Michael Richard Murphy

Well, here is the new “design”. I opted to go the theme route because I find I get bored with a design by the time I’ve got it all fleshed out for Word Press. Besides, like I said, I’ve been pretty busy with paying work lately.

Over the last few weeks I’ve upgraded Word Press to implement some security updates as well as take advantage of some widgets and plug-ins available for more recent versions. The Recent Reading and My Flickr sections of the footer are new to the site.

I’ve also updated the directory structure and moved some things around a little. It’s been tested locally but please let me know (in the comments here) if you click on something that doesn’t work as expected.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Coming…soon(?), this website also has a new home with Bluehost. They came highly recommended and they offer RoR hosting so hopefully you’ find some posts about Ruby here in the near future.

Unfortunately this site has been largely neglected (in favor of paying work). But hopefully soon all that will change…

I’m trying out a new host and this will be the first domain to switch over. When it does, it will have a new (sorely needed) look. The new host supports RoR so I hope to play around with (and write about that) here.

I have an ipod and an FM transmitter for the car. If you don’t know, it plugs into my ipod and sends the music to an empty FM station so I can listen through the car stereo. It’s very cool because I’m done with CDs and all my music is stored on the computer and ipod (for portability).

The transmitter needs to be tuned into a pretty empty station in order to work and be heard clearly (without static). Unfortunately there were hours and hours of driving time through the Midwest and above that for whatever reason, I couldn’t find a station empty enough to make it worth tuning into. Instead I spent hours hitting scan and bouncing between country and religious stations.

S– and I were headed out to run a quick errand today and she wanted to listen to a CD. I popped open the changer and what did I find…?

Six great CDs ranging from Tom Petty and System of a Down to Wyclef. They were there the whole time! Oh well.

I made it into Hood River, Oregon about 1:30 PST today.

The alarm on a car outside my hotel room window last night went off about every 20 minutes it seemed. Finally about 4 I decided it was’t going to stop so I might as well hit the road.

Idaho was beautiful and the mid-June snowstorm I encountered in Lookout Pass between Montana and Idaho was certainly unexpected.

The tip of Northern Idaho went fast but Washington was painful. Most of what I drove through was desert-like and knowing I was so close…but still hours away made it all the more painful.

I finally crossed over into Oregon about noon with a few more hours left to go. Battling the winds shooting down the Columbia River Gorge with four bikes on the car (acting as a big sail) seemed to make me go backwards.

Ah…finally sweet relief and a place to crash…Hood River.

Check out the Flickr pictures from the trip.

I spent most of the morning in the Badlands and Black Hills Forest taking pictures. With lots of time to make up, I drove about 15 hours today for a total of almost 950 miles. Ouch!

I’m spending the night in Missoula and shooting for finishing the trip through Idaho, Washington and Oregon tomorrow. The legwork and extended time in the car today should leave me with an “easy” 7 to 8 hour day tomorrow.

Tonight I’m in Murdo, South Dakota, a few hours East of Montana/Wyoming borders. In almost 800 miles of driving today, I crossed all of Iowa and most of South Dakota. I’m beat and headed to bed even though it’s only 8:30p here.

Tomorrow’s agenda is a quick stop at Mount Rushmore for pictures, Custer National Forrest to see some bison, and hopefully make it as far as Coeur D’Alene, Idaho.

I’d like an easy day of driving Sunday to finish up this trip. We’ll see what happens.

I think that line is from Monty Python…technically I think it’s, “He’s not dead yet”. At any rate, I’m not dead. I’m just in Illinois.

Some of you know and some of you do not. I’m currently driving cross country to Portland, Oregon. I’m relocating.

That’s part of the reason I haven’t written here since I don’t even know when. Too busy with house and packing and moving preparations.

I hoped to post pictures here of my travels. I’m taking them. Unfortunately it seems I’ve packed the USB cable for my camera who knows where. So pictures will have to wait until I unpack. Stay tuned…

Since implementing Subversion at work, I’ve been anxious to get some of my own files here at home under source control.

I’m now pleased to announce that it’s complete and went rather painlessly. I installed Subversion this weekend using one of the graphical installer packages. After I got that up and running, I chose Tortoise SVN as the client, mostly because we use it at work but it also integrates nicely with Windows. Tortoise gives you a contextual menu right in Windows explorer that allows you to manage all your version controlled files (or add files to source control) by simply right-clicking.

