B.Jude Murphy

That kind of day.

2008-06-03T18:24:58Z

Actually, its about the second in a string.

I feel unable to work or reason my way through anything. I am overtaken by an oppressive sense of being a complete and utter fraud. A peasant striving to be noble, without any clue what it even means.

Well, since i'm whining at myself, I guess I'll have at it:

The job now reeks of "big mistake." The experts who employ me seem to have left me out to hang on the last 3 projects, and scowl at every choice I make while I'm out there.

My life outside of work seems like brief daydreams, taunting me with glimpses of things and places which either did, or should, make me happy. Instead, I am estranged, and my attempts to put it back together are clumsy at best.

Gotta get a grip on something.

Out of time, back to work.

No wonder

2008-03-25T16:01:13Z

So, for those who don't know yet...

Evidently it is very common to have music playing in the background of one's mind.

My "inside the head" music player is an old-school 8 trak player, and its broken. It will often play 2-5 tracks, simultaneously, regardless of meter, genre, or my preferences at the time.

Today i can hear:

Still hold on - Kim Carnes
Killing in the name of - Rage against tha machine
Something John Williams sountrack-ish that I can't place
Break Free - Queen

Sometimes this wacko feature is fun - but this overlap is a little hard to think through.

Oh well - back to becoming expert in Linux at breakneck speed!

Arbitrary postulates

2008-03-24T18:49:36Z

What you get in life is inherently random. What you want in life might or might not be obvious to you. The rest of us have no hope of knowing.

Ask, strive, work to attain what you want, explicitly, only then can anyone even choose to help.

Deciding for yourself that the rules have changed, is breaking the rules.

Maybe sometimes breaking the rules is okay. But, the consequences follow anyway.

It was never up to you when or how you got hurt. If it was, do you really think it would happen? You can always reconstruct the pain and "blame" yourself later. But, that is not choice, merely hindsight.

Trust and belief are closely related. When trust is damaged, beliefs don't work like they should, either. Wherever there is a trust broken, not only is reliance not workable, but doubt overrules confidence altogether.

Unless there's a way to stop altogether, there is no ending, happy or unhappy.

Honesty always works. The trouble is, honesty and accuracy are not the same thing. Ergo, any similarity between my honesty, and someone else's, may be purely coincidental. The gaps, i suspect, need to be filled by trust, or belief.

It speaks for itself

2007-12-10T16:45:50Z

"This is your captain speaking. We'll be experiencing some turbulence, and then possibly explode."

1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you(be forewarned! I ask challenging questions at times).
6. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
7. In return, you must post this in your LJ(because if you don't, evidently you explode, or have to listen to goats tell you their innermost thoughts, or something).

Ok, it's true. I took one of these survey things.

2007-12-07T23:50:22Z

Snively report...

2007-12-06T23:15:01Z

Now THIS is Murphlierson humor if i ever saw it!

Real entries later, I have props to build!

Man, I need a new pic...

2007-10-23T16:22:53Z

When I'm happy, or at least some close second, I like my "Pickman's Grave Icon."

On a day like today, it totally sends the wrong message. So reminder to self: get an "alt" userpic that is Over the top silly happy, for the times Caleb Pickman is just too damn morbid.

I'm gonna try to get back into this habit. Alot for the sake of 4-5 very cool people who tell me to call. But I don't want to call and have nothing the least bit to say that isn't just personal whining.

So, I'll put the generic whining here. That way you friends I'm ashamed to call know I'm not ignoring you.

I dream again, vividly. This is very strange - Over the past 3 years i've had no more than 2 or 3 memorable dreams, until this past week. Now I dream all the time. Not restful at all.

The one from the past 3 days is pretty obvious, no doctorates needed:

I'm in my house, smoke thick enough to make sure i cant see outside the room i'm in. The alarm is blaring. The cats are scurrying for cover in places I can't let them get to. Because, I won't be able to save them. I'm breaking Windows, and trying to prioritize what few things can be saved before the flames take over. Cats/the briefcase with the vital records - R's PC with all the photos... I make slightly different choices each time, i start in different rooms, the smoke chokes me sometimes, but not others. Sometimes R is outside the window to help me rescue cats & stuff, but not others.

But theme is pretty consistent. Thats just how it is.

