Categories
Shanghai Composite

Hongqiao airport, bus, railway and subway stations

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I think I started to stay at the Hyatt Hongqiao CBD in late 2017, when they was newly opened. One advantage of the hotel is it’s very close to the Hongqiao Railway Station, sometimes people call it Hongqiao Gao’tie Zhan in Chinese 虹桥高铁站.

But the first time I went from the railway station to my hotel, I almost got lost (I included a YT Video explaining it below). The main reason was at the time I didn’t have a good map. Here, I am showing you how to walk from Hongqiao Railway Station to the Hongqiao Hub and Shenhong Road (where Hyatt Place Hongqiao CBD hotel is).

I also made a few other YT videos for Hong’qiao Hub which is across the street (Shen’hong road) from the Railway station.

Hongqiao Hub one

Hongqiao Hub two

Hongqiao Hub three

Btw, shameless plug, all My YT videos

Old posts

Year 2009 – From Shanghai Pudong PVG to Hongqiao SHA airport

Year 2007 – Hongqiao Shopping Mall

Categories
Career Stocks

Interview story (a while ago)

Reading Time: 3 minutesOriginally written 2005-02-08

Holiday Inn Clinton

After I picked up the rental car (with GPS) at Newark airport, I was on the way to my destination. I took an exit on I-78 by accident, with the help from GPS I did get back to the road without problem. At about 9:40 PM I arrived the hotel. I could see the snow on the parking lot — it’s colder in NJ than in St. Louis. The hotel looks pretty nice, and the town reminds me of Rolla, a small mid-west town where I spent 3 years for study (1997-2000).

After dinner and shower I began to prepare my presentation for tomorrow (2/04/05). My bro told me run it 4-5 times before the actual presentation. I wrote down what I want to say for my slides. Besides work related stuff, I also put down some light side stuff: where I grow up, hobbies, things/places I experienced in the States. This is my first time to give presentation after I graduate from school in 2000. A bit nervous, but my experience in presenting research in car companies during school days did help a lot. I also ironed the shirt for the big day. Went to bed at 1 AM.

Interview

The presentation went very well, much better then I expected. The participants (mainly managers) were impressed. Then comes the harder part.

HR manager is a middle-aged lady who seems very sharp. She talked about the Chinese employee’s work ethic and China’s growth. She also asked about questions about working availability/eligibility, how I heard about the opportunity, and some other behavior type questions. I think it went OK.

Manager 1: this is the make-or-break time. Because he is going to be my boss if I get the position. I heard from HR manager he is a very aggressive person, and he moved around a few times inside the company to get his current position. He asked many technical questions (Qns), some of them I am not comfortable with. At one time I asked why I left my graduate school in China (not get the degree) and come to US. Why not come to US after getting the degree. This is a legimate Qn but I was annoyed by the way he went about the Qn. Finally I told me there is not an ideal way around this, because of visa and financial support issue. He asked if he regretted my decision at that time, I said no. I don’t know if I would be better off or worse off if I made another choice at the time, but I want to look forward. In retrospect, I think I would say there is always things to lose when you try to get something (trade off). This reminds me another Qn I was asked by an interviewer in another company: what I would be if I stay in the same company, and how to work towards to that position. I goofed on that one because I said it just takes time to become a senior engineer/project leader. I took a facility tour with him after the Qn session. General impression was good, the cafeteria and fitness room is much better than my current employer’s. I saw many Indian engineers, later on I learned from Product Mgr they are hired from India on H-1B. In retrospect, I think one reason he is asking tough Qns because he wanted to test my skills to handle the stress situations, which will be very common if I take the position.

Manager 2: he is my would-be-boss’ boss, he, Mgr 1 and I had a lunch together. They’ve all travelled to China on business. He tried to initiate the conversation and asked me a few common things, talked facilities in China. I really regretted with the big sandwich I ordered, but I tried to talk as much as I can. I think it went OK.

