I’m getting nostalgic.


10/2/02 11:11 PM-If you're going to do something, you might as well do it well i say. That's why, when it was time to bomb a test, I decided to bomb it as well as I could. Even though I knew a few more of the items on the exam than my final grade (27 out of 60) indicated, I felt that a 45% would be a beneficial example for the young folk. You see, when 25% of your grade is a 45%, then you already have an 87%, even if you get every single remaining questions for the rest of the year right. I want to tell the kiddies that 45%'s are not the end of the world, just the end of all hope of a 4.0, a number which I was recently starting to become focused on. Now, i'm considering the possibility of getting 3 A's while failing a 4th course. I think that might be funny.
Other funny news includes the massive hurricane barrelling towards the Louisianna coast. It's the same sort of funny that my test was, only now in more of a life threatening fashion. This beast is expected to produce a 20 foot storm surge to accompany it's 145 mph winds. In the flatlands that are the deep south, this will likely inundate everything within 25 miles of the ocean with salt water (ideal for growing tomatoes). Seriously though, this could be a huge mess, praying about it might be nice.
E1st

10/1/02 11:03 PM-As with matt, pine, my UNIX mail tool, informed me that it was now october. Whoopee.
FCA went very well tonight i thought. We had discussion, tears, blood, romance and machine guns. Speaking of which, I have 6:30 AM practice tomorrow. Let that sink in for a second. That means i have to wake up at 5:50 AM, which is approximately 6:45 from right this second. I anticipate getting less than sufficient sleep tonight. Maybe it'll help me on my test at 11. It should also make it easier for me to stay awake in my biblical literature class. The good news is that i'm looking pretty well caught up on my work, and if all goes as planned, Thursday-Sunday will be relatively stress free, except for that whole race thing. But even that looks like it will be in the sopping rain, which makes it terribly fun. Of course, I'm battling for my spot on that pre-nationals team, so i have to be all business.
E1st

9/30/02 10:49 PM-Gus is listening to southern rock, like the Tennessee rocker that he is. It's a matter of time before the confederate flags and pickup trucks start showing up.
Have you ever noticed that every single shot from a blimp of a football game looks exactly the same? Granted, day and night shots look different, but it seems pointless to take pictures of stadiums that look the same from however many thousand feet the blimp is up in the air. Look, there's my cousin, right there by that green thing in the middle.
And now gus has assumed his familiar position in the bathroom, leaving his southern rock unattended. Maybe he's planning a lynching or something. I have never had to wait for hanlon (not even once) to get out of the bathroom, but with gus it happens almost every day. He spends a lot of time in the bathroom. Maybe he's eating the cat.
E1st

9/29/02 10:30 PM-I'm tired and i have a headache, so i probably won't spend long on this. Last night, at about 3:15 AM, i got back from our meet in NC. The meet was actually 2 days ago, but we travelled yesterday. Incidentally i ran fairly well, though the team did poorly (as is a regular trend). The highlight of the trip, however, was getting stranded on the side of interstate 77 for 2 hours (and almost 3 more hours in miniscule dobson, NC) after the bus broke down. After about 5 seconds of surveying the side of the highway, Sonic and I decided it would be prudent to go into the woods and find out what was going on in there. Attempted forts and exclusive clubs sprouted up almost immediately, as we planned for a "Lord of the Flies" type adventure.
We were boxed in by a fence, and knowing that in case of an extended stay on the side of the highway we would need water, I went exploring further. A few hundred meters away, I found a beautiful little stream, which cut beneath the fence. More importantly, it flowed into this 2.5 foot diameter (that's diameter, not radius) pipe which traversed the split median 4-lane highway underground. The total travel length was on the order of 10-12 lane widths, once shoulder, road offset and median were added in.
Spotting the far side of the tunnel in the distance, we, of course, determined that it would be intelligent to conquer the pipe. So Matias, Smokey, Sonic, Pi and I crawled through on our hands and knees (or 1/3rd standing) until we got to the other end. The most exciting moment was when matias encountered a water snake almost exactly halfway through the pipe.
When we emerged, we sprinted across 4 lanes of traffic, somehow avoiding detection and reaching the bus again safely.
So that's my weekend.
E1st

9/26/02 4:18 PM-I'll be gone until late saturday night for the meet. I'm racing tomorrow night in the seeded race, making this the most prestigious race i've ever taken a part of. It's time.
E1st

9/25/02 10:18 PM-Matt's page is particularly funny today. That link might not work today, but it will tomorrow, for accessing on 9/25, go here. If you haven't noticed, I am now proficient at creating links, since i finally hit critical mass; that is now i've done it enough that i've memorized the command without even wanting to. This means that when i'm 88 and half senile, I will still remember it. Go figure.
I suggest reading Matt's "To Do" list, it includes some good things. He needs to add the "Clone-A-Whore" factory, as well as the plan to somehow develop a monopoly in New York state communication services, thus allowing for us to control the entire state. I believe both of those came from somewhere around my sophomore year in high school. I'd also endevour to find the golden egg if i were him, but he has a job now, and no longer has time to triffle with such things.
Also of interest is the guide to being a good wife, which is just above and beyond ridiculous. I guess I'm not as conservative as i thought, because that's just silly. He has a joke involving President Bush, however there's no way that it's an actual quote because it's a bit too clever for the W.
In other news, we will be travelling to Charlotte, NC tomorrow afternoon/evening to the Great American Cross Country festival, where we will square off with 6 top 25 teams. It's time for us to show up on the national stage, and I'll be there.
My current weather forecast calls for the tropical moisture to skirt Charlotte, contributing perhaps an inch total starting thursday night. Wind and the chance of scattered rain and thunderstorms will persist until Friday night. Friday night to saturday lewisburg has the potential to get really wet.
Sounds like Abby's bitching about something. I hear that about 4 times a week, which roughly corresponds to the number of times she visits a week.
E1st

