September-22-2004 : Birthday 2004

My Birthday!

Yes it is nearly that time (Oct 2nd) again, and if you are burdened with the trouble of wanting to buy me a gift, then look no further. I have compiled wishlists at Amazon and ThinkGeek of easy birthday gifts I would greatly enjoy. I am going to be 25 and boy how time flies. I will be adding to these lists and going through them to make sure anything I don't want is removed. Think of how easy it is to buy me a gift now! I bet you can do it in fewer than 10 clicks of the mouse and less than 5 minutes of time. I am really looking out for you guys.

My ankle is finally better so I am playing more soccer. Work has been really busy because I actually am on something important and everyone wants to constantly know how much progress I am making. Which is good I suppose.

Lots of good video games are coming out for the pre-Xmas season. Halo 2, GTA San Andreas, World of Warcraft (hopefully), Sims2, and a bunch of others. I officially work in the "gaming industry" now. So I get to keep up to speed on all this stuff.

My friend Brian broke his leg playing soccer. He didn't collide with anyone or anything like that. He just tried to change directions while running and *snap*. I guess that is life.

The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune. - Plutarch (AD 46?-120?)

-Justin

I got precisely 13 hours of sleep last night. I felt quite refreshed in the morning. Then I zapped myself with electricity at work and creamed the funny-bone in the same arm. The effects feel quite similar.

Hopefully I will have to get a lot of work done this week. And save money, I have spent way too much lately. Going out to eat and drink and sleeping in Hotels gets quite expensive.

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.-- Woodrow Wilson

-Justin

Last night the gang made it out to an Oakland A's Game (about 1.5 hours away) although I got somewhat lost and took a 20min detour. A friend I met up in Seattle, Berti, came down and watched the game with us. It was very interesting. We did go out and do some drinking afterwards and I didn't end up making it back to Sacramento until fairly late the next morning. That was a long drive home.

Also I got my skis back from Armada yesterday. Besides being expensive to ship them out it was completely free to get them repaired. It looks like they did a good job and I am really happy with the customer service. The new ski desgins just came out and they look sooo sweet. I stole the current graphic in the upper left corner off of their page.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. -- Ford Prefect, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

-Justin

This weekend Robbie, Floyd and I went to Santa Barbara. That was a lot of fun. Bars, Beaches, Women, and Sun. Although maybe more of some than others ;) That seems like quite a nice little college town to live in. Great weather and UCSB nearby. Some girl came out on monday while we were on the beach, set up shop on the lifeguard stand, and basked in the sun all day - seems like a decent job to me. It was a lot of fun, we ate at the local brewery and at a nice italian place. We even made it to a dance club, which is not really normal for us. Anyway the 6 hour drive on the way back about killed me though.
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I went to a Technical Career Development class today. Intel offers two different career paths one of which (the typical one) involves going into management positions. The second is the technical path and has corresponding job titles and benchmarks as the management path. The course was interesting and the person seemed to know what they were talking about. The thing that really struck home with me is structured versus unstructured environments. I have always had a structured environment until now. High School, College, and childhood all involve other people telling you what you are supposed to do, what classes to take, what you should learn, how you should behave. Now that I am in my career I have an unstructured environment, which means *I* have to decide what my goals are and how to execute to them. The thing I initially got hung up on was that I don't know what I want to do with my life. That is okay, but you need to pick and commit. You can always change later, but it is important to find long term goals even if you are unsure about them and commit to them. At least, that is how I see it know, but what do I know.

Interested in art, checkout the Flight compilation and some of the art on their forums here, is really really good.

Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate. --Chuang Tzu

-Justin

Santa Barbara tomorrow, sun beaches, and beers. It should be fun despite the long long drive. Third date tonight, lots of people voting for Bush, starting up a volleyball team. A good friend of mine knows someone selling his bike because he is leaving the country. Not just any bike though, a Honda 2004 CBR F4i. The only problem with this bike is that the Kelly's Blue Book for it is $7,100 and very quick. I am thinking of pulling the trigger on it, just for fun.

