2009 West Coast Round Trip Father-Son Roadtrip: Prep work

After dinner tonight I spent some time in the barn playing “Ultimate Tetris”, that is trying to make the most of the Jaguar’s miniscule boot. Normally I have a tools & spares kit that I just toss into an old leather vintage suitcase and put it in the boot. This works great for weekend rallies such as the one my father & I did a few weeks ago, but for a ~10 day drive where we’ll need as much luggage space as possible it just won’t cut it. Takes up too much precious boot space. Tonight I unpacked the big tool & spares suitcase and distributed it between the spare tire well under the boot and a smaller vintage suitcase I have. The latter will ride on the luggage rack, along with our tent (we’ll be camping occasionally) and a few other items. The boot will hold our actual luggage.

I was planning to leave on Tuesday of next week. This date was chosen to give me time to wrap up a big project I’ve been working on at work. This project has taken up a lot of my time for more than a year as it involves a huge change in one of our most important systems and services. My role has been research and vendor negotiations, as well as planning. I managed to get my part wrapped up earlier this week, so I’m thinking of moving my road trip schedule up a few days and leaving on Sunday. We could tag along with the Seattle Jaguar Club’s Mt. Rainier Tour to start the day, and then head to Portland and try to meet up with the Reyns’ who are there for the vintage races. We’ll shoot for visiting the Evergreen Air Museum next, likely Monday morning. Then south. Stay tuned for more!

Car Photo of the Day: Another Interior

Along the same lines as the last CPotD, here’s an Interior that should be fun for the carspotters. Once again, I’ve blanked out one spot with a blaring car company logo, but otherwise it is untouched. Of course guessing the marque on this one won’t be too hard, the model however might take more depth.

Good luck!

In other news, I posted another review of a classic car, the XK 120, which can be read here.

2009 Classic Motorcar Rally: Final results & trip home.

Apologies for not posting this in a timely fashion. As usual my arrival home triggers a complete change in priorities and the wrap ups get postponed.

On the Sunday morning after the rally finished we gathered in the ballroom for the results and a nice brunch. To our eternal surprise Dad & I finished 4th in class, and 5th overall, which means that we actually improved over last year’s 6th place finish. This despite having blown an entire morning’s worth of checkpoints on Day 1! We accumulated 49 penalty points over the course of the rally, but only 11 of those were on-course, meaning that had we managed to stay on-course on Day 1 we’d likely finished in the top three cars. There is no way we could have won 1st place, as the Chockie-Slavich team in the little red Alfa managed to only accumulate THREE points the entire rally. The Beckers in the old Pontiac came in 2nd with 8 points, and the Olsens in the BMW CS came in 3rd with 18 points. The Swansons driving the BMW Z3 accumulated 22 points to win the Modern class and capture 4th overall.

We were awarded trophies for our performance, which in typical Doug Breithaupt style are model cars. Ours are BMW 503 roadsters, plus my car received a trophy for the best-finishing British car, which is a model of a Series 3 E-type.

Dad & I packed the car and headed up to Swartz Bay to catch a BC Ferry over to the mainland. We arrived within 20 minutes of a sailing to Tsawassen and were loaded aboard the big boat.

loaded on Deck 5

We left the car and found a comfy spot on one of the passenger decks. I occasionally wandered outside to fire off a few photos to capture the atmosphere of the ride for you:

Leaving Swartz Bay. Portland Island on the left, Vancouver Island on the right

I call this on the BOOM FERRY as it is obviously set aside for flammable & explosive loads they don't want on the big boats.

Exiting Active Pass, which is a narrow passage separating Mayne Island and Galiano Island, and looking north-east across the Georgia Strait to the Lower Mainland. You can just see Point Roberts (a geopolitical oddity) in the US at the right edge of the horizon.

A similar size BC ferry passed us going southbound through Active Pass, which was quite a sight. Two big ferries simultaneously crossing a very narrow, twisting channel:






After we made landfall at Tsawassen we drove north(a tad unintuitive) then east to get to the US border. The status sign on Highway 99 said the Peace Arch Crossing had a 90 minute wait, and the truck crossing queue was 60 minutes. I declined both and continued east to the next crossing just north of Lynden, WA. There the wait was measured in less than 5 cars. We zoomed through and headed home down I-5, arriving home mid-afternoon. We celebrated our excellent standing with a dinner at La Hacienda with the entire family.

