Month: September 2011

American Airlines Applause! Coupons

On By Norbert HauptIn Bad Product7 Comments

Every year when I get my new American Airlines Platinum Card – a nifty perk that makes a lot of difference when traveling, I get a little sheet of eight of these Applause! coupons:

The idea, I think, is to have them in my pocket, and when somebody with the airline does an outstanding job, I am supposed to think about these coupons, find one, write the employee name, employee number and location on the coupon, along with my flight number and date, as well as a special remark.

The last few years, bewildered, I tossed these coupons into the trash with the envelope. This time I thought they’d make a great “bad product” blog entry.

First, airline employees are doing THEIR JOBS when they take care of me while I am traveling with them. Giving them Applause! coupons like giving school children golden stars on their papers seems puerile to me. Do the flight attendants save these and get toaster ovens when they collect a dozen?

And is the airline really thinking that I’ll find a place where I stash these with all the stuff I lug with me when I travel, and then, when somebody gives me an extra friendly smile, I say: Wait, let me find my coupon so I can write down your name and employee number?

It must be some kind of sweepstakes, since you can go to www.jetnet.aa.com and click on Applause!

So I tried this:

It is not a surprise that it does not know who I am.

In general, I like traveling with American Airlines. They do a good job taking me where I want to go. And I spend a lot of money with them.

However, I don’t think anyone would notice if the Applause! program disappeared. I can’t believe it’s working.

Sports Blackouts

On By Norbert HauptIn Business, Commentaries2 Comments

I don’t watch any sports, on TV or in person. But I get to observe fans around me. This weekend, the San Diego Chargers game is “blacked out” on TV in San Diego, presumably because the stadium didn’t fill up. I was just at the bank downstairs, and all the tellers are wearing Chargers shirts, and everyone is moping and disappointed because the can’t see the game on TV and they can’t afford to go to the stadium.

This must be the single dumbest marketing idea in business. Sports teams are absolutely dependent on their fans. They need to keep the fire going. They need to win, create enthusiasm and excitement. Here is a sports team that is lame enough that it can’t fill its own, comparatively small stadium of only 70,000 seats in San Diego, the 6th largest city of the United States. For comparison, Green Bay is a cow pasture, but the wait list for season tickets is decades long.

And now, since they can’t fill up the stadium because they can’t create enthusiasm, they are sticking it to the fans again by blacking the game out of television. Killing more enthusiasm. Pissing more fans off. Does that make sense?

That would be like the Rolling Stones pulling all  their songs off iTunes when people don’t come to the live shows anymore.

It’s called commercial suicide.

With all this, the team wonders why the people of San Diego keep voting not to build a new billion dollar stadium?

Movie Review: Moneyball

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies1 Comment

I know nothing about baseball. I never watch it, live or on TV. But I loved this movie about the business of baseball.

Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is the general manager of  the Oakland Athletics,  the team with the lowest salaries in Major League Baseball. In 2001, Beane, a former promising player himself, led the Athletics to the World Series, only to see them lose and have their three best and star players hired away by richer teams.

He tries desperately to rebuild the team, and is running out of ideas. Quite by accident, he meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a recent Yale graduate who never played a game of baseball in his life, but is a wizard with mathematical models. The two cook up a system that all the old talent scouts dismiss. After 11 consecutive losses, the A’s start winning, and end up breaking the baseball all-time record, winning 20 games in a row.

This is not a sports movie, it’s about business, and wits and numbers over instinct and time-tested ingrained processes. The action takes place between Billy and Peter, and baseball is just a side-show for the personal dramas and triumphs.

As I said above, I don’t give a damn about baseball, but I learned a ton about how the game works, I enjoyed myself thoroughly and I think this is one of the best movies I have watched in a long time.

Rating: ****

Balloon Ride in San Diego

On By Norbert HauptIn TravelsLeave a comment

For her birthday, I treated Trisha to a Hot Air Balloon Ride in North County San Diego. We flew on Sunday afternoon, September 25 with Sky’s the Limit. We recommend them highly.

