GENERAL ELECTRIC Shareholders Meeting

OK, I feel really really guilty.

I own stock in GENERAL ELECTRIC. Or at least I have a broker who has arranged for this. But it's all abstract. Like the stock itself. It's in my IRA - I think. My IRA is something I wont be touching for at least 20 years, probably more. And who knows if I will even own part of GENERAL ELECTRIC by then. And I buy GE lightbulbs and appliances and occasionally watch GE programs, since they own 80% of NBC. I watch so little TV nowadays that all I remember is that they air SNL which I did watch when I had nothing better to do on a SN. So I get to call it GE, since we're on such good terms. In 2006, GE made $163 billion making them the largest media company regardless of how much media they actually own.

I've been meaning to do this for a while. Write about my proxy statement, that is. I get them emailed to me occasionally, and sometimes they contain gibberish and sometimes they reflect the times. Sometimes they contain virtually nothing.

GE has a reputation for being evil, so their proxy contains good blog fodder. The complete proxy statement is below. It's a form, so you just check some boxes and if you own 300 shares and there are (really) about 10 billion shares outstanding, then I get 3.0 × 10^-10 of the votes which is a very small say in things of such import.

So let's take a quick look at the proxy statement below.

First off you get to vote for the board of directors. These are the people who are supposed to oversee that things are on the up-and-up. Many of them have names straight out of Harry Potter, like ANN M. FUDGE and JAMES I. CASH, JR. Some of them are famous powerful people who have long ago sold their souls and got quite a bargain in the process, like Senator SAM NUNN who on this ballot doesn't use his title. He gives the company an air of legitimacy as if the company that invented the monthly electric bill would even need that. But mostly, Nunn gives the company access. Also, many of these board members on on the boards of other companies as is true for those companies in turn. It is a nice perk for these guys who get to meet a few times a year and reap huge benefits. The meetings and the benefits are a matter of public record for the public companies.

GE is the target of many many shareholder initiatives. Some involve accountability, some involve the fact that this huge company which makes weapons and owns Chris Matthews. In the ballot below you see that the Board doesn't want to make annual reports on their share of Global Warming and doesn't want any more accountability than they are legally required. You have to read another document to find the details, but you get the idea. And who would blame them. Corporations need to make profit for shareholders or not exist. It's their prime directive.


GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY Annual Meeting

Vote Your Shares

Meeting Date: 04/23/2008 for holders as of 02/25/2008

CUSIP: 3xxxxxxx-xxx

Your Control Number: 31xxxxxxxxxxxx

If you plan to attend the meeting Click here.

As your vote is very important, we recommend that all voting instructions be received at least one business day prior to the voting cut-off time stated in the information circular. Scroll down for proxy instructions and voting.

To vote via telephone call 1-800-603-2119

Proxy Ballot: Directors' Recommendations: Choose this if you would like to vote your shares following directors' recommendations. See below or refer to the proxy statement for the detailed recommendations. Please read them carefully. A1. ELECTION OF DIRECTOR: JAMES I. CASH, JR. Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain A2. ELECTION OF DIRECTOR: SIR WILLIAM M. CASTELL Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain A3. ELECTION OF DIRECTOR: ANN M. FUDGE Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain A4. ELECTION OF DIRECTOR: CLAUDIO X. GONZALEZ Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain A5. ELECTION OF DIRECTOR: SUSAN HOCKFIELD Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain A6. ELECTION OF DIRECTOR: JEFFREY R. IMMELT Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain A7. ELECTION OF DIRECTOR: ANDREA JUNG Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain A8. ELECTION OF DIRECTOR: ALAN G. (A.G.) LAFLEY Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain A9. ELECTION OF DIRECTOR: ROBERT W. LANE Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain A10. ELECTION OF DIRECTOR: RALPH S. LARSEN Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain A11. ELECTION OF DIRECTOR: ROCHELLE B. LAZARUS Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain A12. ELECTION OF DIRECTOR: JAMES J. MULVA Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain A13. ELECTION OF DIRECTOR: SAM NUNN Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain A14. ELECTION OF DIRECTOR: ROGER S. PENSKE Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain A15. ELECTION OF DIRECTOR: ROBERT J. SWIERINGA Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain A16. ELECTION OF DIRECTOR: DOUGLAS A. WARNER III Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain B. RATIFICATION OF KPMG Directors Recommend: FOR For Against Abstain 01. CUMULATIVE VOTING Directors Recommend: AGAINST For Against Abstain 02. SEPARATE THE ROLES OF CEO AND CHAIRMAN Directors Recommend: AGAINST For Against Abstain 03. RECOUP UNEARNED MANAGEMENT BONUSES Directors Recommend: AGAINST For Against Abstain 04. CURB OVER-EXTENDED DIRECTORS Directors Recommend: AGAINST For Against Abstain 05. REPORT ON CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTIONS Directors Recommend: AGAINST For Against Abstain 06. GLOBAL WARMING REPORT Directors Recommend: AGAINST For Against Abstain 07. ADVISORY VOTE ON EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION Directors Recommend: AGAINST For Against Abstain

