Author: Norbert Haupt

Software executive, blogger, painter and mountain goat.

Book Review: Hillbilly Elegy – by J.D. Vance

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Political, Three Stars1 Comment

Published in June 2016, when Vance was just 32 years old and about three years after he graduated from Yale Law School, Hillbilly Elegy is a remarkably good book and a must read, no matter what your political bent may be. There is also a Netflix movie that I have reviewed here.

Vance wrote the book long before he had political ambitions. It is a passionate and highly descriptive narrative of his own personal life and upbringing. He is only one year older than my daughter, so I could relate to the chronology of when and how Vance grew up and what shaped him.

The odds against such a child just simply surviving the desperate fight out of drugs, poverty and despair, let alone being successful, and achieving a stellar political career, are astronomical. In the end, I took away that the United States Marines saved the boy, made him a man, and served as his springboard. Vance tells not only his and his family’s personal story, but he shows us what social and class decline feels like in huge swaths of this nation. It helps us understand the decline of the rust belt, and the impact of manufacturing leaving our country for she shores of Asia.

It is therefore no surprise to see how some of Vance’s political views were shaped. I have a hard time understanding where some of the controversies come from that he has created since he associated himself with Trump. After reading his book, the Trump-Vance alliance seems unlikely and I can’t quite figure out how it happened. It almost does not make any sense. Perhaps it’s just the next logical step for him to ascend the ladder. While he obviously disagrees with some of Obama’s policies, views and strategies, he admired Obama and modeled some of his own life to Obama’s rise. That, I speculate, might have driven him to Trump as a stepping stone to the national stage. After the Trump era is over  and Trump is gone, Vance will still be a young man and now we all know him, don’t we?

There is also nothing about any couch in this book, and nothing objectionable that might push you away from Vance as a character. On the contrary, you want to meet him and chat with him at a backyard BBQ.

I am not going to vote for Trump-Vance, but I am telling you that Hillbilly Elegy is a remarkable book. If you are at all interested in understanding the decline of America’s white middleclass, you need to read it.

Book Review: Slaughterhouse-Five – by Kurt Vonnegut

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Two StarsLeave a comment

 

There isn’t a list of best books in the English language or best American novels that Slaughterhouse-Five is not part of. It’s a classic. It’s an anti-war novel. It was first published in 1969. As it often is with me and classics, I don’t particularly agree with the general sentiment, and so it with this book. I enjoyed reading it, not because it had me riveted from the start, but because it’s a fairly short book (190 pages), and it’s a classic, and I felt that it was time to ride it out. In the end I gave it two stars.

The story is based on autobiographical experiences of the author. He was a soldier in the United States Army in World War II and an eyewitness to the firebombing of Dresden by the Allied Forces. To put things in perspective, the Hiroshima bomb killed some 71,000 people in Japan. The bombing of Dresden killed an estimated 135,000 people, mostly civilians. The images of that event obviously haunted Vonnegut for the rest of his life, and prompted him to write this book. The anti-war message is of course what makes the book.

I found it confusing and unnecessary to include the alien abduction side story, or for that matter the time-travel segments. The author used time travel to allow him to tell the story in non-chronological order, jumping around the protagonist’s life as he felt suitable. The alien abduction segments seem to be there only to give the author a vehicle to convey speculation on the nature of time, free will and eternal life. Perhaps the pseudo-science fiction nature of the book brought readers. To me, it was distracting. It’s a good anti-war story, and it leaves you in horror, but there are many other anti-war books.

You should read Slaughterhouse-Five because it’s an American classic that everyone should have read. Then you can make up your own mind.

So it goes.

 

Lessons from the Digital Pandemic

On By Norbert HauptIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Overshadowed by the news coverage of the Republican Convention this past week, if you weren’t traveling, chances are you might not have noticed. We went through a digital pandemic. It took only a few days, but in digital time, that’s an eternity.

CrowdStrike is a cyber security company with customers in all reaches of the industry, in all countries of the world, over 29,000 of them. Microsoft is one of their customers. Some hapless programmer made a mistake in their Windows kernel software which caused Microsoft servers to come up with the famous “blue screen of death” that most users of Windows computers have experienced from time to time, particularly when our computers were getting “sick.”

