1/4/00 - Happy New Year! Four days into the new year, Y2K seems to have been an overrated phobia. Apparently, however, the effort the world took in updating its computer systems for the Y2k bug will result in great boons of productivity. We'll see.
Sorry I've been out of the loop for a few weeks. First, I spent Christmas with my family in Chesapeake, VA, then it was off to San Diego for Y2K, where Elaine, Wolff, and I rang in the new year at Torrey Pines GliderPort, overlooking La Jolla Cove.
Christmas yielded many splendid fruits, from a faster computer (I'm now running a E-Machines Celeron 433, upgraded from a CTX Pentium II 233) to a webcam (I haven't decided I'm going to run it all the time through the website just yet) to some new clothing, luggage, and colognes. A few DVD's here and there as well, including 12 Monkeys, South Park, and L.A. Confidential. Christmas was especially exciting because it was the first time all members of our clan were together since 1997.
San Diego was great fun. Not only did we sightsee various San Diegan locales and sup at great restaurants such as Moondoggies and P.F. Changs, but we spent a good deal of time hanging out with old friends. Much Basketball was played as well. Once I sort out the many pictures taken over the past two weeks, I'll post some on the site.
One dark cloud on an otherwise wonderful trip: I've caught some west coast ailment and have inadvertently brought it back east. I'm currently running a fever of 101.5 and feel like death, and Elaine looks like she may be coming down with the same symptoms. Beware my presence.
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12/21/99 - Sprewell-Houston Backcourt 1, Naysayers 0.
The folks at Memepool have discovered the all-new Journal of Mundane Behavior. Glad we as a society are finally getting to the important stuff.
For some unknown reason, I'm in something of a blue funk at the moment. Perhaps its the maudlin strands of the Malkovich soundtrack in the background. Perhaps it's a bout of It's a Wonderful Life holiday melancholy. Perhaps it's because I've eaten enough Hershey Kisses in the past 24 hours to kill a donkey. Ah, well. C'est la vie.
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12/20/99 - My friends can tell you that I am normally all for technological progress. But one recent invention brings out the Inner Luddite in me: The CellPhone. Not only do they seem to be constantly flaunted by the aggravatingly self-important, but cellphones are the worst thing to happen to driving since the hipflask. I may not be able to prevent their inevitable dissemination throughout our society, but I can join the Cloot Insurgency. Cloot! Cloot!
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12/19/99 - Hello again. Thad and Gillian are in town this weekend, and we've been catching up on our movies. Toy Story 2 was the afternoon matinee, and it was a great one. A smart, sharply-written, and funny film, Toy Story 2 joins that select group of sequels that clearly surpasses the original. Then after a brief shopping interlude (is it just me or are the Christmas crowds much, much worse this year? It might just be the Grinch in me.), Elaine, Gill, and I went to Anna and the King, a sumptuously filmed historical epic featuring Jodie Foster and the coolest man in the world, Chow Yun-Fat. Since I am one of the sad minority who has never seen The King and I (Yea, I know it's pathetic. At least I heed Mohammed he's got me doing calisthenics), I can't really comment on the film, other than to say it was beautiful, enjoyable, and probably 15-20 minutes too long.
12/17/99 - Apocalypse Moon? Elaine forwarded this to me a few days ago. Perhaps there is something to all this Y2K hype..."This year the Winter Solstice, December 22 -- the longest night of the year -- will be extremely special. This is because the solstice will coincide with a Full Moon. Ah, but not just any Full Moon. The Moon will be within a few hours of its perigee, its closest point to the Earth. This will make the Moon appear to be about 14% bigger than usual. However, it is also only ten days from the Earth's perihelion, its closest point to the Sun. Since the Moon shines with reflected sunlight, then the moon will appear 7% brighter than usual. These events occurring together are extremely rare. This is probably the biggest, brightest moon of the Millennium as well as its last [sic]. Whatever else you do, get out and look at the sky. You will never see a Moon like this again."
12/13/99 - R.I.P. Joseph Heller (1923-1999). America has lost one of its most pungent satirists of the twentieth century. His most renowned work, Catch-22, will be remembered as a hallmark of anti-war literature, and remains one of the few books to provoke a physical revulsion in me (when Snowden's "secret" is revealed). He will be remembered.