When people think of a balloon ride, and they have never done it, they don’t realize that it’s an adventure of multiple dimensions, not just climbing into a flying machine and doing a flight.

The preparation, the planning, the decision of where to take off and where to land, all are involved and complex. Watching the crew drive to the launch site, where there will likely be other crews setting up their balloons at the same time, lends some excitement. There is nothing like watching the basket unloaded, the balloon stretched out over a field, getting it inflated, and feeling the heat of the flame for the first time, to get the adrenaline pumping.

Here is a picture of the balloon just before the pilot started heating it up. You see him inside the balloon, doing a quick inspection.

Shortly before jumping in the basket, we have time to get a picture taken:

After watching and observing all the preparations, the actual launch happens almost within seconds and there is not enough time to take all the pictures and reflect. Here are the happy ballooners, seconds before leaving:

Next thing you know, you’re high above the field, looking down on the other balloons and the ants (people) around it.

I took my GPS with me, and I am excited that I did. I now have a profile. Here is a picture of the route. As always, you can click on the picture to enlarge and hit the browser back button to get back to the article.

We launched off Manchester Road in Encinitas (blue arrow), flew due south-east and landed on an empty brush field, right past a housing development (green arrow).

Below is the elevation map. You can see, at the peak, we reached about 4300 feet.

You can also see that we lifted up and rose to 2000 feet straight up, rapidly, then fast to 4000, and stayed there most of  the time. Just before landing, we dropped rapidly and then came in horizontally.

Below a detail of the map after take off:

Right after take-off, we drifted southwest, away from our take off site. Then the wind blew us back over it, so we could, for quite a while, stare straight down.

Here is a quick one, seconds after take-off:

Then, a minute later, looking down to where we just left. Believe it or not, the two balloons you see were on  the ground to either side of us when we lifted up from the space right between them. You can still see  the empy mat where our balloon was blown up as a white spot under the blue balloon:

Here is Trisha, looking out over Rancho Santa Fee, from an altitude of perhaps 1500 feet:

Our route takes us over Rancho Santa Fe, the second wealthiest community in the United States (looking down on mansion after mansion) and then Fairbanks Ranch, the first wealthiest community in the United States. The pilot pointed out some homes of people we all know, Bill Gates and the like. You can’t see those from any road.

Looking out in the other direction, the three balloons that launched after us are following:

Finally, we’re landing:

When you look at the chart, you can’t see the excitement. We came in from the upper left, dropped down to where the wind finally blew due east, to our landing site. The only way the pilot has to steer is to rise or lower, and follow the wind in. The crew on the ground tests the wind direction, and the pilot and the crew communicate via walkie-talkie. When he is properly lined up, and the wind blows in the correct direction, he stays at that exact altitude for the final approach. You can see the jockeying on the left lower side of the chart. Then we drifted over a neighborhood (you can see the streets there), and I wish I could have taken a picture – it was too exciting then. We were so close over the tile roof tops of these homes, it felt like we could grab their chimneys and we could definitely look into their windows. I wonder what the people living there think about every night as balloons drift over their heads close enough to throw a ball into the basket – if they tried.

They land on this same little field every time, after a 9 mile flight from the launch site, all done by gauging the wind at various altitudes and rising and lowering at just the right times. It’s one thing to land a balloon in a vast prairie in New Mexico, it’s another thing to jump over a community of homes, dodge a few power lines, and land on a field before the eucalyptus grove just beyond, all without any power but the wind.

It’s an art, and it’s something to watch and experience.

When we were down, the excitement continued when we got to watch the other three balloons come in all around us. Here is one:

Check out the roof line (horizon) and the power pole right by the basket. He made it and here he is:

When it got dark, if you shot carefully, you could get great pictures of the balloons coming in for a landing. Trisha snapped this one:

When can we go again?

Stephen Mather – Father of the National Parks

On By Norbert HauptIn Cool People, Nature, SustainabilityLeave a comment

There is an excellent article in the Fall 2011 issue of National Parks, the magazine of the National Parks Conservation Association, by Kate Siber, titled The Visionaries.