Manager 3: he is a product manager, and he seems like a nice guy. His team will rely on our system for new product development, so he wanted to make sure the system is up and running, and the data is not corrupt. He listed an instance that half-a-years’ product data get lost during data migration (from old system to new system). I don’t know if that eventually get resolved or not, but it seems like a common problem.

Ms. C and Mr. D (would-be direct reports): teleconference went not very well. Like Mgr 1, they also prepared a list of technical Qns for me to answer. I think I scored poorly (<50%). It looks like I’m the guy to solve their problems and headache. But again In retrospect, I think one reason they were asking tough Qns because he wanted to test my skills to handle the stress situations, which will be very common if I take the position.

Categories
advice and tips Career Economy

Software Engineer Job Market March 2025 and Some Job Search Tips

Reading Time: 5 minutes

The IT software engineer job market seems warmed up a little bit recently, from my observations. I am getting some emails from the recruiters, and they looked like real jobs or openings.

I think during the middle of last year (June 2024) I came across the software engineers job chart from (FRED) Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in the United States, and the chart could be a bit misleading because the start date is Feb 2020. Basically, we can say it just showed the dramatic increase of software engineer jobs and subsequent declining of job openings due to the pandemic over-hiring earlier, big tech big cuts following Elon’s huge cut at Twitter post his acquisition.

I believe this hiring boom and bust trend is similar for the related area such as quality assurance (testing engineers), localization and translation, platform and dev ops engineering, product development and project management and so on.

Indeed and LinkedIn

In recent years, I mainly use Indeed and LinkedIn for job search: for my last 2 jobs (Mastercard and Ascension) I found them mainly through Indeed.com. I remember the days (year 2010) when I found my job at local craigslist, those days are long gone. I found my current job in year 2021 through a recruiter btw – I know the recruiter (recruiting company) through previous engagement (year 2011), and we kept that relationship over the years 🙂

A note on LinkedIn, LinkedIn has DESTROYED the job market (in 2024). I tend to agree – because LinkedIn aggregates a lot of jobs nowadays, and for one job especially the remote job, it’s quite easy for the recruiter to received hundreds of resumes in a day or two. For example, this staff software engineer job at GE Healthcare, I saw “(posted) 23 hours ago · 62 people clicked apply” right now (03-25-2025, 2:17 pm central). So this is a real problem. And I don’t know how to get around it – unless you know the recruiter or hiring manager.

Typical process (St. Louis based dev jobs)

Phone screen, technical screen and manager interview. Offer or being ghosted, or if they are nice, they will send you the rejection email. Note in STL we don’t do the leetcode stuff which is common among Silicon Valley, Seatle or Austin based tech companies. They needed those quizzes to filter out candidates – in a way it’s like the Gaokao in China.

Interview

There are usually two types of questions: behavior and technical. For behavior sometimes you can go to glassdoor.com and see if there are any. I guess we can do similar for technical questions too – but at the same time I think it’s probably more unpredictable.

Whatever the question you receive, try to be calm. Over the years I have interviewed at places, in rare cases the interviewer will have some sort of undesirable attitude – for example, I recall once at Tomson Reuters in year 2009, the guy commented towards the end – you are not the most ignorant person coming in in terms of technical knowledge 🙁

Occasionally you will meet some super nice people too: people with decency and true empathy. Once in New Jersey, I was interviewing at Ingersoll-Rand office all day, one interviewer said, let’s make it informal, so he took me walk around the cafeteria. It was winter, and we didn’t go outside.

Don’t be defensive, as much as practical obviously. Once my big boss at current place, asked me: it seems your tenure is not too long in this and the place, note the implied question here – are you a job hopper (I talked about this topic here too). More on job hopping for practical purposes, there are data to back up that for many people, salary or compensation increase is from “job hopping” (Forbes). A few of my job changes (not hopping 🙂 confirmed this trend too.