"A pithy saying proves nothing" Voltaire

-Justin

So I thought I would post some links and stuff. If you listen to teh hippity-hop music, (and have a fast internet connection), checkout http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra it is fairly tight. As far as artwork goes, this is a cool place for desktop wallpaper images. I saw Mike had some of Mark Ryden's work, I went to his page once, it is messed up stuff. Also, for the readers who aren't offended by very graphic sexual and violent descriptions there is this online sci-fi book : The Metamorphasis of Prime Intellect. Besides the sex and death stuff it handles some computer AI sci-fi stuff that is interesting and some questions about utopia and the human struggle to survive etc.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. - Bertrand Russell, 1872 - 1970

-Justin

I was up till 3:30 last night by accident. Mostly playing world of warcraft, that game is dangerous. I couldn't keep myself up on the weekends, but I can play games all night long, who knows. So anyway I am tired today and had a training course for 2 hours that didn't teach me anything new. Hoorah.

I asked Nic for pictures of his new place, but this is all I could find :

"Love your enemies in case your friends turn out to be a bunch of bastards." --R.A. Dickson

-Justin

Sorry about the website. If you are reading this then you made it through all the justinbischoff.com mess. My domain forwarding subscription ran out and I thought I renewwed it twice now, but for some reason it didn't work. Anyway justinbischoff.com should now take you to http://www.geocities.com/jbischof.geo/. Bookmark the latter if you don't want to deal with the problems. My roomate and I will be installing a server soon, then I can host my own web page instead of using geocities.

Well my weekend was a very lazy weekend. I didn't even go out much. I played socer on a hurt ankle and probably made it worse. It is a tendon injury so it is taking forever to heal. Top news, however, probably goes to Nic. He is down in Loyola now rushing to get everything set for classes which start this Thursday I think. Anyway, now I have to go to grad school somewhere just because he did. So this means that one of my brothers and two of my best friends are living in Chicago now. Boy that would sure be a bummer to live down there about now...

We are planning a trip down to Santa Barbara this weekend, should be a blast and a long drive.

"Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement." --Barry LePanter

-Justin

I am currently at work and eating a snickers bar. Soda causes diabetes, but I think diet is okay. Snickers probably causes diabetes as well.

Work is going well. I basically got a compiler running that takes code someone else wrote, analyzes it and compresses it. The basic algorithm was developed by someone else and handed off to me, but I think I am ahead of schedule and performing well in my new group.

Several people are talking about leaving Intel. My roomate is 29 and eligible for a sabbatical next week. His project also got cancelled so he has nothing tying him down (yet he won't leave). Another friend isn't happy with the future of his group, so he is leaving. Yet another is going back to school. They keep dropping like flies. I am too happy with my current job to leave quite yet.

I keep thinking that I need a girlfriend in order to sustain maximum levels of happiness. But I am not sure why exactly. I think it is peer pressure from the world + dog that makes me feel that way. I tell myself I can be optimally happy without a girl and for a while it works, but then it fades. Maybe it is just genetics.

My roomate asked me if I would clone an exact copy of myself that knew everything I knew for all the money I had. I don't have any idea why someone would want to do that. I wouldn't do it for $5. He might already be out there living in some other state or county - who cares.

One last thing, if you use that message board thing -->here, then I feel compelled to update the page. But otherwise it feels like nobody reads this junk. Tell me why Kerry/Bush is a jerk.

The more passions and desires one has, the more ways one has of being happy. - Charlotte-Catherine (I disagree with this)

-Justin

So the diet is over. I am going to focus on soccer, volleyball, and weights for my health concerns. FYI, this just in, meat tastes good. No matter what Nic says. I am going to continue trying to eat less meat though, meatless mondays. You can do it too.

I went on a second date with this girl I met at the Limelight. I am not going to say more than that because talking about dates on a webpage is just bizzare.

My ankle might be better by the end of this week. Tendon strains are a b*t(h and take forever to heal. I think I might have re-injured it slightly last weekend when I tried to play two games. The first game was okay, but the second was misery.