An excerpt:

During Mather’s wanderings in the mountains, he encountered the famous naturalist John Muir, who spoke of grave threats to the wilderness. In 1914, two years later, Mather was so inspired by Muir’s devotion and horrified by the persistence of loggers eyeing the sequoias of Yosemite that he sent an indignant 26-page missive to Franklin K. Lane, the secretary of the Interior and fellow Berkeley alumnus, detailing the sorry state of the national parks. Lane famously responded with one sentence:

 “Dear Steve, If you don’t like the way the national parks are being run, come on down to Washington and run them yourself.”

Book Review: Der Gelbe Stern / The Yellow Star – by Gerhard Schoenberner

On By Norbert HauptIn Atrocities, Books, Four Stars, HistoryLeave a comment

This is a German photography and testimony collection that chronicles the persecution of the Jews in Europe between 1933 and 1945. The material shown here is utterly shocking, unsettling so, and the testimony and reports cited are so outrageous and disgusting, shocking is not a sufficiently severe term. Crushing might be more appropriate.

This material is very difficult to watch and even skim. It changes the way we think of humanity. The evil shown is staggering.

To illustrate, I will show the original German text of page 84, followed by my translation to English afterwards. There are no pictures, there is no sensation. Just the cold and emotionless sworn testimony of a participant at a trial.

Warning

This material is very disturbing. If you are sensitive to depiction of atrocities, you might not want to read on. I believe that only by publishing the truth about evils committed in the past, and today, do we have a chance to prevent such injustices and atrocities in the future.

Page 84:

Ich habe mitgeschossen   Die Erschießung der Juden in Schirowitz

… Schirowitz ist ein Vorort von Slonim und ca. 7-9 km entfernt. Bei dieser Exekution wurden ca. 1200 bis 1400 Juden aus dem Ghetto vernichtet. Es wurden bei dieser Aktion Gruppen von 500 Personen zu Fuß an den Vernichtungsort geführt und von den eingeteilten Vernichtungskommandos vernichtet. Bei dieser Exekution war ich selbst dabei und habe selbst mitgeschossen. Die Anlagen der Gruben waren diesmal 4 m breit, 5 m tief und ca. 60-80 m lang. Der Exekutionsort war außerhalb der Ortschaft hinter einem Wäldchen. Einige Tage vor der Exekution wurden Schießproben an dem Exekutionsort durchgeführt, um festzustellen, ob die Bevölkerung von Schirowitz den Schall der Exekutionen hören könne.

Diese Exekution verlief ungefähr folgendermaßen: die Wachleute gingen mit den Juden in die Gruben. Dabei wurde das hintere Ende der Gruben verschlossen und die Juden gezwungen, sich am Rand aus­zuziehen und sich sofort ohne eine Untersuchung in die Gruben hineinzulegen. Als die erste Schicht drinnen lag, gingen die Wachleute aus den Gruben hinaus unter gleichzeitigem Einsetzen von beider­seitigem Feuer. Durch diese Art der Aufstellung wurde es ermöglicht, ein Kreuzfeuer auf die Juden zu eröffnen. Die erste Schicht betrug etwa 100-120 Mann in der Grube. Nach der ersten Exekution mußte sich die zweite Schicht der Juden so auf die toten Körper legen, daß der Kopf auf den Füßen der unteren Leichen zu liegen kam. In einer Grube wurden ca. 5-6 Schichten aufeinandergeworfen und betrug die Anzahl der Juden in einer Grube ca. 400-500 Personen. Die Exekutionen wurden mit Schnellfeuergewehren, Karabinern, Maschinenpistolen, ganz nach Belieben durchgeführt. Vorher wurden viele zu Tode geschlagen. Es war erstaunlich, wie die Juden in die Gruben hineingingen, nur mit gegenseitigen Tröstungen, um sich dadurch gegenseitig zu ermuntern und den Exekutionskom­mandos die Arbeit zu erleichtern. Die Exekution selbst dauerte 3-4 Stunden. Ich war die ganze Zeit an der Exekution beteiligt. Die einzigen Pausen, die ich machte, waren, wie mein Karabiner leer­geschossen war und ich neu laden mußte. Es ist mir dadurch nicht möglich zu sagen, wieviele Juden ich selbst während dieser 3-4 Stunden umgebracht habe, da während dieser Zeit ein anderer für mich weiter schoß. Wir haben während dieser Zeit ziemlich viel Schnaps getrunken, um unseren Arbeitseifer anzuregen. Die noch in den unteren Schichten lebenden, bzw. nur angeschossenen Juden wurden durch die oberen Schichten erstickt oder durch das Blut der oberen Schichten ertränkt. Diesmal kamen keine angeschossenen Leute lebend davon. Die Gräben wurden anschließend durch die einhei­mische Bevölkerung zugeschaufelt. Nach dieser Massenvernichtung wurde wiederum eine Besprechung bei dem Gebietskommissar durchgeführt. Der Gebietskommissar lobte bei dieser Gelegenheit meinen Fleiß und war mit der ganzen Aktion zufrieden …

