonbron, through Valkenburg, then up the Cauberg (4e cat) and I took a picture of the last sign at the top of the climb, that you are leaving Valkenburg. From there it was down to Sibbe and a quick stop at Margraten to visit PFC Henry L. Hooper.

From there it was back up the hill towards Gulpen where I stormed the Gulperberg (see picture of the sign at the top of the climb), onwards through a few smaller villages to Heijenrath, then down into Slenaken. I then turned around and took the Lorberg tour climb (4e cat) back up to Eperheide and Epen. From there it was through the rolling hills through Mechelen, Wittem, Gulpen and home to Schoonbron.

Once I got changed it was time to examine the statistics on the cycling computer; 2 hours on the bike, 2100 calories burned, 40 km cycled. It was so nice I first had a coffee and the local Limburgse vlaai (pie) with the pictured view of the Keutenberg.

Armstrong's April Fool's joke

This is a really good one about the recent surgery and how they used carbon clavicle to fix him right up (includes pictures and x-rays).

Another long Veluwe ride

It was a 2,5 hr ride through the hills around Apeldoorn, Hoenderloo, and Otterlo. Sunny,
cool at 12 C, with a bit of wind. Burned over 2800 calories over 64 km.

This was a good day. ;-)

Ride in the Veluwe today

Rode for 1 hour and 40 minutes in the hills near our vacation location. Climbed up a 6 km hill (awesome!) and some smaller steeper ones around Apeldoorn. Total ride was 40 km and I burned over 1700 calories. Great weather, sun and a bit cold.

Bit of a time trial today

Made a run with my new bike to Uden today. Bit of wind at the back but from door to door it was 32km and I did it in 1 hr 5 min, the fastest I have done that yet. I love this bike!

First trips on the new bike

After picking up my new bike I was really looking forward to the first ride. Unfortunately the weather (both snow and ice enough to skate on here in the Netherlands) and a few colds in a row kept me off the thing.

Finally this weekend I got two days of 12 degrees Celsius and some sunshine! Off on Saturday for 40 km but ran a rear tire flat at the 20 km mark. Had to take it easy the last 20 km back home. On Sunday I only got 6 km down the road and again another rear tire flat. That pretty much ended my weekend attempts at riding. Both punctures were just small pieces of stone / shell that cut through both tire and tube. I sure hope this was just plain bad luck...

A new bike - VanTuyl VT740

After more than 3 years on my previous VT730c, I was more than ready to upgrade to something nice. I love to climb so the lighter version, with Shimano Ultegra Triple will be just wonderful. As I just turned 40 I thought it would be a nice birthday present for myself. After some birthday fund raising, I ordered my VT740 three weeks ago.


Yesterday I took delivery and today I could just squeeze in a 30km ride before the rain started. It still needs some tuning as the front derailleur is not making it over the middle blade without two shifts, but this thing is very smooth. I didn't push it much, but it really moves nicer over the road and accelerates more easily through the gears that the old bike.


The old bike was aluminum colored, but this was not possible any longer. I choose a flat black like you see some of the retro cars being painted these days. Gives it an 'old school' look I really like.

I am definitely ready for some nicer weather and a trip to some mountains now.

Some cycling inspiration