05-23-04 : Congratulations Nic!

Nic, Congratulations on Graduating!
In case you weren't aware. Nic recently graduated from college. He has decided that more school is in order, however, so he will be attending Loyola in the spring (I think).

I am finally done with Spanish. Even though it was only 2 days a week it took up a lot of time. It is now summer and my goal is to work less and tan more. Skin cancer will by my second of many cancers ;)

I am changing job areas again, still doing the same thing but completely different technical area. Now I will be working on 3D, so working on new features and 3D games. Fairly cool stuff.

This coming weekend is the debaucherous Indy 500. Nic, Dad, Friends, and I will be hitting up the Chi-town and Indy areas. It will certainly be exciting.

"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end." Henry David Thoreau

-Justin

Checkout MattsBand.com. That is the album cover in the upper left. If you like Dave Matthews you will really like this album. If you prefer the works of artists such as Jay-Z or Eminem then CHECK IT OUT ANYWAY, slacker. At the very least you could be pretentious about it and pretend to be "Indy". Support the Indy Scene.

I will be in Chicago/Indianapolis the weekend of May 30th. FYI. I suppose I didn't really need to post that, but too bad. Now you know and that is half of the battle. The Thunder Cats in spanish would be LOS GATOS TRUENOS! trueno Trueno, LOS GATOS TRUENOS HO!

May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house. - George Carlin

-Justin

I meant to update my page with some cruise details, but it was fairly uneventful and I am a slacker. If you ever had questions about the matrix movies like "How can neo see the machines with his orange vision" or "How can he blow up the machines" or "What is the point of the train station" this provides a pretty good explanation.

More coming...

We must expect to fail...but fail in a learning posture, determined no to repeat the mistakes, and to maximize the benefits from what is learned in the process. - Ted W. Engstrom, US Senator

-Justin

I have cancer! Ha ha, april fools, just kidding. I had cancer. I forgot that I was diagnosed on April 1st and called my parents. My parents were probably thinking that it was the worst April Fools joke ever. So two years ago I had a testicle the size of a mango and they wanted to cut it off. Okay, fine, I say. When do I need to have the surgery, next week? next month? Oh.. how about tomorrow? You want to remove a significant chunk of my body - tomorrow?! Anyway, yeah! for science and health and noxious chemotherapy.

So recently a muslim cleric in Faluja denounced the mutilation of bodies as an un-islamic thing to do, when refering to the 4 civilian contractors who were burned and dragged through the streets in Iraq. Does this seem ironic to anyone else? Mutilating the bodies after they are dead is un islamic, but little kids throwing jugs of gasoline on civilians who are burning alive is perfectly fine. They have plenty of reasons to hate America and the American occupation but A) these people were protecting food shipments into Faluja and B) The more help the American occupation gets the sooner we will be out of there. Maybe they just want us to leave so they can have their Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish 3-way civil war. I saw a bumper sticker that said something like "ISLAM, a peaceful humanitarian religion". Well I don't think a religion that truly focuses on peace should need a bumper sticker clarifying that fact. For the majority of Islam, it is true, I am sure, but from most of the news we see it sometimes doesn't seem that way.

Last night I went to a NOFX/Alkaline Trio concert in Davis. My goal was to see Alkaline Trio which was opening for NOFX. The only rub was that the concert started at 7:30 and I had spanish class until 9. There were four bands playing though, so I thought I had time to still make most of the concert. I was wrong. We got there just after Alkaline Trio had finished. Doh! None of us who went were big punk rock fans. NOFX was good, just not our normal cup of tea.

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely. - François Auguste René Rodin, 1840 - 1917

-Justin

I spent the weekend in San Francisco because on Friday I went down the the Gaming Developers Conference in San Jose which is about an hour south of the city. I hung out with a friend in Santa Clara and we partied it up in San Fran a bit. Other than drinking I didn't really do much.

I am still planning on setting up a linux server so that I don't have to use geocities anymore. That will allow me to do fun scripting stuff on the webpage. But you know, it is low priority when it comes to work, or doing laundry, or sleeping, or watching tv.

2 weeks until I go on a CRUISE! 15lbs to go! ;)

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause. - Victor Hugo, 1802 - 1885

-Justin

Write in the forum and tell me what products or services are missing in your life. Personally, I think the world could use some advanced A.I. Technology in that field is really lacking. I took a class on A.I. in college and we spent the first half of the semester on searching algorithms. So that you could search for the best solution to a given problem. That isn't very advanced.

I watched Dr. Strangelove last night. Good movie, jason you need to watch it. I just don't understand why Dr. Strangelove acted like he did at the end of the movie.

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!"

-Justin

I got bored and made a script that can read the hidden subconscious of the internet. You can see the results here, here, here, or here, and this one. I think they are interesting. You could say that the subconscious of the internet is the subconscious of our collective persona. Or not.

Apparently playing poker is legal in California. Our main hangout bar just started offering Texas Hold'em. First day they opened I missed the tournament but they had a table going afterwards and I sat down and won $100. Seems fun, as long as I win. It was somewhat shady though, probably good for a first night.

