November-28-2005 : Soccer and Brazil Pics

I played soccer today in the rain, despite being lazy. My friends peer-pressured me into it. Close to the very end of the game I came down really hard on my right leg and felt a slight pop and tweaked my knee. I think I sprained or strained some ligaments. It isn't anything serious but its frustrating to see my knees and joints get older and start to go. I know one of these days, probably a few years from now, I will do something similar and tear a ligament. Oh well...

Here is a link to my pictures from the now several weeks gone Brazil trip. There are 272 images, which is quite a lot, so browse fast. At the beginning of the album there are 80 or so pics from my roomate that show most of the trip, however they have no captions or comments. After those come the other 190 that have captions explaining what the pictures are. Brazil Trip Pictures I have also included some small ones here.

Our Van in the Canyons	Canyons of Cambara	Sitting at the Canyons
Floyd Jumping a Stream	Fog Rolling In	Waterfall
Going Out in Brazil	Grilling Churasco	Riding the Rail Cart
Crazy Gremio Soccer Fans	More Crazy Fans	The "Other" Team's Stadium
Luiza's Gracious Family	Porto Alegre Sunset	Porto Alegre
View from our pool in Montevideo	Tango Dancers	Rodin Sculpture
Too Early in Punta Del Este	Punta Hand Sculpture	A Montevideo Tower
Buenos Aires Buildings	Lunch in Uruguay	Brazillian Girls Like the Wind

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils - Hector Berlioz

-Justin

Well I am going to Brazil for a week and a half after my birthday! I am really excited. I almost didn't go because it is an inconvenient time at work, but not many times would be convenient. We are flying into southern Brazil near Sao Paulo (second biggest city in the world by population depending on how you define the city boundries.) So I need to take care of visa's and vaccinations and all that Jazz.

My parents are coming to visit me in Sacramento before I go. That should be fun. I don't come home quite often enough in the summer, but I am sure they will be sick of me by the time I leave after Christmas ;)

One does not discover new continents without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. - André Gide, 1869 - 1951

-Justin

Okay, sorry for the slow updates ;) I haven't been doing all that much, just playing warcraft. I went down to LA/Newport beach a couple weeks ago for a friend's wedding, which was great. We stopped by San Diego and it would be really cool to live down there.

I have another friend who is leaving Intel and I would be considering it, but my current job is fun and keeps me happy.

I am riding my bike now because I finally got the title and got it registered. For the longest time I couldn't get the title because the friend I bought it off of promptly left for Turkey after I bought it. Then his sister couldn't find the paperwork so I had to submit for a new title. Lots of running back and forth so that I could register the bike for $373. That, along with the trips, and eating out too much mean that I am out of cash, broke, living on the cheap. I am going to have to start eating Ramen multiple nights a week so I don't bounce any checks.

To be stupid and selfish and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless. - Gustave Flaubert, 1821 - 1880

-Justin

I finally got my motorcycle on Saturday, and rode it for the first time on the freeway. It is going to be great except for that now I have to get a helmet that fits, a jacket, and gloves.

[bike1.JPG] [bike2.JPG] [bike3.JPG] [bike4.JPG] [bike5.JPG]

Here is a picture of my roomate playing his Halo2 online. That is pretty much all he does, and all I do is play warcraft ;)

[Halo]

Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. - Hermann Goring

-Justin

Looking to waste some time. Try to figure out this puzzle. Just keep clicking on stuff until you win. There is a certain order things have to happen. Very interesting and very tricky. I won't say how much time I wasted on it. http://www.foon.co.uk/farcade/?page=hapland.

