Author Archives: markorton

Cuisinart Toaster Brings Fire to Breakfast

Last Friday our Cuisinart toaster (model CPT-120) caught on fire.

Cuisinart model CPT-120 toaster fire

fire extinguisher type B-CFortunately we had not wandered too far from the kitchen and realized that the crackling sounds were not those of burning toast. Even more fortunate was the fire extinguisher at hand to douse the flames that had already burned a good portion of the plastic housing along one side of the toaster adjacent to the electronics inside. But, the bread was barely warm!

Here is a close up of the burn zone.

Cuisinart model CPT-120 toaster fire burn zone

Cuisinart model cpt-120 toaster fire crumbtrayYou may be thinking that this fire was caused by sloppy housekeeping here. But, in fact the crumb tray had been cleaned within the last month and this picture of the crumb tray clearly shows no evidence of fire. It didn’t get started there. From the location of the fire right where all of the electrical components are, the obvious conclusion is bad design and/or manufacturing by Cuisinart.

I sent off an email with a picture to Cuisinart last Friday. Still no reply from them.

Saturday morning we went shopping for a replacement toaster. This time we bought a model by Hamilton Beach that has an all metal housing instead of the obviously flammable plastic housing.

By the way, if you want to replicate this experience at your house, the very same Cuisinart toaster is for sale at Lowe’s where we bought ours.

Fire Extinguisher Is Handy

fire extinguisher type B-C-closeup of label

One lesson is clear – the value of having a fire extinguisher in the kitchen ready to go. make sure it is one designed for the kitchen environment.

 

George Smalley in Yatzeck's Russia in Private

Russia in Private by Richard Yatzeck

Russia in Private by Richard Yatzeck

Russia today seems very far from the country I grew up with as an international ogre on the TV news,  the Soviet Union or USSR. After all, the Wall fell in 1989, already 23 years ago. The Soviet Union 

dissolved in 1991, 21 years ago. It is mostly in the memories of those over 40 years old that crossing behind the Iron Curtain was an exotic, even inexplicable adventure.

In the spring of 1971 I left my high school teaching job several weeks early to join the second Lawrence University Slavic Trip. This three month long camping trip through the Soviet Union, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Yugoslavia (I left to go to graduate school at Cornell before the trip concluded in Hungary and Czechoslovakia) has stood as a formative event in my life. For the first time I was outside of the US and definitively in foreign cultures.

Now we have Russia in Private (Amazon link) by Richard Yatzeck. Professor Yatzeck suffered through my presence in his Russian literature courses at Lawrence University for four years. More importantly here he also participated in 9 visits between 1961 and 1997. He calculates that cumulatively he has spent three years in the Soviet Union then Russia. 

The structure of the book is loosely chronological from his 1961-62 years of study at Moscow State University (the Harvard of Russia) through camping trips with undergraduates to a final stint at semesters abroad in 1997 in Krasnodar. The central content is really the particular world views of Russians in their public and private lives.

Since there is more continuity in human affairs than not, this book is an excellent introduction to some of the driving elements in the current Russia. It is not a psycho-sociological academic exercise. Whatever didactic goals there might be, the book moves forward with many well told anecdotes and observations of the personal and the private as well as the day-to-day.

George Smalley in Yatzeck's Russia in Private

George Smalley, back cover of Yatzeck’s Russia in Private

One of the treats of Yatzeck’s book for me is the opportunity to revisit George Smalley. George was passionate, sometimes about matters that seemed a bit mysterious to a college-age student. He worked phenomenally hard. He demanded hard work in return and it was difficult not to reciprocate. His language teaching methodology, based in Prague school linguistics (think Russian linguist Nikolay Trubetskoy and the Russian-born American linguist Roman Jakobson), was a miracle of clarity and power. Above all George was a wild and crazy guy.

Who else would invite you in for your private tutorials in Russian with cigarettes burning in both hands, wave you to your seat across from the over flowing ash trays and announce, “You have parachuted into Karaganda. You’ve been arrested and are now being interrogated by the local police.”

Dick Yatzeck’s book inspired a flood of memories and comments from me. The 6,000 word letter I tapped out is available for download here (PDF).

Coursera online courses

Online Education Leaps Forward

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Coursera online coursesOnline education has been around for over a decade. Questions abound about the efficacy of e-learning. Here are two TED talks about the move by our flagship higher ed institutions into this space. The first talk by Daphne Koller:  “What we’re learning from online education”  is just plain thrilling.

“Since we opened the website in February, we now have 640,000 students from 190 countries. We have 1.5 million enrollments, 6 million quizzes in the 15 classes that have launched so far have been submitted, and 14 million videos have been viewed.” 

We appear to be rapidly approaching a point where we can say that the Web is delivering on its potential to expand access to education on a global scale. An interesting insight is that all of these courses are offered on a schedule, with homework assignments, quizes, exams, all of the scheduling features that drive people to actually get to the end of their course work. Deadlines do work, even in the virtual world.