I had to get new insurance, I get the "good driver" discount. I still think I pay too much, oh well. I am reading Microserfs a novel about Microsoft employees trying to have a life. It is interesting to see the differences between their workplace and ours. They have offices with doors.

Skiing season is pretty much over. It is nice and warm out, I am playing soccer just about every day. I wore the Guadalajara jersey my Mom sent me, it is quite nice. The mexican chef at Chipotle liked it. I read most of "Letters to a Young Poet" by Rilke. There was some rather profound stuff on life, questions, existance etc. I will probably write some of it here eventually.

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. - James Thurber

-Justin

Poker night last night and I only had three measley beers over a few hours, and still my head hurts in the morning. I think lack of sleep matters more than how much I drank in this particular scenario. In cards, Floyd (my roomate) made out like a gangbuster while I happily donated to the cause. I have a bit of a confession. The normal poker games we play are starting to bore me. You either have a good hand or you don't, rarely you think you do and still lose or think you don't and still win. There is very little bluffing. We play mini no limit hold-em games which are a lot more interesting, I think. They do seem to take a long time though. The no-limit means you can bet all your chips, it does not mean you can keep cashing in for however much you want. Everyone starts with the same amount, like $5 or $10.

So I rear ended someone, yes chalk up another accident. Because of this I signed up for new insurance and filed a claim this morning. Not fun, but humbling. The brunt of the impact (which wasn't very fast) was taken up by the tire on the back of the SUV in front of me. Which means her car had very little damage. It could have turned out much worse, I got lucky.

I have always had a fear and aprehension of big purchases, which makes it very difficult to setup an apartment. A new simple, black, IKEA desk is sitting in our apartment. My new computer fits quite nicely on it. I am slowly getting everything setup - like a cable running to my TV Tuner card in order to play (and record) tv on my computer. The nice monitor I got can do picture in picture with a tv signal and computer signal. Now I just need a switch box in order to have multiple computers running to the same mouse, keyboard, and monitor. Then I will set up my own server so that I don't have to put the webpage on Yahoo's Geocities. Of course it would be nice to have another flat panel so that I could run two displays at once :) But that gets expensive.

Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise: so say the most ancient and the most modern serpents. - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844 - 1900

-Justin

I don't really understand that quote, but it seemed profound. Oh and checkout Craig's kids here.

Mike got married. Congratulations, it was a beautiful wedding. The trip down to Utah was fun, I should do that once every two months or so. Got to see everyone briefly and head home. I used to avoid using the word "home" to mean somewhere where my parents are not living, but I suppose I am getting used to be the one who lives far away.

Work has been busy, busy, busy. I think it is always like this and I am just not used to it. I have given up on my potential promotion. In fact, I am hoping that I don't get the promotion - that way I can just say that I don't care about work and do what I can do and not worry about it. Right now I am worrying about it a lot and taking a lot of it home with me. If I have to miss a deadline it really kills me. Basically I am trying to develop an application to test video. So it will automatically play a video stream and check to make sure that everything played correctly. But it doesn't work yet ;).

The new skis I got are awesome, I am not sure if I said that, but I will say it again. I plan on going skiing this weekend after a long long break from it.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. - Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900

-Justin

Girls, girls, girls. I am trying to actively date, but it is wierd dating girls you meet at bars. It is much easier to date friends of friends etc. I am trying the prior with seemingly moderate success. I thought she wasn't going to call and then she did but she didn't want to hang out etc etc etc, blah blah blah.

I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to talk about, but now I have forgotten. A couple of quick things, the band Alkaline Trio is awesome if you are into indy/rock. It is about time someone made a fully functional computer small enough to fit in your pocket (they just need to put an Intel processor in it now ;).

It is going to cost roughly ~200 to fix my old skies. I must pay at least $900 for decent insurance coverage. Rear 1999 Hyundai Tiburon windshields cost over $500. Computer desks (and all furniture) is not cheap. I am missing my copy of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Oh, and Itzhak Perlman saturday night at the Mondavi Center.

If you ever get windows error 80040111 "ClassFactory cannot supply requested class" then you don't have the correct decoder for the video stream you are trying to play. (Windows XP doesn't come with an native MPEG2 decoder). Try installing a different media player. This took up half my day.

No one knows what he can do until he tries. - Publilius Syrus

-Justin

Happy New Year. Now get back to work... I am frustrated with work lately, but that is for another post. Today's post is about some of the best skiing I have ever had. Blizzards in Utah for Christmas followed by blizzards in Tahoe for New Year. I skied more powder the last couple of weeks then all the rest of my life combined. My new skis helped a lot, the Armada ARVs. They are awesome and hot pink, which looks suprisingly cool against the white snow. Canyonlands with Jason and his friend was awesome. I rode for the first time on my new skis and it made powder so much more fun. The very first run we took we got stuck in powder, but after unsticking ourselves we had a blast floating through really light powder.

