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News and Stuff
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School, my last semester and possibly forever, although I do hold some aspirations of graduate school, either MBA or technical. I'm at one of those points in my life where decisions that could potentially be completely arbitrary will greatly affect how the rest of my life turns out.
I think my problem is that I want to do everything a little bit and very few things a lot. I mean everything is interesting. If I had to decide the rest of my life now, and I could get whatever job I wanted, I would probably work for like 2 years at Intel, then maybe join the military and become some sort of pilot, then law school and eventual be some kind of judge or supreme court justice. I think that they (the Supreme Court) pretty much have the most influence on America and our lives out of everyone. At some point I would like to get a Ph.D and own a Bakery/Deli. I am, however afraid that I might end up working in essentially the same job for 50 years, and never do anything interesting. Maybe that is an immature point of view but then again maybe it is justified.
I finally got a research position with a professor, I have pretty much been trying now for like 3 semesters, and it really doesn't take a lot of effort on behalf of a Professor, they just have to give you a chance. I will be writting a part of a compiler for a professor and experimenting with new optimization techniques to make it run faster. I think one of the big reasons that I am doing this is to try and keep my options open for graduate school. I really dislike and get frustrated by the idea that certain choices or paths for my life are closed. I think I felt like I could do anything I wanted when I was in High School, and before I had decided I got shoved into the real world.
Classes are going good, I will elaborate briefly on them in case your interested, but since nobody reads this crap I guess it's for my own benefit. I am taking 5 classes, Latin - which is interesting and fairly easy, Teen Slasher Movies - which is a film studies course. I am suprised by the amount of content in this class and how you can make associations with society through something as obscure as slasher movies. I haven't, until now, taken a course that analyzes society, other than maybe philosophy, and I am glad I took this course and find the material interesting. My technical courses are Operating Systems and Parallel Programming, they are both interesting to me, neither required nor exceptionally difficult. My professor in Parallel Programming, Ph.D David Padua, is the one who arranged my research, it should be a very good experience. Lastly I am taking Executives in Engineering, where VP's and other higher ups of certain companies come and give short lectures on whatever they like. There is some interesting stuff and the course is 1 hour and won't require much work. If I ever don't want to do the work however I suppose I could just drop it and show up to the lectures anyway.
I still hope to drink a lot and play lots of video games to make up for my busy semesters earlier, however with the research project, who knows I might actually be busy.
Mali liberos culpant.
-Justin
Skiing, I love skiing, and it is where I will be in two short days. Skiing is such a
great sport, it mixes heavy physical activity, with skill, with the gorgeous scenery breaks of the liftline, plus you get to be in the great outdoors. Nothing really compares. When your hammering
down the rough terrain of some steep slope and adrenalin is kicking in, you forget about the cares of
day to day activities and truly live in the moment.
I finished another semester at UIUC, and it was a fair amount rougher than I had planned. The good news is that now I have pretty much an easy semester ahead of me and it looks like I might get a research position with a former professor. My grades were decent but not quite the stellar outcome I had hoped for. Im really not certain why my grades didn't come out all A's. I guess I just need to put more time into my classes, that is the only real problem. A's used to come easy, but now they just take a little more time. Wait, scratch that, they take a lot more time.
So, one more semester to go, and then Im in Sacramento. Im writing this right now from Arizona, where my parents live, its a balmy 70 degrees or so mid december. I could get used to this. Although by Sunday I will be in Utah, freezing my butt off. Although its all worth it for the skiing!
Crazy like a fox.
-Justin
11-20-01
Im graduating this year, along with many of the people I started college with, about four years ago. Many of us have been slightly
concerned about the current job market situation and many companies are not hiring at all. Fortunetly I got a job offer, which I soon
accepted from Intel in Sacramento. So it looks like Sacramento is where I will be living for the next couple of years.
Kurt Triebe and I went up to Chicago last Saturday. We drank very expensive drinks in the 95th floor of the Hancock tower and then went
to a club called the White Lounge or White Star or something like that. We went with three girls, one of which (Shanna) Kurt new from over the summer
and the other two were friends of Shanna's. It was a really expensive night, but it was also a lot of fun. Lets just say Kurt and one of the girls we
met got along really well. We might go up to Chicago a couple more times before the year is up, it is a lot of fun down there.