Some other tips

Background check

Don’t lie on your resume. At the same time, don’t stress over the background check. Sometimes at some old-fashioned companies or out of date places they will ask a question such as “have you ever involuntarily lose your job”: I would say No regardless the situation. Or ignore those places if they are truly “out of date“. Because you may feel out of places when you join them.

Usually, background check is a part of the pre-employment process, and you would need to give two weeks’ notice at the current place. That’s also sometimes people have stress – what if anything goes wrong with background check?

My experience with this is: as long as you don’t break laws, etc., you should be fine. It seems to me the background checking companies are mostly providing a service anyway, and in the process making some money. I have done quite a few background checking in last 5 years or so. In fact I did three (or 4) background checking in this school year: depends on how you count it.

First: the volunteer background check for the school district I volunteer. They have two background checks: one requires fingerprint (and I assume some sort of FBI database lookup) Missouri Automated Criminal History System (MACHS); another one is for Missouri educator sort of check called FCSR, stands for Family Care Safety Registry, this can be done online exclusively.

For Uber: it’s done fairly quickly. Cannot find the background checking company from my email now.

For Lyft: it seems they used checkr.

For my current job, I did background check via clariti (now a part of DISA Screen). Btw, I noticed they had a security incident recently 🙁

Drug testing

This is required sometimes. Nowadays they usually only require urine sample. And you can go to a specimen collection place such as Quest Labs, or other special places such as occupational health clinics, etc. In the old days when I got my 1st job, I recall they will cut some of my hair for testing – those are more rigorous testing in my opinion. Anyway, don’t do illicit drugs, marijuana and/or cannabis included. I recall when I was working for coal mining companies: they even said the company can ask for urine sample anytime.

Reference check

It seems this is rarely done nowadays.

Microsoft Teams – multiple Microsoft office 365 accounts

I learned my lesson the hard way during real interview. I clicked on the Microsoft Teams link on the Chrome browser that I usually use. But I forgot that I recently used that browser for outlook (another email account, different email from the link I was clicking). And the Chrome browser gave me an error right away. So I copied the link, and open a new incognito window and pasted my link there, it prompt me with some new information. I was not sure what to do. So I opened Safari as I believe I haven’t used that browser for a while, and got information similar to the new Chrome incognito window (at least they are consistent), and I just clicked the link there and it worked.

Reference

(MarketWatch, Paywall) LinkedIn co-founder has known Elon Musk for years. Here’s what he says Americans don’t understand about the Tesla CEO.

(Yours Truly) FAQs on work: tenure, job hopping, purpose of work, and overtime

Categories
Economy Fun Technology

Is America becoming dumber and dumber

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Or it was always that way? It’s just I (dumb me) vastly underestimated some people’s stupidity. Or let’s blame the smartphones and the tech bros who helped this journey of “making us dumber” 🙂

Smartphone and Social Media

This is not a joke actually, because sometimes I joked too much and my kids usually think my “dad jokes” are not funny. Probably my wife doesn’t think highly some of my jokes either. There are research (google search) that says “social media” make people think less critically – if they were thinking critically before social media, I guess. Let me quite some results from Google search below.

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Search Labs | AI Overview
Is social media making us stupid and less empathetic? – Peerbagh
Yes, social media can make people less able to think critically and analytically, and it can also contribute to mental health issues.

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Reddit: Social Media is making us Dumber

Note with all the American exceptionalism (which in my mind, it’s a myth or overrated to say the least). I don’t think America is exceptional in terms of social media usage though – at the same time, the tech bros are raking in money from social media and overuse of big tech left and right:

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Zuckerberg’s FB/Instagram/Whatsapp;

Elon Musk’s X/Twitter (at least he hoped he could make more money from X, he did make tons of money from Tesla, with quite a bit government subsidies);

Jeff Bezos’ Amazon – earth’s biggest store, shop until you drop;

tech bros’ Google;

tech bros’ Apple;

and so on

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I do similar things on the Chinese social media platform WeChat and Red Note too 🙁 In other words, I believe overall we are all dumber because our eyes are glued to the phone or screen all the time (again if applicable, nothing personal).