If you can master nonsense as well as you have already learned to master sense, then each will expose the other for what it is: absurdity. From that moment of illumination, a man begins to be free regardless of his surroundings. He becomes free to play order games and change them at will. He becomes free to play disorder games just for the hell of it. He becomes free to play neither or both. And as the master of his own games, he plays without fear, and therefore without frustration, and therefore with good will in his soul and love in his being. -Principa Discordia

-Justin

I went skiing a bunch recently and have been playing tons of warcraft. Kris and I went and found the cliff we had jumped off last season and jumped off again. It is a hard cliff to build up the courage to go off of because you can't really see where you are going to land. I tried to go off the smaller way and when I landed there was a river of ice under the recent snowfall. It was a very hard landing that slammed my knees into my chest, but I was fine. Kris went the larger way left of me and landed in powder.

My WoW character is level 48 since nobody who reads this plays WoW(World of Warcraft) I am sure you want all the gory details.

I finally got my haircut. I wanted to keep it longer but the crazy supercuts lady went scissor nuts on my bangs. Now I am back to my shorter hair look.

I got two nice wide panoramic pictures from Kurt that he took while we were on our Western parks trip. He sent me two nice prints and I went and had them framed for only $300!!! Frames are not cheap. I am gearing up to make a lot of purchases soon, but I require a lot of mental preparation. Motorcycle and espresso machine are on the top of my list.

Completing your taxes five days before they are due would be called procrastination by some people. I am not one of those people. Oh and if you want to file your federal taxes for free, you can use one of the services listed here http://www.irs.gov. You can actually use the free online version of turbotax. The free version isn't available from turbotax.com, you have to get there from the irs website. It took me about 2 hours to finish, nice and quick, although my taxes are easy.

"I Try to Take One Day at a Time, but Sometimes Several Days Attack Me at Once" Ashleigh, Brilliant

-Justin

I finished my class, although by "finished" I mean that the day when everything was due has passed. I don't in any way mean that I completed the coursework in a satisfactory manor, although it wasn't for lack of trying. Here you can see a picture I took while in the painful mental throngs of the course. Note the hair.
[math pic]

I received a small box in the mail for easter. To express my gratitude I have another picture of myself during my typical holiday gorging.
[easter pic]

-Justin

I am a big fan of Google and they are in the news everywhere these days. Here are a couple new search services they launched. I particularly like Google Local that shows me all the pizza places nearby. If you want a quick easy way to try these searches I made these buttons for you. Google Video finds recent TV broadcasts. Google Local finds businesses near an address.

Google Video

Google News

Google Local

Google Maps

Google Search

-Justin

Homework is anti-fun. I am not sure why I wanted to take a math / computer science class while working, but it is too late now. The first homework assignment killed me. Mostly because I think you were supposed to work in groups of 3 students and I got "help" from a lot of people that weren't in the class. Anyway I fretted a lot just before the drop date on what I should do, in the end apathy decided for me. The second homework assignment is much easier so maybe there is hope for me after all.

I remember thinking that I had a lot to write about, but now I can't remember. I have started playing some WoW again. The Illini Basketball are 23-0! Wikipedia is one of my new favorite sites. It is an open, free, internet encyclopedia. After using it a little bit I think the articles are really good. They also have information on obscure topics that a regular encyclopedia probably wouldn't have. TypoGenerator is a website that has a computer program that creates pictures based off of images it finds on Google.

Have heard news about this "supercomputer on a chip"? Well I am suprised at how much noise this is making because it is nothing new. It is just a normal computer chip like the others IBM has been making for a while. This one went into the PS3 and now they are trying to push it into the consumer PC market. The chip is new because it has many cores, but that doesn't mean it will be faster or better than intel chips. It is made for playstations not for normal computers. In addition, Sony already tried to do this once. The chip that they put in the Playstation2 (The "Emotion Enginge") was supposed to take over desktop computers too, but that didn't happen! We will see if it ever makes its way into a PC.

I haven't skied in 4 weeks ;( But two skiing trips are coming up! Mammoth Mountain and Whistler!

