Home Page of James D. Murray
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I'm a 35 year old computer nerd, balding and with a beard and a ponytail. How else can I describe me?
If you are in to the Myers-Briggs character type indicator, then I am a hard-core INTJ. If you don't know what an INTJ is, then imagine someone who is a cross between Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Mr. Spock. That's about right. (It wouldn't have been as romantic if I had said a cross between George Harrison and Al Gore).
To find out more about personality types, browse TypeLogic.
If you are an INTJ then you should join the INTJ Ring.
If you are into horoscopes (I'm not) as an indication of personality, then I'm a Taurus with:
I currently reside in the City of Orange, Orange County, California, USA, which is about three miles east of Disneyland.
I'm in the oldest part of the city in the Orange Plaza Historic District. The building of Orange was started in 1871 by two attorneys, Alfred Beck Chapman and Andrew Glassell. They started a town on land given to them in payment for legal services they rendered to the Yorba and Peralta families. They called their new town Richland.
At the center of town they built a plaza (a small park) and surrounded it with the downtown area and residential buildings. In the center of the plaza was placed a large water fountain. In 1873 the U.S. Postal authorities informed the city fathers that a town in Northern California was already named Richland, and the name of their city needed to be changed if they wanted mail delivery. With names such as Olive, Walnut, Almond, Lemon, and Orange (the native crops of the locale at the time) from which to choose, a poker game involving several other city investors was used to decide on the name. The winner of the game was Andrew Glassell, whose hometown was Orange, New Jersey. The City of Orange, California was named thus in 1873, and officially incorporated as a city of the State of California on April 6, 1888.
Today the plaza is surrounded by a traffic circle and a thriving business and residential community. Many old houses still exist in Orange, including Chapman University. And it is in an apartment building (built in 1906) on this traffic circle overlooking the trees, flowers, and the fountain were I reside. When people ask me where I live I just say on the Circle at Chapman and Glassell.
Orange has not actually been my home since early 1997. I still have my apartment there, but only for business purposes (writing books and software). I actually live in the City of Fountain Valley, just a few miles south of Orange and near Mile Square Park. It is there that I live with my wife and two step kids. My wife is an R.N. and the manager of pediatrics at Memorial Miller Children's Hospital in Long Beach, California. My two step kids are, well, just in the troubled, larval stage as teenagers go, but they will probably turn out OK. My son and ex-wife from my first marriage are located elsewhere in Orange.
My best friend and former roommate, Brian Lee Cross, lives in the apartment on the Orange Circle with my two cats, Judi and Toshi (my wife is deathly allergic of felines, and our dog thinks any running cat is a fun thing to chase). Brian is a wall paper contractor by profession, and chair of the Orange County Libertarian Party by obsession. If your are located in Southern California and need wallpaper hung, or you are just tired of the bipartisan bickering of the elephants and the asses and you require a different political ethos to keep your sanity, then email Brian at blcross@pacbell.net with your needs.
I'm into coffee houses. Not coffee shops, mind you, but coffee houses. It's hard for Southern California to compete with the great hole-in-the-wall coffee houses up in Silicon Valley and the Bay area, but a few do exist. Unfortunately, my favorite den of coffee depravity, P.J. Mead's Used Books and Coffee in Orange, California, closed down due to the lack of proper management. I'm hoping somebody will buy the delightful little place and reopen it, but so far no such luck.
My coffee time is now spent mostly at the Diedrich Coffee on the Orange Circle (and cattycorner to a Starbucks, of course). But they have no convenient electrical outlets like P.J.'s to plug my laptop into (battery life = 10 minutes; price per battery = $120US. *yikes!*). I'm currently looking for a new place that has easy outlets, over-stuffed chairs, few obnoxious patrons, and a great hazelnut no-whip mocha.
If you like coffee, then have a browse of Over the Coffee.And I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm addicted to caffeine. I make a Darjeeling that'll peel the enamel off your teeth and the epithelial cells off your stomach wall.