Missouri aka the show money state

The outcome of recent lawsuit that awards Missouri $24 billion seems confirmed my worry. I was too simple, too naive. MO AG Andrew Bailey doesn’t seem to be a nice person, btw. As practical matters, this will just make the lives of Chinese people in Missouri a little bit harder. Because as a Chinese person who lived in the show money state since 1997, I know most people here cannot even tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese people and so on. I can’t either: when I met a Chinese couple back in January 2015 for my old daughter kindergarten registration, at first I thought they are Korean 🙂

I am expecting more “go back to your country” shenanigans 🙁

Tariff is another good example. It’s 100% shoot yourself on the foot – those who start the trade war. Here is a good example.

If a country wants to reduce trade deficit: the rational way is to reduce imports, or reduce consumption. Right: don’t buy the junks from Shein and Temu.

If a country wants to boost manufacturing sector, the country can do things such as educate young people on engineering and manufacturing, advocate and support manufacturing business (instead of doing the bitcoin and cryptos shit; or put 100% tariff on EVs from the country you don’t like), and soon. In either case though, tariffs for imports or subsidies for domestic manufacturing are interventions, in other words the Government is meddling in the market. What happens to the republicans free market narrative?

AP: Missouri plans to seize assets to make China pay a $24.5 billion judgment, but can it collect?

Categories
Chinese articles

哪吒 NeZha

Reading Time: < 1 minute

NPR (in English): The new Chinese animated film ‘Ne Zha 2’ is setting new box office records

油管: 独家】打破中国影史纪录！专访《哪吒之魔童闹海》导演饺子 大量《哪吒2》制作故事首次公开！1900多个特效镜头是如何诞生的？导演曾考入名牌大学药学专业？| 故事会 Story Hour

我十多年之前在Autodesk 打过15月的工。在那之前在一个三维计算机辅助设计软件公司打过八年的码工。昨天看哪吒2的后台制作参访时我看到这个软件，应该是 Autodesk Maya, 看到三维模型和图形界面很亲切。不过我当时都是用英语学的，国内工程师说渲染，我需要查一下才知道是rendering.

祝贺饺子和团队。这片子在文化（讲故事，story telling) 和动画的计算机技术上是一个里程碑。

油管：《在故事的最終》粵語版 也很值得体味。
粵語填詞：心之洛
翻唱：何璟昕

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人生於世 似故事 始終有日
年月在消退 倒數會行到一
離別一刻 哭到衣襟都已濕
也需強忍這份痛失