"I Have Abandoned My Search for Truth and Am Now Looking for a Good Fantasy" Ashleigh Brilliant - other brilliant quotes

-Justin

My tall friend in Flash, Robbie, has grown a new affinity for disaster. He came back from Christmas to find that his apartment had been ransacked. His furniture was toppled, every bit of electronics stolen, clothes and paperwork strewn about the floor. The theives were also fond of his sheets (which we assume they carried off all the electronics in) and his clothes - including underwear and socks. His passport, spare keys, and checkbook were also stolen. Then yesterday he gets up to go to work and his car is gone. Apparently they came back for the car since they had his spare key. Anyway, bad bad luck, but at least he wasn't in Thailand over Christmas.

The Tahoe area got tons of snow last weekend along with the rest of the west coast. There was so much snow that they couldn't keep the roads open very much. On Saturday Floyd, Kris, and I went to Squaw which was good except for the fact that it was bitterly cold and only 2 small lifts were open. Despite that we managed to have a great time in the trees and still found plenty of deep powder which was suprisingly light (probably because of the cold spell). On the drive home it took us a full 5 hours of extra driving to get back. The increased traffic because it was New Years day, combined with the snow plowes and chain control meant we were going ~15mph at the higher altitudes where there was still snow.

We missed a great day of skiing on Sunday.

With our legs recuperated and with more friends we tried to going skiing on Monday, which Intel employees got off because of some technicality where they wanted the new years holiday to fall in the year '05. We checked the roads and left early. 2 hours later we were 5 minutes from our destination - Kirkwood - when traffic stopped because the 'pass' was closed due to avalanche control. They kept us there for a couple hours before we turned back. We were there sometime before 10 and waited roughly an hour until word spread that it would be 3-4 more hours until they opened the gate. My friends who actually waited longer (Brian Romo and Tony) said that the gate finally opened at 12:30. So we stopped waiting at about 11 and turned back for our 2 hour drive home. The grand total falls somewhere at 14 hours of driving for 4 hours of skiing.

"Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich." Tao Te Ching quotes

-Justin

Okay, I caved and finally updated my webpage. So what happened since 4 days before Thanksgiving? Well there was Thanksgiving in Utah, which was fun. We went up to the cabindo with the fam and rented snowmobiles. I managed to get the snowmobiles stuck for most of the day and right as we were going to get one out it died. Christmas was also fun, although short. I think I like the short visits though. See everyone, do the required visits and then head home. I don't have a lot of friends to hang out with back in Utah so staying too long isn't wise and probably inconveniences my parents too much. Mom and Dad are truly gracious hosts. Fixing wonderful meals and planning out my vacation so that I don't have to do anything but have fun. This is in stark contrast to my roomate Floyd, whose parents force him to work their embroidery shop in the mall al day.

So I got everything I wanted for christmas and I have several big purchases that I am planning on making now that the holidays are over. These things include a motorcycle, espresso machine, and more furniture. I have several books I want to read but I don't actually spend much time reading. My graphics course starts January 6th when I will officially buckle down and get to work. If I screw up and get a B- or worse then I have to pay the very expensive tuition myself instead of having Intel pay for it. World of Warcraft might have to be put on hold at that time. I also have a couple of side projects including a neural net generation program and my linux web server that I have been meaning to get off the ground for a while now. The furniture purchase is part of a concerted effort by Floyd and me to stop living like college students and actually have our place appear as if two adults live there.

All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power. - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant, English metaphysical poet

-Justin

Yesterday marks the first skiing day of the season! I am going to track the number of times I go skiing just to see how many it is. I bought another pass to Kirkwood like everyone else, despite our desires to go to other resorts besides Kirkwood. I think we will a little bit but in general it is just too expensive. The skiing was quite good for this early in the season. I had a very nice mogul run and a sweet run through a large bowl off of "the wall". The snow was a little choppy but still soft. I almost got Kristen (Renee's friend) and me stuck in a chute that I thought might be passable, but didn't have nearly enough snow.

Last Thursday Amber was nice enough to arrange a little San Fran trip for us. We saw her friend Meredith's art show (she curated). It was nice, but much smaller than we expected. I should have gone to art school because all of the girls there were cute and dressed well in a sort of "everybody here is non-conformist" kind of way. Later we grabbed a bite to eat and had a couple of beers in a nice bar. The food we had was quite good. Some sort of american-indian fusion type place. They had american dishes but everything had a hint or influence from some indian dishes. It was one of the better meals I have had.