Last Saturday they opened up the backside of Kirkwood for the first time in a couple of weeks. Just above where the lift ends is a roughly 200-300ft hike that gives you a few turns of uninterrupted powder. That is until enough people hike it and it gets all tracked out. It is similar to the top of Millicent lift at Brighton, but not as many rocks. Kris, Brian, and I hiked it and I got 20 or so turns of uninterrupted deep powder. (One wipeout as my skis dragged a little my weight got thrown forward and my tips sank). Then, once we had enough of the backside, where everyone plus dog is skiing, we headed to the other far side of the resort for some more powder. Between Sentinel Bowl and Pallisades Bowl there is a big rocky outcropping that is about 30 feet high. I was skiing with two people who had jumped off of it a couple seasons ago when more snow had accumulated. Anyway we all ended up going off of it again and landing in a big pillow of fresh snow, it was great. I have a video of it I will put up here soon. We also tunneled huge holes through the snow in our lawn at the cabin. Probably about 25ft worth of tunnels.

Today at work my hard drive on my laptop crashed. I kept a lot of personal files and most of my work files on my laptop. The last backup I made was in August. If they can't retrieve the files I will be hugely dissapointed.

My vague new years resolution is to not let work stress me out and start lifting regularly again. I am signing up for Spanish 2 soon and there is a slim chance that I might take a Japanese course being offered at work. Japanese seems like an awesome language to know, but a very difficult one to learn.

New question, click here and put in your answer. Today's question is "If you died today, what would you regret not doing?".

It is an inexorable Law of Nature that bad must follow good, that decline must follow a rise. To feel that we can rest on our achievements is a dangerous fallacy. Inner strength can overcome anything that occurs outside. -- I Ching, 1150 BC

-Justin

I am in Utah! My aunt wanted me to upload this photo. So here you go.
[Family Halloween Picture]

I saw Return of the King tuesday night, and it was very interesting. The interesting part wasn't so much the movie, which was great, but the types of people who come to the 12:01 am showing of a 3 1/2 hour movie. There was more than one person in costume and before the movie started we had no less than three impromptu improvised plays performed for our amusement. The Tolkein fans applauded frequently and with excessive enthusiasm several times during the movie. There is that main elf guy, Legolas, that apparently all nerdy young girls are in love with. Well every time he was on screen or did something heroic (which was frequently) they would clap madly. So I figured the first time a cute female appeared on screen I would applaud and hoot and holler. Well, I was the only one. Oh, did you want to know about the movie? It was great. There was a lot of stuff to pack into 3.5 hours but they managed it quite well and the special effects and computer generated images enhance the movie instead of dominate it. There is plenty of character devleopment, George Lucas might need to look that one up.

So I decide to go skiing on Sunday, but everyone else is lazy or leaving town, so I am going up by myself. I thought I could get all the way up there without using chains, but I was wrong. The last 10 miles of my 100 mile trip I had to chain up despite the fact that there wasn't that much snow on the ground. I don't know if it was because I went ~30/35mph or because I didn't put the chains on well enough or if the Tiburon just has too narrow of a wheel base for chains, but I broke off some of the plastic on the interior of the wheel well. Then the left chain came off completely. I think this was because one of the links might have been folded up under another link. When you put chains on you have to make sure everything is completely smooth, lined up correctly, and snug. Which is no trivial thing to do on the Tiburon. So after all this the left chain came off completely.

So I make it home with no problems and I am getting my stuff out of the car. I have my skis, boots, jacket, and poles, but my ski pants are in the back of the car and I want to get everything in one trip. So I reach into the back of the car with a ski pole and start lifting out my ski pants. They are somewhat heavy to I am lifting fairly hard when the ski pants slip off and CRACK! I smack the pole into the rear window. I swear I barely hit the window, if it was 6 inches farther away I wouldn't have hit it at all. Anyway the tip of the pole goes through and I have a 2" hole in my window. Then the whole window starts shattering into millions of little squares. Basically I just got off the phone with the glass company and I currently have a plastic garbage bag for a rear window. Sigh.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. -- Albert Einstein

-Justin

I hear voices, they say "If you update it, they will come". RETURN OF THE KING TOMORROW AT 12:01 am. Nobody in my time zone will see the movie before I do, bwuahahaha!

Here is what I am thinking, every update I will have a question, click here and put in your answer. Today's question is "Ritual Japanese Seppuku or Death by Firing Squad?" If you are forgetting your Japanese rituals look no further.

Well, it's better to be happy in a cardboard shack Than to be alone in a castle - Harry Connick Jr.

-Justin

Have you got something to say? If so Click Here. Or you could email me instantly right from this website! (emails me at work, delayed response on weekends).

So here are the skis I am considering buying. Buying stuff is fun, I should do it more. I am leaning toward the AR5, but ARV is better in powder, which is where I struggle the most heavy deep powder. Armada is a cool company, started by a bunch of freeskiers. And I am captain of team cool (right Jason?), so I think I am going with them. The AR5 is built for the park, but supposedly also good on the entire mountain. The ARV is Armada's "Backcountry" ski, which is also good in the park. Fatter and longer it isn't as good on groomers, oh well. The ARV is also about $50 more expensive.

Update!
We have a last minute contender. I think it is between the Mothership (below) and the ARV. I need a ski that performs in snow, not in the park. In the park I just need to grow some cajones.

