John Norstad's Home Page
I am retired. I worked for 35 years as a software developer at Northwestern University.
Email address: j-norstad@northwestern.edu
My Facebook profile.
Some amateur papers on Finance, one of my hobbies. Warning: There's lots of math. My investing advice is simple: put all of your money in low-cost total-market index funds at Vanguard. Pick an asset allocation and rebalance once per year or so. Otherwise just set it and forget it. You really don't need all the math unless you're a geek like me who wants to prove that this really is the best way to invest. As Bill Sharpe once pithily put it, "don't just do something - stand there."
A photo journal of my trip to Paris in July, 2006. I've become a bit of a Francophile (Francophiliac?) Je suis tombé amoureux de Paris. Maintenant, je suis un cours à L’Institut de Français de la Rive Nord à Winnetka. Cet été j'habiterai à Paris pendant trois mois et continuerai mes études à la Sorbonne. J'ai loué un très petit appartement de 21 mètres carrés (environs de 230 pieds carrés) au milieu du cinquième arrondissement (le quartier latin), dans le coin de la Place de la Contrescarpe et la rue Mouffetard.
A photo journal of our bathroom remodeling project in the Fall of 2012.
Annotated vital statistics:
- Born: February 6, 1949 in Fort Dodge, Iowa. We moved to Minneapolis when I was 6.
- Childhood homes: Golden Valley and Bloomington, Minnesota, suburbs of Minneapolis. Favorite pastimes: All sports but especially tennis and cycling. Reading anything and everything, especially math and philosophy.
- Family: My father Jack Norstad was a journalist and technical editor and active in community theater. He died in 1992. My mother Nancy Dooley was a homemaker and secretary. She currently lives in Apple Valley, another suburb of Minneapolis. My parents divorced when I was a teenager. Jack remarried Jan Dargavel and Nancy remarried William Dooley. I was close to my step-parents, both of whom are deceased. I have one sibling, my sister Ann, who is three years younger than me.
- Current home: Skokie, Illinois. I've been in the Chicago area since 1972.
- Job status: Retired since October, 2011.
- Relationship status: Widowed since June, 2012. Sigh. Miss you, Robin. We were married in 1976.
- Children: Andrea (1981) and Jeremy (1986). Great kids.
- High school: Lincoln Senior High School, Bloomington, Minnesota, class of 1967. Drama club. Philosophy club. Lettered in tennis. Resigned from the National Honor Society (a sad story involving mandatory prayers). Placed first in the state on the annual MAA high school math competition. Started messing around with computers at Control Data Corporation, which had its headquarters in Bloomington. Managed to get a few dates despite being a terrible nerd. Hero: Bertrand Russell (after reading Principia Mathematica).
- Undergraduate: University of Minnesota. 1967-1971. B.A. Mathematics, Magna Cum Laude, 1971. Fraternity: Sigma Delta Rho (not really - that's an old joke that means "Sex and Drugs and Rock-and-Roll"). Minored in philosophy, the hippie counterculture, and political protests against the war in Vietnam. Scariest moment: getting tear-gassed on the steps of the Pentagon. Placed first in the state on the annual Putnam math competition. Worked as an operator, consultant, and systems programmer at the computing center. Heros: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Stanley Owsley.
- Graduate: University of Illinois Chicago. 1972-1975. M.A. Mathematics, 1973. University scholar fellowship. Studied mathematical logic with a concentration in recursion theory, plus general studies in analysis, algebra, topology and number theory. Learned how to drink booze (sometimes in excess) and enjoy good food and wine, thanks to the corrupting influence of my best friends Larry Lambe and Fred Thulin. Read a bunch of science fiction. Taught math and programming classes.
- More graduate: University of Chicago. 1975-76. No degree. Spent all of my time on computers writing compilers and SLR(1) parser constructors instead of working on my dissertation in logic. Lectured in computer science in the math department. Taught the first ever programming class at the U. of C. Met my wife Robin. Heros: Niklaus Wirth, Edsger Dijkstra.
- Career: Software developer and jack of all trades, Northwestern University, 1976-2011. A "loose canon that was fortunately usually pointed in the right direction." Lots more cycling in the early days. Heros: Steve Jobs, Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld, and all the other geniuses at Apple who created the Macintosh. Also Harry Markowitz, Bill Sharpe, Paul Samuelson, Robert Merton, Eugene Fama, Jack Bogle, and all the others who created modern Finance (these are the good guys, not the idiots who recently destroyed our economy).
- Current interests: Working out (treadmill running), losing weight, reading, gardening, home remodeling and improvements, travel, studying French, watching too much tennis on TV, fiddling around with my mathematical finance software, politics and economics, learning how to cook.
For more, see my autobiography.
I'm a flaming liberal. My political heros are all economists: Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, and Mark Thoma. Click their names to read their excellent blogs! If you care at all about truth, justice and the American way, read them every day. Here's some political articles I wrote:
Some articles that are about me or mention me:
Awards for two popular Mac programs I wrote, Disinfectant, an anti-viral utility, and NewsWatcher, a Usenet newsreader:
Some old work-related items which may be of interest (or not :-):
As a child circa 1960, with my sister Ann. Geeky-looking even then. Heros: Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger.
With Andrea and Jeremy at the Obama victory rally in Grant Park, Chicago, on election night, November 4, 2008.
My wife Robin, who died on June 22, 2012, just 5 days short of our 36th anniversary.
Because the rules of the Internet require it, here's a picture of my kittens Ziggy and Aladdin (named after David Bowie albums).
Here's the trophies and plaques I got for my awards on my bookshelf. For the two Apple awards, I got free Macs instead of trophies, which was a good deal.
With my new daughter Andrea and my sister Ann, circa 1981-2. So much dark hair! Where did it all go?
A picture of the Seine that I took during my trip to Paris in 2006. Comme Montaigne a écrit, Paris est "la gloire de la France, et l'un des plus nobles ornements du monde."