My West Coast connects tell me that trade rumors are circulating involving Latrell Sprewell and Glen Rice. Could the Knicks front office be that stupid? I dearly hope not.
Speaking of stupid, Fox News has created Dunk the Candidates. It's pretty lame, but, as they say in Murdochland, "We report, you decide."
Depending how much work I can get done in the next 24 hours, I may be going to NYC for the next few days to spend time with my older brother and younger sister, in which case Ghost in the Machine may not be updated. Sorry!
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12/11/99 - Christmas and other assorted December holiday parties out the wazoo. Elaine's office party at Rand was last night and tonight we have a Harvard alumni party at my friend Bridger's place, who also happens to work for Al Gore. Hopefully my Bradley pin will involve me in a festive holidays fracas. If anybody mentions heart trouble I'm going to start swinging.
I finally got my act together and bought some URLs the other day. I am now in possession of kevincmurphy.com and ghostinthemachine.net - the latter will eventually bounce to this weblog, but for now they both go to the introductory page with Migraine Boy and the spiffy Rebel Alliance graphic.
Unsolicited advice of the day: Be kind to your waitstaff. If not, they may rat you out on the web.
Thad and Lotta, my brother and sister-in-law respectively, return from their 1 year stint in Beijing with MIBS tonight. Lotta will be returning to her native Sweden for the holidays, but Thad will be joining our branch of the Murphy clan for Christmas festivities in Chesapeake, VA.
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12/10/99 - Would you like to dissect a frog online? Well, heck, don't let me stop you.
The repeated failures of the NASA Mars missions have me feeling blue - I've always wanted to be the old guy on the colony ship. (At least I can still send my name to Mars.) Some much-needed good news on the Martian tip: scientists have concluded that the red planet probably once had oceans! You know what they say - where there's smoke, there's fire...where there's water, there's Life? Better sign up for some Martian real estate now, folks.
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12/9/99 - Stick a fork in him. The career of Sir Charles ended on a sad note last night in Philadelphia when he ruptured his quad during a routine block. Barkley definitely had a mouth on him, but the way he boarded for a man of his size remains unbelievable. In happier aging NBA superstar news, Patrick comes back tomorrow night, also in Philly.
My buddy Colton (of Brill's Content) is back with a new web project, designed to poke fun at Y2K hysteria - check out Times Square 2000. In other fun site news, Lemon Yellow has discovered that You are where you live. The Weblog continuum is also making a big fuss about the release of Blogger 2.0: free, simple weblog software which I probably should be using.
Finished up Black Hawk Down and started The New New Thing. I must confess, reading about the crushing denouement of the Battle of Mogadishu brought about a palpable sense of loss and frustration. After completing the book, I can sympathize with the Rangers' anger and dismay at being pulled out of Somalia before they could exact revenge for their fallen comrades. Fortunately, some droll Lewis prose on Silicon Valley guru Jim Clark and the rise of SGI allayed my martial instincts.
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12/8/99 - R.I.P. Benjamin Davis (1916-1999). A death in the family, Elaine's great-uncle, discouraged any updating of KcMLog for the past few days. A naval coxswain during WWII, Uncle Ben was memorialized at a touching service in Arlington National Cemetery yesterday morning. Elaine's branch of the Newtons were all in attendance.
Elaine and I exchanged some early Christmas gifts. She got me The New New Thing, the recent Michael Lewis book on Silicon Valley (I was a huge fan of Trail Fever), Winning Chess Tactics (I've already studied Strategies and Openings in the same series), and The Dictionary of American Slang. She received Longitude, the acclaimed book by Dava Sobel, and a biography of Isaac Newton. Speaking of Christmas, Elaine and I have picked up our first tree (or, more to the point, our first amalgamation of synthetic materials designed to look like a tree), courtesy of the good folks at Target.
Still undecided on who to vote for? Well, if my Bradley site can't sway you, try your hand at Select Smart, a webpage that will determine your candidate based on your answers to several policy questions. Believe it or not, I got Bradley, followed closely by Ralph Nader. Also, today is the last day to vote in the Internet Primary. And, if you're bored, you may also want to check by the folks at Evil People, Inc.