Line Mothership
The Mothership is apparently nice and stable, great in powder, with big twin tips. This is pretty much what I am looking for.

-Justin

Skiing is great. I was going to take tomorrow off and head up to the mountain because there has been a thorough dumping up in the mountains, but I think I won't. I have a meeting with my manager to go over my expectations last year and if I met them. Blah. Whatever, I used to be good at my job and got no credit, now I am considered good at my job but I am not and I have pretty much nothing to show for it. I realize that you can't let crap like work stress you out. You worry about it while you do it and then leave it at work and don't really care. I don't quite have it down yet. So... I was going to go skiing tomorrow but I think I have to meet with my boss because we are going over this expectations stuff as a group on Monday where we each stand up and say "I met these expectations and not these other ones".

So back to skiing, I went up a couple time last weekend. I have decided to get some shorter, fatter, twin tip skis. I want something that can land backwards, soar in the pipe, and float in powder. My current skis rock for going fast, carving, and steep terrain but they are getting somewhat old and beaten.

I think, in general, you should try to remove desire from your life. If you really desire for people at work to think you are a hardworker, smart, creative, cool, or whatever and then someone acusses you of being the opposite you will get really upset. Now, if you remove that desire and don't care what others think then you won't get upset about what others say. This isn't because of a direct experience or anything, I think it just applies in general. If traffic is really bothering you, remove your desire to get there quickly. I can, however, see an argument for keeping desire. Some people might say that it is what makes life worth living. I think this argument doesn't take into account the "contentment" that can come from removing desire. People frequently talk about whether or not they are "happy". Happy is too strong a word in english. It implies that you are in a really really good mood and getting what you want. Maybe we should ask people if they are content. Also, capitalism is built around desire and trying to remove desire while living in the US is swimming upstream. Earn, Buy, Sleep, Earn, Buy, Sleep.

I think I am going to become really religious. Find a list of religions somewhere, pick one arbitrarily and just run with it. The notion "It is in God's hands" is comforting, even for an athiest. It just gets translated into "Whatever happens, happens." Actually I want to start a new religion. I have three basic premises so far. 1) "Decide for yourself". 2) "Get whatever you can from other religions". 3) "Tolerance". We could have mass where someone quotes the Koran, The Bible, and The Vedas all in the same lecture! Lots of people smarter and more experienced than I am have written a lot of good things, why restrict ourselves?

Oh, I almost forgot. Checkout this new comic. Slackers

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

-Justin

Computer - So I was going to return my computer and get a different one, but they offered me an additional discount to keep my current computer and I went with that. Now I don't know what I am going to do. I don't really want the discount and the new computer I was going to get would have been awesome. Lots of upgrades for the same price as what I paid. You can see those specs here. I am somewhat tired of dealing with it, so maybe I will just leave it be. I still need to get a desk too, which is somewhat of a pain.

Thanksgiving - I went to my friends house for thanksgiving and ate lots of turkey among other things. It wasn't as good as home but it was better than I expected. After that I hit LA to see Jason's hockey tournament. That was a good time especially since I haven't been to LA many times before. The only thing that wasn't fun was the 7+ hour drive back. Coming to a complete stop in the middle of the desert in the middle of the San Juaquin Valley (in the middle of nowhere) is demoralizing.

I suppose I have been trying to be "profound" on my website. I guess it is because I have a vague feeling other people are reading this, yet I don't receive any direct feedback. It is somewhat nice that way though. I have been trying to come up with an ever improving philosophy on life, but when work is busy, spanish class takes time, and I am always doing stuff, it doesn't leave much time for anything else. I am still considering other careers, still wondering what to do with my life, and still looking at going back to school. There are a million side project things I would like to work on (LED Rims), but I don't really have the motivation or the time. I think starting a company would be grand, because then your hobby, passion, and job are all the same thing.

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well. - Josh Billings

-Justin

I type this to you from my new computer! (pictures to follow). The flat panel monitor is nice, I highly recommend it. To test out my new system I just bought Tribes 2, Warcraft 3, and Black & White. I haven't been this excited since... since my first season ski pass! Speaking of skiing, Kirkwood opened up last saturday so went up on Sunday and caught the first runs of the season, my first fall of the season, etc. I am in much better shape than last year so things are much easier. I hear Utah has a lot of snow so everyone down there has to email me skiing/snowboarding updates and stories. I might have to make an emergency Utah trip if enough snow falls.

Shake it like a polaroid picture

-Justin

I just slept for 14 hours straight without blinking an eye. Okay, maybe one long blink. I feel a lot better now and I am coming off of a vicious cold that attacked me most of last week.