Odd Therapy

2006-11-30T15:20:11Z

The new job is my first career move.
Everything I've done previously was "a way to get cash" or "something to fill time."
This is 45 hours a week of things worth doing, problems worth solving, that I like to do and to solve, followed by a paycheck that actually contributes to mortgage and grocery and Realms and stuff.

The odd thing is that often I'm being "paid" to just keep something going smoothly, which often means not working very hard or very efficiently. This is antithetical to my overcharged and unfocused way of life. However, I've concluded that for now at least, it's the way of life that is wrong, and not the company's desire to stay near, rather than far under budget.

Okay, I'll say it now.

2006-11-21T18:32:51Z

Evidently, the CIA has completed a report for our leadership, that concludes that there is no hard evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Our Federal administration, along with the leadership figures of western Europe, apply liberal amounts of rhetoric towards just such a program in it's policy toward Iran, and all countries near it. The response from the current white-house squatters: The CIA is incompetent, and we know better.

This CIA is the very organization that these cheneyacs hijacked a very few years ago to trump up imagined dangers to U.S. citizens from One Saddam Hussein. This is the organization that still uses the license of executive powers to quietly abduct anyone, anywhere, that might be useful to interrogate, and drag them behind a bush to secretly beat information out of them.

Whenever the CIA is engaged in actual intelligence gathering, they threaten the bully-pulpit of evil that these neo-"nazi" -conservatives have designed and abused for six terrible years.

We, the people, are no longer allowed to dismiss these overlords of deceit and treachery as morons. They are not morons; they are evil men. Evil in the only way true evil operates, blindly. This evil manifests as a hell-bent devotion to a false ideal, attractive to some and fearsome to the rest.

I refuse to be afraid of it any longer.

I still find it repulsive.

I will speak my mind, here and elsewhere. If the sound of my words offend you, do yourself the honor of knowing exactly why, and say so. That is the "American" Idea we are losing. If the sound of my words make you nervous, then you are my target audience. I would have you angry at me, and know why, or angry at them, and audible.

This mass of humanity, within these imaginary/arbitrary borders we call the United States of America, is the only thing to stop this madness, and replace it with something other than blind evil. If every person who is afraid, or is angry takes every opportunity to shout, to interrupt, to heckle, to undermine, to vandalize, to ridicule, to sing, to teach, to accuse, to condemn, to do whatever damned thing they must to stem the tide of wrongdoing done in their own name. The world may be a little louder, but a great deal less evil.

I accuse these people of directly causing the deaths of a few thousand valuable American soldiers.
I accuse these people of the negligent homicide of tens of Thousands of Iraqi citizens.
I accuse these people of tarnishing the good name, of marring the character of the United States.
I accuse these people of creating uncounted violent enemies, greatly diminishing out ability to live peaceably anywhere in the world, including within our own borders.
I accuse these people of reckless mismanagement of a thousand year progression from autocracy and tyranny to enlightened oligarchy with universal rights for all.

I accuse myself, and everyone I see, of allowing such evil to cow us for this long, and hurt us this much.

When in Rome

2006-09-27T01:21:28Z

Im going to skip the step where i look up exact dates, or historical terms, and paraphrase my understandings here. Forgive the gloss:

Rome had a "golden age" where a patrician Senate ruled an expanding and dynamic empire. It couldn't have been perfect, but the closer to Rome you lived, the more "Roman" you were, the better you understood irrigation, animal husbandry, metallurgy, and dozens of other technologies /disciplines that later western European Empires would lack until the renaissance.

At about the same time that everyone west of china either was within the empire, or violently jealous/ hateful / opposed to it, The Roman sense of leadership shifted from civic and self disciplined, to militaristic and autocratic. THis did not happen all at once, it took several generations to manifist. But eventually, the greatest social and technological culture the world had ever seen became a fragmented, discontent, and tired mass of people, obeying the dictates of an emperor, through the interpretation of privileged but dis-empowered senators.

This pattern can be seen in most history overviews of most empires in human history. Rome left in its wake violence, economic misery, and ignorance in dozens of places throughout the world for years to come.

The average person living on the italian peninsula, or in turkey, greece, the places that were truly Rome. could not read or write. They had no say in who their senators were. They had no way whatsoever to talk to neighbors on the other side of the province, and organize solutions to the current and coming horrors that everybody could clearly see.