In dieser Art und Weise wurden weitere Exekutionen in anderen Ortschaften durchgeführt, so in Koslowtschisna, ca. 7-800 Juden, in Beretschin ca. 2000-3000 Personen, in Holinka 400-500 Juden, in Bytin ca. 3000-4000. Bei diesen Exekutionen mußten alle, die bei der vorhergehenden Exekution an­wesend waren, wieder teilnehmen. Wir benutzten dabei die gleichen Waffen. Außerdem haben sich Herr Muck, Uffz., sowie freiwillige Soldaten und Eisenbahner vom Bahnhof Slonim beteiligt, als sie merkten, daß bei diesen Exekutionen etwas zu gewinnen war. Bei dieser Exekution wurden Kleider und Schmuckstücke vor der Exekution abgelegt. Körperliche Untersuchungen fanden aus Mangel an Zeit nicht statt.

In einer dieser Ortschaften war eine Widerstandsbewegung, die vom SD aufgedeckt wurde. Die Leute wurden besonders scharf beim SD vernommen und mißhandelt und anschließend mit den Juden erschossen. Es handelt sich dabei um 80 Polen vom nationalen Kongreß. Der Führer dieser SD-Truppe war SS-Untersturmführer Amelung. Auch an dieser Exekution habe ich mich beteiligt …

Die zweite Vernichtung in Slonim war im Herbst 1943 und sollte die endgültige Lösung des Juden­problems in dieser Ortschaft sein. Diese Erledigung war für sämtliche Kommissariate angeordnet und sollte der Gebietskommissar, der am ersten das Judenproblem erledigt hatte, anschließend sofort be­fördert werden. Ich möchte hierzu bemerken, daß 85°/o der Bevölkerung Juden waren. In V/2 Jahren wurden in diesem Distrikt 24000 Juden vernichtet.

Eidesstattliche Erklärung des Dolmetschers Alfred Metzner in Augsburg am 18. September 1947

 

English Translation:

I have participated in the shootings.   The killings of Jews in Schirowitz

Schirowitz is a suburb of Slonim and about 7-9 kilometers away. In this execution about 1200 to 1400 Jews from the ghetto were annihilated. In this action, groups of about 500 people at a time were led to the place of annihilation, where they were killed by the assigned annihilation commandos. I myself participated at this execution and I have shot people. The arrangement of the ditches this time was 4 meters wide, 5 meters deep and about 60 to 80 meters long. The place of execution was outside of the village behind a small forest. A few days before the execution they conducted shooting tests at the place of the execution in order to determine if the population of Schirowitz would be able to hear the sound of the shots.

