To our senators on the Zelenskyy meeting

While I don't agree with Mr Trump on his Ukraine policy (and believe he's effectively acting in Putin's best interests as a kind of "Russian asset") this is not about that specifically. 

This is about his "stunt" in the White House that involved inviting President Zelenskyy to come on an official visit, and then proceeding to essentially ambush him with multiple people involved, strong words, shouting, and even a bit of a physical moment where Trump shoved him. 

All played out for the cameras, including a Russian news outlet. 

And then the "icing on the cake" - kicking him out and calling him unreasonable and then complaining about how he dressed. 

On that last point, musk is often seen in the White House dressed "like a slob" and his kids are allowed to run amok. Where is the decorum there?

This is all unacceptable and flies in the face of what we believe diplomacy to be. Henry Kissinger famously said "diplomacy is the art of restraining power"

This was surely not that. 

In fact, if you take the time to read about or first diplomat, Benjamin Franklin, you see where diplomacy comes from for our nation. It requires you to be willing to listen. To be self aware. Not to simply tell everyone what they have to do. 

At what point are you going to say "enough is enough?" And actually say something about the childish reality-show behavior we're seeing in the White House?

You represent us, all Americans. And this behavior, this utter disregard for the mores that have existed for nearly 250 years is absurd, and must be stopped. 

We can disagree on specific agenda items Trump wants. We can argue the merits of policy. 

But we can not argue that the tearing down our history, or place in the world, and how we treat other nations is positive in any way. 

Land of the Lost

I saw this and, well, the truth is that I know more about the tv show Land of the Lost than I probably should (eyes roll). 

For example, it was mostly written by some of the greatest sci-fi writers of that generation. 

But back to the picture. My  mega bonus trivia: members of UCLA's basketball team were inside the sleestack costumes. Including Bill Walton who said it was a hoot. Bill Lambier was in high school in LA and was sometimes there, too.

About my career

From the time I left high school, until I started working at American Express, I did a number of what you might call "odd jobs."  I worked a number of short term contract jobs that were purpose-driven, I interned at IBM in the PC division, I worked at GE in their simulation division, I did graduate research at NASA (and wrote my thesis about payload processing on the space shuttle), I spent the better part of a year working at Disney World, and I did a stint in manufacturing as a plant engineer. 

I had some fun along the way.  I didn't make a ton of money, but I lived my best life.

But when a unique opportunity came my way, I decided to jump on it.  The year was 1994, the company was American Express, and they were looking for someone to come in as a contractor and build something new.

Until a few years before I joined, AmEx had been known as a charge card.  A charge card is essentially designed to lend you money that you have to pay back at the end of the billing cycle.  There was no interest to be accrued, rather if you didn't pay by the due date, you were assessed a late fee.  The company was governed by the FTC and was not considered a bank.

But, in the early 1990s, they launched their first credit card (that could accrue interest) in a product they called Optima.

What AmEx wanted to do, what they brought me on to do, was to figure out how to launch new charge products that could have very specific benefits that more closely resembled credit cards. It was so wildly interesting that I was in.

I was part of a very small team that made that happen. We launched a number of new card products into the marketplace.  Some were successful, and some not so much.  But I was responsible for making it happen.  Me.  The company would not have grown in this space without me.  In all that time, I certainly generated revenue for the company.  Its wild to realize just what I contributed to the bottom line.

And what did I get for my hard work?  A job offer to come on as a full time industrial engineer and continue to build on this process.  And take a pay cut.  I thought long and hard about it, but decided to take the offer.

The next big thing I worked on was a secretive project that looked like a new product launch.  I had to sign a specific NDA for it, and was one of about 10 people in the company who knew anything about this.  And one of about 5 actively working on it.

Enough time has elapsed, and the outcome is widely known, but I still won't give away too much here.  In short, we were working with one of the banks to launch a Visa product that could earn Membership Rewards points.

Two side notes here: Membership Rewards started out was Membership Miles, where purchases you made on you charge card could accrue miles to be used on a partner airline.  It was expanded (on a project I worked on), to not just be used for miles, but for other things, too.  You accumulate "reward points" instead of "miles."

