cwmurphy.com

2009-01-19T20:29:00.001-05:00

Testing Ping.Fm

These aren't the droids you're looking for

2007-10-02T20:09:00.000-04:00

But there's always ohtheshiny.

Blogmailr?

2006-11-10T19:19:00.000-05:00

So... this is a test of Blogmailr.

If it works, it will be a... good thing.

(insert maniacal laughter here)

This is just the best

2006-11-03T17:54:00.000-05:00

"I now realize that all of the complaining parents do on their blogs that annoyed the crap out of me while I was pregnant wasn't really complaining at all. The poop and lack of sleep and crying and stuff is the equivalent of complaining about how ice cream makes you fat...Doesn't diminish the pleasure of the ice cream at all."

Via the Anchored Nomad

Friday was my 33rd birthday

2006-09-30T18:06:00.000-04:00

And this is absolutely my favorite gift.

I blame myself

2006-09-24T23:11:00.000-04:00

courtesy of Hugh Macleod, at gapingvoid.com

Pass this on

2006-09-03T19:52:00.000-04:00

"We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep on humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information."

-Neal Stephenson

In a word, homesick

2006-08-22T20:06:00.000-04:00

As I type to you now I'm deep inside the town that almost nailed Rudy Rucker to a tree for heresy back in the eighties.

This afternoon I sat down in the hotel room and put my feet up. I was going to read for a bit before venturing out to find some dinner. I'm gone all week, so I packed a few books in my suitcase: Good to Great, a book on playing Go, and a new collection of Harlan Ellison short-stories. (And come to think of it, at least one of the three could get me nailed to my own tree...)

I opened one up to the page held by the grease-stained Hardee's receipt/bookmark (last night's dinner). The loneliness punched me in the gut so hard and sudden that I winced. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is my third night away.

I miss my family. I miss my beautiful wife. I miss our pets. Even if I'll only be gone for a handful more of days. Even if they're only a 3-hour drive away from where I sit.

"The happiness of the domestic fireside is the first boon of Heaven; and it is well it is so, since it is that which is the lot of the mass of mankind."
-Thomas Jefferson

Why yes, this is a metaphor...

2006-08-20T00:02:00.000-04:00

In 1996, I started making real money for the first time.

I bought a watch and a pair of sunglasses I saw in the glass-case at a store with a dead brand. Soon afterwards, the sunglasses were knocked off my face by a wave as I waded out into the Myrtle Beach surf. The watch I just found again, ten years later and right towards the back of a sock drawer.

I bought a fresh battery and a new leather band for it. Good as new.

Now I can't say exactly why I stopped wearing it and that bothers me. Did the battery wear out? Did the ring that holds the strap to my wrist snap? Or did I just take it off one day and never put it back on again? Not that it really matters.

It's such a great watch.

Dinosaur afternoon

2006-08-14T07:31:00.000-04:00

"I turned it over, and gave an exclamation of surprise. There was a full-page picture of the most extraordinary creature that I had ever seen. It was the wild dream of an opium smoker, a vision of delirium. The head was like that of a fowl, the body that of a bloated lizard, the trailing tail was furnished with upward-turned spikes, and the curved back was edged with a high serrated fringe, which looked like a dozen cocks' wattles placed behind each other."

-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Deathmarch concluded

2006-08-06T19:59:00.000-04:00

Just a bit past noon on Friday one-dot-oh went gold.

Now I can't decide whether I want to climb back up on the GTD wagon or eat half of a shoo-fly pie.

Heat and panda

2006-07-30T17:13:00.000-04:00

It was crazy serious hot at the zoo. We carried along water bottles in our backpacks and filled, and refilled, and then filled them again, over and over throughout the course of the trip.

NOTE: This manic work schedule has played hell with my travel equilibrium. Making a headlong dash to the nation's capital in the hottest part of the summer, on a Saturday no less, now makes a perfect sort of carpe-diem sense to me. Be afraid.

These photos are fairly representative of what we saw yesterday:
sleepy, bored animals. The few who did look up from their dozing gave us derisive "So that's what the top of the food chain looks like, huh?" glares before promptly falling back asleep.

Fast-forward and we were standing out in the sun, my lovely wife and I, waiting in line with the other pilgrims to enter the zoo's climate-controlled pandatorium.

I wiped the sweat rivulets from my forehead and swigged down more water. "I can smell all that panda goodness from here, baby," I said.

This, we soon learned, is how pandas spend 95% of their time.

SCIENCE-NOTE: The other 5% is apparently spent making fumbling attempts at reproducing the species.

Drawing (perhaps) an unfair comparison, the bears in Pigeon Forge stand up on their hind legs and wave their paws for thick slices of green apple.

Pandus interrupti

2006-07-29T10:48:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I was already out in the back lot and tossing my briefcase through the unzipped window of my jeep when it occurred to me, I should let someone know I'm leaving for the day.

The project manager (of the death march) and myself had finished out the last meeting of the day and - realizing we'd be working our fourth 60+ hour week in a row - simultaneously packed up and just walked out of the building.

This morning, however, I learned that I have the entire blessed weekend off.

I almost don't know what to do with myself.

Oh wait.

Yes I do.

Sometimes it isn't just about the polar bear

2006-07-23T21:27:00.000-04:00

We saw the global warming movie as an afternoon matinee. It's very good, this film.

Right now, I'm thinking about an exhausted polar bear, swimming across an empty ocean in the darkness. It paddles, headed towards an ice float that melted away to nothing sometime earlier this morning.

That's such a startling thing to consider.

Such a sad thing. And obvious. And serious.

7/24 update:
Of course, sometimes it really is just about the polar bear. I'm just saying.

The Workening

2006-07-22T07:25:00.000-04:00

The Work, it goes badly. 12(ish) hour days. 6 day weeks. Last week. This week. And all again next week.

And so the death-march plods, plods along.

But pretty soon, the remainder of the France photos. Perhaps even some pretty words.

It's just a restless feeling by my side

2006-07-16T10:48:00.000-04:00

I slept for four hours longer than I have any other morning in the past week.

Before the sun sets, I'm likely to go to an amusement park.

Or a zoo.

Or maybe movie about global warming. Or pirates.

Gone to... Appleton

2006-07-11T23:33:00.000-04:00

Yup. I'm in Wisconsin.

I'm here for less than 24 hours.

The question is: can I possibly make it to the Houdini Museum?

(update, 15 minutes later: I miss home)

New photos: Catacombs, Aix, and Nice

2006-07-09T10:07:00.000-04:00

I'm still going (read: cropping, adjusting, tweaking) through the vacation photos. And this is a slow work, indeed.

Here's what I've managed to cobble together for presentation so far:

Catacombs
Aix
Nice

Coming (in my wildly oscillating definition of) soon: pictures of Paris proper and Avignon

Back from France

2006-06-27T20:01:00.000-04:00

And finally managed to coax iPhoto into sucking down my photos.

1084... 1083... 1082...

Gone to France

2006-06-13T22:47:00.000-04:00

note: technically, that's a picture of Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, VA

"Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness."
~Ray Bradbury

First beginnings

2006-06-12T19:02:00.000-04:00

"The first beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye."
~Lucretius, from On the nature of things.