Critical systems of all types went down and didn’t come up again when they rebooted. It affected airlines (hence my travel comment), emergency call centers, 911-systems, emergency services, hospitals, banks, and any other system that relies on Microsoft servers. It happened all over the world. Once they figured out the problem, it was solved quickly, the patch was updated and propagated, but it took a couple of days before the ripple effects were ironed out. Airplanes can’t just take off instantly and delayed passengers spending nights marooned in strange cities need to be sent on their way before things can get back to normal.

Ok, you might say, what’s the big deal. Another computer glitch, right?

I started my career as a firmware engineer writing kernel level code in assembly language, so I know a thing or two about machine control and operating system software. While I am not privy to the details of this particular bug, I have to tell you that it gave me pause. I am very concerned.

We just demonstrated to the hackers of the world where we’re most vulnerable. I can guarantee you that hacking shops in China, Russia and Iran, and who knows what other countries, have also learned from this event, and they are busy working on the next digital pandemic. The digital arms race just went up a notch. We know how high the stakes are, and we also know how vulnerable our entire way of life is.

I was on a trip in New York when this happened. I had less than $100 of cash in my pocket. I was dependent on airlines flying to get back home. If the phone systems are down, credit cards don’t work. If the credit card processing networks are down, credit cards don’t work. All my money is in banks. If the banking systems don’t come up, I have no access to my money and I will be insolvent within the first day a bill comes due. If the banking system does not work, the ATMs don’t work, and I can get no more cash. There isn’t enough cash in circulation anymore for anyone to shop for groceries. Within days we are reduced to bartering, but only if we have something of value to give, something to eat. Who has that?

If a rogue state figures out a way to wipe out the kernels of our computers and networks for more than a few days, society could collapse very quickly.
It is not that time yet but give it another five or ten years. Let’s say we have an artificial intelligence that went rogue. If it decided to take control of the operating systems of our machines, there would be no way for us to get ahead of them. For all the reasons I just listed above, our entire way of life has become dependent on global networks that need to work, and thousands of systems must interact for us to – put simply – eat. That means we can’t just turn the machines off. We need to keep them running to eat. And the artificial intelligence has us by the proverbial balls.

While this is going on, the leaders of our nation are preoccupied with banning books, promoting religion, restricting reproductive rights, and demonizing immigrants. Nero is fiddling while Rome burns.

Trust me, this little global digital pandemic that many of you might not even have noticed, has me frightened.

I don’t know what the solution is.

Don’t Forget to Vote

On By Norbert HauptIn Political1 Comment

I just spent a day impromptu with Canadian friends at their lake house about a hundred kilometers in the mountains north of Montreal. Over dinner, they asked me what I thought of U.S. politics. They thought we Americans were all going crazy. “What the heck is going on down there?”

Clearly, my Canadian friends were deeply worried – and powerless to do anything about it. As we got back in the car, after having said goodbye, they were standing in their driveway as we drove away, and I saw him mouthing something. I stopped, rolled down the window, and he said: “Don’t forget to vote.”

That night I watched Trump give his acceptance speech at the RNC.  I was dumbfounded about how bad it was. He has one asset over Biden, and that is that he can speak, for the most part, without stuttering or stumbling. His speaking ability is that of a 5th-grader, but at least it’s comprehensible. But there it stops.

Trump’s thinking is confused and jumbled. He can’t keep track of a single coherent thought. He can’t even read a 20-minute prepared speech from a teleprompter. He has to go off script, and then ramble asinine delusions, lies and misrepresentations in endless word salads. I can’t believe that so many people are okay with that being “their guy.” I had to force myself to listen until the end hoping there would be some conclusion. There was no conclusion, no message, no passion. It was just a doddering old man rambling on and on and on. I would not leave a toddler in his charge for ten minutes – I’d be worried. But we’re okay with giving him the nuclear codes?

And then there is Biden. It’s excruciatingly obvious: He’s senile. After watching his horrible debate performance, topped off a few days later with the Stephanopoulus interview, and then a few days later the Holt interview, Biden is not fit for the job either. Biden is a good man, well intentioned, who dedicated his life to politics. But he is senile now.

I am a hiker. I can still climb mountains and I feel very fortunate about that. But one day, my knees will no longer be good enough, and I’ll have to stop that activity and replace it with something that is not so hard on the knees. When that time comes, I’ll have to stop climbing mountains.

That’s what happened to Biden, but it’s not the knees, it’s the brain. And it’s sad that it’s happening in front of the whole world to see. It’s sad and perhaps humiliating. But it’s very obvious. Biden isn’t going to make it through another debate with Trump. He is not making it through any town hall rally convincingly. Our young people aren’t going to be excited to vote for him. To them he is a doddering old man. I am an old man, and to me he is a doddering old man. Biden is also not going make a fiery convention acceptance speech.