I would really enjoy living in a big city such as Chicago, maybe I should look into that.
School is wrapping up quickly. I should be able to pull off a really good GPA as long as I ace my next two Statistics tests. Stats is really
a bitch. I did not expect it to be difficult at all, which was probably part of the problem to start. My ECE312 (Computer Architecture) class
is going really well. I am finishing up designing my pipelined microprocessor and it is starting to work, which is really good. This project
has taken up a ridiculous amount of time, but it is good stuff to know. I might get a research position next semester with my current
professor. He is working on compiler technology, especially with Intel's new Itanium processor, which is very interesting to me.
Some Random Quote
-Justin
10-19-01
Im 22 now, there aren't any more world trade centers, and school is still rough despite the
fact that Im only taking 4 classes. I am taking my ECE312 class which is microprocessor design, which is
really interesting and making me think about graduate school.
I am graduating this may and going to Europe over the summer, which will be awesome. Pretty much
everyone I talk to says they want to go to Europe after college so maybe I will go with a bunch of people I know,
or see some people while I am there. As far as jobs go I don't really know what I want to do, but that
hasn't stopped me from trying to get lots of job offers. I know that I want to work in the Computer
industry, but my hardware/software preference is questionable. So far I have interviewed with
Sun Microsystems, IBM,
Microsoft,
Lockheed & Martin, and I am interviewing with NVisia
and E-trade next week. I haven't gotten any offers yet,
or any free tickets to be flown somewhere for a more in-depth interview, but I am still optomistic.
Thats all I'm writting for now, oh but did you hear what Osama Bin Laden is going to be for
Halloween? --Dead. Whats the difference between Osama and Christmas? Christmas will be here
in December.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
-Justin
08-28-01
I moved from California to Illinois in the past month, and my family is going to Arizona because of my father's well deserved promotion. I am making several changes to the website, slowly, so if it is broken or doesn't look right that may be why.
My update is going to be short because I have other stuff to do, but I am taking a fairly easy set of classes this semester with only 4, however one of them is UIUC's tough microprocessor course ECE 312. This will leave me with a strikingly easy semester for my last semester here, thank you AP credit.
Intel recently released a new P4 processor at 2Ghz. I am thinking about writing an article about how to judge processor performance, especially in the realm of P4 vs. Athlon, but many people will assume I am biased because I worked for Intel.
I am reading a couple of interesting books, on called Ishmael by Daniel Quinn was recommended by my brother Nic, a religious book I should have soon from Richard Woo, and the Dune series.
Kids, you tried your best, and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.
-Justin
07-23-01
Big Brother is Watching You! TeraGrid Computing System at UIUC
Well, I have had some time lately, but I have been using it up watching movies and surfing "the web". I watched Taxi Driver for the first time recently. My roomate didn't like it because it wasn't all action, but I thought it was good. It has the famous Robert DeNiro lines "Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me? I don't see anyone else around." (that's not an exact quote, but you get the idea). I also watched "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" again, that movie just rules. I saw some really, really bad movie called "Monkey Bone". It has Brendan Frasier and Chris Catan (saturday night live) and its partly animated. The last one I'm going to mention is Planet of the Apes. I hated it. Okay the monkeys looked cool, but the rest of the movie sucked. Here is a brief listing of the things I didn't like about it: One ape was constantly mad, they changed the plot a lot, the main character (frickin Marky Mark) didn't inspire at all, there was some messed up love thing happening between Marky Mark and some ape chick yet he ends up kissing the hot human, **Warning, plot revealed**; and the ending with earth inhabited by apes, that made ZERO SENSE.
I have been logging my dreams sporadically to try and get lucid dreams, but no luck yet, no really interesting dreams.
Friday is my last day at Intel, I am happy to be going back to school but I wish I would have had a longer internship so that I could have gotten more done. I had my final presentation today and everything went good. Hopefully my manager will give me a good review, but I'm not sure.
Age Quod Agis
-Justin
07-23-01
San Francisco is a great city. I mean sure you have all the bisexuality thing, which can bug you out, but ignoring that the city pretty much rocks. I was down there all weekend, chilling in Santa Clara (aka. Silicon Valley) and driving up to San Francisco at night. We stayed out till about 5am Friday night at this cool bar and a club afterwards. Saturday night we went to a small bar in San Jose where there was some Reggea music playing.
