“…like giving a pyromaniac matches… in a fireworks factory.”
Need a laugh? Here you go:
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All posts for the month February, 2026
There is a light above the “landing” at the bottom of the basement stairs. This was a circline fluorescent tube for many, many years. I had, from time to time, considered finding an LED replacement circline and swapping things. It never quite happened. And then an item showed up on Amazon Vine – an LED ceiling light that looked about ideal to swap out the entire fixture. Even better, it wasn’t a default yellow 2700K or blue 5000K or 6500K but a switch selectable color temperature with 4000K (proper white) as an option. I requested it, and got it.
The install was rather trivial. The biggest issue was making sure $HOUSEMATE properly powered down some Serious Hardware on the same circuit before I flipped the circuit breaker to OFF. Once that was dealt with, the install was about as trivial as could be. I didn’t even need all the included mounting hardware, which is as well as due to the Nature of Things it went flying with going to Never Never (Find When You Need It) Land. The only tools I needed were dealt with by the multitool I have as an EveryDay Carry item.
The result? Instead of a sort of blister and circline fluorescent that had a start hesitation, now there is a low-profile pancake of a light that switches on instantly and is the WHITE I desire rather than yellowish or bluish.
There is one more fluorescent tube, but that’s not in a built-in fixture and is seldom used at all. It can wait. I do keep one incandescent desk lamp about for comparing to the mantle lamps and as load test for some things. There is also a box of old incandescent bulbs that I keep around just in case.
I saw this a while back and bought it. I think it was meant as a bottle cleaner. It likely does that well. I had another use for it.
It does rather well at cleaning the insides of my kerosene lamp chimneys.
A song about a dead skunk in the road? Yep. And it got radio play – not just by Demento – in the 1970’s.
Still getting used to the “new eyes” in many ways. It’s still weird, but cool, to wake up and see the projection clock time clearly. Likewise, it’s weird to no longer have my “built in microscope” of removing glasses and being able to see crazy fine detail up close.
The “reading glasses” (aka “cheaters”… how is it cheating?) do work for closer things. I overdid it when I got an additional pair. The tester rig seemed clearest at 2.75 diopter and there was one (count it, one) pair with that rating. When I tried it once home, WOW did things ever swim and seem excessive – with one exception. Those are now the pair on the nightstand so I can read the phone while in bed if need be. Moving with them is… not a good idea.
After decades of wearing concave (overall) lenses where everything seems smaller, the reading glasses (convex) are indeed magnifying glasses. On some screens (inexpensive when not outright cheap) at $WORKPLACE it’s a bit jarring to see the pixels of so much.
Life is brighter, whiter, and at times BIGGER than it has been in some considerable time.
Moo!
Oh, more? Very well… I plan on going to LibertyCon and BasedCon this year. What should I have for badge ribbons? Repeats are acceptable, if deemed good enough. What I had last year that I can recall was/were:
Minotaur Approved
Gnot A Gnu
There might have been another one or two, but I do not recall them at the moment nor do I feel to digging them out just now.
Any ideas?
No promises I’ll use the ideas, but ol’ ox-brain can use a little help. Or a lotta help.
Also: moo.
The lens replacement surgery went very well. I admit to being Rather Nervous about anything involving the eyes. The first (right) seemed to take some time with set up. Maybe making sure I was truly relaxed? maybe making sure I didn’t have any adverse reactions? The procedure itself was short, or seemed so.
It was weird that evening seeing good near (left) and far (right). I removed the right lens from my glasses and wore them under the wraparound sunglasses I was given and told to wear, especially outdoors. Everything was brighter and whiter… or was once the red/orange stuff was finally gone. The “artificial tears” eye drops seemed to help with that. The dilation drug… well, it lasts and lasts and last.
The next day, the left eye. Everything seemed to go faster, from setup to procedure. I think I dozed most of the trip home, which was as well. I wasn’t seeing well due to the dilation and such, and reading was right out. Also, I had been awake for quite a while. And the “twilight” anesthesia left me a bit less than stable. It was a couple sublingual tablets, combining three drugs. The one I can recall was ketamine. The others are ones I’d not even heard of before – and no longer recall.
Even the next day (Thursday) I could see that the pupil of my left eye was far wider than that of the (mostly?) recovered right eye. The local followup appointment indicated things were proceeding Rather Well Indeed. $HOUSEMATE had a pair of reading glasses about, “I think these are two diopter.” and they seem to be reasonable for letting me see things close. I’ll have to check if I might be better off with something else. Due to things changing post-op, no real new glasses exam until at least a month has passed.
There are two more followup appointments. One in two weeks, the next in four. At least that’s what I know about so far.
And the evidence crosses countries and continents:
Excess deaths caused by COVID vaccines, not just COVID or lockdowns
An addition I should NOT need to make, but some people are confused at best, or possibly worse. No, I am NOT “anti-vaccine.” I am very much PRO-vaccine. But that’s for REAL vaccines, not mRNA quackery. One day, all too distant, the mRNA “vaccine” mess will be looked upon with deserved horror, much like how we now look back at horrible mistakes such as Thalidomide and Radithor.
Or: Why, yes, I am ancient.
Not long ago someone asked me what time it was. “Quarter to 2” I replied. And then I was informed that the asking party had never learned time by halves and quarters. Evidently a child of a purely digital age? I had to re-phrase to “1:45” – and explained what the quarters and halves meant. I doubt it took hold, considering who it was that asked.
Every once in a while there’s some young new hire at work and if they stay around for more than a night or two (it’s amazing how many do not realize that ‘night shift’ still means having to do work) I might ask them some questions like…
Have you ever done chemical (film) photography?
Ever waited for ALL the tubes to warm up?
Set the needle in the groove?
Threaded the (open reel) tape?
The movie film?
And it amuses me that by now my aging car has a unexpected theft deterrent for many: a manual transmission.
In the 1970’s and 1980’s if I watched a movie set in the time of its own making (not historical or attempted futuristic) from say the 1930’s to the 1970’s, things worked pretty much the way I saw in life. Lights were generally incandescent. Music was by radio or phonograph (or instrument, had one the talent), phones had dials (the first pushbutton phone I encountered myself was still pulse-dialing as the local phone network wasn’t ready for TouchTone yet – it was oddly disappointing to discover that), Western Union was in the telegram business, and so on.
Now music is often by mp3 and the only moving part might be a speaker or earpiece diaphragm. Lights are more likely to be LED or maybe fluorescent. Phones have buttons or screens – and they (except for businesses and such) connect people rather than locations. Telegrams have become text messages.
I’m sure I’ve missed a good many things, but the idea is there. The old movies that might have looked a bit dated before are apt to look downright foreign to many today.
I will not deny that there has been much real progress. Today’s world is more accessible, more capable, and more survivable due to various advances. But it still jars me some to see microcontrollers used where analog circuitry was once common (“the ubiquitous 555 timer” as an article in Popular Electronics once put it). Though it feels like overkill, the micro is cheaper, less subject to variability, likely needs fewer support components, and is more readily tweaked to change behavior if need be.
But every once in a while I think it might be a good idea to get a wind-up alarm clock, just in case. Then, I still have a slide-rule too, though I never really use it.
The Elegant Ungulate 