Friday night I spent roughly $2000.00 on a new PC. So all you people who think I don't spend any money are wrong! You might even see me playing some counter strike soon. I must brag about the system specs. I have a 3Ghz P4 w/HyperThreading running on a Canterwood chipset with an 800Mhz Front Side Bus. It comes with 1GB of DDR 400 Memory and a 120GB SATA hard drive. The graphics card is the Radeon 9800 Pro w/128MB of memory. This baby should hum. To view it all I have a new 21" Flat Panel with a maximum resolution of 1600x1200, with picture in picture and a 16ms response time (better for gaming). I bought it off of Dell, because I had to, and I got the XPS which is Dell's new gaming system. It was a pretty good deal especially with the nice discount I had.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin

-Justin

Here you can compare me and my brother Nic. People often say we aren't very alike in neither personality or appearance. You can clearly see that I am the nerdy one while he is the.. uh... purple one. Judge for yourself. [Justin]
And no, my eyes are not glazed over because of the debillitating effects of alcohol. It is because I, uh, just got new glasses.
[Nic]
Jason! send me a picture, that way we can have all the brothers up.
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Comic!!

So it has been a while since I updated, lo ciento. On a good note, though, my spanish has been getting better. This week I have been sick and it was not much fun, I almost stayed home from work on Thursday.

Sunday I got to see Modest Mouse at the Fillmore. The Fillmore, for those who haven't been to San Fran much, is an awesome concert house where every major modern music band since the 50's has played. They still have the playbills up from back then with lots of bands like Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Led Zepplin, etc. It was an awesome concert except that the lead singer was losing his voice and didn't play for as long as he was scheduled.

Intel is graciously giving us $1000.00 to buy a new pc with, and we have to spend it on a Dell PC (with an Intel processor of course). I am currently deciding whether to go for a stripped down version or a suped up version. Either way I will probably get this really nice 21" Flat Screen Monitor that can go up to 1600x1200 resolution and has a newly developed 16ms response time, which makes it much better than most Flat Screens for playing fast moving games.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. --Voltaire

-Justin

I seem to frequently say to people that time moves much faster now than it did when I was little. I usually get some small reply, you know the usual "yeah it does". But, I don't mean it in some sort of small trivial sort of way. You know the years 10 - 16 took forever. I mean a year was a hell of a long time and you were a completely different person after one year. Each grade in school was a significant leap forward, and you were always looking forward to some new thing you had to prepare for. It scares me, somewhat. I mean I get up this morning and I am 24 and yesterday I was just entering college at 19 years old. I know that time is flying by so fast that tomorrow I am going to wake up and be 45, then 69, then on my death bed (if I live that long). It can really rattle you if you think about it that way. It isn't that I am afraid of death I suppose, just reluctant to see it all fly by while I sit and wonder how to make the best of it. You have to admire those people who go off on their own and start a business, or move to a new country, or quit their job and become artists etc etc. It takes bravery, a special kind of bravery that they don't write about in books.

Kris and Amber (now engaged, congrats) setup a marvellous sushi dinner for me. It really was great. For some reason I was suprised at how many people showed up. After the dinner we didn't really do much, but it was a great meal. Sake, raw fish, Sapporro, and oyster shots actually go kind of well together.

I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 ways that don't work. -- Albert Einstein

-Justin

So, my wonderful birthday extravaganza is over, thank you all who participated, it was a blast. Marvellous presents all around and I now have plenty of reading material. We played paintball near our family's cabin a couple of hours south of SLC. I accidentally overshot Craig and the next time we play I would thoroughly expect him to get some revenge :). Riding ATVs is something I didn't realize could be so much fun. I tore around one time riding up some fairly steep stuff and Mike showed me around. The best thing, by far, was getting to see my family and eating well. I mean I eat well normally, it just costs me restaurant prices.

[Click Here to see Mike's Art]

This is a severely shrunken piece of partially completed art from the up and coming soon to be renown Mike Smith. I am showing it off here it its reduced quality format to encourage him to send me more art. The fact that we Bischoffs couldn't muster up a decent sketch to save our lives makes us appreciate his art all that much more.

So consider this your warning and reminder that the 3rd and final movie in the Lord of the Rings series is due out soon, don't miss it. Also, don't forget about the Matrix part tres and Quentin Tarrantino's new movie "Kill Bill".

Those links, by the way, are not for the bandwidth limited (dial up).

Arnold, Arnold, Arnold aka the GOVERNATOR. Here is where I talk about California politics. But not right now, I might add an update soon. Basically I can summarize the situation as "politics is not governed by logical reasoning, but by the whimsy of the collective subconsious". Meaning, we were mad, because of the economy, because of the power crisis, and because of things in general so we kicked Davis out of there and took a chance with someone new (even if he is unqualified, unproven, unkown, of questionable integrity, and a Republican with a Democratic government). I think half the votes came from people who just thought it would be fun.

"This is your life, and it is ending one minute at a time."

-Justin

So for some reason, when I am waking up I am prone to believing weird things. For some reason yesterday morning I thought I had two alarms set, one that I set last night and one that I just set in the morning. The other day I thought that I was cutting the snooze short each time I hit it (It normally takes 9 minutes to go off but I thought I was somehow cutting it short at like 3 mintues or something) which is impossible because hitting the snooze doesn't do anything until your alarm goes off.

Kurt is coming down from Chicago Oct 17th and I am thinking up what to do for the celebration. I will probably hang out with him in San Fran and his Stanford friend Shanna. Anyway it will be good to see him again. I really need to get out to chicago sometime.