I read some stuff about the French philosopher Sartre, whom pretty much started the area of philosophy known as existentialism. Its nice to read stuff like that right after I took my intro to philosophy course. Just from the little book I read it looks like the Sartre stuff gets way more deep and complicated than the stuff we went over. On a seperate note, I have been trying to have lucid dreams. Leroy, my roomate, had this little pamphlet off the net on how to have lucid dreams. It seems intruiging so I am going to try it. One of the things you have to do is keep a dream log, so maybe I will put some of my more messed up dreams on my webpage. I do remember this one dream I had about a year ago which you can read about here.
I added a little article I wrote to the paintball area, top ten rookie mistakes. A new paintball player would probably learn a lot from it, and it might make their experience a lot more fun. I might add more stuff later in regards to paintball and similar stuff, If I do I will note it here.
You probably noticed the little banner ads at the top of the page. If you dismissed them qiuckly like most people do, you might have missed that they are supposed to be humorous. Anyway I will probably get rid of them soon, because they are kind of annoying.
If you really want something in life you have to work for it. Now quiet, they're about to announce the lottery numbers.
-Justin
07-19-01
So California rules, there is a ton to do and I don't do any of it. Last time I was here we were traveling everywhere, skiing, hiking, but this time I have been sitting at home a lot. Hopefully we will go to Santa Barbara to surf this weekend, but it could very well not happen. I didn't do much of anything last weekend or the one before that, however I bowled a nice game on Tuesday. I like bowling, and I'm better at it drunk. My new online addiction is this site called everything2. I'm not going to link to it because you probably won't understand it, and if your really curious you could find it easily. I have decided that drinking profusely is a good thing, and that growing up and working for the rest of your life is not. I am currently hoarding all the money that I can for my Grand Scheme (laughs maniacally). My only problem is that I'm not sure what this scheme is exactly. I am fairly sure it involves me not working and it involves Europe.
I have complained before about the cable company, but lets just say that they couldn't find their asses with an electrified ass finding machine and a mirror. They messed up our cable connection at home, didn't give us the channels we ordered and in general think that I enjoy spending most of my life on the phone searching through automated menus. I would like to meet and greet the maker of the automatic phone menu so that I could introduce him to a swift boot in the behind. In case you hadn't noticed, this is my bitter rampage update. If you create your own web page your allowed to go on bitter rampages, its in the constitution or something.
Women, like beer, are the cause of and solution to all of men's problems (except they only solve one problem). I'm not talking about your female relatives, I'm talking about those other women. I think the problem is that women are much more 'relationship intelligent' than men, which enables them to manipulate us in bad ways, so you have to stand by your ignorance and not take any of heir crap. Otherwise they will always be telling you to put the toilet seat down or something. Okay so I'm not really that bitter, but its fun to act like it. As far as the internet goes, I feel obligated to show you fools around since you don't know what your doing :) What are you favorite 80's Movies? There is also this computer program you can talk to. There are also the 2001 web award winners if your interested. There is a new good place to buy guy/kid stuff. And there is a weird online mural that I haven't really looked at. Finally there is this site of great Simpson's quotes. Stick Death!
Maybe, just once, someone will call me 'sir' without adding, 'you're making a scene.'
-Justin
07-9-01
So work has slowed down a lot, because I have finished a big part of my project, and now a lot of my work depends on other people. I really
want to get more done, and start being really productive, but its hard. Especially with so many distractions.As far as my weekends go, last weekend I didn't do much of anything, although I almost bought this APB arcade game. I decided at the last minute that I didn't really want to put as much money as it was going to cost me into it. Anyway over the fourth I went to some guy's house and barbecued and watched fireworks, woohoo! The weekend before that was my trip with the fam to Lake Shasta. We spent three days on a house boat, coasting along getting toasty on america's favorite drug and driving jetskis. It was a lot of fun, and I got some sun, so I am happy about it. I still haven't been playing paintball much down here in CA, but I hope to go out at least once. I don't really feel like doing much of anything lately, so I don't think I will be renovating my website, even though it needs it. I will officially be able to add scripting and other cool stuff when I move it over to my friend's server. I did read the book DUNE, just because of the miniseries, and the sequel that they are going to make. I also downloaded this moderately interesting book by Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. The book will provoke some thought, it has a lot of scientific, religious, and philosophical topics. If you are extremely savvy in science, or well knowledgeable about philosophy or a religious fanatic, you probably wont like it. The rest of us think its pretty good. That's about all that has been going on for me.