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12/3/99 - Twelve more Epinions put up yesterday, which, I must confess, were all basically cut and pasted from the Library. Nevertheless, after wasting away in there for over two years, it's nice that they're finally getting read.
Watched the first Republican debate that included George W. Bush last night. I must admit, I was kinda hoping to be more impressed with Bush the younger than I was, on the off chance that Gore wins the Democratic nomination and I'm forced to go seeking a candidate. I can see how Bush would be an excellent state politician, but he seemed to be missing that extra element that makes one Presidential (what the French call a certain "I don't know what.") Moreover, his answers seemed too robotic and rehearsed to be inspiring -- when he accidentally deviated from a set play he would grin like a sheepish schoolboy caught trying to pretend he'd done the reading.
I did think Senator McCain was very impressive - alas the GOP powers-that-be are even more invested in Bush than the main Democratic poobahs are to Mediscare Al, and the Tempestuous One seems to making no traction in my homestate of South Carolina, which has been declared a "key state" by the official prognosticators. It's too bad -- a Bradley-McCain general election would be one for the ages...
Elaine and I picked up our tickets to San Diego for the Y2K Dish reunion. Personally, I refuse to get all worked up about the coming New Year's and look forward to auguring in the realnew millennium at some ultra-swanky place on December 31, 2000. Not to rain on anybody else's parade, though. As Mulder correctly pointed out in last week's X-Files, "Nobody likes a math geek, Scully."
In any case, if pre-millennium tension has given you a hankering for some of that old-time religion, there are plenty of recently created sects on the web these days, including:
First United Church of the Fisher Price Record PlayerVirtual Church of the Blind ChihuahuaThe Church of the Quivering OtterThe First Church and
Second National Church of ShatnerologyCenter for Duck StudiesChurch of the GerbilChurch of the Holy Spork
If these myriad pathways for millennial Salvation have you confused as to what to do, don't fret -- it may all be moot anyway. These folks seem to believe that On the First Day of the Year 2000, God will Die. Hey, don't shoot the messenger. I'm just trying to show you all the options.
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12/2/99 - I went a little crazy on the Epinions tip yesterday, adding over thirty reviews from the Writing vaults. In my humble opinion, the best of the bunch are Barber, Fallows, Last Supper, White Man's Burden, Empire, and the Mt. Auburn Cemetery, but they're all decent. I also created my own Epinions affiliate, if only to pick my own color scheme and create a link back to here. Vanity knows no boundaries on the World Wide Web.
A college friend of mine, Mike Colton, now has his own column over at Brill's Content, entitled Information Overload. I highly recommend his Y2K piece. I've also found a few choice nuggets of website fun in my recent websurfing. Courtesy of Memepool, readers unoffended by lots of gratuitous profanity are encouraged to sign up with the Datapimp. Also, if you're looking to redesign your desktop, Digital Blasphemy has some of the most amazing wallpapers I've ever seen. From Strange Brew (well, not to mention Yale and the University of Washington), we have the Measure Your Implicit Attitudes test, for determining your innate biases. And, finally, we have Darth Pikachu, for no other reason than I'm a sucker for Star Wars humor.
I caught End of Days yesterday, which with Sleepy Hollow and TWINE hopefully completes the trilogy of ho-hum action flicks I had higher hopes for. Schwarzenegger vs. Satan...so brilliant in principle, so flawed in execution. Gabriel Byrne was a kick, although it's hard not to be when you're playing as juicy a role as the Prince of Darkness.
12/13/99 - R.I.P. Joseph Heller (1923-1999). America has lost one of its most pungent satirists of the twentieth century. His most renowned work, Catch-22, will be remembered as a hallmark of anti-war literature, and remains one of the few books to provoke a physical revulsion in me (when Snowden's "secret" is revealed). He will be remembered.
My West Coast connects tell me that trade rumors are circulating involving Latrell Sprewell and Glen Rice. Could the Knicks front office be that stupid? I dearly hope not.
Speaking of stupid, Fox News has created Dunk the Candidates. It's pretty lame, but, as they say in Murdochland, "We report, you decide."
