Contending

So last night, Cornell came out to play the game like it always does. Weak, slow, lethargic, and unexcited. Honestly, I thought we'd lose or tie with the way they played into much of the second. And it's not that SLU was so great, it's just that the guys were slow. SLU had at least three one-timers that were three inches away from opening up the game, and finally one did. 1-0 SLU.

Strangely enough, the fan also weren't into it. Like the last home game we played against Yale, the score was 1-1 heading into the final period, but there was so much more energy then. I remember standing in the press box, having to shout to Bill Moore, feeling the concrete quiver beneath my feet. That's how loud Lynah was.

This week? Last night? Not the same, by a longshot.

But then they snapped out of it — the team, not the crowd — picking up a second, and game winning goal. They continued to pound away at SLU, dumping it into their end and beating them up along the boards. On one shift, Mike Iggulden left the ice, clearly winded, only to return and create a Cornell break away on the tail end of his next shift. For weeks, I've seen them dog it in the third, not give everything they had. This, and the following break away goal on the next shift, and the empty-netter punctuation mark, were signs of how things have changed.

And after Brown lost to Dartmouth, and Colgate lost to Clarkson, Cornell is just one point (and some help from SLU) out of first place in the ECAC. More importantly, this late in the season, the guys have put things together. For the first time this season, they looked like contenders.

Dare I say it? Froz ... no, not yet...

This just in....

The AIM headline scrolling bar just said this:

"Six Pence None the Richer Breaks Up..."

Who?

Last home hockey weekend is tonight, sort of. We're garaunteed a home playoff series, so there's going to be at least two more games. Still, it's an emotional weekend becuase the senior's parents all come, and they get introduced to teh crowd. It's really nostalgic and always makes me think about the last time I do things at Cornell (Like this Spring will be the last time I do Spring course enroll...).

Anyway, the weekend should be fun. It's the house's pledge alum weekend, which means all of our alumni come back and we have a rousing good time. Saturday night is culminated with a trip to the local ice rink, where we face off — Brothers vs. ALumni — in a fairly low-skilled hockey game. Needless to say, I'm excited.

95,000 and counting

It's amazing how interpersonal networks can blossom (and overlap). I recently started using my friendster account, and have added three friends in the past two days. Since then, my personal network has grown to more than 95,000 "friends." The craziest thing to me is that I was at 90,000 something just this afternoon.

Prelim tomorrow ... now it's time to start studying.

Smells like Spring

I was making one of my many Monday trips between Kennedy hall and the CIT HelpDesk center, when I noticed something exciting. With the air wafting from the north east, and a familiar friend poking out behind the clouds, Ithaca began to smell like Spring. It was only for an instance (someone with a cigarrette had to ruin it, of course), but it smelled like Spring.

And what does Spring smell like in Ithaca, you may be wondering?

Well...it feels like hitting the home stretch in a mile race. It is like winning. Spring means that you have survived the winter, that the break in the semester is almost here, that exams are on their way.

Basically, Spring smells like hope.

Sleep to Dream Her

(Warning -- the first part of this is Whiny -- for a substantial update, skip to the next section)

So the other night, a friend (Jackie) asked why a nice guy like me didn't have a girlfriend. I really couldn't answer the question. I suppose part of it deals with my inability to committ, and part of it stems from the fact that it's just hard to meet people at Cornell.

But it was nice she asked. She also made the comment that I should be getting laid regularly. It's nice to know someone else agrees...

We both happened to be at Bar night, and she ad just asked if I'd be a partner with one of her pledges for a game. I said sure, I figured I had nothing to lose. As it turned out, I didn't have much to gain either.

The girl was named Anna, and happened to be from Williamsville (a town back home, for those of you not familiar with B-lo). She was a freshman, and sported the typical "I'm too good for this guy" attitude. She even told Jackie that I was mean (?!?). We both sucked at the game we were playing, so Jackie and Jason (her boyfriend, and my pledge brother) were winning pretty handily. Of course, I took the blame for our team's poor performance, and when my some of Anna's friends offered to take over for me, I gladly let them.

My mind was elsewhere, particularly on the curly blonde haired girl in the other room.

We have a fair amount of attractive girls wander in and out of the house for Bar night, so when this one was in line to get a drink I was content to watch and day dream about things that would never happen ... like conversation...

But then it happened. She and her two friends happened to come on over, and I noticed she was checking me out. I was pretty excited but gave it another few minutes before confirming that she was actually checking me out. I glanced over a little while later, and sure enough she was still looking at me, and kind of smiling. She hadn't even gotten her drink yet.