Legal Proxy:

Choose this only if you plan to attend and vote your shares at the meeting.

IMPORTANT: By choosing this option, we are precluded from voting your shares on your behalf. A Legal Proxy covering your securities will be issued to you. Your Legal Proxy must be presented at the meeting for your shares to be represented. Do not make any other marks on this ballot.

DO NOT use this option if you hold shares directly with the issuer, rather than through a bank or broker.

Is There No Free Rice?

A reader asks:

http://www.freerice.com/

You should blog about this. Why do they work? DO they work? How do they work, are they run on ads?

I hate them and love them. Not like my 400 grains of rice will feed even a single person. It's kind of insulting. But it's fun to do, too.

My reply:

The vocabulary game is fun.
I agree in giving food to the hungry.
You give 20 grains of rice per round of the game.
There are 29,000 grains of rice per pound.
That means 1,450 rounds of the rice vocabulary game per pound of rice.
A pound of rice probably costs about $1 a pound. This is probably actually be lower, since large rice purchases for humanitarian reasons is made by the ton.
There are ads on that game, but they only get real money if you click-through.
If people click-through one percent of the time, then they perhaps get 10 cents per click-through or 14 click-throughs per pound of rice.
14 times 10 cents is $1.40 which is more than the cost of a pound of rice.

So, it is possible for someone to pay for the rice and maybe even make a little money at the same time.
The rice for the poor is supposed to be guaranteed, but the ad revenue is not, since someone has to click on the ads.
So if I were to guess, the owner of this site is either giving all the ad revenue to the rice people or perhaps a portion like 75 percent.

My conclusion is if you like the game and want to work on your vocabulary, then go ahead and use freerice.com without feeling guilty.

Nature Sightings

We are blessed with our new home to have it located adjacent to 600 acres of protected woodlands.

As such we do get wildlife. This includes: mice, usually found dead - smushed or rotted; bear, visiting as they do, rather oblivious to this whole "people" thing; snakes, along the driveway; chipmunks everywhere; and birds, at the feeder, under the feeder, nearby looking hopefully at the feeder with squirrels not far behind. Of course many of the animals like the snakes, bears, and chipmunks have disappeared for the season.

We've been seeing deer tracks around the house, because the snow leaves a perfect surface to tell who's been coming by. Back in November our neighbor told us how some deer were in their front yard playing tag with their bird-eating cat. It was only recently that we have actually seen deer on the property. About three weeks ago, some house guests noticed deer right out our kitchen window. I guess we needed new eyes to scope them out. There were three of them. Only a few days later, I saw another one taking its time munching on bark in the woods. I snapped a quick photo where you can just make it out.



Then last week, Sasha noticed a woodpecker and alerted me while I was in the shower. I had seen a Downy Woodpecker at the feeder once, so I was not in much of a hurry to see this one myself. When I finally saw it a few minutes later, I was awestruck. This was a male Pileated Woodpecker which is about 19 inches tall. That's huge. That's about the height of a newborn baby - up to your knee. We're talking Woody Woodpecker with the red head. It wasn't at the feeder, it was making it's own feeder out of an oak in the yard. After a while, it threw up it's wings like a costumed caped super-hero and peeled off into the woods skipping from tree to tree.