Checkout this flash game from Pop Games. It insane, and once you start playing you can't stop. Until the 1 hour trial ends ;)

Thanksgiving is soon. I can't wait to come home.

"Ahhh, women they make the highs higher and the lows more frequent" -Friedrich Neitzche

-Justin

Here Brian and I are hard at work carving pumpkins. The person taking the picture is my roomate Floyd who was too lazy/apathetic to carve his pumpkin. [carving ze pumpkin]

And I think they turned out pretty good. Brian was using a pumpkin inspired by Jack from that Halloween movie. I was doing a character from StrongBad.

[click here for pic0]
[click here for pic1]
[click here for pic2]

-Justin

Thanks to nic, the 1337 Ph0t0sh0p ninj4 for my new Fraggle Rock Banner. Take a second to bask in its awesomeness, ahhh. You can still see the halloween edition of my page here. And my soon to be added pictures of the pumpkins we carved.

I installed Linux finally, which is step 1 of getting my own server up and running. I really have no idea what I am doing so there might be some hiccups along the way.

I am getting my motorcycle license this weekend so then a small purchase is all that separates me from the rest of the riding world.

I will be back in Utah for thanksgiving, only a couple short weeks from now. It feels like forever since I have been in Utah.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. -- Friedrich Nietzsche

-Justin

This is the Halloween edition of my webpage, ooooh spooky. Images shamelessly stolen from a very talented artist. I love this time of year. Although I don't really go all out in decorations, costumes, or candy, I enjoy watching other people do it. If you are looking for some really scary (and really funny) costumes, checkout 2004's Scariest Halloween Costumes. The cool autumn weather is great. One place it isn't all that cold is San Diego where Brian is moving shortly. He will be living in Pacific Beach (read as : young crowd, near the beach, lots of girls, lots of shops) exactly 50 yards from the beach. He broke his leg so I was down there helping him try to find a place to live. We caught some sun on the beach even though this is the cool time of year

In some sort of concerted effort to bring change into my life I have signed up for 3 different classes. Motorcycle Safety Course, Basic Yoga, and a Computer Graphics course. I figure I will need to get my Masters or PhD now because I have to at least keep up with Nic ;) If coddling insecurites and ego building aren't good reasons to get an education then I don't know what is.

�Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and co-operation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.� --Dwight D. Eisenhower

-Justin

Thanks everyone for the great birthday gifts. Too bad that only happens once per year. Lots of new shirts and soccer gear which is nice because the weather is pretty awesome in Sacramento right now. Cold at night, warm during the day. When will the ski season get here?

Went to a concert last night in SF. Itzhak Perlman was conducting and had one small solo that wasn't very challenging or technically difficult. Thats about all of that.

Brian, a friend of mine, is moving to San Diego. He will be living on the beach. I am quite jealous, although he will be several hours from the nearest ski resort.

I am slacking on setting up a server, no progress. I will try to get some work done this weekend. I also want to sign up for a technical course at some university, hopefully Stanford and take the GRE to prep for full admission. Work is going well but I want to go back to school for a while.

Whenever I'm caught between two evils, I take the one I've never tried. -- Mae West

-Justin

The first presidential election happened last night, and I think the consensus is that the debate is so staged and controlled that is essentially just a chance for candidates to give their normal PR messages. It looks like it will be a close election, hopefully Florida can get their act together this time ;) Instead of war we could have purchased this.

My official birthday starts at the stroke of midnight tonight, so it is poker and barbecue after work. 25 years old. I think it signifies the end of childhood and the start of middle age. However I think I am way behind the curve, at least as far as things like maturity, common sense, being married, etc. You know I have been thinking about this marriage thing a little bit and was wondering : Does true happiness require that you find a significant other? Because I don't think it should (theoretically), but a lot of people assume it does.