Robert McNamara and Lessons (un)Learned

While it was hard to catch in the never ending stream of supposed “news” coverage of some dead singing weirdo, one of the 20th century’s most important figures died this week: Robert S. McNamara. Best known as Kennedy & LBJ’s Secretary of Defense, essentially the man responsible for the US’ involvement in the Vietnam war, McNamara was also an executive at the Ford Motor Company. At Ford he is credited with the Falcon, and therefore virtually all of Ford’s subsequent small cars. McNamara also served in the USAAF in WW2, as well as a stint at the World Bank, seemingly the traditional home of disgraced members of the Executive branch.

To me he was always portrayed as a villian in history, both in the White House and at Ford. My eyes were opened to a new perspective when I viewed the Oscar-winning documentary “The Fog of War” a few years ago. It is literally a conversation with the man himself, and in it he reveals and reviews his errors, and draws lessons from them. It is truly wisdom passed on from an elder, and digestion of it should be required for anyone who find themselves in a position of leadership. McNamara breaks down his experience into eleven life lessons:

R.S. McNamara’s eleven life lessons
1. Empathize with your enemy
2. Rationality will not save us
3. There’s something beyond one’s self
4. Maximize efficiency
5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war
6. Get the data
7. Belief and seeing are often both wrong
8. Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning
9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil
10. Never say never
11. You can’t change human nature

These lessons were foremost in his mind as not long before the documentary was made, McNamara wrote a book which applied many of these lessons unlearned had failed us in Vietnam:

Eleven lessons from the Vietnam War

1. We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.
2. We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience … We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.
3. We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values.
4. Our judgments of friend and foe, alike, reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.
5. We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces, and doctrine.
6. We failed, as well, to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.
7. We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.
8. After the action got under way, and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening, and why we were doing what we did.
9. We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgement of what is in another people’s or country’s best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.
10. We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.
11. We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.
Underlying many of these errors lay our failure to organize the top echelons of the executive branch to deal effectively with the extraordinarily complex range of political and military issues.

In reality these lessons do not really limit themselves to the conflict in southeast Asia in the 1960s ad 1970s, in fact they apply to virtually any conflict between nation-states. Substitute the word ‘Iraq’ into any of these lessons and you will find that they apply. It is a shame that this level of review was not considered in 2002/2003. The human and monetary capital saved would have been astounding.

Isn’t the life and lessons of this man far more important to our country than a dead drug-addled, gender/race-confused, singing-dancing, whack-job? Why is the media so obsessed with the latter, and ignoring the former? Do any of you wonder why I don’t watch television anymore? If so your answer is found in this situation.

Instead of watching the 24hr news cycle’s circle jerk over “MJ”, pull up a chair and watch The Fog of War right here. (Or go rent the DVD if image quality and sync issues drive you crazy.) There are many, many moments within it that are profoundly thought-provoking – such as at the 42 minute mark. The depth and impact of these words about and on humanity truly put the meaninglessness of the gloved one in perspective.

Your brain will thank you for it.

Car Photo of the Day: Name That Car.

Mystery Car!

It has been a while since I tossed a real stumper up here so maybe this one will do the trick. I’ve edited out one small identifying mark from this photo, otherwise it is unretouched. I will admit to having minor fits of lust whenever I see one of these cars, as they fit within one of my Zeitgeist Car categories, that is a car that expresses its moment in time very well by its styling and presentation. Nobody would ever guess that this car came from any time and place other than its true time and place. Do you know what car this is?

Car Photo of the Day: Boy & Toy

This is my son Nicholas, on his birthday or Christmas, probably about nine years ago. I know the car was a gift from his grandmother Bishop. It is post 1999, as I can tell it was taken in the kitchen of the home we moved into the Spring of that year, but pre 2003 which I can surmise from vague age and his teeth. I bet his mother can tell you exactly when it was shot as that is how mothers work: mentally cataloguing the mundane minutiae of their childs’ lives… but being a dad, I can only narrow it down to within a rough two- or three-year time-frame. I do know that this was taken prior to our father/son road trip in the summer of 2003, as his appearance over those four days are deeply imprinted on my mind. I can honestly say that those four days were among the happiest days of my life. I’d never felt as close to him as then, and have not since. We were alone, and together. We talked, and we didn’t. We genuinely enjoyed each others’ company and let our whims decide what we were going to do.