Beware The Roof Glacier

We had record snowfall in December. For the most part our new home behaved as it should. I "plowed" the snow a few times both during and after each storm with the new Toro electric snow blower I picked up. I was a bit embarrassed about buying an electric snowblower for two reasons. Firstly, it means that I have given up using a shovel to clear the driveway. Lastly, few people around here would dare use an electric outdoor appliance. In these parts you either have someone plow you out regularly with a truck or you use a huge gas-powered snowblower. Now those two methods do work better, but the first one costs you per visit. The December storms would have already set me back about 2/3rds the cost of the Toro. A gas blower costs you quite a bit to buy and maintain. Even though it's mostly made of plastic, I chose the simple plug-in route, which for this model Consumer Reports says is OK, but not the best method if say you wanted to propel snow, ice, sticks, and rubble more than 50 feet in one fell swoop. An electric is much greener to run and does require zero maintenance, unlike a big gas guzzler. It seems to work, but there is a chance I'll have trouble if we get some heavy super slushy stuff, which admitably no snow-blower will like, followed by a temperature drop... or if I run over the cord. Whooops. Zzzzt.


As you may know, this winter we had at least two huge snow storms, a few large and a few small ones. We did not have any long periods of melt, so that snow piled up. Especially on one part of our roof which is flatter and smoother and actually colder (that's another story) than the rest. So it was about two weeks ago, that I noticed that the 18 inches of compacted snow and ice (from our almost 30 inch total snowfall) on that roof has started to move south.

What I mean is that all that frozen stuff on that rather shallow sloped membrane roof was moving. It was sliding off the roof. And since the gutter was filled with ice, it was even taking some of the gutter with it.



That veritable guillotine of a glacier was sitting up there. Hundreds of pounds precipitously positioned to imperil people. I warned my immediates to stay away and instructed them on how to safely peek up at it from under the screen porch.

They have these things up here called "ice dams". They are different, but interesting and troublesome nonetheless. If you have an ice dam, then you have a ridge of ice on the lower part of your roof just before the edge. Basically your roof is not well insulated, so the snow on top of the roof above your living area melts, while the water which runs off along the edge of your roof just over the eaves freezes. You get a build-up of ice around the edges until it blocks any melting water. Now you have an ice dam. It's a pool of water on your roof. It can leak into your house or if it gets even colder it can freeze and mess with your roof tiles. Good thing I just have my roof glacier to deal with.

Another day went by and, as you can see, the roof glacier was now projecting about 3 1/2 feet out from the house. Icicles are supposed to dangle and glint and grow as they melt and freeze, but this was instead one slowly moving sturdy yet dangerous heavy shelf of ice. But it was very cold out, so it clearly wasn't going anywhere fast.

Two days ago we started to have our recent bout of mysterious Spring weather and a big thaw. In the middle of the day I heard a huge crashing, whomping sound from the yard when the whole thing fell off leaving a pile of snow and broken ice. An hour later, another 2 foot glacier was back - apparently slid down the roof - to take the place of the first. It too fell and again and again until now the roof is mostly clear. What remains is a bit of ice and a bent gutter.

American Girl Fashion

Recently, we visited American Girl Place in New York City. My daughter knew exactly what she wanted from her study of their catalog. We grabbed the new Julie doll, some accessories and got out of there.



I was curious what else there was in the store, but my daughter did not want to see anything else. She was done shopping. "Why should I look any more? Since I used all my money, I won't be buying anything else."

I found a beauty salon for dolls with a large crowd waiting for their turn to have their American Girl coiffed.



I hope that you can read the fine print in this sign. Just click on the image to see a larger version. I could not make it out in the store while I was there, which is why I took this picture. The average doll hair-do costs $10 to $20. That's how much I still pay for my real hair (what's left of it) at the barber shop. But then again I'm not 18 inches tall and don't get braids anymore.



On a related note, this doll (pictured below) during a recent fashion show at our home is sporting a hand sewn skirt, hand knit sweater and hat. It was purchased at a craft fair at a nearby senior home. My daughter bargained them down to $15. I'd kill to get such a nice outfit for my real daughter.

Low End Appliances Suck

Unfortunately, most small appliances are not worth researching. They are made in China and are cheap and disposable.