檐底香氣 滿滿伴 炊煙四溢
回味在心裡 鼓舞成長獨行
何日再會 故鄉阡陌
再擁至親 愛未泯

此去或者再會很遠 前程未過問
此去或者永難相見 誰人亦抱憾
離合與悲喜歷來相映襯
能攜過手 已是無憾
不必嗟嘆或含恨
願你都笑著懷念 不再自困

同路是緣 有你在 今生有幸
難陪伴一世 都算情牽一生
誰若先走 會先等候
會給對方作導引

此去或者再會很遠 前程未過問
此去或者永難相見 誰人亦抱憾
離合與悲喜歷來相映襯
能攜過手 已是無憾
不必嗟嘆或含恨
願你都笑著懷念 不再自困

人生於世 似故事 始終有日
誰離別先行 不必悵然似失
緣定他生 哪管虛實
會感世間 暖流滲

======

国语版在这里。

哪有故事能讲得没有尽头
再用力挽留 也到分别时候
行至路口 就算眼泪不停流
也终究要学会放手
哪有屋檐能将你永远收留
成长不就是 无法回头地走
有天终于 懂了乡愁
向更广阔处远游
只能送你走到这儿了 前路仍悠悠
只能陪你走到这儿了 离别总会有
该启程了别在原地等候
正因为失去是必修
拥抱才紧到颤抖
毕竟每次相遇都 绝无仅有
多庆幸能有一程伴你同游
走不到永久 也曾片刻拥有
沿途会与 遗憾邂逅
将笑与泪都领受
只能送你走到这儿了 前路仍悠悠
只能陪你走到这儿了 离别总会有
该启程了别在原地等候
正因为失去是必修
拥抱才紧到颤抖
毕竟每次相遇都 绝无仅有
哪有故事能讲得没有尽头
再用力挽留 也到分别时候
等多年后 你再回首
总有回忆如暖流

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Categories
Chinese articles Saint Louis

圣村华人教会的兴衰

Reading Time: < 1 minute

昨天一个偶然的机会，我开车经过圣查尔斯，看到圣路易斯华人浸信会教会 St. Louis Chinese Baptist Church 的教堂⛪️。我没有去过那个新教堂，但是多年以前我有去过他们在Page/Ashby 路上的老教堂。我记得出生于香港的黄英杰牧师讲道：我还蛮喜欢。我也记得在换教堂期间，就是老教堂已卖掉，新教堂还没落实的时候，他们每礼拜天租用了highway 64 旁边的美国人教堂：我还去过几次。前几年听说他们搬过去新堂以后，后来就有一些问题，好像黄牧师也搬到外州去了。我好像在脸书上还看到过教堂荒废的照片。

其实我听说村里的另一个华人教会圣路易斯华人教会 St. Louis Chinese Christian Church, 有时候华人会说CCC, 我记得当时是自己建新堂的，近年也因类似的原因衰落了。我也去过那个教会，参加过团契，英文崇拜，好像搬新堂的时候还去帮忙打扫卫生还是搬东西。08年汶川地震的时候我和我太太还去参加过那里的聚会/讲道。

这是两个我在圣村二十多年多多少少参加过的教会。村里还有其它的一些华人教会。有了孩子以后我们去过橄榄村的路德教会的基督之光教会，严格来说基督之花不是一个独立的教会，她是路德教会以马内利橄榄村教会 Immanel Lutheran Church Olivette 的分支。后来主要因为疫情和其它政治原因（华人教会里有较多的川粉），我们也就不去了。这个教会其实离我家非常近。

PS: 网上查询黄英杰牧师的时候看到一篇说他坏话的文章。我的直觉是北美保守评论是一个在美华人基督教徒的一个极右组织。

油管：我今天早上也在散步的时候想到这个问题，就说一下吧。

Categories
uber-and-side-hustle

More Uber Driving Tips

Reading Time: 3 minutes

(Update 03-19-2025) I paused Uber driving for last few days since the power outage as a result of the powerful tornado hit STL on Friday 03/14/25 night. I resumed it today (this morning). And I made a mistake – I turned off the Cellular Data for “Uber Driver” app as a measure to save the cellular data usage. I used up about 5GB one day without realizing it until I already used it – I thought playing from YT Music is not using data – my assumption was not correct – it doesn’t use data only when I played it from “Download” folder on the YT Music app.

The problem this morning is as soon as I drove away, my Uber Driver app stopped working. Eventually I stopped at the Stacy Park, and thought maybe I would just do morning walk. But at that time, I realized my cellular data setting and turn it back on. And I went back to the Uber app (after closing the app and re-open) and the trip was still there. So, I proceeded as usual. The lesson for me is I should not turn it off at the first place.

Also, came across this sad news – Father of Houston rideshare driver speaks out on son’s death during carjacking – FOX 26 Houston via YT.

(Update 03-08-2025) Today I drove a bit on gravel road the 1st time as Uber driver. Note gravel road is not popular in America, but there are still some in rural areas.