This execution went about as follows: the guards went into the ditches with the Jews. They closed off the back end of the ditches and forced the Jews to undress at the edge and lie down immediately without inspection in the ditches. As the first layer of people was in the ditch, the guards climbed out and fired down from both sides. In this manner and arrangement it was possible to open crossfire on the Jews. The first layer was about 100 to 120 people in the ditch. After the first round, the second layer was forced to lie down onto the dead bodies below in such a manner that the heads were aligned with the feet of the corpses below.  That way, in one ditch they could pile up 5 to 6 layers, resulting in 500 to 600 Jews in one such ditch. The executions took place with automatic rifles and machine guns, as they wished. Before, many were beaten to death. It was astonishing how the Jews walked into the ditches, only with mutual consolations, in order to encourage each other and to make the work of the execution commandos easier. The execution took 3 to 4 hours. I participated during the entire time. The only breaks that I took was when my gun magazine was empty and I had to reload. Therefore I cannot say how many Jews I killed myself within the 3 to 4 hours, since during my breaks, somebody else continued shooting in my stead. We drank a lot of schnapps during that time in order to stimulate our eagerness for work.  Those that were still alive in the lower layers, or just partially shot, were suffocated by the weight of the bodies above them or drowned by their blood. This time nobody got away alive. Afterwards the graves where shoveled in by the local population. After this mass annihilation there was a meeting at the office of the area administrator. The administrator praised my industriousness at that time and said he was satisfied with the entire action.

This way, further executions took place in other villages, so in Koslowtschisna, about 700 to 800 Jews, in Beretschin about 2000 to 3000 people, in Holinka about 400 to 500 Jews, in Bytin about 3000 to 4000. At these executions, all of us that participated at the above, had to participate again and again. We used the same weapons. In addition, sergeant Muck, as well as other volunteer soldiers and railroaders from the depot of Slonim, participated, when they realized that there was something to gain at the executions. At this execution, clothes and jewelry was collected. Bodily inspections however didn’t take place due to lack of time.

In one of these villages there was a resistance movement that was uncovered by the SD. These people were interrogated particularly harshly, mistreated and finally, together with the Jews, shot. They were about 80 Poles of the national congress. The leader of this SD troupe was SS leader Amelung. I participated in that execution, too.

The second annihilation in Slonim was in the fall of 1943 and was intended to be the final solution to the Jew problem in this village. This was ordered for all regions, and it was meant to get a promotion for the regional administrator afterwards. I want to note that 85% of the population there were Jews. In one and a half years, 24000 Jews were annihilated in this district.

Declaration under oath of the interpreter Alfred Metzner in Augsburg on September 18, 1947

The Two Avis Keys

On By Norbert HauptIn Bad Product, Commentaries6 Comments

In the last few years, I have noticed that Avis always delivers two keys with their rental cars.

The keys are identical. They are attached to a tag and a remote by a fixed band that does not open. There is no way to separate the keys. If there are two drivers, they can’t each have one. Rental car keys are bulky enough, with the big tag and the remote. Two keys are so bulky, they don’t fit comfortably into pants pockets. They always get in the way.

I wonder what Avis is trying to do?

Of course, they want to keep the keys together, so when the car is eventually sold, they have both keys there. In the meantime they bother every one of their primary customers like me, car renters, and they hassle us with the keys.

In the event a renter should lose the key, he would lose both, of course; nothing saved there.

Wouldn’t it be much better to put the second key in a key warehouse indexed by the car’s VIN number? When the car is eventually sold, it can be mailed to the location of the car, and it’ll be a brand-new fresh key. If the first key is ever lost, the one in the warehouse would be a nice backup.

Other rental car companies don’t do this – as far as I can tell. It’s an Avis thing. And I don’t get it.

Outsourcing

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, SustainabilityLeave a comment

Try and buy a T-shirt at Sears that is not made in China.

Try and buy ANYTHING at Wal-Mart that is not made in China.

Go to REI and check out their clothing. It’s made in China.

We don’t make anything anymore in America. Ok, we make airplanes, but Airbus is kicking our butts. We make cars, but Toyota and Hyundai and a dozen other companies are kicking our butts. We make software, some, anyway. But we don’t make enough.

I listened to David Zach, a futurist, recently, at a conference. He said we are outsourcing three things in this country:

  1. Baby boomers never want to pay full retail for anything, so in effect we are outsourcing our future.
  2. We outsource our labor issues.
  3. We outsource our pollution.

And we pay dearly for it. But much more dearly than we, our children will pay for it. Their American Dream is going to be much more difficult to achieve than ours was.

Where is mine?

Book Review: The Help – by Kathryn Stockett

On By Norbert HauptIn Books (not finished reading)1 Comment

I didn’t go see the movie, because I was reading the book.