This year while we were renting my wife bought a cheap microwave oven. It was about $50. When I opened the box I could see that the door was bent. I returned it, and I bought a cheaper microwave. It was $40, and actually was a reasonable size for heating leftovers. The next week it was reduced to $30. I got my $10 back from Target. After 92 days (2 days after you could return things to Target w/o going through warranty) it died. It was a ChefMate which might be Target's house brand. I called the manufacturer, ultimately located in China, but undoubtedly with a tiny service office in Canada. I know this, because the Chinese fellow who answered the phone was also the voice on their answering system. He had me cut off the plug and mail it back along with the plastic support for the glass plate which usually revolves inside the unit while it is heating. I eventually got a check back for the full amount.

Now on to toaster ovens. We do not use a traditional pop-up toaster here - just the toaster oven. We use it for toast, melting things covered in cheese, and breaded chicken (or fish) fingers. Years ago, maybe 7 in fact, our old family friends gave us a toaster oven. It was small and standard and it was in their garage and hadn't been used much. It was probably 20 years old at the time, but you'd recognize it. It's the kind with the lever you push down and the mechanical 'ding!' when it was done. Anyway, it was slowing down. Not heating as much. Perhaps one too many a chicken finger had gone through it's maw. My brother had an almost new one, so I took that and free-cycled the old one. My brother's oven was obtained from his neighbor who once sold them online. Whenever something was returned to him, he'd send the plug back to the manufacturer and often would give the working appliance sans plug to my brother. So this one had a hefty plug from a hardware store attached to it. He apparently didn’t use it much at all. Now I'm trying to avoid using brand names in this story, but this one was an Oster. It died about a month into service.

So off I went to Target again. I consulted Consumer Reports, but of course since it's my contention that low end appliances are not worth deep comparison shopping, there were no good top specific models that Consumer Reports (CR) recommended to actually find. Target had 10 models, but I found that almost all models had the same big chunky knobs which were actually quite difficult to turn. Big and chunky is easy to use if you are a handle of an implement like a can or bottle opener, but very hard if you are a knob on an appliance. I take it CR didn't take usability into account. It seems clear to me that they all use the same knobs from the same Chinese knob factory. They don't really care that they are hard to turn - they just want to copy each other. Only one or two had the tapered knobs. So of those which were easy to operate, I found the $29.95 GE toaster oven which was exactly the same as our original one, except with knobs instead of levers. Within a week, it failed to 'bake'. I returned it. We now have another - similar one - a Hamilton Beach from (gulp) Wal-Mart. Our pathetic little Wal-Mart* at least only has 4 types of toaster ovens. I'd have paid up to maybe $70 if they only made toast and melted cheese and baked fried things and didn't have those big chunky knobs which neither me nor my family could turn very easily first thing in the morning.

You think I'm cheaping-out here, eh? Well there were many expensive silly toaster ovens which I skipped for good reason:

Do you want two racks in the oven, so you can toast two layers at once? Nope.
Pizza size, so you can reheat a whole pizza? Nah.
Do you want a rotisserie in your toaster oven? I think not.
Do you want a glass top so you can observe the top of the toast while it's toasting? Nope.
Do you want some scalloped warming trays inset into the top of the oven. Definitely not.

I'm beginning to think that generic appliances - the ones made in China (or Mexico or somewhere far away by people who would never use them) from companies you never heard of - are just as good (or bad) as any lower end name brand. Consumer Reports should note that or just give up. They don't read this, so you can note it if you'd like.

* note: It seems my MS Outlook spell-checker actually has the word 'Wal-Mart' in it.

Pyromania Update - Strike!

First the Wood Pile:

I must confess now. Last week I was visiting my glorious wood pile, and I noticed that it was listing to one side. It was leaning a bit toward the house. I nudged it. It wiggled. I nudged it again. It wiggled some more. I decided to tie a rope around it and secure it to our deck. I nudged it again. It wobbled. I gave it a shove from the safer side, away from where it was leaning, and down it came. It sounded like pins in a bowling alley. So I was quite thankful that I was the one to discover the problem and that nobody else was around to be surprised by it.