Be relaxed

A few things came to my mind. Recently sometimes I don’t want to drive far out of way, and then come back home empty handed. So I screen the ride requests carefully, sometimes I stop the car and wait in the parking lot, and only accept the ride I liked. This morning is a good example, I declined a few ride requests before getting a one at Dobbs tire shop, at Olivette, near where I live. Second trip was driving from near the Dieberg’s at Craig to the La Boone Bouchee at Olive and Tempo Dr. I even got tips from both trips. I was not expecting, but I guess when I am relaxed, customers (passengers) may feel that way too.

So this is about “take it easy”. Not solely chasing for the money – honestly I still feel Uber driving is not an easy way to make money or bring bread home.

Again I do understand I am probably lucky in a way because I am not going to kill myself to make money via driving for Uber. Somedays if I feel not like it, I can just do my other things, such as exercise instead of driving. I think I am going to do that tomorrow morning 🙂

Audio

Also, about audio. I think ideally I want to have one AirPod in my left ear, so that I can listen to the passenger just in case. Because I have a 2012 model car, the build in audio is not that sophisticated, so I just use my iPhone and AirPods.

Uber App Notifications

I realized I don’t need the instant notification. I just need to turn on the notification summary. This way I can save quite a few “surge” notifications during my normal work day.

Cleanliness of the car

I washed my car (2012 Toyota Sienna minivan) as practically as possible. Due to snow and the road salt, the car looks dirty from outside, finally I was able to clean over the weekend, due to the warmer temperature. One thing, I noticed, is unfortunately the faucet for the garden hose was broken during the extreme cold weather, and the ice inside the faucet. I am researching and will hopefully come up with a good fix soon.

I may summarized more and refer to my earlier Uber driving tips.

Categories
advice and tips Shanghai Composite

Mixue Bingcheng IPO

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Mixue Bingcheng

RIVAL ARRIVAL World largest fast food chain eyes America after kicking McDonald’s off top spot – menu items start at 15 cents (the-sun.com)

This boba chain you’ve never heard of has more outlets than McDonald’s (CNN Marketplace Asia)

China Bobba Tea, Milk Tea players (most contents are in Chinese, links for each store go to Wikipedia)

蜜雪冰城: 千亿餐饮 IPO，被时代选中的创业者 by 晚点LatePost (their website is not responding, so I just post their YT channel here). 2097.HK

喜茶 : last few years (2023, 2024) I noticed their store in Shanghai Hongqiao Hub (see below), after I listened to this Apple podcast. They (疯投圈) actually did two more episodes on milk tea – one and two. My impression is they are the high end, consider this as Starbucks of Chinese fruit tea. Btw, I know it’s useless but fun fact: do you know which area in Shanghai has the most coffee shops? (Hint, see this pop-up store inside Hongqiao Hub). Once I counted there are 7 well known coffee (brands) shops in the area: Starbucks, Canada’s Tim Horton (Tim’s), Man Coffee (Shanghai high end brand), Luckin coffee, etc.

古茗：晚点对话古茗王云安：得三四线者得天下 also by 晚点LatePost

霸王茶姬: 霸王茶姬（英语：CHAGEE）是一家中国茶饮连锁经营品牌，主打“原叶茶+鲜奶”的“鲜奶茶”饮品。霸王茶姬于2017年6月由张俊杰创立，品牌名称源自京剧经典曲目《霸王别姬》，标识为水墨风格的虞姬形象，主要售卖水果茶、奶茶等现制茶饮饮品。同年11月17日，首家门店在云南昆明五一路开业，其后发展为中国西南地区的知名茶饮品牌。2019年，开始进军海外，先后进入马来西亚、新加坡、泰国等东南亚市场。2021年6月，总部由昆明迁往成都。2021年9月，霸王茶姬对品牌进行升级改造，使用全新英文名称“CHAGEE” ，标识改为白底红色的京剧花旦脸谱，参考奢侈品门店风格设计新门店，并加入中国古建筑中的榫卯结构，全国首家旗舰店在成都春熙路开业[1] 。(Update 2025-12-01 Just noticed they are listed in the USA and Nasdaq now, with ticker symbol CHA). If you looked at the stock price history, it’s a good way to lose money if you bought the stock at the debut.