Today we had a meeting with a hardware design engineer who was telling us about stuff he is working on for our future products. We were giving him some feedback on how it would effect us and I realized that he would potentially be a great connection for the job I want to do. Basically I am in software and it would be great to be able to move to hardware. I am, as always, thinking about going to school to get a degree but I am just not sure if I want to go down the technical path or the business path or both or whatever. Maybe it doesn't really matter and I should just chose one. If there is no way for me to know if I will like it before I do it then so be it.

We are Zen Masters and we KNOW what the fuck we are talking about.

-Justin

My roomate complained about getting his eyes dilated so that they could look for rips, tears, or signs of other disease within his eye. Oooh, I am sure it is soo bad. He stopped his complaining when I told him of the boundless glee I get when I have to have a scrotal ultrasound administered by some large elderly woman.

Work is going slow, again. I switched jobs, and I am in "training". I have little to do and it bothers me tremendously. I have to start really hunting out some work to do.

The weekend was alright, although I didn't really do much. Played soccer and had some decent goals. This week a player on our team quit because he was a little to violent and the referees didn't like that too much. I started looking at a bigger TV to get. I am not sure what size I want or what price range I am looking for, but I know that cheaper is better :). There are only a million different types of TVs now, DFP, LCD, plasma, projection. Then once you have picked that you can go with normal TV, HDTV (which has several flavors itself, 480p, 780i, 1080i, etc) and don't forget about progressive scan and viewable area and picture quality. This is why I don't buy things.

"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." -Edsger W. Dijkstra

-Justin

Ack! Lost at poker last night, but I was giving my money away staying in when I shouldn't be. Lost at Halo as well . But the good news is, we are quickly approaching...

My Birthday!

Yes it is nearly that time (Oct 2nd), and if you are burdened with the trouble of wanting to buy me a gift, then look no further. I have compiled wishlists at Think Geek and Amazon of easy birthday gifts I would greatly enjoy. I am going to be 24 and boy how time flies.

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness." - Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso

-Justin find out more about RIAA

So spanish class is going well, if slowly. There are lots of women in my class which is great because hanging out only with guys who work at Intel doesn't afford me many oppurtunities to meet women. So slow though, I should have taken Spanish 2 instead of the intro level. Me llamo Justin. Como estas? Muy Bien. Mi pelo es cafe. Thanks that was two weeks.

My last two weekends have been ...uneventful. It is a welcomed slow down though, because I had too many weekends away. I went to the coast and Vegas and somewhere else before that. I had a good soccer game, scored a couple of goals however our teammate Trine busted up here knee bad. She had stiches but fortunetly didn't break anything.

I am excited about going home for my birthday to see la familia. Going up to the cabin and getting to see everyone will be great. I sometimes get that "what am I doing with my life" feeling. All my family is in Utah and all my college and high school friends are in the Midwest. But, it is nice to meet other people and see other places. It would be good to see what everyone has done to the cabindo.

"He who sacrifices liberty for security deserves neither. Benjamin Franklin

-Justin

Yesterday was the first day of a Spanish class I am taking through a local community college. At precisely one minute before 6pm, our start time, the teacher (professora) says "This will be the only time we will ever start late" and I am thinking what the hell have I gotten myself into. Okay, so she turned out not to be too bad and I suppose some of the structure, deadlines, and grading is why I am taking the class. I need that structure to help force me to learn in a timely manner. Anyway, I am only taking the intro course so I should be well ahead of the curve from High School spanish for a while. That will make it easier to get by without too much work required, at least initially. I am taking it with Alex, and it is probably a good place to meet new people outside of the bars. Really I would just like to be fluent in another language which is especially usefull in California.

Boycott the RIAA. Despite recent harrasment of online music users and potentially suing people who filesharing programs (which caused a 22% reduction in online filesharing), cd sales are again DOWN 15%. During the economic slowdown CD sales for the RIAA were down, but not down as much as the entire economy was. This all points to reasons other than online file sharing for why CD sales are down, and yet the RIAA is going to begin suing individual file sharers soon. The RIAA also sued a student at a University who wrote a program to search the University's network for files. The program had nothing specific in it that would promote the illegal copying and sharing of music yet the RIAA sued him and he could not afford the court costs so he settled out of court for several thousand dollars. I think the RIAA is unethical and no longer needed as a means to distribute cds. So until they change their ways or go out of business I am not going to buy music under their labels(which is pretty much all mainstream music). I mean think about it, what service do they provide? The distribution of cds. Current technology has made that service accessible to anyone; anyone can distribute cds. So the RIAA should look toward providing users with something they need or want and stop trying to enforce an antiquated method of distributing music - it is bad for everyone.

Okay, so enough with my rant. I am coming down to Utah from Oct 1st to Oct 5th. The majority of people who occasionally read my website (all 3 of them) will be there :). I am 24, blah blah feel really old, blah blah time moves faster now. So I have my job, finished school, and am working every day. Now what?