9/24/02 11:03 PM-FCA was strangely draining tonight. Study didn't go so well, as far as i can tell, and I just felt out of sync. That hasn't happened in a while, I hope it doesn't again.
Well, that's over now. I don't have much else to say, but i have decided that i'm going to start adding quotes from this huge quote book every day or so. I actually read that "bartlett's familiar quotations" book cover to cover last year, highlighting those quotes which stuck my fancy. I'll close with one of those quotes. I think i'll just open the book up randomly and write the first one that i see.
Ahh, here's a good one:

"We are never so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine."
Some guy named Duc de La Rochefoucauld Francois wrote that in 1678. He actually wrote several things that I liked. Reality can be depressing on occasion.
E1st

9/23/02 12:00 AM-I suppose this counts as 9/24, but i'm in the business of mislabeling dates, so i might as well stick with it. First off, i'd like to note that the archives links are not working, mainly because angelfire sucks. I'll have to get on that.
Another way in which they suck is the pop-up window which states: "Furstie, you are about to exceed your storage limit!" I think this is a bit presumptuous don't you? I have no intention of exceeding anything, yet their "about to" phrase indicates that i have a one-way ticket to overuseville. Do they know me? Despite calling me by a moniker affectionetly used by only a few, no they do not. Yet they assume the worst, telling me i'm just like all those others who misuse their webspace and overflow their usage. Who do they think they are?
Maybe i should exceed my limit. Or, maybe i should get my own domain with matt. What's up now angelfire, you don't even understand that my webjournal is unstoppable.
E1st

9/22/02 11:15 PM-I think i got the messed up links straightened out up above. When i make my real home page (ETA Fall Break) then i will no longer have that problem. It's about time i learned to speak html. By the way, that release date is analogous to the release date of the double lp. People from goshen will understand that the original release date for our double lp was some time before my junior year (5-6 years ago), and it is now due out in a matter of weeks. It included various scenes from our movies, and sound bites including AJ's anti-semetic version of "Mo' Money, Mo' Problems." Phil Motl and his bande will also be featured. I might have placed that extra "e" in the wrong place. That would be a problem, considering i am Phil Motl when the situation calls for it.
I'm going to pull a Prof. Payne tonight. I just gave what amounts to an introduction, however, that will be the entirety of the entree. He gives what sounds like it is an introduction, and then 50 minutes later says that we'll soon get into whatever it is which he was trying to introduce. The man makes a 5 minute intro last all class.
Next time i'll talk about something useful
E1st

9/21/02 8:55 PM-Ok, there's one event that i have to describe. So i'm sitting in classical mechanics the day of the job fair (friday) and 2 minutes before class Kyle strolls in. He is, however, clad in black pants, a white shirt, a black bow-tie, a black HAT, and a full length removeable leg cast. So professor Bowen's like, "Kyle, what happened to you?" to which he replies, "I tore my MCL playing soccer." This leaves me with the question, "Yes, but why are you wearing a bow-tie and conductor's hat?" He explained he was going to the job fair, at which point Bowen says, "Seriously though, are you trying out for the theater or something?" I couldn't help but laugh every time i looked over at him for the rest of class. Love the kid to death, but damn did he look silly.
In other news (i use that a lot, don't i? i need more transitional phrases), for those who were wondering, my buddy info comes from a song, not a poem, off the Moody Blues' album "A Question of Balance", specifically from within the song, "Question". It's a good album, since Melancholy Man, one of my top-10 all time is the second to last track. High quality song.
I have a new contest. I've never actually gotten any replies to my contests, but if you want to mail them to efurst@bucknell.edu or IM them to efurstie, I would appreciate some suggestions for transitional phrases. It should be noted that I jump between trains of thought that are in no way connected to each other. I should just completely eliminate tranisitions all together. If you have any phrases which work in the same fashion as "in other news", "speaking of which", and the ubiquitous "anyway", let me know.
E1st

9/21/02 3:30 PM-24 and a half hours after leaving lewisburg for home, i arrived back in lewisburg. In the meanwhile, steve's race didn't go that great; he got discouraged and lost focus. He was hoping to give this guy from Pearl River, Brendan Fennel, a run for his money. If Fennel had one of his head case days steve might have been able to, but the kid is just too good. He ran 14:56 which is blazing fast. Steve lost contact after a 4:50 first mile and eased in for 3rd, not caring about 2nd for 15:48. Not a bad time, but he could have run 20 seconds faster in a different day. Otherwise, nothing much happened. Job fair was decent; the big defense contractors weren't that impressed, but the government was all about me. I took a bio test and did well, as far as i can tell. I guess i'll find out monday. I'm going to relax for a while now.
E1st

9/19/02 10:39 PM-Since the first 6 months took up a huge chunk of space (170K of text is impressive), i had to partition the year. So welcome to 1.5 years after i started this web journal. Has anything happened since i started it? Not really. I've run poorly, kicked ass in school, worked in strange places, been generall socially inept with the opposite sex, changed my career plan, done a lot of work with FCA, etc etc. I think I have a stronger relationship with the Lord, but i'm not too much different. When i think about it, my last good race was about 2 weeks before i started my web journal, at IC4As.
Anyway. I have a busy day tomorrow including a job fair which could determine my future and a test which will be inconsequential in the long run. I will also be driving home to watch my brother's race on saturday.
I've spent enough time screwing with this page for one night.
E1st

9/19/02 8:45 AM-Location: 214 7th St. I don't know why this didn't work before. Maybe we misidentified the wire or something. But after switching which port on the hub this computer was connected to, everything all of the sudden worked. Ridiculous. Thank God.
E1st