I think I am, therefore, I am. I think.
-03q1sT
06-24-01
I thought of a good idea, well I stole it from someone
else. Basically I am going to keep track of my weekends and all the fun
stuff I do on my website here. That way when I go back and read through
it, it will evoke all these fun memories. I was reading about surfing on
this website and a person suggested to mark your calander with a brief
explanation of what the surfing was like, and I was wishing I had done
that with skiing. Anyway last weekend (yesterday) we went to this bar in
Sacramento called Harlows and saw a pretty bad band. The bar was a little
more highclass than we were, but it was a moderately good time. Then we
argued a lot and finally decided to go to Lake Tahoe. Our main problem is
that we have no luck in planning things, either apathy or indecisiveness
prevents us from doing cool things. At Tahoe, we just chilled on a beach
for a while, then roamed the Casinos and went to the club in Ceaser's
called Club Nero. We danced at Club Nero for a while and then I gambled
some before passing out in our motel room. The weekend before the one
that just passed we did the usual
local club called Polly Esthers and went to Davis (I think). Anyway, Im done with this update.
I did nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be.
-Justin
06-21-01
I swear that the weeks go by faster now than they did last year. Anyway Im not driving down to Santa Barbara this weekend because the weather isn't so great there, which is odd considering its like 100degrees and sunny here everyday. I guess being on the coast is cooler than inland like Sacramento. We will probably be going somewhere though, like Tahoe on Sat. Next weekend I am going to Lake Shasta to chill on a big boat with some friends and family. It should be a blast. I haven't been doing as much web surfing because I have been busier, but I did get cable at home (including cable internet service) and its blazingly fast, by far the fastest connection I have ever had. I dont know how it will affect my free time. I did find a couple things, like this article on an artificial intelligence machine called "Cyc". Well time to run, short update today.
quod me nutrit, me destruit
-Justin
06-13-01
Link-O-rama
Well I guess we can start with some cool Stick Figure Kung Foo, and if your looking to be amused there are always those people who aren't clever enough to live. They will be bringing The Holy Grail back to theatres. If your not down with the h@x0r talk then you can use a translator. If your looking for hardware info, or some material on the Pentium 4 you can try Tom's Hardware Guide. Of course there is always the extremely funny Onion. And lastly if you want to browse your local network (NOT the internet) for MP3's (like at school), you could try the neato mp3 finder here.
-Justin
06-12-01
Well, Im well into my working at Intel. It has taken me a while to get settled in and actually start working, but it seems like everytime I get work, I finish it all right away. Anyway I am back in the swing here in sunny Sacramento, and let me say that things are awesome. The weather is always good, and there is a ton of stuff to do. So far I have been out every weekend, barbecued a lot, partied, etc. I am going to either Santa Barbara or San Diego next weekend. Its a long trip, but we're young, we don't care. On a different note, I have changed my mind about the Pentium 4. I like it better than the Athlon now. And just in case any of you AMD fans are out there, I will briefly justify. First of all the Pentium 4 has much better all around bandwidth, and once code is optimized for the P4's new features, it will run much better on benchmarks. It is a difficult thing to judge a processor, even if you have seen benchmarks, and clock speed is certainly important but its not everything. The P4 has new SSE2 instructions that make things like graphics and mpeg encoding, etc, much faster. For things like gaming and streaming media and stuff that requires high bandwidth, the P4 should greatly outperform the Athlong. This version of the P4 is a weaker preliminary version though, newer versions will be better.(.13u, DDR, and a shrink). There was something else I wanted to rant about, but I forget. Now that Im only responsible for being productive 8 hours a day, Ishould update more often. School was horrible, I took way way too much work on. Next semester should be much better. Oh and on a final note, for those of you who know Mike Barth, Im just giving a little public thanks to that kid for helping me out so much with my brother's gameshark. He is an all around good guy. Thats all for now, Im out, gotta party :)
There is nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation
-Oeqist1
4-13-01
Well, last time I wrote I was studying for my ece291 test, which I pretty much aced. I recently took my ece340 test, which I think I did good on,
I should find out tomorrow. I am starting my ECE291 final project, which is Chess, you can find information on it, if you would like,
here. I kind of have a break here, before I have to start working on all the
end of the year stuff for my classes. I also am wrapping up my OTCR project, which went really well. I learned a lot
about how to manage a project, and how difficult it is versus how easy it seems. I really hope everything comes out well because managers SHARE the
credit when things go well, but TAKE the blame when they go wrong. I guess thats why they get paid more :) I came to realize that my family tends
to read my website, so I am going to try and refrain from cursing too much.(which is probably a good thing anyway). Im not going to really say much this time.