Depending how much work I can get done in the next 24 hours, I may be going to NYC for the next few days to spend time with my older brother and younger sister, in which case Ghost in the Machine may not be updated. Sorry!
12/11/99 - Christmas and other assorted December holiday parties out the wazoo. Elaine's office party at Rand was last night and tonight we have a Harvard alumni party at my friend Bridger's place, who also happens to work for Al Gore. Hopefully my Bradley pin will involve me in a festive holidays fracas. If anybody mentions heart trouble I'm going to start swinging.
I finally got my act together and bought some URLs the other day. I am now in possession of kevincmurphy.com and ghostinthemachine.net - the latter will eventually bounce to this weblog, but for now they both go to the introductory page with Migraine Boy and the spiffy Rebel Alliance graphic.
Unsolicited advice of the day: Be kind to your waitstaff. If not, they may rat you out on the web.
Thad and Lotta, my brother and sister-in-law respectively, return from their 1 year stint in Beijing with MIBS tonight. Lotta will be returning to her native Sweden for the holidays, but Thad will be joining our branch of the Murphy clan for Christmas festivities in Chesapeake, VA.
Elaine and I exchanged some early Christmas gifts. She got me The New New Thing, the recent Michael Lewis book on Silicon Valley (I was a huge fan of Trail Fever), Winning Chess Tactics (I've already studied Strategies and Openings in the same series), and The Dictionary of American Slang. She received Longitude, the acclaimed book by Dava Sobel, and a biography of Isaac Newton. Speaking of Christmas, Elaine and I have picked up our first tree (or, more to the point, our first amalgamation of synthetic materials designed to look like a tree), courtesy of the good folks at Target.
Still undecided on who to vote for? Well, if my Bradley site can't sway you, try your hand at Select Smart, a webpage that will determine your candidate based on your answers to several policy questions. Believe it or not, I got Bradley, followed closely by Ralph Nader. Also, today is the last day to vote in the Internet Primary. And, if you're bored, you may also want to check by the folks at Evil People, Inc.
Watched the first Republican debate that included George W. Bush last night. I must admit, I was kinda hoping to be more impressed with Bush the younger than I was, on the off chance that Gore wins the Democratic nomination and I'm forced to go seeking a candidate. I can see how Bush would be an excellent state politician, but he seemed to be missing that extra element that makes one Presidential (what the French call a certain "I don't know what.") Moreover, his answers seemed too robotic and rehearsed to be inspiring -- when he accidentally deviated from a set play he would grin like a sheepish schoolboy caught trying to pretend he'd done the reading.
I did think Senator McCain was very impressive - alas the GOP powers-that-be are even more invested in Bush than the main Democratic poobahs are to Mediscare Al, and the Tempestuous One seems to making no traction in my homestate of South Carolina, which has been declared a "key state" by the official prognosticators. It's too bad -- a Bradley-McCain general election would be one for the ages...
Elaine and I picked up our tickets to San Diego for the Y2K Dish reunion. Personally, I refuse to get all worked up about the coming New Year's and look forward to auguring in the real new millennium at some ultra-swanky place on December 31, 2000. Not to rain on anybody else's parade, though. As Mulder correctly pointed out in last week's X-Files, "Nobody likes a math geek, Scully."
In any case, if pre-millennium tension has given you a hankering for some of that old-time religion, there are plenty of recently created sects on the web these days, including:
First United Church of the Fisher Price Record Player
Virtual Church of the Blind Chihuahua
The Church of the Quivering Otter
The First Church and
Second National Church of Shatnerology
Center for Duck Studies
Church of the Gerbil
Church of the Holy Spork
If these myriad pathways for millennial Salvation have you confused as to what to do, don't fret -- it may all be moot anyway. These folks seem to believe that On the First Day of the Year 2000, God will Die. Hey, don't shoot the messenger. I'm just trying to show you all the options.
I caught End of Days yesterday, which with Sleepy Hollow and TWINE hopefully completes the trilogy of ho-hum action flicks I had higher hopes for. Schwarzenegger vs. Satan...so brilliant in principle, so flawed in execution. Gabriel Byrne was a kick, although it's hard not to be when you're playing as juicy a role as the Prince of Darkness.