Then for a closer look at just one of these online courses watch the 6 minute TED talk by Peter Norvig,  “The 100,000-student classroom“

Now, the class ran 10 weeks, and in the end, about half of the 160,000 students watched at least one video each week, and over 20,000 finished all the homework, putting in 50 to 100 hours. They got this statement of accomplishment.”

You can go to Coursera.org to view the schedule of classes and maybe even enroll. What are we doing in the evening? TV?

Seeking Independent Financial Planner

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We are planning to implement a retirement funds management system based on John C. Bogle’s The Little Book of Common Sense Investing. At this point in our lives we are focused on achieving the lowest possible investment costs and market average returns.

To kick this off, and provide annual advice, we are seeking an independent financial advisor. This person must have the expected financial planner certifications, work on a fee only basis, and understand that we will not buy any financial products from them nor retain them to manage assets. We only want to pay for their expert advice. The advisor does not have to be local to Hudson, NY. We are happy with videoconferencing.

Though the Bogle strategy is straight forward, visits to companies like Vanguard and Fidelity reveal a surprising number of choices. These need to be sorted out. In addition, we need to understand better the mechanics of withdrawing money from funds, tax issues, and probably other matters not currently visible to us. Based on our current investment strategy we have a good starting point for the distribution of funds between equities and bonds.

If you meet the minimum requirements set forth in the second paragraph, contact me at mark@markorton.com

 

June 2012

Monday – 6/11/2012

Raised $1 million at investor meeting with UThisMe LLC.

Tuesday – 6/19/12

35th wedding anniversary. Tennis lesson in the morning. Went to movie in Millerton. Best Marigold Hotel. Then dinner at Escoffier Restaraunt at CIA in Hyde Park. Excellent and extravagant.

Wednesday – 6/20/2012

Temperature reached 96 by 1pm. Retreated to bedroom at 4pm. Spent most of the day catching up on bills and other personal admin. Sent letter to Jesse returned by HK post office for inadequate address to their new address.

Talked with Harvey Meyerson. Spent evening in AC’d tv room.

Not to Be Missed – Sam Pratt on FOIL

The omnipresent and frequently useful Sam Pratt has a great introduction to our New York state Freedom of Information Law. Don’t miss it it on his eponymous blog
I am going to try it out to get the current contract between the city and Mid-Hudson Cable. Got to get a head start on rousing people to the barricades before the city gives away the store again when the contract comes up for renewal.

Internet Access and Service Levels in Hudson and Columbia County

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The Register Star featured an article today about internet service in the county, “County dials up broadband efforts: Working with local providers and developing a map of who can’t get high-speed Internet access among officials’ goals” By Nathan Mayberg. 

Counting the Number without Access Is Not Enough

It is good that our government officials are concerned with improving Internet access across the county. It is painfully obvious that Internet access is more important in our time than even rural electrification and telephone service was to earlier generations. Without Internet access people are increasingly cut off from an array of opportunities. They cannot participate fully in our culture and economy.

I want to focus on the quality of Internet access. Even in Hudson, the most densely populated part of the county, we barely have broadband service. Mid-Hudson Cable provides download speeds that are only marginally broadband. Despite their advertising campaigns proclaiming “blazing speeds” up to 5 MB/s (or for $5 extra per month – 10 MB/s) the actual service I have experienced, tested with easily available test sites on the Web, has averaged 3.7 MB/s over the last 2 years. Worse, the quality of this service is so bad that it has frequently made it difficult for me to conduct my business conferences over the Web. And, because cable Internet service is provided through a party line, when lots of people are online at the same time, the service becomes even slower and less responsive.

Some have said, “You live in Hudson, Get Verizon DSL.” Recently I have done just this. Now I get 5.2 MB/s download speeds and the service quality consistently allows for good video-conferencing. But this is as good as this service will ever get. DSL has its technical limitations. To be competitive in broadband access we need to reach for 20 MB/s and higher.

Use Next Contract to Leverage Services from Mid-Hudson Cable

What to do in the short term?

The contract between the city and Mid-Hudson is coming up for renewal next year. Our local government officials need to get involved.

  • Any new contract with Mid-Hudson must contain service level standards that are enforced by monetary means. 
  • We should expect Mid-Hudson to come to the table with a plan for enhancing Internet service in the future and this plan should be made part of the enforceable language of the contract. 
  • And, the contract should address a real economic barrier to access in Hudson. We need a three tier system. It might look like this: basic Internet with 5MB/s service for $20 per month; better Internet access with 10MB/s service for $35 per month and world class service with 20MB/s service for $60 per month. In all cases the service level agreement would guarantee that Mid-Hudson actually deliver these speeds not just their current “blazing speeds”. 

Hudson Takes the Lead –  County Benefits

If Hudson takes the lead on this, everyone in the Mid-Hudson Cable service area will benefit. We have the density and economic power to get Mid-Hudson to improve Internet access and service. Once we set the standard other communities in the county with less economic power can tag along.