Last weekend I went down to SLO (San Luis Obispo) with Robbie Floyd and Robbie's girl Mandie. It was a great little college town with lots of restaurants, shops, and bars. We went out Saturday night and enjoyed some good music and a more diverse crowd than we normally get at Sacramento bars. We also swam at nearby Pismo beach Saturday night and wondered why we had the beach pretty much to ourselves. No one else was in the water. Then we got back to our hotel room and find out that a 17' shark was spotted off the Pismo beach pier the same day we were swimming at Pismo beach. Yeah, so the shark was spotted an hour or two from when we were there about 200 yards from where we were swimming. A girl died at the beach near us (Avilla beach) on the 18th and I believe it was the first death in California from a shark attach in 9 years. Needless to say we didn't do much swimming on Sunday, although I was really looking forward to trying to surf.

'At the end of all our searching we will arrive at the place we began and know it for the first time.'

-Justin

The site is back up, after about a year off. I wrote a couple of logs in my Slashdot account, which you can read here. I am now hosting on geocities, which I initially used long long ago for my first crummy website. It appears to be quite add-free and free now, so I am using it.

I removed a lot of the older crap which used to be on my page. I will look to adding more content eventually but for now there isn't much. Look for more updates soon.

Oh, I almost forgot a little story I wanted to tell. I was at the doctor, I still have to go there a lot from that whole cancer extravaganza, and we are wrapping up our little checkup. They are so uneventful I don't know why I go. The normal procedure is he says "How do you feel" after looking through some papers, and I say "fine." and he says "Okay see you in two months". Anyway, this last time we are shooting the normal proverbial shit when he says "So.. hows the love life? Do you have a girlfriend?" No. "Well, a nice young handsome engineer like yourself should have no problem finding a girl." Oh really? Is that how it works? Maybe you should tell them. It's like I am going to reply "Do you really think so? Well then maybe I should give it a shot. Maybe I could start talking to girls and maybe even date one of them. Thanks for the advice doc, next visit I will be putting in an order for some Viagra!"

Counting flowers on the wall, that don't bother me at all.

-Justin

AND NOW A WORD FROM CHESTER!
This website contains adult language and content that may be unsuitable for children.

Chester: and a ferarri
Chester: and sum coke chick
Chester: s
Chester: live in
Chester: in my mansh ion
Chester: on mly yaucht
DBEAST7: yes
Chester: do you ever feel like to look straight you have to lean your head back?
DBEAST7: uhh yeah
Chester: cause boy am i leaning back
DBEAST7: oh yeah?
DBEAST7: wow
Chester: so spam
Chester: is lthils little thing i like to call frutella
Chester: and once i saw a girl eat nutella
Chester: with her finger
Chester: lappin it up klike a dog
DBEAST7: cool
DBEAST7: I uhhh am going to bed
Chester: and i just stared at this fat girl who said
Chester: she once
Chester: deep fried mars bars
Chester: with her cousin
Chester: for fun
Chester: and ate them
Chester: so this girl llooked like miss piggy
DBEAST7: messed up nose?
Chester: and shes eatin this chocalleteee fudge poop outtta this nasty factory made cycliccal carbonite compoundish bullcrap
Chester: lappin it like a dog
Chester: sickkests thing ive ever seen
Chester: but the main point is
Chester: She ATE DEEP FRIED MARS BARS WITH HER COUSIN
Chester: now print this in your next bischoff update
DBEAST7: okay
Chester: form anyonymus user
Chester: poster
DBEAST7: okay
Chester: updater
DBEAST7: okay
Chester: anonymous
Chester: you ass
Chester: ill sue
DBEAST7: gotcha
Chester: i have lawyer already
DBEAST7: Im really going to sleep now
Chester: me too
Chester: im done

Chester is a good buddy of mine whom I have elected to keep anonymous, by his request of course.

I am doing well in California, for all who care. I got a bed! believe it or not. So no more sleeping on the floor for me. I also got a bank account and other stuff, no cell phone yet though. Spending money is a time consuming and painfull process for me.

My job is about to get REALLY busy, basically I have been barely staying afloat in the kiddie pool and I am getting tossed in the deep end next week. Its good though, I work best when I have a lot to do. It keeps me focused and working hard.

Checkout Gutei's Finger, if you haven't already. Short update this time.

I can't decide if what you're saying is too profound for me to comprehend or just insane.

-Justin

So I am by no means a gambling addict, but I have been a few times since Lake Tahoe is close and I went to Vegas on my road trip over the summer. So, I was tired of losing money so I looked up all the odds, strategies, and other things you can do to improve your odds. On my last visit I won a little, which is always good, and I had fun and drank and ate and it was all either free or paid for by the casino! I also had poker night in Folsom, which was fun but nobody had played before. We spent the whole time just explaning games and getting started. It's only really fun when everybody knows how to play, then the good bluffs and betting comes out. Anyway I'm going to Vegas with like 12 people sometime mid October, maybe I will find a CHEAP place to play poker.

[ Click Here for BlackJack Picture ] Me and Jeff Kalikstein at Harrahs? in Lake Tahoe playing some black jack. Those chips are pure profit that you can see sitting by my arm.