茶颜悦色: 是中国湖南省长沙市的一个中式古风茶饮品牌，由吕良创立于2013年，经营着多家连锁茶饮店，目前仅在湖南、湖北、江苏、重庆开设分店[1]。茶颜悦色在制作茶饮时强调“中茶西做”，是长沙最受欢迎的本土茶饮店。在形象上，茶颜悦色的商标图、饮料名称、包装、店铺装修等都体现了传统的中国古典风格[2]。

茶百道: 2555.HK. 一年卖超10亿杯，会员超1亿：茶百道，要上市了.

2021年，奈雪的茶率先在港交所上市，成为“新式茶饮第一股” 2150.HK；2024年，茶百道也登陆港交所，成为“加盟制茶饮第一股”；今年2月，古茗完成了港交所挂牌上市 1364.HK。

I would be very careful buying any of their stocks.

Guming – 古茗HKG:136410.94
Mixue Bingcheng – 蜜雪冰城HKG:2097297new IPO
Nayuki – 奈雪的茶HKG:21501.57
ChaPanda – 茶百道HKG:25559.09
4 Listed Chinese Tea Companies in HKSE stock prices as of 03-05-2025

Categories
Business Technology

Switch of software or IT vendor

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Sudden Change vs Gradual Change

I have seen a few sudden changes of vendor in my career. And this is usually sign of either “not thinking through” or “the bean counters are in charge”.

Once at Ascension Health, it seems they only implemented the Okta two factor authentication for a few days or a few weeks, then suddenly they switch back to Microsoft AD (Active Directory). It seems to me this one was due to some executives have second thought on Okta. They want to go all in with Microsoft in terms of authentication (and authorization) as well, and they built a layer on the top of Azure AD B2C (and named it as AscensionID).

Now I think about it, in a way “sudden change” is probably easier than change an entrenched software (or rewrite), or trying to slowly change a software or app. Because the “sudden change” approach is somewhat like “just rip off the bandage”. In the case of the example above, because it barely went into production, it was not entrenched.

On the contrary, I have seen in a few cases in my career, we were trying to rewrite an app or a software, only end up going nowhere after spending quite some time. Re-write has its own challenges, btw.

In fact, in most cases: I realized we end up not switching – note this is after decent or significant efforts (in terms of money, multi-millions dollars). If it’s my money, I don’t think I would spend it like that.

FAA (Key Officials)

About 2 years ago, I recall this incident – (CNN) Aging, outdated technology leaves air travel at risk of meltdown. Quote:

The glitch at the center of this week’s headache was a corrupted database file in a pilots’ advisory system that issues warnings, known as NOTAMs, of various hazards that could affect a flight, ranging from notices of closed runways to the presence of nearby construction equipment. The damaged file was also present in the FAA’s backup system, a source familiar with the matter told CNN, which first reported the detail on Wednesday.

Officials moved to reboot the main NOTAM system early Wednesday morning, but it failed to be completely restored by the time rush hour began on the East Coast, leading to the FAA ground stop. A senior US official told CNN Wednesday there was no evidence of foul play in the incident, a detail the FAA later publicly confirmed.…

The NOTAM issue occurred just days after the FAA had said an “air traffic computer issue” was responsible for hours-long flight delays to Florida airports on Jan. 2. That system, known as ERAM, is responsible for tracking hundreds of flights at a time and is considered a critical component of the FAA’s efforts to modernize the US airspace.

More recently, I heard that the DOGE or more precisely Elon is going to fix the old systems at FAA. See below. Note this is different from the system above: also current system is neither Verizon or Starlink.

(Twitter/X) The FAA is close to canceling a $2.4 billion contract with Verizon and HANDING IT OVER TO STARLINK.