I have a lot of things I have been thinking about lately, like religion, women, philosophy (from my philosophy class), people, relationships, family etc. But
Im not really ready to start a whole paragraph on one of those. Time goes faster and faster now, its seems like it is speeding by now so fast that semesters
just snap by. Anyway, work calls. Oh, and sorry about the quote, but I had to jump on the bandwagon.
--All your base are belong to us!
-JB
04-01-01
Busy, that has defined my existance at school. Whatever I was thinking when I signed up for
classes, and didn't drop any before the drop date, is now completely beyond me. Basically, if
you glance over at my schedule you will see that I am taking two
"CS" courses and one little course called ECE291. Now what you don't realize is that these
courses have the longest and most ridiculously time consuming MP's I have ever worked on, so they
have completely absorbed my life.
Limiting my complaining about school to 500 words or less,
there is Intel stock to complain about.
It hit a new 2 year low recently, and hasn't climbed much.
Seriously people, buy more stuff, Intel stuff
then let me sell my stock off so I don't have to worry about the damn tech market anymore.
Life is good though, I am going back to California next semester, I have yet to call and make sure
everything is Kosher since the big Intel layoff. I also have to look up my friends Robbie and Brian.
I tried to contact Robbie, but it looks like he isn't at his same apt. which could mean just about
anything. So if you guys read this, drop me a line. Anyway this is just a quick update, inbetween
major projects. I finished (sort of) my MP for my databases class and now I am going to study all night
for my assembly class. Enjoy your sleep and get some for me.
"Well, your story seems very compelling, Mr. Jackass, I mean, uh, Simpson. So I'll just type it up on my invisible typewriter. Dum dee dum dum."
--Cheif Wiggum
-Justin
02-13-01
Whew, I have just had a really busy last two or three weeks. Finally I am getting around to updating this page. School has been thoroughly kicking my ass, because I have five courses and they all think that they are the only important one. I spend literally 5-8 hours a day in the lab to finish my ECE 291 programming assignments. My crazy CS 311 instructor assigned a huge assignment and only gave us a week to do it. And then there are all the tests I have coming up soon.
Well, enough of me whining. I am really involved in the not-for-profit consulting group OTCR, which is a really good experience but it is a lot of work. Other than that I am looking for research projects to do next year, and trying to make sure I bring up my gpa so that graduate school will be an option.
I am finally back in school, partying every weekend, going to the same old bars, and seeing all my old friends from school. California seems like a ways away already, but I am most likely going back there next summer to work for Intel again. School is fun, but school is school. Anyway here are some nifty links that I have found in my web searching :
--
-JB
01-15-01
First day of school tommorrow at UIUC, good thing I am staying up late to write this. Basically I just want to tell you that I have an online version of my schedule available. My OTCR group is going good and I am getting settled in, I am the project leader for the Chamber of Commerce project which should be a very good experience. I haven't quite finalized my schedule, even though classes start tomorrow.
I think Im about to build a new computer since fast computers are getting so cheap. I want a top of the line one, but I like my money, and don't want to spend it all at once. There are about a million things that I want to buy right now and so Im trying to decide which I need most. Anyway, thats all for now.
"If computers get too powerful, we canorganize them into a committee--that will do them in."
