John A. Murphy

Works at Philips Research North America in Briarcliff, NY
e-mail: murf@philabs.research.philips.com

Well, if you've seen me, chances are I was wearing jeans and sneakers. I am a professional member of Usenix and SAGE. I spend a lot of time doing Sun (son) , Linux (lee-nooks), and UNIX (you nix) systems administration. I work with Internet stuff, news, email, Linux , GNU and various other pieces of net software. If you got mail from someone named Murf, that was me. If you saw a posting from Erin's , & Kevin's dad , that was me. If you see me outside dancing around like a mad man, chances are I'm avoiding a bee (to which I am allergic) or playing hackysack.

I come from a small town in western NY called Chautauqua (home of Lucille Ball and the 10,000 Maniacs).
I have a nice family , a loving wife, daughter, and son.
I like cats, I let two cats own me . Apparently I like dogs too, but they test my faith a bit more. I've noticed that in bed a cat becomes infinitely heavy, while a dog becomes infinitely large.........and heavy.
I'm a lousy speller, but I let my come pewter pass me off as someone who can.
I'm also lousy at remembering names and faces; it took me 2 years to recognize my own mother and father.
I drive a crappy green Saturn (or is it a green crappy Saturn). I was kicked out of the Saturn family because I'm not a happy camper and do not recommend anyone else ever buy one (unless you want a reliable car that annoys you, pick your poison).
I like Pink Floyd which is why this page has this annoying Wall background image. But at least its a cheap forgery and not a copyright infringement.
I've been skydiving twice, tandem. I highly recommend it if you have a discretionary $200 to spend. You'll go farther and faster if you assume the pose of Peter Pan.

If you ask nice, I might juggle cats for you.

Contrary to popular belief, sysadmins do NOT have eyes in the back of their head , nor do they possess psychic powers.

I enjoy hiking , Dungeons & Dragons , computer games (sometimes I play xpilot , I fly as Ether Bunny or sometimes Batman), puzzles, riddles, reading (I especially like Tolkien ), sports (particularly the Miami Dolphins, New York Yankees and the Boston Celtics ), and a good joke.

After 10 years with Philips I finally got to go to Holland. I took pictures so you don't have to go yourself.

I use Perl a bit. I'm starting to muck a bit with pTk (Tk & Perl) (and looking at TCL - ugh!). I've even been known to write a few lines of HTML ...such as the ones you're currently reading.

If you can read this, you're too close to the screen. On the upside, your nose is now tan. I told you I liked jokes.

For some reason I really like the idea of online books . They're not easier to read, but more accessible and in my mind, just a good idea.

Another really good idea is programs with source code. I'm a major fan of freely shared software and source, and thus the GNU and X efforts.

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BTW, you may have noticed, that no where on this page is a link to Yahoo. This is not in error. For some reason, people who author web pages seem to think that maybe someone who is reading their page could have possibly been on the web for all this time and somehow NOT managed to been led to Yahoo. I'm starting to think that authoring tools automatically add the lines and links to Yahoo. Web browsers will soon be built with automatic timers that every few minutes bring up a popup window that reminds you of the location of Yahoo. Don't get me wrong. I like Yahoo, I use it a lot. I just think that adnauseam references to it are now a bit redundant.

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The Erin Rose Murphy Project
The Kevin John Murphy Project