Neitzsche was an interesting guy. Mike mentioned him again and I finally picked up a book of his. I had been meaning to read some for a while now. I think he is known most for his "god is dead" comment and his book the Anti-Christ. I started reading some of his stuff and he has very compelling viewpoints on morality. He did, however, focus a lot of energy against the catholic church, but a lot of that was misinterpreted anyway. The Anti-Christ is somewhat of a bad translation and can actually mean anti-christ or anti-christian. In that book he actually speaks very fondly of Christ and seems to revere him. It is the official religion that he has problems with, because he things they messed up the essential message or model that christ displayed. It is interesting though, keeps my mind from rotting away on things like Doom3.

One last thing I wanted to mention is that I am going to go back to school at some point. I realize now that I will never know *for sure* what I want to do with my life. In the meantime I need to decide on something, set some goals, and stick to the path until I decide to pick something different. I think most people realize this in High School or something, not after working for 3 years. Anyway I liked school the first time around, so I am going to have another go at it. Timing is the question though. I should probably stay at my current job until 2006, maybe apply for spring semester. I want to get into somewhere good (UIUC, Stanford) or somewhere by a nice beach. So I have to study up for the GRE and maybe take some courses while at work. That should help my less than stellar undergraduate performance.

If you view all the things that happen to you, both good and bad, as opportunities, then you operate out of a higher level of consciousness. - Les Brown

-Justin

I beat Doom 3 last night. After checking the logs it looks like I played from ~1:30pm to 1:30am on Sunday. With little or no breaks. The game is evil, no doubt about that. There are all sorts of bad things hiding in every corner and jumping out at you repeatedly while you fumble in the darkness. At one point I saw a zombie munching on a corpse so I shot him and then the corpse he was munching on got up and attacked me so I shot him too. I had dreams of killing demons.

Kerry is a Flip Flopper. This is currently being drilled into everyone's head repeatedly. I am pretty sure I am voting for Kerry now, so my opinion is biased. However, In regards to the flip flopper comments I would like to say so what? Maybe Kerry was trying to decide the best course of action. Being resolute and wrong is not a virtue. I guess nobody can accuse Bush of being a flip flopper because he probably knew from the beginning that he wanted to go to war with Iraq. Enough politics though.

It is starting to get cold and I am ramping up for the ski season. I figure if I lose 15lbs and get my legs in shape before hitting the slopes then I will have a much easier time than the last two years. Tanner Hall's new flick WSki 106, Trailer Here, will be out in October and it looks nothing short of awesome. Armada (his ski brand), released two new skis and two new designs for the old skis. There is a park/jib ski that has rounded edges under the heel (horrible on steep ice but great on rails), and a new back country ski that I wish I could have. It is 191mm long, lighter, wide base, and the tail end is increased even more than previous twin tip skis (Not to mention the awesome graphic).

[click here for skis]

"When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself."- Jacques-Yves Cousteau

-Justin

I looked at some professional blog pages and realize that my page looked like crap. So I tried to pretty it up good with Paint and Notepad. I can't afford real image editing or html making stuff so you are looking at 20 minutes of procrastination while at work. Like the new look? Tell me about it here.

I have trimmed and pruned my Amazon Wishlist so that it is an accurate reflection of stuff I would like to own if I wasn't too cheap to actually buy it myself. At some point in life I decided it was okay to spend $25 a meal for dinner multiple times a week, but not okay to buy $10 books I find interesting.

I have been increasing my phsical activity as of late and boy am I sore. I am also on the verge of getting sick again which would really suck. FYI, if you ever get cancer and have to do checkups for the rest of your life afterwards to see if the cancer came back: remember to keep your doctors in check because they will be overly cautious to the extreme. And also, don't sue them.

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true.-- James Branch Cabell

-Justin

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.
[map]

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.

[ click here for bike ]

"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 ;)

---

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

---

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. - Fran�ois Auguste Ren� 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