Bush, Kerry, Bush, Kerry. I would be interested to get a summary of how my family feels on these presidential candidates. I am pretty sure Nic, Mike, Star, Jason, and Myself would all vote Kerry or 3rd party. My parents I am not 100% sure on, but I would say Democratic. Craig & Jess might vote for Bush. I pretty much have no idea about Pops/Grams, David/Claudia. I think most of my Mom's side of the family would vote Republican, except for Renee. But who knows, that is just my guess. Frankly I don't feel that strongly towards either candidate. I think Bush messed up (or the whole intelligence community messed up) on Iraq. Other than that one big issue, I don't fully agree with either candidate. Enough of that. I get sick of the media and everything you hear about politics and how they want to make something very very complicated into something simple. It just isn't that simple so don't come to broad sweeping conclusions when they don't apply.

Microsoft released Windows Service Pack 2. Download and install it if you haven't already. It might break some applications, but if it does that is because they weren't behaving in a secure matter (or you might need to turn off the firewall if your app can't access the internet).

All my life, I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific. - Jane Wagner

-Justin

Work, Play, Work, Play. So work is interesting. I am doing some cool new pixelshader compiler coding. It requires me to come up with a solution, which is something apparently you can't handle until you have had 3 years of experience. My group is many orders of magnitude more fun than my previous group. In my previous group I could have fallen asleep at every team meeting. It was dull, uninteresting, technical, and just boring. In my new group, people joke, have fun, and it is full of smart and capable people - I just hope I can fit in ;). Anyway, I can't complain about my job, much.

The diet update is basically that alchohol has made its way back onto the "allowed substances list". I tested positive for alchohol yesterday morning, but I make the rules so it was removed as a banned substance. Meat and Sugar are still banned. Don't go to a place known for its great barbecue when you aren't eating pigs or cows.

Injury has been the theme of my free time. I was sick with my annual sinus infection thing again two weeks ago. While I was sick I played a game of indoor soccer and hyperextended my ankle. I played on my ankle the rest of the game and then couldn't walk on it the next day. It still bothers me :( Playing volleyball yesterday I lightly pulled my tricep. Playing soccer on my injured right-ankle last week caused me to favor my left-leg which I think has caused my left knee to start complaining. Maybe I am just getting older so joints and muscles are going to complain a lot more than they used to (and so am I apparently).

San Fran tonight.

"Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions." -Woody Allen

-Justin

Okay, so everything I eat has meat or sugar in it. I was going to eat something for dinner but none of my frozen pizzas, microwaveable dinners, lunch meat, or frozen chicken fit my new diet. I thought I could just have cereal, but it had lots of refined sugar. Even our frozen yogurt was "Chicken Chocalate Chip Vanilla". I don't know how you vegetarians do it.

-Justin

Over the weekend I mostly played WoW but also went out some. It was one of the greatest weekend's I have had in a long time. Mostly because I did nothing. I needed a weekend off. No plans, nothing really happened except that I played a lot of video games.

I decided to go on a small diet. Not to lose weight, but to be healthy. No meat (except seafood), no alcohol, and no refined sugar this week. I figure that removing those three things is probably one of the best things I could do for my diet, but who knows.

If you want to see an example of how confused the scientific community is on health, checkout this site. It talks about the blessings and evils of alcohol. It can reduce your risk of heart disease, but it will give you breast cancer.

One of the biggest factors in success is the courage to undertake something. - James A. Worsham

-Justin

I made an automated script to generate these webpage updates. So maybe I will do it more often now. Maybe not.

I forgot to mention that a couple weeks ago I got to go up to Seattle for the Microsoft Meltdown gaming conference. That was a lot of fun. I partied with a friend after the conference and we actually met up with some Australian girls. The Microsoft conference was cool because I got a glimpse at a lot of the new technologies and games coming out. Believe it or not that stuff is interesting to a computer nerd.

Here are some links you guys might like. Star's Hell test to see if you are going to hell. Bush/Kerry parody here. A Hamlet text adventure if you are into Shakespeare (I couldn't get very far). And some cool independant music sites

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, 1817 - 1862

-Justin

PS. I should mention my new favorite comic. WIGU

I will never run out of things to say.

Last weekend was a lot of fun, I went to a terrific Giants/Cubs game and watched them come back to crush the Giants 8-4. Woohoo. It was also the 300th win for Maddux. We tail-gated before the game and our friend Romo really came through with the grub (he prepared everything the night before).