If you’re new to setting up source control and repositories (like I am), it doesn’t get any easier than these two applications. Now I just need to setup up my repository so I can connect to it from my laptop.

After sleeping for maybe an hour in 10 to 15 minute intervals on the red-eye from the West Coast, I was in no mood to get my picture taken when my parents met me at the airport this morning.

Until I saw this guy:

I spend WAY too much time online reading blogs, news, etc. This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. This guy found company URLs that when read the right way probably aren’t exactly what that company had in mind when they purchased them. Enjoy!

Top 10 Worst Company URLs

• Single
• Empty house
• Job
• ColdFusion
• Free time lunch

I don’t get it.

I went to the mall today to run an errand and grab some lunch. While I was there, I saw two high school kids walking around.

One had headphones on and the other had a cell phone glued to his ear.

Why did they even go together?

I don’t get it. I guess I’m old.

It’s been well over 90 here today and after spending 10 hours in front of a computer during the day it’s just too hot to do it now. I am wondering one thing however…

I saw a realty sign today that had this name on it: Spaminato. If that was really your last name, how could anyone ever receive email from you sent using your real name?

A few thoughts:

1. I᾿m still alive…
2. Somebody always has it worse.
   A friend of ours called last night to say her car was totalled in a collision with a truck. Funny thing…nobody was in either vehicle. The truck was hurtled into her parked car after it got hit by a train. You really do have to laugh. Apparently the truck got stuck on the tracks and somebody was in the process of reporting it to CSX when the train came. Luckily no one was hurt but talk about a freak accident.
3. Last year around this time I bought and moved into a house in the town where I grew up. In fact, without knowing it, I rode my bike by this house many, many times on my way to and from where most of my school friends lived. This weekend some friends of ours where in town and all the kids walked down the street to a corner store that I visited myself when I was their age. As expected, they came back with what we sent them for and candy and soda. It makes me happy.

This is a real web site for a real product from a real company. Talk about balls…literally.

Here it is, The Student Loan Corporation/Citigroup/Smith Barney shirt for the 2006 JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge:

If the writing here seems spotty or few and far between lately, it’s likely due to scope creep. Also known as ‘Give an inch, take a mile’ or ‘Why can’t I say no?’

For those of you that aren’t familiar with the term, scope creep is those little extras that seem to sneak into projects (of any size) that manage to make them one or two or more sizes larger than originally intended. I’m sure it has a much more technical definition, but I think that breaks it down just fine for my purposes.

I’ve been working seven days a week lately on a number of projects. As usual, there is work work (what I consider my full time job) and within that there are “volunteer” projects. When I say volunteer, I mean a combination of being a true volunteer and a conscript.

I was asked to put together a registration web site for Take Your Kids to Work Day which somehow. Originally it was supposed to record whether employees were bringing their children or not and how many. Somehow that’s mushroomed into allowing employees to register each of their children for different sessions, closing these sessions when maximum occupancy is reached, and since some sessions are different lengths, disallowing employees from registering children in overlapping sessions. It will also dump registrants into an Excel sheet so that administrators can print out agendas for each employee’s children.

The Corporate Challenge logo is also running into multiple iterations because the different groups represented all want their names to appear first. Hopefully all the time I’ve spent on that will be coming to an end soon and a consesus will be reached.

I’ve also had a bunch of freelance work lately (which is a situation I hope I never complain about) and I’m getting ready for a much needed vacation.

Stay tuned over the next two weeks for those announcements. One will be the unveiling of the Corporate Challenge logo and the other will be a new web site.

Check back for at least two major announcements coming with the next few days. Details need to be finalized but I have some great news coming! Stay tuned…

I’m please to announce a new addition to both the client list and the extended family: Jack Van Epps.

It’s a good thing that A- and I are good at our chosen careers because we would make terrible, terrible agents or talent managers.

A woman approached us at the garden show this weekend and asked to take our picture for something. We immediately said yes and asked for details afterward. And even though we did ask for details, neither of us is still sure what it was for. We’re either going to be in the Insider (whatever that is), the Weekend section of the paper, or The City Newspaper. We’re not sure which.

I half expect to see our smiling faces gracing an article under a phony headline like the one above.