--Bradley's Bromide
-Justin
01-09-01
I am back in school now and a lot has happened since last update, the new millenium being one of those things, although it doesn't really seem to be nearly as much of a big deal this year as it was last year. I recently went to see the Blue Man Group in Chicago, it was pretty cool, but not what I expected. I thought they were going to be more like Stomp, where they just beat on random things for an hour or two and make cool noises, but it was different. The three blue guys experiment with different things that are normally commonplace and try to make us laugh. There is a lot of theatrical scenes and similar humor, but overall it was really good, and entertaining, which is why I went. This was just after Christmas, which was fun, I did some more skiing in Utah and had one of the best powder days of my life at Snowbird. I got a Palm VIIx. It will be quite usefull and entertaining as I experiment around with this wireless web that everyone is talking so much about.
Im now back in the good old Delta Chi house and starting school up very soon. I am putting my schedule up here shortly if you have any interest in viewing it. I have a lot of hard classes but they are in things that are very interesting to me. I interviewed with OTCR again, to get a position on the board or leading a cosulting team. If you are a student at UIUC and wish to participate in the technical consulting group known as OTCR, please go to the website, to apply. I should be updating more now that I am at school so you will be able to get the latest information from me here.
--Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy
-Justin
12-19-00
California shall see the last of me this coming Thursday when I am driving to Utah. I have to pack up all my stuff and I have a bad feeling that it will take a long time. My roomate left last week and I moved out of my apartment and I am living with a good friend Robbie, who has an extra room in his apartment and doens't mind (or so he says). This is just a lot easier that way I don't have to worry about extending all my current bills (cable, gas, etc..) an extra week past when my roomate left, this is especially important in the ones that were registered under my roomates name. Anyway... I have become much less enchanted with the entertainment value of the web as of late and therefore I have been spending much less time on it. So, this means no really good links for you guys, I think.. , let me check. Nope, nothing new; if you didn't know before these are the sites that I tend to visit somewhat Yahoo Stocks, Toms Hardware, Slashdot, and Gamespot.
Tonight is my last volleyball game here with a league I played in for a while. I am going to miss the Volleyball Cafe, where we play, quite a lot. My skills have improved a lot since before I got here, now I routinely spiketh the ball upon my opponents heads, I only stand at about 5'11 too so I think my vertical has increased significantly (or I like to pretend it has). Today is Justin Dawson's birthday, he is OLD. Still in school and like 34 or something, he is finishing up an internship here with me at Intel and going back to Kansas, you know why... because there is no place like home. Okay I have to stop now, before someone gets hurt.
--I intend to live forever - so far, so good.
-Precious Roy
12-14-00
Today's desultory diatribe :
Okay, I haven't updated for a while and there is a reason. I am moving and I have been sick, hence I am incredibly busy and don't have much time I don't spend cleaning, packing, sleeping, or partying (gotta have your priorities). I am, however, going to Squaw to ski this Sunday and I am looking forward immensely because they just got 6 fresh inches and Squaw is known to be quite a nice resort. Hopefully I am over this endless flu I seem to have contracted and will be in tip top shape for Sunday. Well we finally have a President and frankly it didn't change much in my life. I knew Bush was going to win in the long run, I mean honestly, Gore never came out ahead in the polls in Florida except in some people's predictions when all the votes weren't in. We also have some information that the P4 doesn't suck, especially with the right motherboard. So go buy one, because it runs at a faster clock speed than any of AMD's chips, and of course the most important thing is that it can run Q3 better!.
--I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.
-Jizza Justin
12-04-00
Today's mindless tirade :
Skiing over the weekend was a blast. I went to Sierra Tahoe as I said I would and then on Sunday I headed out to Sugar Bowl. I liked Sugar Bowl better because it was bigger, had more snow, and lots of open forest filled ungroomed terrain, but its also about 45min further away than Sierra Tahoe. Sierra did have a small terrain park, though, where I completed my first ever "helicopter" or 360 on skis. That is a friggin difficult trick if you ask me, because unlike snowboarders, skiiers dont get to try a 180 first and then move up to a 360. It was quite a fun weekend, the weather was toasty and the slopes were all but empty so no lift lines. I am only in California until Dec 22nd, so I am probably going to ski every weekend until I leave. (because back in Illinois they don't have skiing). I have entered into a contest with a couple of friends from school to design a webpage. Top prize is $2000 but I really just want to see how I compare to others as far as webpage design. I am almost ready to go back to school, where I do only two main things, study and party, but this semester I am doing more of the studying and less of the partying so that my gpa might go up. I am plum out of things to say, so later.