(Politico) Musk slams a Starlink competitor amid questions about $2.4B FAA contract

(Rolling Stone) FAA Officials Ordered Staff to Find Funding for Elon Musk’s Starlink

Quote Rolling Stone here:

Elon Musk’s satellite business Starlink may not have officially taken over Verizon’s $2.4 billion contract with the Federal Aviation Administration yet to upgrade the systems it uses to manage America’s airspace. However, on Friday, FAA officials ordered staff to begin finding tens of millions of dollars for a Starlink deal, according to a source with knowledge of the FAA and two people briefed on the situation.

The sources note that these internal directives have mostly, if not entirely, been delivered verbally — which they say is unusual for a matter like this. The source with knowledge of the FAA tells Rolling Stone that it appears as though “someone does not want a paper trail.”

I can recall in a few other cases “verbal instructions only” are used, e.g., the dismantle of USAid, CFPB by the DOGE team.

And last but not the least, Protest held at South County Tesla dealership.

Full disclosure: no stock positions on $MSFT, $OKTA, $TSLA and $VZ at this time.

Categories
Life

Sad story Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa

Reading Time: 2 minutes

(Update 03-09-2025) LA Times – His wife dead, an ailing Gene Hackman was stranded alone in his house for days, authorities believe.

(Update 03-7-2025) Huff Post: Gene Hackman And Wife Betsy Arakawa’s Causes Of Death Released. It seems to me in other words: Mr. Hackman who is in his 90s and has dementia, appears not aware of his wife’s passing and lived one more week on his own after his wife (who is 30 years younger) died suddenly. 用中文来说，有老年痴呆症的老先生好像没有意识到比他的年轻30岁的日本裔太太已经突然去世。虽然平常是他的太太照顾他，他自己一个人生活了一个礼拜。不知道他这一个礼拜是怎么过来的。而且因为他们是非常有钱的人，房子，院子也是巨大无比，我估计邻居一是平常不一定有交流，而是不会很容易看到他们家有啥异样。最后还是打扫院子的工人透过玻璃（窗或是门）发现的。当然类似的事情美国以外也偶尔有发生。

Alzheimer’s Expert Suggests Caregiver Emergency Plans After Deaths of Gene Hackman and Wife Betsy (Exclusive)

(CNN via YT) Actor Gene Hackman and his wife found dead in their New Mexico home || The CNN YT Video showed a lot of Tom Cruise and my memory of Gene Hackman is this move The Quick and the Dead.

(People Mag) All About Gene Hackman’s Wife, Classical Pianist Betsy Arakawa, Who Died Alongside the Actor and Their Dog

Gene Hackman Wikipedia

(Huffington Post) Close Friends Of Gene Hackman, Betsy Arakawa Recall Family’s Last Conversation With Couple

Some of my thoughts

It sounds to me they committed suicide(s): but we will have to wait what the police has to say. Refer to CNN: Actor Gene Hackman and his wife were found dead in their home this week under ‘suspicious’ circumstances. Here’s what we know.

This also exposed one problem that’s hitting our modern society – and my dad (who lives in China) mentioned it in recent years too: that is the loneliness of elder/older people.

Also, I saw a unique problem in America: some people are dependent on, or more precisely, addicted to the prescription drugs and hard drugs such as Fentanyl. This is happening to people of all economy backgrounds: I recall Michael Jackson died from drug over-dose years ago.

For substance abuse, e.g., Fentanyl, Peter Santenello (YouTuber) has a good documentary Inside America’s #1 Epidemic. In St. Louis area in recent years, I saw increasingly some (homeless?) people asked for money at the busy intersections. I hope they are not on drugs. A related problem/issue I see (or I don’t understand) why the states are making cannabis (marijuana) legal in last few years – it seems both Dems and Republicans are supporting that.

References

(YT: Dr. Josef)10 MOST Dangerous Prescription Drugs