But I had been reading  the book for a couple of weeks, and I got to page 33 or so. I’d read a page, half a page, two pages. I could not get into it. I found it was well written. I liked the dialog and the slang. It reminded me of the slave-talk in Gone with the Wind.

Somehow I cannot read this book. Many people can’t put it down. I am sure it is well done. It’s just that I can’t make myself care about a lot of women in the 1960ies talking about woman stuff.

The end.

I’ll rent the movie on Netflix when it’s out.

Good Bye, Borders

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries1 Comment

Most Borders stores are gone now. A chain with more than 1,000 stores at one time, with 10,700 employees, gone. What do I do with this now?

I guess I am not renewing my membership.

Visualize 12 Million People

On By Norbert HauptIn Atrocities, CommentariesLeave a comment

Why is it important to visualize 12 million people?

Adolf Hitler, by ordering the mass extermination of Jews and other minorities, caused an estimated 12 million people to be murdered in the Holocaust, 6 million of them Jews.

Counting the casualties from World War II would raise this number considerably, to more than 50 million, and as many as 12 million Germans. 

How many people is 12 million?

Most average football stadiums in the U.S. hold about 70,000 to 80,000 people. I have been at the Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego when it was full. 70,000 people is a mass of people. When they do “the wave” it points out just how many individuals there are.

Here is a picture of the M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, the home of the Ravens [click to enlarge].

You see 70,000 people here.

Simple math: 12 million people would fill 171 stadiums of this size. 

Now imagine what kind of vision, operation, planning, funding, organization and sheer will it would take to kill that many people. The Nazi regime’s famous “1000 year empire” lasted only 12 years from the early beginnings in January 1933 to the total demise in May 1945. That would be about 1 million people killed per year or 2740 people a day, every day they were in power. Of course, the big killings didn’t even start until the later years.

It is unimaginable. And yet it was going on only 13 years before I was born.

Orson Scott Card for Obama

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, Political1 Comment

WHAT?

Orson Scott Card is a Mormon and staunch conservative.

Yet Orson Scott Card is contemplating voting for Obama because he can’t align himself with any of the clowns coming forward from the Republican party. To quote:

We need a president for the whole country, not rigid ideologues like Obama and most of the Republicans vying to run against him. The extreme wings of both parties believe such an absurd mishmash of mutually contradictory dogmas, and are so vicious to anyone who does not join in their insanity, that I shudder to contemplate the future of our country if anyof them wins.

At least Obama has learned how to compromise — grudgingly, petulantly, like a toddler deprived of a toy, but he has learned to comply with reality now and then. Better the clown we have than the clowns piling out of the teeny-tiny car.

Clowns piling out of the teeny-tiny car is exactly what I have been picturing when gazing at the Republican field. Does the Republican party have a death wish? Isn’t there a conservative politician in the country who is willing to step forward and lead?

Nutcases, all.

Coincidence on 9/11/2011

On By Norbert HauptIn Crack-Ups1 Comment

On 9/11/2011, a Sunday, I decided to start a long-procrastinated project: Going through all my book boxes and cataloguing all my books in a spreadsheet, with ISBN number, title, author and category.

I have a habit of using things like airline tickets and receipts as bookmarks. My bookmarks usually stay in the books until I have finished reading. If for any reason I abandon a book, the bookmark may remain there forever.

As I went through the first box, I found some books that still had bookmarks in them from many years ago.

In 1990, when I still worked for Vektronics (which now no longer exists), I did a lot of work at the McDonnell Douglas Apache helicopter plant in Mesa Arizona. Sometimes we would need to ship urgent machine parts and we used airline counter-to-counter services. You could drop a package off at the counter and ship it to another city, and pick it up at the counter there. I am not sure if this is still possible after 9/11.

Here is the amazing coincidence:

On 9/11/2011 I opened a book with a counter-to-counter receipt from Southwest Airlines of a package I picked up in Phoenix on 9/11/1990, 21 years to the day earlier.

This is a remnant from a world where 9/11 didn’t mean anything important or significant yet.