The other thing is something a lot of people don't realize. American Express is a closed network, and acts as the "issuer" and the "acquirer" meaning they own it all and make money on the cards and the merchant network, fees, interest, and so on.  Discover is a similar type of setup.  But Visa and Mastercard are independent organizations that run the network, but they do not issue the cards.  That's done by a legal agreement with member banks.  These banks have an exclusive agreement to only issue Visas and Mastercards.

What we didn't realize when we launched our new product was that this wasn't about getting new customers.  It was really about exploiting a loophole in the bank member agreement which caused Visa to amend their bylaws to prevent what we did from happening.... and ultimately to get the DOJ to open an investigation into Visa's business practices.  And that led to a very large (like $100s of millions large) judgement that Visa had to pay to Amex.

So in summary, my work led to a windfall for AmEx.  My blood, sweat, and tears gave them something.  But netted me literally nothing in return other than an "atta boy."   

Flash forward a bit.  By the turn of the 21set century, I was working in a different area and got tapped to help migrate customer service agents off of the old-style mainframe green screens, and onto something web-based.  In this case, I was a cog in a machine that was making this transition.  There was an outside consulting company that was running the show.  But I was responsible for designing the user interface, and ran between the tech teams and business partners to get it completed.  It's impossible for me to say what my contribution was in terms of a percent or a dollar amount, but I was heavily engaged.  And the amazing thing is that when I left the company nearly 25 years later, that same user interface was still being used by agents taking calls!  The backend may have changed, but what they saw was all me.

Shortly after that, I migrated the help system for the tool from paper to a web-based solution.  At the end of the year, I was told that I  - just me - was responsible for more than $1 million in saves!  That netted me another "atta boy" .... and then ... well .... I got called into a meeting where they told us how they changed the stock award program.  Until that point, they granted stock awards to every 1 in 2 employees.  I had never gotten one, but had been around for nearly a decade so in theory I should have received 5 of them.  It was like rubbing salt into a wound in a way, I got nothing and then was told that I got even less than nothing.

Later, I got put onto a special project to look at internal fraud.  And it turns out there was some.  More than anyone knew.  I couldn't tell anyone about it, not even my boss.  So of course, he was upset that I wasn't working on anything *for* him, and anything I did find would not contribute to his success.  So I took a lot of flack.  I could tell a higher up what I found, but he was uninterested in knowing the reality (shame on him as an officer of the company!) and he just wanted to make sure we wouldn't let it happen again.

I did get a little monetary reward for my work at the end, but it felt weird taking it because I did wind up "turning in" some people I knew pretty well, and they were unceremoniously fired. 

I went on to work in different areas in tech after that. My roles were more generally creative in nature - I developed processes, deployed universal tools, and worked on reporting vulnerabilities (including some cool dashboards). I taught classes for a while after AmEx decided to become a bank. And I got a patent into the system, which if AmEx had decided to build it (rather than squat on it) would have brought me around to Membership Rewards in a way.

By the way, it turns out that the patent was rejected anyway.  The reasons don't really make sense, and I can see the outside attorney retained by AmEx communicated with the office about resolving some issues, but they never reached out to me about it, either to ask questions or to simply tell that it was never completed.  Its just one more thing to throw my hands up in the air about.  

That was my 28ish years.  I was responsible for $100s of millions of money the company would have otherwise had....and yet I got the call one afternoon. Thanks for all your hard work, but don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.  

That's the delightful part about working in corporate america. 

Another in what is becoming my weekly comments to my senators.

I'm still trying to figure out why Elon Musk is being allowed to run amok through our government.  And what you plan to do about it.

You are tacitly approving of him standing on stage and holding up a chainsaw, and making a mockery of the federal workers he's firing indiscriminately. You are condoning his nazi salute.  

But those are just "simple" yet essentially harmful actions.  His more nefarious ones that you are letting go include:

Creating a "department" that he claims to both not be a part of yet and also run, and whose acronym conveniently is an advertisement for  his crypto coin.