We are left with one malignant senile narcissist, and another well-meaning incompetent who has no chance of winning the election.

To my Canadian friends who urged me to not forget to vote:

I need somebody that I can vote for!

 

Movie Review: Thelma

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Two StarsLeave a comment

Thelma (June Squibb) is a 93-year-old woman who lives alone. Her grandson Daniel (Fred Hechinger) looks in on her from time to time, helps her with her computer, and has her back when she needs him. One night she gets a frantic call from Daniel, telling her he is in prison and needs $10,000 in cash right away to be sent to his lawyer. But it wasn’t Daniel. She falls for it.

When she realizes she has been scammed, she takes matters into her own hands. With her friend Ben (Richard Roundtree) she embarks on a journey around town to get her money back.

Thelma is lighthearted comedy with some feel-good elements and a lot of fairly demoralizing scenes. It casts a bright light on the plight of our seniors. They often live alone, even when they have a loving family, like Thelma, and watch their peers die away one by one. There are a number of scenes in an assisted-living home where we get to glance into lives of the tenants.

I am currently going through this with my own parents, who I always remembered as capable, independent, active and healthy. That is no longer the case, and they need care, lots of care in lots of situations. Our modern world does not offer good solutions for the elderly, and due to improved health care, the elderly are getting older.

Thelma was funny and light, but I walked out of the theater somber and almost depressed. It made me think of my own life, and the fact there there is a lot less sand in the top of my hourglass than there is in the bottom, and it made me wonder how much Thelma there is in me already.

If the objective of the movie was to make us think about our lives – I guess it met the objective.

 

Am I Better Off Than 4 Years Ago

On By Norbert HauptIn Economy, PoliticalLeave a comment

Today I checked my stock ticker:

The Dow Jones is at 40,000.

At the end of Trump’s term, the Dow was at 30,930.52.  Trump’s legacy for investors was his aggressive corporate tax cuts and his hands-off approach to regulation. Corporate profits did well.

Trump famously predicted that the stock market would crash if Biden won the election. That hasn’t happened. The economy has performed fine under Biden, given where it was when he started, in the doldrums of the pandemic.

Yep, I am better off.

 

 

To Buy or Not to Buy a Tesla

On By Norbert HauptIn Bad Product, BusinessLeave a comment

I recently read an article on MSN.com that Elon Musk’s politics may be pushing some buyers away from Tesla.

Tesla’s market share of EVs in the US has recently dropped below 50%.

I was definitely in the market to buy a Tesla several years ago. But I am definitely not anymore. Several things have occurred:

  1. Tesla is getting bad press on reliability, quality of the product and support.
  2. Musk bought Twitter and it’s now – in my opinion – a shadow of itself.
  3. Along with the Twitter debacle, Musk’s politics and apparent arrogance does not appeal to me, and I don’t want to sponsor his company.

I sold all my Tesla stock when the Twitter purchase happened. The price of  the stock has been fairly flat since then.

So yes, Musk’s politics is definitely pushing me away from Tesla.

I am waiting for another EV, preferably from Toyota, to jump in.

The Disastrous Landscape of Automotive Media Interfaces

On By Norbert HauptIn Bad Product1 Comment

My Jeep’s navigation system is out of date, and Jeep is trying to get me to pay $99 to update it. I get an email like this every couple of months.

The truth is, I tried the navigation system in my brand new Jeep in 2021 a couple of times, and it is atrocious. It is very difficult to navigate, to program destinations, the voice and cadence is awful, and the instructions are poor. I gave up, and very quickly resumed using Google Maps on my smartphone,  which luckily, albeit awkwardly, connects with Jeep’s UConnect system using Apple CarPlay. I can use the same navigation system everywhere, in rental cars, when walking, and in my own car. I know how it works, I can navigate with it in my sleep, and it’s consistent everywhere.

Last year I was in Germany and rented a high-end Mercedes. I don’t remember the model. I tried to use its own navigation system. I was pulled over in a bus stop trying to figure out how to put in a destination. After fighting with it for quite some time, I gave up and resorted to my Google Maps on my iPhone. I tried to connect my iPhone to the interface on the Mercedes, but I could also not figure that out. It worked for phone calls, but somehow I wasn’t successful getting audible instructions from my phone through the car’s sound system. I am sure if I spent time with the manual, or I checked out some YouTubes, I could have figured it out. But who wants to bother doing this with a rental car for a week? So I just used my phone with speaker on and all was fine. I could leave the sound system turned off.