In about a week I’ll be doing the same, but this time with both boys. We’re taking a road trip. Actually two road trips. One with Chris, the other with Nick. I have so much work to get done before we can start “playing” with our big-boy toy, so excuse me if I’ve been remiss in posting as often as I usually do. The CPotD will likely cease once we’re under way, unless we see something cool that we’ll share. Instead I hope to post updates from the road. I’ll certainly track progress via twitter, as that is simple to do from my cell phone. My username on twitter is chuckgoolsbee (the name I use everywhere, even in real life!)

Can’t wait to be on the road again.

Enderle Idiocy, Schneier Wisdom: “Terrorist Risk of Cloud Computing”

Schneier on Security: Terrorist Risk of Cloud Computing.

Bruce Schneier gets it COMPLETELY right, (about Rob Enderle being completely wrong,) when he says:

“…the main point of the article, which seems to imply that terrorists will someday decide that disrupting people’s Lands’ End purchases will be more attractive than killing them. Okay, that was a caricature of the article, but not by much. Terrorism is an attack against our minds, using random death and destruction as a tactic to cause terror in everyone. To even suggest that data disruption would cause more terror than nuclear fallout completely misunderstands terrorism and terrorists.”

There is a common logical error people make when trying to asses risk: planning without thinking. Making invalid assumptions without proper analysis. Nowhere is this as obvious as when people discuss protecting things from terrorist attack. Terrorism ignites all manner of fear in people, even without the “terrorists” having to actually DO anything. Fear is indeed the mind-killer here as people toss away all logic and let their imaginations run wild, conjuring up all manner of fearful outcomes. They literately lose their minds and lose the ability to think clearly.

Of course Rob Endlerle is a proven idiot and is obviously incapable of thinking. He merely lobs grenades and trolls for flames wherever he writes, always constructing bizarro arguments on assumptions and fallacies. Schneier rightly points out one of these fallacies when he scoffs at Enderle’s statement: “The Twin Towers, which were destroyed in the 9/11 attack, took down a major portion of the U.S. infrastructure at the same time.” The U.S.A.’s infrastructure suffered virtually zero damage on 9/11. In the grand scheme of things the 9/11 attack was less than a pinprick in our national skin. The air transport system was back to normal within a week. The stock exchange was trading again in a few days. More people die falling off ladders each year in the USA than those killed on 9/11/2001.

The point of terrorism is found right there within its name: terror. Shock. Outrage. Fear. Paralysis. Over-reaction. That is what terrorists want. Their aim is to provoke maximal emotional reaction with minimal effort. Therefore terrorists attack specific targets chosen for maximum shock and outrage. They attack symbols. They attack people. They seek to have visibility. They don’t attack infrastructure. In the case of 9/11 infrastructure was the weapon, not the target.

Nation-States engaged in warfare attack infrastructure. The fastest way to disable an enemy is to destroy their means of communications, transportation, and manufacture. This is how warfare has been conducted since the mid-20th century. Technology allowed the expansion of the battlefield into entire continental “theaters of war” and technology allowed warring nations to attack each others’ technology. This is the natural evolution of conflict that began when our ancestors first beat each other with rocks.

The error that Enderle, and so many others make is mistaking terrorism for warfare. Terrorism is NOT warfare. The purpose of attacking infrastructure is to weaken the opponent so as to make warfare easier. The destruction of infrastructure allows the next logical step in warfare: the attacker destroying their enemy and/or invading their enemies territory. Terrorists are not interested in those steps. They are not seeking to invade or destroy. They merely want to inflict maximum emotional damage at minimal cost. Osama bin Laden spent very little money to execute the 9/11 attacks. Sure, it may have been over a million dollars but it provoked a trillion+ dollar response. THAT is the point of terrorism.

Datacenters, Telecommunications Infrastructure, Carrier Hotels, Long-Haul Fiber-Optic Circuits, and by extension, “Cloud Computing” will never be terrorism targets. Ever. They have no emotional value. Their disablement or even destruction provokes no visceral emotional reaction or outrage (except in the people like myself who must build and maintain them of course!) Ask yourself this: If the 9/11 hijackers flew those planes into One Wilshire, The Westin Building, and the Google Datacenter in The Dalles, Oregon would we be fighting wars in two middle-eastern countries today? The answer is: “No.” In fact it may not have even been seen as a terrorist act at first, instead being seen as a random set of accidents. It would not have been seen live on TV around the world, and people would not have even been affected much technically and certainly not emotionally. Today it would be one of those dimly recalled events of yesteryear. “Oh, remember when those plane crashes made the Internet slow for a few hours?”