--True, money can't buy happiness, but it isn't happiness I want. It's money.
-J
12-01-00
Today's incoherent ramblings :
I am going skiing tomorrow, for the first time in about a year. I can't wait, although hopefully the snow and resorts down here will live up to my expectations. I am skiing in Sierra Tahoe and it will be a blast. I recently got AdvantGo on my handspring visor, and it lets me download web pages so that I can read them when Im away from the computer. Now I can get my Slashdot headlines while I am not online, along with stock quotes and sports scores. I now spend that quality time in the bathroom, catching up on news and current event type things from my PDA.
I don't really have much to report right now so I am going to just list some links of stuff I found recently, and then go home because its FRIDAY! Have you ever wondered if your a genius, or have you ever wanted to be a Killer Bean (This is a large video, but it is hella cool)? Perhaps you think you are a l33t hax0r, or just like to make fun of dumb people with your satirical wit? In any case, one of those websites probably pertains to you, they are all pretty cool, especially the Killer Bean thing. Later, I gotta go um.... spend my money on umm.... booze, oops.. I mean...women ... I mean.. books, yeah thats it! books.
--A fool and his money are soon partying.
-JB
11-29-00
I am fine. That's the update. See below for my usual incompetent babbling.
I have gotten some work done on my website. The comics page is up, I added one article, and revamped the paintball page, although none of the three are very impressive.
I gave a big presentation at work today about this online database deal I made and it seemed to go over really well, sorry it's behind a firewall and you can't see it. Now we just have to see if anyone really uses it. I think they will because, well they have to so too bad for them.
I still haven't decided where I am going to work next summer (deadline Friday) or what major I am going to be. If your in the Computer industry do CS majors make more or EE majors? Right now I'm exactly in between as a Computer Engineering major but I think I want to switch to Computer Science. I don't think it really matters however. Now on to some stuff you might actually want to read.
I just got my Got Wang? shirt. It is quite amusing. It is from my favorite online comic strip Penny-Arcade. I posted my articles on the website known as IM-UR. Honestly it is not a very good site but I am sort of interested in getting other people to read what I write. Intel Stock has plummeted recently due to bad news from other companies. I recently purchased at $44 what I thought was the absolute bottom of Intel's drop from about $74 but I was wrong. I am down a little bit of money now, but I am in for the long term and Intel wont go much lower than its current 52 week low because it is a multi-billion dollar revenue company and they don't just go away. I'm going to link to one more website and then I'm done with this harangue, that site is How Things Work and it is a really good site with everything from how web servers work to how a car engine works. I have gleaned quite a bit of useful information off that site myself and they have had a how-to for everything I've searched for so far.
--Mmmm ... 64 slices of american cheese.
-jbischof
11-27-00
The long break between posts is due to the fact that we Americans had a major Holiday. Now I have to get one thing off of my chest, this whole election thing. I will recap slightly, first Bush won the initial vote count and Gore protested, then there was an automatic recount, a hand recount, and another hand recount where they counted dimpled chads or something. The result was Bush won and Gore protested. Then we counted the overseas votes and Bush won (as predicted) and Gore protested. Now we have the final vote tallied up and Bush won and Gore protested. I consider myself to be a democrat in the loosest possible way but the way the Democratic Party has treated this whole issue has made me frankly embarrassed by their behavior. I remember in school we had a word for the current attitude of the Democratic Party, its called a SORE LOSER, and they are wasting lots of people's time and money. Okay, that should sufficiently illustrate how childish this whole thing is to everyone, if you have a conflicting opinion you can email it to me and I will post it up here (sorry but I can't write scripts on the schools account to create a message board).
My vacation in Illinois from work in California was great. I had a fantastic time and my mother is a wonderful cook, if they ever read this then Thank You. With that said I got to see a lot of my friends from college and high school and it was overall a good trip. The remainder of my time in California I plan to spend doing one thing, Skiing. We will be going up this Saturday to drop some fly moves off of trick jumps at the local ski resort. I am leaving the real skiing for when the snow is better and they open all those steep, rock filled, mogul runs I crave for.