My Jeep also has this annoying “feature” where it always start playing the current playlist on my iPhone as soon as I get into the car. There is no way to turn this off. Every time I get into the car, I have to either turn off the sound system completely, or if I need it for navigation (through Google Maps), I have to tune it to some other channel, so it does not play music I don’t want to hear.

All these examples are signs that automotive companies are not experts in human-centered design, like Google or Apple are. Their attempts at the user interface level are dismal at best.

GM announced earlier this year that is would abandon Apple CarPlay and Google Android Auto. They are citing it’s to keep people safer in their cars and minimize distractions. Does GM not know that that it’s a n0-go decision for many buyers? I certainly will not, under any circumstances, buy a car that does not connect with Apple CarPlay. I have absolutely no interest in putzing around with whatever inadequate and clumsy alternative they provide.

Good luck to GM with that utterly stupid decision. And good luck to Jeep trying to extract another $99 to “update” the navigation system.

 

Book Review: Tropic Angel – by Nate Van Coops

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Two StarsLeave a comment

Luke Angel has been a pilot all his life. He runs an airplane hangar and repair business out of an airfield in St. Petersburg, Florida. One day a friend and his plane go missing. He finds out when a police detective comes to his shop. Something does not add up in Luke’s mind, and he plays detective and vigilante at the same time.

Tropic Angel is a fast-paced thriller and very readable. Playing in Florida, and dealing with planes and bad hombres, the book reminded me of Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen. Van Coops is a good writer. I have read many of his books, particularly his time travel series, which he writes under the name Nathan Van Coops. Here is the list of Van Coops time travel books I have read:

Author Title Genre Category Rating Date
Nathan Van Coops Time of Death Fiction Time Travel 2.5 Jan 23, 2022
Nathan Van Coops Agent of Time Fiction Time Travel 2 Dec 13, 2020
Nathan Van Coops The Warp Clock Fiction Time Travel 3 Oct 9, 2018
Nathan Van Coops The Day after Never Fiction Time Travel 2 Jan 2, 2017
Nathan Van Coops The Chronothon Fiction Time Travel 3 Dec 3, 2016
Nathan Van Coops In Times Like These Fiction Time Travel 3 Oct 31, 2016

When I reviewed In Times Like These back in 2016, I said this:

The best time travel book of all time is Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. This book is the second best.

Tropic Angel is the first of a series of two books (so far). I am sure the second one will be just as readable as the first one. Van Coops books are pure entertainment and fun to read, but I am not interested enough in what happens next in Luke Angel’s life to read the next one.

Trump Saluting General of North Korea in June 2018

On By Norbert HauptIn PoliticalLeave a comment

Here is President Trump on June 5, 2018, saluting to North Korean four-star  general No Kwang Chol.

Look at Jim Jong Un in the background. Even he looks like he can’t believe his eyes. This shows you how ignorant Trump is with respect to foreign policy and the role of the United States in the world. Trump should never have gone to North Korea, let alone salute its generals. This was an abomination and an embarrassment to our country.

It also shows where Trump’s respect lies.

In the spirit of fairness: remember when Obama bowed to Japanese emperor Akihito in 2009? The whole country went apeshit. Here is a post I wrote then.

I stand by the comments I made then.

I would so like to be able to vote for a leader in our country that I have some respect for.

 

When the Tigers Broke Free – My Perspective of Russia

On By Norbert HauptIn Atrocities, Music, War1 Comment

Pink Floyd released the album The Final Cut in 1983, which contained When the Tigers Broke Free. I must have heard that song hundreds of times, and I still today, every time I hear it, my eyes well up with tears. Here it is. I suggest you read along with the lyrics for better understanding.