Cubs Game Checklist
Eat too much	X
Drink too much	X
Get Sunburned	X
Yell at Opposing Team's Fans	X

Despite all of this, we still somehow managed to go out on the town Saturday night which was quite eventful. We went out to eat at a nice Peruvian restaurant and proceeded to Bar None which had a very college-like atmosphere. Here I practiced my new philosophy on meeting women in public places. The philosophy is complicated, but it basically says in order to meet girls, you have to actually talk to them. Didn't do too poorly either. I don't know why, but I think there were 4 seperate bachelorette parties there that night. Weird.

I suppose I should also say that I have been playing a lot of Doom3 and World of Warcraft, making good use of my still somewhat new computer. I will leave some stuff for another post soon though ;)

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I wrote this stuff earlier, but never updated it to the website :

You know, there is something presumptuous about having a webpage dedicated to one person's ramblings. Why would the rest of the world care in the slightest about my poorly designed web page? I suppose I continue based on ego alone. In an attempt to compensate for the tedious nature of the page I will provide some interesting web links and content (since I browse the web far more than the average user).

We are coming upon a national election and I hope that the current attitude of fear and war can be replaced. I know that 9/11 was a horrible event, and that people feel more vulnerable than ever. However, I despise some of the sacrifices we have made. The United States of America stands for freedom, we do not detain people idefinetely. If anything, we should be more safe now than we were before 9/11

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The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light. - Stanley Kubrick.

-Justin

I might have run out of things to say.

We say Farenheight 911 yesterday. It was pretty interesting. Biased, but interesting. At somepoint in the last year or two I think I found that I associate more with the democratic party. Although I still think it would be better if we could make it a 3 party system. But I don't really want to talk about that.

Outsourcing ultimately helps the US economy. We drive the economy by making products people want, making them cheaper, better, etc. Outsourcing allows us to do that and because of it companies make more money. They then create new products or jobs and we have more workers to work on new great things. We just need some way to deal with the short term drawbacks of outsourcing.

I switched jobs last week. Actually I didn't really switch, I just started doing my new job while also doing my old job. My new job will be working on 3D, meaning games and that sort of stuff. It is pretty interesting and could lead to a lot of interesting job oppurtunities in the future.

If you look at our capitalism in America as a whole it seems that we constantly strive for easier and cheaper access to everything that people want. Well, what happens in the somewhat near future when people can have anything they want anytime they want it and nobody has to work very much (or at all) in order to make this happen? What is the purpose of life then?

"Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers." - Socrates

-Justin

Well Indianapolis was a blast. A drunken fiesta if you will. We were kicked out of bars, urinating in hotel rooms, jumping into pools with very little clothes on, yelling at random strangers, dancing with random women, and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. That about summarizes it. Then I had to go to work.

If it isn't obvious from my post below, I missed my flight on the way out there, meaning I had to take the red eye. I don't know how people do it, it was thoroughly miserable. If I hadn't been able to sleep for roughly 8 hours through the morning I would have died.

"We are what we pretend to be." --Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

-Justin

In retrospect, I probably cut it a little too close.

Flight Departs at 6pm SFO (San Francisco) United 160

• 2:50pm - I leave work to go home pack and leave for airport
• 3:10pm - Arrive home, grab snack, pack bags
• 3:35pm - Depart Sacramento for SFO Airport, Mapquest says it will take 1:45min to get there. Estimated arrival at airport 5:30
• 4:05pm - Making great time going 80mph down the freeway, saw some warning about an accident.
• 4:15 - come to a stop. Motorcycle zips by through the cars
• 4:45 - Traveled approx 2 miles in last 30min.
• 5:10 - Clear accident, it was a rolled trailer or large truck.
• 5:15 - More Traffic, slow to a crawl.
• 5:25 - Encounter same motorcyclist, being loaded onto an ambulance.
• 5:40 - Run into some rush hour traffic in San Fran.
• 6:05 - Make wrong turn at BART station just past airport.
• 6:20 - Find Bart Station.
• 6:30 - Fill up with gas.
• 6:40 - Finally decide to park at BART station despite signs saying 24 hour limit M-F Car will be Ticketed and Towed.
• 7:00 - Catch BART train to SFO International
• 7:10 - Catch RedLine from SFO International to SFO Domestic
• 7:15 - Get in line for United desk
• 7:35 - Receive boarding pass for 11:25pm flight to Chicago.

-Justin

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