So when two other brothers I was talking with turned to talk to them, I was stuck on the outside looking in. She pulled me into the conversation, though, reaching past them to ask me a question. I couldn't believe this. I was in the conversation, and things were going well.

She was there with her friend Allie, who I recognized as one of the regulars, and one other girl who I didn't remember. We chatted for a while, I apologized for not remembering their names, and we kept the conversation going.

But all the while she was still wearing her fleece -- not a good sign in the "are you sticking around for a while" department. As it turned out, she was also popular, and kept getting calls from other guys (all Freshman, though) asking where she was and how they would get there.

But we kept chatting it up, and she never really left. There were two other guys hanging around her all night, and both were freshmen, with one presenting himself serious competiton. He clearly already knew her, but they weren't dating, just having a good time. Eventually she (let slip/said) that she'd never date a younger guy. I'm not sure if this was her way of giving me a green light for asking for her number, and me not being swift in the dating vernacular department, I didn't ask for it.

So yeah, that's it. There's no grand conclusion. I didn't walk her home, almost hold hands with her, look at photos of her ex-boyfriend, or get her screen name. It was just something that I was excited about, and made me smile for a while. Hey -- you're the one reading this, so don't complain to me about content.

So did I dream about her -- is that where the title of the entry comes from? No.

Last night I had a dream about Briton, my pseudo high-school girlfriend. I say pseudo becuase we had a few dates before we both left for college, but that was about it. She also came to visit me freshman year, got hit on by every guy at a party we went to, and made all of the guys on my floor really jealous. H (Haymaenth - sp?) kept talking about her for the rest of the semester. She was definitely one to remember, but we lost touch, and I haven't seen her since two summers ago.

She was a thin brunette, about 5-7, with an olive complextion and dark eyes. Sultry would be a good word to describe her. She danced for fun, which is why she was in such good shape (see tight "everything"), and was easy to have a conversation with. We were comfortable with each other, and that's really what made it such a great (though limited, and short lived) relationship.

She's also set the bar for every other girl to measure up to since.

So last night, after spending the weekend with Ip, Owen, and Christine (the Photo editor) covering the hockey games, I came home, ate some cookies and went to bed. Then I had a dream about her.

She was hot, like always. I was in a computer lab somewhere, and she walked in the door. I was also surrounded by a bunch of girls who thought less of me (but I didn't care, the feeling was mutual). Briton walks in, comes over to me and sits in my lap. Everyone else in the room drops their jaw on the floor.

It was a great dream, and I don't remember what I was showing her on the computer, but I do remember being happy in it. It was hard not to be happy around her.

---

Prelims this week. I've got two of them, on top of some other quasi-nausating assingments to be done. I'm just hoping to do well on the prelims. Bill and Mary Ann have been nagging me for a while about my GPA, becuase semesters of "3.4" aren't good enough for them. It's just a pain in the ass.

Internship applications also need to go in soon. My Dept. Chair finally got back to me about submitting a letter of reccomendation for my attendance at a Journalism conference. The only problem is that the letter was due last Monday. He wants to meet tomorrow, where I'll tell him we missed the deadline, and then ask if I can have a different letter for an internship. I'm not sure how he's going to take it.

I've also only got four more times to desk. I'm really excited, beucase after that I can get some normal sleep patterns established, and resume going to my 9:05s.

I suppose in the end, it's just all frustrating. I feel like I'm really close to getting out of Cornell with everything I want -- an honors thesis, an acceptance to a top 20 law school, and possibly "honors." Still, I can feel things slipping away, and no matter how far I go to try to hold onto them, or tread water, it feels like I'm still drowning.

We ate at KFC last night in Albany, and I was estatic to see that they had parfaits. It reminded me of the times when Grandma and Grandpa would come and take me out to lunch on half-days of school. I had a parfait, and for three minutes I was six again, sitting there with Jake and Julie, reliving the glory days of legos and crayola crayons.

Then I finished the parfait, got indegestion, and realized how much everything sucks right now.

*sigh*

We'll just call it "Trainwreck"

I wrote a column today for that other *great* publication, the Cornell Daily Sun. It's in the sports section, and as some of you may have guessed from the title, it happens to be about one of my dating experiences.