When the Tigers Broke Free

It was just before dawn
One miserable morning in black ‘forty four
When the forward commander
Was told to sit tight

When he asked that his men be withdrawn
And the Generals gave thanks
As the other ranks held back
The enemy tanks for a while

And the Anzio bridgehead
Was held for the price
Of a few hundred ordinary lives

And kind old King George
Sent mother a note
When he heard that father was gone

It was, I recall
In the form of a scroll
With gold leaf adorned
And I found it one day
In a drawer of old photographs, hidden away

And my eyes still grow damp to remember
His Majesty signed
With his own rubber stamp

It was dark all around
There was frost in the ground
When the tigers broke free
And no one survived
From the Royal Fusiliers Company Z

They were all left behind
Most of them dead
The rest of them dying
And that’s how the High Command
Took my daddy from me

As of now, British estimates put the number of Russians killed or wounded in Ukraine since February 2022 at about 500,000. Today, every day, we estimate that about 1,000 Russian soldiers are injured or killed in Ukraine. Russia is recruiting 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers a month. I am not counting Ukrainian soldiers here who are defending their country. The Russian men and boys are sent into a meatgrinder in a far-away country that has nothing to do with their own lives, security or safety, simply at the will and ego of one man.

Throughout history, rich and powerful men have sent other people’s daddies into the line of fire, into literal meatgrinders.

Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Putin!

We don’t learn and we keep doing it.

When the Tigers Broke Free!

The Devolution of Presidential Debates

On By Norbert HauptIn Political2 Comments

I received the above text from Trump this morning.

I have watched all presidential debates since the Jimmy Carter years. Last night’s debate was the very worst one I have ever seen.

I am proud of my country, but after last night’s performance I am embarrassed for our country, not because “they don’t have any respect for us” as Trump spouted last night, but because out of 330 million people in the United States, THIS IS THE BEST we can come up with for two people for president? It is an abomination.

Trump was Trump. He does rallies all the time, where he spouts nonsense, gibberish, incoherent word salad, with no real objective other than hear himself talk. Last night’s debate was another Trump rally, this time with a gigantic, world-wide audience. Yes, thanks CNN for giving him this opportunity. Trump didn’t gain any voters last night. He didn’t answer any questions. He lied and misrepresented reality all night long. He insulted large swaths of people, me, an immigrant, included. Biden should have made short work of Trump last night.

Biden wasn’t Biden. This was arguably Biden’s most important 90 minutes of his career. Trump is a conman and an impostor. He has no agenda, other than enrich and glorify himself. That was obvious. Biden’s job was to show that. It should have been easy. But he could not handle it. I was dismayed within the first two minutes. I was afraid he might start to cry. He as a feeble, senile man desperately trying to hold his own. But he was obviously not up to the job. He came apart in front of the nation. Where was the Biden of the last state of the union address?

Out of 330 million people, these are our choices. Biden gets an F- from me for his performance last night. I myself could have done better. I could have walked up on that stage in my Birkenstocks, jeans and T-shirt and took care of Trump. All I needed to do is ten “table-topics.” For those of you who do not know the Toastmasters International program: A “table-topic” is a two-minute speech you give extemporaneously, without any preparation, without notes, and without knowing what the topic is going to be. Last night was basically ten table-topics, and I would have done just fine.

I would have answered every question the moderators asked. Even though I am not a politician, I know enough about the immigration crisis, the border, the pandemic, economics, taxes, and inflation that I could have given coherent answers in full sentences, with an introduction, a body and a conclusion, using up my 120 seconds. In the rebuttals I would have simply pointed out Trump’s hyperbolic distractions or outright lies and corrected the facts. Maybe I would not have scored A+, but I am sure I could have been in the B range. I am sure that there are another 10 million other Americans who could have done just as well as I would have.

President Biden is not up to the job anymore. In the most important 90 minutes of his career he could not perform. I do not trust him to handle Xi or Putin. I do not trust him in another debate with Trump. His senility is obvious. The emperor has no clothes.

Obama would have made mincemeat out of Trump. Pete Buttigieg would have eaten Trump alive. Go and watch some Buttigieg YouTube videos and observe how sharp and quick that man is. Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris would have been orders of magnitudes more effective than Biden.

Instead, we got to watch in horror how Trump wiped the floor with Joe Biden last night.

What do we do now?

On My Commute Today – the White House

On By Norbert HauptIn TravelsLeave a comment

After an all-day summit meeting at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, I walked across the street and through Lafayette Park on my way to an Uber. This was my view:

Not a bad way to end the work day.

Ten Commandments in Public Schools – Grooming

On By Norbert HauptIn ReligionLeave a comment

Here is a post from the ACLU:

These initiatives are about grooming our children, nothing more. It starts with a simple thing like posting the Ten Commandments of the Christian religion. Next they require children to attend bible schools. They are noticing that less and less young Americans are religious, and they think grooming from an early age on will fix that.