I have added one article that I wrote to this page, and expect to see more, along with that programming page I promised. I have a lot of stuff planned to do, but I am a busy guy.
--Well, that's just what we call pillow-talk, baby.
-JB
11-16-00
Looks like I am doing pretty good as far as keeping up with these posts go. I recently received a Handspring Visor which is the equivalent of a palm pilot (essentially). The thing is pretty cool because it automatically synchronizes itself up with Outlook and it can update with webpages so that I can get headlines, stock quotes and sports statistics. Anyway I have to give it back when Im done with my internship. Intel offered me another internship next summer which will be my last summer at school but I don't know if I will take it. (a $5 an hour raise!!) I really want to work somewhere in Illinois so if your an employer in Chicago HIRE ME! (trust me I'm good) :) What a blatant self promotion, that's okay though because none of them will read it and this is my webpage so I guess I have free reign. I have fallen from my Slashdot fix, I was looking at that sight something like 100 times a day to catch up with current nerd news. I now am getting bored with the Internet, I need something else to keep my interest, like a new computer. I have a 22" monitor at work and a 17" at home, I can't take it at home. Don't ever get a big monitor because you can never go back.
I am still developing this website, it is really restricted right now because it is on the school's servers and I cannot use any server side scripting. So when I move it over to my friends IIS server it will have a lot more features. Look for a Programming page and a Comics page to come soon, I have this thing for online comics. As a little preview check out these comic strips, my favorite, and a classic. That's all for today.
-- Hear about the new pirate movie? It's rated "Arrr".
-JB
11-14-00
Post number three for me, maybe this won't be something I do for a week and then give up on. I have figured out what my website needs, content. Its that easy really, so I will search for content and you just keep coming back to read this little news article diary deal. Right about now I am pretty much deciding the rest of my life, I have to decide what major I want to get, CS or Computer Engineering, if you have an opinion on this mail me. I am also looking for employment for next summer and a place to live next semester. I sent my resume out to the usual places, head hunter, and companies that interest me, basically Intel, Lucent, and IBM. I haven't heard much back from them yet, but at least my resume is out there. I have a volleyball league game tonight and we are going to kick but because I shouldn't be playing in the beginner's league, IMHO. I didn't really want to sign up for beginner but its practice, which I need, I did it because some girl made me, and no I'm not interested in her. In my spare time I have started to read a book on WAP, wireless application protocol. Basically I want to be able to write programs for my PDA/Cell phone, web based programs. I also have been working on a program that "evolves" an AI that can play tic-tac-toe intelligently. Okay that's enough for today.
I bought a pack of batteries, but they weren't included so I bought them again
-JB
11-8-00
Well I saw an opera last night, it was Carmen for those of you that follow that type of thing. Many of you might be saying to yourself right now "what kind of music loving freak did I get myself involved with?". Well fret not I didn't love it, in fact I only mildly enjoyed it, the only reason we (a bunch of guys) went is so that we can pretend that were not social misfits and we have some culture. Now that were back to going to bars and drinking until we can write profane things on each other while they are passed out, things feel normal again.
Anyway I am looking forward to school again and it turns out that I might end up switching my major to CS from Computer Engineering. I can't really stand all that electrical stuff and I'm much better at programming, which is what I currently do a lot of. I am in the works on improving this website, send ideas or something my way because I am willing to do the work now, Im just short on ideas.
Later, -JB
11-6-00
This is the part where I tell you what I have been up to lately, btw expect this page to go through many changes, so dont expect any consistancy. I am finishing up my 6 month stint in lovely California with Intel Corporation. They have me designing websites even though thats not what I was supposed to do originally. Its okay though because they pay me enough to do whatever they want. I signed up for my classes today and it looks like I might have a rough semester next year. Im taking all technical computer courses so far. I have managed to stay fairly social down here in Sunny Sacramento. We just went to San Francisco last weekend which was awesome, or hella cool if your from around there. Saw Stanford, it wasnt much, honestly, there was a cool mural and thats it. Anyway my fingers are cold and I cant type well so I will catch you guys next update. Later. -JB
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