So I moved into Folsom (about 30 min east of Sacramento) with 3 other guys, 2 of whom I new from my previous internships at Intel. It is a really nice house and I'm glad I got it. California is nice, the weather is perfect in the summer, not too hot and not cold at all. The winter gets a little chilly and rainy, but not for too long. It beats a lot of places I have lived although I could get used to the Arizona weather and tan ;) I am playing volleyball and all that good stuff.

Work is coming a long. It is ridiculous the amount of stuff I have to setup, install, get access to, learn, borrow, apply for, take classes on, and get ready just to do the work everyone in my group is doing on a daily basis. We get a lot of work done but there is a lot of beauracracy and complexity in everything that we do. Its cool however that I get many computers to work on, with different operating systems and software. I also got my first laptop, it is a P3 1.33Ghz. It beats the piece of junk Im using at home (shown below). Look how clean my room is Mom!!

[ Lake Tahoe Picture ]

It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.

-Justin

So much has happened in such a short time. Right now I am sitting in Phoenix Arizona awaiting my trip to California to start working. I just heard that Intel is laying of 4000 people so I am not even sure if I still have a job. Howevever I do have a lease so I am moving to California regardless of what Intel does.

I just finished my trip to Europe with Garrett and I also had a nice road trip across the Western United States with Kurt. All in all I spent a ton of money and completely satiated my travelling desire (for now). I will try to get some pictures up on the web along with a brief description of our trip, but I don't know when that will happen. Here is a quick picture of the girls we met in Munich. This is after our night at the Haufbrau House in downtown Munich, where liter beers are ~4 euros.

The Drunk Europe Gang

[ Click Here for Image ]

My cancer treatment went well, and as of 1 month after chemo-therapy there is no sign of cancer. However the type of cancer I had has been known to resurface so I must get monthly blood tests. Which presents a host of problems since I am moving and changing health care providers. I am lucky though that Intel has such a great medical plan. It should be fairly easy for me to get the treatment I need.

I am glad that I did all sorts of travelling this summer. I enjoyed seeing what Europe was like, and how people live over there. I am leaving a lot of friends in Chicago, which is upsetting, along with MB which is also very upsetting. Anyway I refuse to get down about moving off by myself. Being happy or sad isn't really dependant on your surroundings, only with how you treat the situation. It still hasn't really sunk in that I could have died from cancer (or still possibly could), nor has it really sunk in that I had cancer. It feels like an accident, it wasn't supposed to happen to me. But, it is good that it did. I think I matured a lot. I also think I have a healthier respect for life and the fact that it could all end soon, tomorrow, or even today. Once you realize that you don't know what will happen in the future and you don't know if you will live a long life then it becomes much easier and important to have fun in the now. To make an impact in the now. I don't know what I want to do with my life in the long run, but I do want two things. 1) I want to have a good time (which I think is completely determined by ones self) and 2) I want to have an impact in other people's lives. Basically I want it to matter that I was here.

"The pessimists may be proven right in the long run, but the optimists have more fun along the way."

-Justin

Left Radical Orchiectomy

I think doctors like using weird terminology because it makes them feel special or something, I see no reason why they can't call it by something a little more accurate. For example left testicular cutoffitude or nutum leftum removeum maybe even chopage a la leftball. Anyway that is what I have been going through recently and I am kinda embarrassed to talk about it on my webpage but everyone who reads this probably knows already anyway.

So I am playing catch-up at school now, after having missed about a weeks worth of classes. Its not so much fun. I think I want a job reviewing video games or something so that I can do that for a living.

Two things I am really excited about, though, are going to europe this summer for about a month and working in California again. I will enjoy seeing all my CA buddies again and being around mountains. Europe will be especially fun because I get to hang out with my old High School chum Garrett. Although I am not enthused about being around people who don't speak english for 24 hours a day. Really we will all be speaking english eventually (a presumptuous assumption but in my mind its fairly accurate) so can't the rest of the world get on it now? Australia is good, England America and Canada are also on the right track. Everyone who speaks two languages in Europe or Mexico speaks english now isn't that enough of the world?

Faber est suae quisque fortunae.

-Justin

Small changes to the webpage again. Looks a little better to me. Been busy lately, some sort of 1/4 way point where all my classes decide to make things due at the same time.

I'm thinking about buying a computer, but my current one is pretty much enough for me, unless I want to game. I am thinking that when I get to work I won't want to do much from home, after being on the computer all day. I also want to get a sweet computer if I do get one, and it will cost me an arm and a leg. I keep seeing what the next generation of processors will have and I want to have the ones that aren't out yet. I was waiting for the .13u P4's which are now out at 2.0 and 2.2Ghz, which offers a significant performance increase over .18u. The 2.4Ghz and 2.6Ghz (which aren't out yet) will have a 533Mhz front side bus which will again be a significant performance increase over current proccessors. So, I'm caught in the loop of always waiting for the next better processor.

Also, my trip to Austin went well, although they haven't gotten back to me yet... I also got kicked off my flight on the way back because they over booked their plane. That is freaking annoying, especially when they overbook every flight for a given day. Austin is a pretty cool city. I was down there for Mardi Gras, which was probably the best time to go. It was a giant party downtown. The city is small like Sacramento, but cooler. I think the people down there just have more pride in their city.

If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

-Justin