Today I restacked it. A little better, but still not perfect. A little shorter, which will make my wife happy, but shorter mainly because we actually burned some wood.

Now, moving onto pellet stove news:

We did have a recent adventure here at the house. We returned from being away for Thanksgiving to find that our gas furnace had been off for 3 days. It seems that every so often, it would try to start up, but didn't. As it was early evening, we turned on the pellet stoves, moved bedding to the family room, tried to find the source of the problem, and find a heating guy to fix it. We had a toasty time camping out in the family room, but the house which started at 47 degrees inside when we got home was not very hospitable. The pellet stove eventually got it up to 58 degrees. This was with the stove on maximum. By morning the stove had burned up all it's fuel.

BTW, the furnace needed a new ignition element - the thing that lights the gas. The old one had burned out. The gas company had said they couldn't come check it out for at least a week! (Good thing I'm able bodied.) The local repairman, referred to me by my neighbor, came the next day, fixed it, and said he'd send a bill, which I expect won't be very big.

Small Town News

Sometimes our local news just cracks me up. This breaking news is not from The Onion. It's from the local Northampton newspaper Hampshire Gazette.

(Note: one link below added by me for sarcastic effect - like this story even needs it.)

Williamsburg gears up for a new stop sign

By DEBORAH DOULETTE Staff Writer


WILLIAMSBURG - A new stop sign will soon be installed at the corner of North and North Main streets just east of the village center.

Selectmen approved the move after hearing comments both for and against the sign from a small handful of residents, saying their decision was motivated by concerns for the safety of drivers who attempt to cross the path of drivers coming down North Street.

Selectmen said they also hope a stop sign will slow drivers down as they approach the village center.

"Traffic coming down North Street is going too fast. How to resolve it is what we're discussing," said Denise Banister, chairwoman of the board.

At least one resident, Robin Rosewarne, 89 Ashfield Road, said she is not convinced the sign is necessary. Rosewarne is concerned about an increase in accidents if cars stack up at the sign and are not visible to other drivers heading west into the center.

"We need more than just a stop sign," said Selectman Jeff Ciuffreda. "We'll also need a 'stop ahead' sign." Ciuffreda agreed with Rosewarne that the concern regarding traffic backing up is real and that the sign in its first weeks may create some problems.

Selectmen asked Highway Superintendent Bill Turner to lay out a plan to phase in the new sign. They would like to see some early warning signs go up, alerting drivers that a new stop sign will be installed soon.

Turner mentioned the possibility, too, of posting the area with traffic cones when the sign first goes up.

"The timing is good," said Ciuffreda, "since winter is coming and that may mean slower driving."

Fire In the hole

This is a shot of one of our pellet stoves aflame. When the room is cold, it is cozy to sit in front of the stove and enjoy the glow and the radiant heat. The front of the stove, the glass, and the stove pipe are hot, but unlike a wood stove, the rest of it is cool. When the stove is on low, the stove pipe is actually warm - and not hot - because of the high efficiency. Every few seconds, the pellets drop down a chute making a quaint little plinking sound when they land in the little metal box. The only other sounds I hear is the faint roar from the fire, the turn of the auger which delivers the pellets, and blower.

In case you were wondering, this is a Travis pellet stove (Lopi - Heritage Bay). The stove has a switch which can be manual, automatic, or off. Manual means you hit another button to start it, and it will keep running. Automatic means if you hook up an external room thermostat, then it will cycle on and off like any heating device depending upon the room temperature. It also has two knobs one is oddly labeled 'Heat Output' which really means 'heat level' or really 'feed rate of pellets'. If I turn this up to max, then fuel (the pellets) will be fed more frequently into the fire box. The other one reads 'Fan' and this is actually the 'Heat Output' since when the fan is set to high, the stove will output heat (blow hot air) faster.

As promised, I hooked a thermostat to the pellet stove. Just about any thermostat available from your local hardware store will do. I bought some telephone wire and 1/4 inch contacts to hook it up. I even get a rebate from my gas company, because I bought an EnergyStar compliant thermostat which will let me program it. For example, I can set it to heat the room up more in the morning and less at night.

BTW, I'm told that my pellet stove can even burn a mixture of up to 10% corn kernels. I wonder if occasionally some will pop!