What is my excuse?

Just gettin it on virtual paper

2006-09-27T00:54:47Z

My tiny world spins too slowly, and the terrain i walk upon is like 10 inch deep quicksand.

Taking the core hardware exam Friday morning. I know all the stuff, but my ability to tackle the ridiculous exam format seems to ebb and flow with the tide. I already rescheduled the OS exam till next week, just because The practice tests have me questioning everything backwards and forewards. Anyways, Tim got desperate for competent sales, and called me in. Money is sooo tight right now I daren't refuse.

Got my first consulting client. They have the kind of problems that donated machines from 1999-2000, combined with 1 or 2 new dell laptops predictably have. They also seem to like my style of operations. This is good because these people are using crutches on the Information Freeway. (For those of you with any IT knowledge, They looked at me quizzically when I asked about their authentication code stickers for Windows. One of their counselors reacted excitedly when I demonstrated Windows Defragmentor "The color-y bars! I've seen that part!")

This gets to me. Not that they lack the understanding themselves. That part is fine. But they've been paying THE local expert computer business over $100/hr to come in and handle their IT woes. Despite that investment the machines are filthy, overloaded, and lacking basic reference information. Obviously out here in these parts "preventative" maintenence and "client education" are considered unacceptable business practices.

I've set up a client referral arrangement with Joe, the owner of the shop I used to work, where clients too far west or too financially stretched for his services will get my number. And clients whose needs are beyond my single pair of hands get his. I suspect this is the best advertizing investment either of us can get for the price.

All well and good, even almost fun. But, how long until mortgage/grocery/medically useful amounts of money come from it?

I said I would so...

2006-09-19T19:48:22Z

Blame Nimir-ra. Cause it's not my fault...
At least it's short answer, not multiple choice, so nuance any way you like. I wont keep score or anything
-B

IF YOU'RE ON MY FRIENDS LIST,
I want to know 28 things about you. I don't care if we've never talked, never liked each other, or if we already know everything about each other. I really don't. You are obviously on my list, so let me know with whom I am friends!

1.Your Middle Name:
2. Age:
3. Single or Taken:
4. Favorite Movie:
5. Favorite Song:
6. Favorite Band/Artist:
7. Dirty or Clean:
8. Tattoos and/or Piercings:

HERE COMES THE FUN ... ... ...

1. Do we know each other outside of LJ?
2. Whats your philosophy on life?
3. Would you have my back in a fight?
4. Would you keep a secret from me if you thought it was in my best interest?
5. What is your favorite memory of us?
6. Would you give me a kidney?
7. Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you:
8. Would you take care of me when I'm sick?
9. Can we get together and make a cake?
10. Have you heard any rumors of me lately?
11. Do you/have you talk(ed) crap about me?
12. Do you think I'm a good person?
13. Would you drive across country with me?
14. Do you think I'm attractive?
15. If you could change anything about me, would you?
16. What do you wear to sleep?
17. Would you come over for no reason just to hang out?
18. Would you go on a date with me if i asked you?
19. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together?
20. Will you repost this so i can fill it out for you?

bjudemurphy @ 2006-09-14T19:02:00

2006-09-14T23:02:38Z

Okay, here's my quoted Lie for the day:

"It is the primary job of government to protect the homeland."

Just the kind of vaguely reasonable B.S. I expect from W., who is of course "all wrong." Due to the fact that i disagree and my intellect is staggering to behold.

If one reads the documents of our history, the primary job of government is to stay out of the way as much as possible for people to live their lives, excercise their liberties, and pursue their own happiness. to "provide for the common defense" comes later on the list, suggesting that it is up to "the people" to decide what constitutes a threat worthy of defensive action.

Of course, staying out of the way is seldom really a good idea. What our govrenment used to strive for was to not allow any one creed, religion, race, or social class, from completely trampling the rights of another, or silencing another politically. This philosophy is bourne out in legal catch phrases like "freedom of speech," "due process," "juris prudence," and countless other manifestations of great ideas greek, roman, british, french, and yes even a couple home grown.

