Thursday, May 12, 2005

Light Bulb Oddity

It's official: I've been to north Tulsa now. To meet my mentee at her house. Maybe I was just in a better part of the rough side of town, but it didn't look nearly as bad as I had thought it was going to be. That's usually the case. Then again, I'm pretty naive and don't think people are going to randomly hurt me/steal my stuff and I was with my case manager, so all was well. Her court appointed family has a picture of a black Jesus in the living room. Paradigm shift.
~~~~~
Someone I know who teaches but wishes to remain anonymous says:
I know you will get a kick out of this. I was
reading out of the book in my Humanities class.
I did not scan the section I was reading before
class started. "Neeway,"* this composer could not
have had a worse name. His name, I am not
kidding, was Phil Dick. I looked out of the
corner of my eye and I saw a student start to
laugh which made me die laughing. We had to skip
that section.
Yeah, and at the NJHS induction ceremony, a girl there was named Lydia Dick. Just as bad.
~~~~~
I walked into my apartment and turned on the light in my living room. It's a fan with four light bulbs attached. Right when I turned it on, one of the bulbs fuzzed out. As in, the filament or whatever broke and so no more light bulb. I go to the hall closet, get a light bulb, turn off lights to replace bulb, screw off old bulb, screw in new one, turn on switch. The moment I turned on the switch, another light bulb died in the same way bulb 1 did. I know when you put them in at the same time you can expect them to go out within a month or so of each other, but my gosh...5 minutes? Maybe I should spring for the brand name next time.
*making fun of me for saying n. e. ways instead of anyways

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

FYI: Philip K Dick is also a dead science fiction writer responsible for Blade Runner, Total Recal, Minority Report, & Paycheck.

ET said...

Well, BKDotCom, now at least we know who to blame for those godawful movies.

Rachel, my light bulbs were going out at a rate of ALL OF THEM each month. We had an electrician come out to check that our voltage /wattage /whatever was not too high, and what I ended up doing was switching all non-makeup-putting-on-related lights to the little twisty compact fluorescents. NOW, you can buy a pack of four of these at Home Depot for about $9, and they are GUARANTEED to last seven years AND save you like 80% on your electricity. I would not invest in them for your apartment (since I take it you are leave soon?), but after you get your new place they are a pretty good idea. None have gone out on us yet...and I kept the original box, taped the receipt to it, and marked where I put each bulb so IF they go out I can take them back and get new ones free.

Oh, and I had to take "Lighting and Design" back in the day when I was studying Interior Design, and I can tell you (all about candlepower ...oops, another story)that you're supposed to change them ALL when one goes out, because the others should follow suit shortly thereafter.

Our builder put 3-bulb fixtures in our bathroom, which has (already) two 4' x 4' corner windows AND two vanities, so that's 60 watts x 6 bulbs for a BATHROOM! Needless to say, when you flip the switch in there it looks like a nuclear reactor. I am planning to change the fixtures to a 2-bulb with, perhaps, lower wattage...meanwhile I had let all but one bulb burn out so it would be tolerable. But LT felt industrious the other day and changed them out (I had not divulged my plan or reasoning to him, so doubtless he thought I was just too lazy to change the bulbs) and now it is BRIGHT BRIGHT BRIGHT in there!

Rachel said...

I generally go crazy around flourescent lighting after a bit of time. Serioulsy. They ALL make noise and they ALL flicker/blink. I can barely tolerate it at places, but I manage to tune it out. I thought I was crazy until I took my exceptional child class. Yeah, it's one of the symptoms of some disorders. Yay me. Given this fact, I much prefer to have someplace where I can choose to make the lights not blink: home.

ET said...

I have that too...the sensitivity to fluorescent lighting. It makes me sick, dizzy, etc. But you're thinking of the strip lights...the twisty ones are different technology and they don't flicker. BUT, another solution might be to get 130v rated bulbs instead of 120v (normal) bulbs...you can buy these in bulk at Home Depot or Lowe's...can't remember which...Lowe's I think.