Deciding what is happening at the FAA because of his personal beef with the administration in order to promote his own spacex company - while endangering all of us.

Telling us that we need to get rid of the international space station in order to go to mars - again a blatant promotion of his own private company.

He received a contract for tesla vehicles that went through no bidding process - and which serves to enrich him personally as the ceo of tesla.

He has already moved some official communications from agencies to appear only on the-platform-formerly-known-as-twitter which he owns.  And again without any sort of formal process. And plans to move more agency information there and there only, for his own gain.

This is simply absurd.  DO YOUR JOB and hold him accountable.  He's an unelected person who is telling the president what to do. And profiting from those things.  He's a foreign national to boot.  He has no business doing all the things he is doing.  

Shame on you for letting it happen on your watch.

History repeats itself

As Delon Trusk continues to assail our public servants, I noticed something.  

Did you know that nearly 30% of all people in government service are former members of our military? And 70% of all federal jobs are defense and security- related businesses?

By volume of federal workers, here are the biggest departments:

Veterans Affairs ~19%

Army ~12%

Navy ~11%

Homeland Security ~10%

Air Force ~ 8%

Justice ~6%

Defense ~5%

So, in effect, by "trimming the workforce" (and seeing Musk holding a chainsaw is the absolute height of absurdity), they are both adversely impacting veterans AND essentially weakening our defensive capabilities.

And for some retired military personnel, there is a general fear that their pensions or other benefits may wind up being cut or delayed either directly or indirectly because of these cuts.

Now, the title of this post is about history repeating itself.  

Let me start by saying that I am a "citizen archivist" for the National Archives (and will keep doing it as long as that remains available - who knows what might happen there?).  I am helping to transcribe hand-written, cursive letters regarding Revolutionary War Veterans.

The thing about the Revolutionary War is that people, ordinary citizens, took up the cause to fight against the British.  They did it because it was right.  But it was understood they would get pensions and land grants for their service.

The war ended, and the new government sought to make good on this, and set up a program to give back to these soldiers.  Except that being newly formed, it was complicated to figure out just how to do that.  And once they started taking applications there was a fire that destroyed most of the documents.

So the soldiers had to wait longer still.  Then, in 1818 - 35 years after the end of the war - they officially started taking information again, but it was based on testimony of the soldiers who were still alive and their families.  Some were paid out, and some had to wait longer still.

The records I'm going through are from shortly before the civil war - in the late 1850s, another 40 years later - so now these pensions that were worth far less since it was almost 75 years later were going to children and grandchildren.

History repeats itself insomuch as the soldiers we have defending us are not really given their due.  The VA setup we have now is inadequate, and in some ways not so different than it was after the Revolutionary War; soldiers suffered injuries that weren't treated properly and they weren't compensated for their injuries.

And yes, I am painting with a fairly broad brush. I just found it interesting that we put so much emphasis on our military, but the actual people in these jobs are mere commodities that are cast aside once their service is done.

Watch "Will An Asteroid Hit Earth in 2032?" on YouTube

This is a clear, concise, and rational explanation that counters the salacious headlines by Neil Degras Tyson. 

In short: we will be able to accurately predict what will happen soon-ish as the asteroid makes its way though the galaxy - thanks to science! 

And if it were to hit us, it's most likely to land in the ocean and have little to no impact.

So when you hear the breathless report or read the all caps doomsday headlines, stop and think about it. 

https://youtu.be/_-ZB2Z7VtmE?si=HZ5KnjDpztsZhw8v

A Chinese breakthrough in space travel

The Chinese believe they have unlocked a solid state fuel to get us out of Earth's atmosphere. 

For those not quite sure what that means, we use a liquid rocket fuel coupled with a liquified oxygen in a controlled explosion that creates thrust. 

A solid rocket fuel would be something more stable and with an even greater control. If you remember the model rockets many of us had as kids, it's taking of like the rocket packs that were stable and safe we'd use to launch a rocket. 

By the way, the article notes that watching Boeing's failure with Starliner helped jump start their plans. 

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3299454/chinese-scientists-turn-boeings-helium-leak-crisis-stealth-missile-tech-breakthrough