[insert screaming here]

And e-mail from CIT to its network admins

"Hi,
At 2:58am on 2/10/04 we experienced a system crash due to a filesystem problem with spool3 on Postoffice8. At 5:30am we determined that the filesystem was corrupt and not stable. We attempted to restore the filesystem from backups but by late morning we realized that it would not complete in a timely fashion. We have created a empty spool with the same mailboxes as before the crash but they are empty at this time. We are continuing to restore the filesystem from backups and Sun technical staff are on-site to attempt to recover as much data as possible from the failed filesystem. We regret to inform you that the restoration of mail from before the crash will take an extended amount time and we don't have an ETA for that restoration at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We will be contacting the affected users directly as well.

Jim Howell"

[insert my pained "I can't believe I lost all my e-mail" screaming, here]

Cornell the Craptacular

I had to wake up early to get to work by 8 a.m., but decided to get up even earlier today. I was a man on a mission, and my only objective was a Trillium Grill breakfast.

I wanted one of those greasy egg omlettes, with all the cheese and bacon. Then I wanted a really strong coffee to keep me going through the day. Of course, like most things at Cornell, what I wanted and what I ended up with were completely different.

I made it to Trillium with plenty of time (t-minus 10 minutes until work), and walked in through the double glass doors. Much to my surprise, there was no line. Upon closer inspection, there was also no grill.

That's right, due to an early morning fire, there would be no Grill that morning. I almost cried, but that would have meant Cornell got the best of me. Instead of my greasy egg omlette, with the cheese and the bacon, I had to settle for cold cereal.

I went to work, wrote some e-mails, renabled some freshmen's ethernet connections, and got ready to go to class. It was soc 101, one of my favorites.

You can never find a seat, the class is full of unintelligent underclassmen, and practically screams "Greek Athlete!" at you when you walk in the door. Still, I love it. The subject matter is so interesting (go social sciences -- last week we talked about Goffman and his notions of Face), and the professor is hot. Red hair, shapely body. She definitely provides for some pleasing lecture material.

To top it off, she has the European accent (which drives me nuts -- I love listening to it), and constantly slips in jokes. If you're not paying attention, you won't catch them, but I usually am, so the class is great for a laugh.

Then I went to Comm Law. Another class I love, this time only for the material (although the proff is really cool -- Dale Grossman). I had a hard time staying awake beucase I hadn't had my coffee yet, but managed to keep my eyes open for most of the class.

Then came lunch.

I headed back to Trillium, since the sign said it would only be closed for the morning. Of course, it was also close for the afternoon. No grill, no fried food, no happiness. Instead I walked to the Ivy Room, where I ran into Pledge EZ Bake. He was whining about how Latin was killing his GPA, and how his department chair lied to him.

He had asked earlier in the year if he could take the class pass/fail, but was told no. Then he found out he could. Apparently he's going to petition the dean of A&S, and pray to God that everything comes through. I hope it does. It wouldn't just be a victory for EZ Bake, but a victory for all of us who have gotten screwed in the GPA department while at Cornell. The proud owner of a 3.2 (give or take a .01), I can understand where he's coming from.

Then I took my fried food (ah, cholestorol), and headed back to work the afternoon shift. It was epic, to say the least.

There was no PC super, so I was flying blind, renabling ports left and right, and dishing out generic advice for complex problems. Somehow I always manage to make it through the supervisor shift ok, without anything or one blowing up. I think that's why they gave me a raise.

Then, out of nowhere, Cornell's commodity Internet goes down.

Sure, you can connect to any .edu, and any of Cornell's internal pages when on campus. You can even send e-mail to all members of the Cornell community. But you can't get outside, and those on the outside can't get in.

Ah, Cornell the Craptacular.

So here I sit, updating my blog, beucase my other favorite pastime (checking my e-mail) is lost to me.

---

On a side rant, there was a mistake in this morning's Cornell Sun (there's always mistakes, but this one was important to me). The Communication department was called the "Communications" department. I would like to take this time and space to inform people of this egregious error.

As I wrote to editors-l, Ted Lowi does not teach for the Historys department. Likewise, A.R. Ammons (RIP) was not an Englishs faculty member. With this in mind, please note that there is no Communications department. Cornell, however, does offer study in the field of Communication.

Now I was called picky for noting this, but had it been your department, wouldn't you feel obliged to do the same? Maybe it's just my drive to make everything perfect, and fix every mistake I have the capacity to (I say capacity because Lord knows I've made my share of goofs in Sports). Yet if someone told me about my mistakes (and the sports editor has on numerous occurences), I'd take the time to make sure it didn't happen again and thank them for their views.

It'd be nice if everyone held that view.

Okay, it's really coming this time

After travelling every weekend for the past month, I'm going to finally update tomorrow morning. Expect new stuff up after 10 a.m.