In a place like today's Iraq, where truckloads of Mutilated Sunni Muslims arrive as hate mail, either from long repressed shiite Muslims or from third parties who want Sunni counterattacks against those Shiite, That kind of government that will defend the homeland by any means neccesary is called for. If that was presbyterians slaughtering Lutheran's and blaming it on Mormons, in our country, I'd be willing to accept the pragmatism of an exhausted military, tapped phone lines, and maybe even a few longer than conventional detentions for people in custody.

Instead we have ALL of that in our country today, as a desperate attempt to find reasons and justifications for creating just that kind of mayhem in someone else's homeland.

I find this akin to my setting up an aggressive and militant neighborhood watch, to deal with the problem of rowdy violent teenagers next door. At the same time not owning up to the fact that the reason next door has that problem, is because a year ago I busted down the door and shot the homeowner, who was verbally abusing the rest of the family.

http://ounceofreason.livejournal.com/
ounceofreason is right. Ranting does make the world better!

bjudemurphy @ 2006-08-23T18:17:00

2006-08-23T22:57:17Z

Window dressing : 8/23/06

The curtains are swapped out while I'm not really paying any attention.
Sometimes they are frivolous, whispy things that serve no purpose.
At others they are metal blinds that look like they could stop bullets, or at least the occasional stone, from invading my den.
Regardless of color, fold, weave or direction, the first and only thing any of them do well, is obscure the world beyond the glass.
Of course, the glass itself is not beyond suspicion. Maybe it adds blue to the sky, or ripples to the rain.
Maybe it casts a reflection of me, so lightly that i cant help but ignore it.
Even if the glass was perfect; even if I took the glass out and peered through the frame with the naked eye, My sight is still limited to the southern side of the yard.

-BJM

And now, ethical question...

2004-06-07T19:18:42Z

Scenario:

You go to a store and ask the clerk to sell you something from behind the counter (a pack of cigarettes or something) and said clerk does so, puts the item in a bagand sends you on your way. When you get to the trash bin outside the store and decide to pocket the pack and trash the bag, you find TWO packs in there. The receipt says you were charged for one, and you have the right change for one.

The ethical question: what do you do next? and more importantly, why?

Now, to bring the focus of this question closer to reality, replace the store with an online vendor, and the pack of cigs with a $160.00 electronic commodity. Does that change the answer any?

I've already decided what I would (and wil) do about it.(I will comment about what I did when I think no more comments are coming.) I'm just curious what my friends and family think about it.

words, money, columbus day, gay marriage, terrorism...

2004-03-11T17:59:51Z

My wife often pokes fun at Socrates; in particular, passages where Plato recounts a pupil saying something to the effect of “Yes Socrates, that is my opinion, too, now that you’ve explained it to me.” Admittedly, this is kind of funny. But it is also valuable. Plato, through his teacher, demonstrates for us how an intelligent, literate mind, can be guided towards certain ideas and conclusions.

Socrates is generally portrayed as one who promoted logic and critical thinking, as fine tools to sculpt thought and feeling into clear ideas. More recent examples show me a malignant aspect of these skills, words used as chains and mauls to create narrow, or even false, ideas within people, and the societies they form.

Most of us have heard about economic systems where the wealthy have stongly influenced, or actually controlled, the resources of the poor. I’m suggesting that in our mass-media environment, the wealthy, through well educated communicators, can strongly influence vast numbers of people who are less educated. As an example, not long into the current US invasion of Iraq, a large percentage of American citzens believed that the people who simultaneously hijacked, and crashed four passenger jets in September, 2000 were from Iraq. In reality, most were from Saudi Arabia, and none were from Iraq. When dealing with factual data, for every accurate answer there are nearly infinite innaccurate ones. So, just saying that our population is stupid, or ignorant, doesn’t explain how millions of conscious, literate people came to the same, wrong conclusion.

The answer is, so quote our president, “strategery.” Most of us, between jobs,meals, housechores, etc. do not have a great deal of time for critical thinking. We catch headlines, soundbytes and the occasional short interview, but little Danny’s karate lesson is always going to be more important than in-depth, critical analysis of the information his mother is hearing. Anyone who uses mass media to affect people’s behavior understands this. Advertisers know that recognition and repetition work. Our political leaders also use this mechanism. By carefully placing the word “Iraq” within or around sentences involving the word “terror” or “nine-eleven,” people will inevitably link the ideas, and not necessarily understand how or why.

There is also a limited degree of trust we place in sources of information, that is not always well placed. A good friend of mine, one of superior intellect and good education (though perhaps not of world history), once told me that he'd just learned that Christopher Columbus did not call the native people of the Western Hemisphere “Indians” the way our history books summarize, but rather, used the phrase “una gente en Dios,” (a people under God). Further, that India wasn’t even a country to be referred to until it was formed in the 20th Century. This of course is all nonsense, carefully built by historical revisionists, trying to defend the tradition of Columbus Day. This patently false information came to him through channels that also carried many truths, and with good language skills. That this “pig in a poke” style of logic can be used to fool him, convinces me that few to none of us are immune to such intellectual shenanigans.

I don’t have a solution just now. I don’t even precisely know when to trust information as opposed to when not to. I have figured out that I have to listen carefully to words, and particularly phrases, that get repeated often enough to catch my notice, and question them at their deepest levels. Here are a few examples that are sure to upset somebody...

"Tax relief"
Relief implies a hardship or burden being lifted... So Taxes must be bad, and burdensome. And we need them taken away in order to gain relief... Uh question: Do I end up agreeing to any of this by so much as using the phrase?

“Gay Marriage”
What is really different about “gay” that requires either attack or defense?
What is “marriage?” What is it really for? What does it actually do or not do?
What relations does either term have with law, rights, responsibilities?

“War on Terrorism”
A long-term battle, worthy of all human resources against an poorly defined idea? Any “ism” denotes an idea or school of thought, Does it mean “a belief in scaring people into changing behavior?” Well that doesn’t work. We ALL do that... Lets make a new word for the belief in slaughtering people for the sake of public discourse. How about “brutalism” that has overtones of the verb brutalize, and it more specifically embraces injuries and destruction, not just the more abstract “terror.”
How about it: “zero-tolerance for brutalism.” It’s even more broad, and none-too-catchy, but more people could understand it and decide it’s worth bombing campaigns and chargless arrests in outdoor cages and.....hmmmm... ...New plan: let’s just make some laws against blowing stuff up and treat those that do like criminals...hmmmmm......

*****************
Well I'm outta time so I'll just hope I can pick up later. Maybe I'll find a conclusion somewhere in here.

Can't improve something you don't practice

2004-02-11T19:01:47Z

I like the 'blog, in theory. It's a new level of "keeping up" with friends & family. It just seems I have no practice, or much drive to remember or document the details that make each day different from all the others.
So, either I find every day unworthy of note because I haven't recorded the details. Or, the details are so insignificant that each day IS just like the others, and I record nothing.

I think I'm having a bad day, a "what the hell am I for?" kind of a day.

So, for the sake of doing, here's a detail:
Practice last night was tough on my mortal frame. I forgot my gloves, which I use all the time, so my soft palm blistered and tore. I took a similar insult to my left foot, thanks to my habit of buying cheap sneakers. Then I slipped on the ice getting back into my car, and pulled muscles in my leg.

Practice was still worth it!

Might as well be something

2003-12-03T07:01:00Z

The photo isn't as dark and brooding as it may appear. Though we can't read the writing (This is the back of a headstone) it states more or less that this is the final resting place of one Caleb Pickman. Who died in his twenties "being struck with lightning." Here are the top 5 reasons I like this guy:

5. He's buried in the "old" cemetery of Salem, NH, one of my favorite places of all time. It is a little oasis of greenery, animals & quiet, in the center of a city that can't decide if it's modern, historical, or a tourist trap for freaks.
4. He died in 1680 something, with the name Pickman. If you haven't read any H.P. Lovecraft, this information means little to you.
3. "Being struck with lightning" makes it sound like he came down with it, like a sudden fever.
2 There's a 250+ year old, Honkin big'ol Tree growing straight out of him! The original footstone is buried somewhere among roots that are half above ground. That's pretty cool.
1 Caleb continues to be hit by lightning; mere death is not enough to calm the angry spirits here. The tree has been struck twice by lightning in the past 12 years. The first brought down a limb as big around as my torso. The second, (post this photo) burned and severed a section of the trunk 3 feet wide by 7 feet tall. on the side of the tree facing away from the camera.

So, you see, not dark and brooding, merely morbid and freaky.