Obsolete

You know I struggled with the Title for this post. I don’t think obsolete is actually it either but I decided it was time to move on.

Over the weekend one of the things I did was replace a burnt out spotlight for my parents. I figured no big deal, I needed to go to the home improvement store anyway to buy some nails and screws. Was I mistaken.

Back when I was a teenager, or maybe younger, I had this thing for lighting. I owned probably at least 4 spotlights. I was building a light bar (I have always been impressed by the technical nature of theater). Back then you had few choices. You could get a 150 watt spotlight or a 150 watt floodlight. You could also get red and green versions of these same lights. Well to be fair there was also the 75 watt version of the spotlight. I had me two of those to light the mirror ball I owned but that is a totally different story.

When I walked down the lighting isle, one entire side of an isle was spotlights. Try as I might I was not finding what I wanted, just a plain 150 watt spotlight. First most of the spotlights were 65 watt to 90 watt. They also had indoor only spotlights or floodlights that I guess were more for those recessed lights you see in homes these days. Ok, those were eliminated easily. But now I had natural daylight and halogen and soft white and ... I just wanted a simple spotlight. My head was hurting at this point.

So I started to look at the lumen values (how bright the light really is) and how long the lights were suppose to last. I also would not mind something that was bright but used less electricity although they really do not use those lights a lot.

In the end I ended up buying a two pack of 90 watt halogen lights. The one thing about these particular lights they were suppose to last 4 years (6,000 hours) so at least they should not have to worry about changing lights any time soon.

I can’t wait for what is coming. Now they have those compact fluorescent lights which are suppose to use a lot less electricity, be rather cool and last a long time. I have several of them and I can tell you two of them are just what I needed as bulbs were always burning out there. Of course these also have mercury inside them that is a problem if they are broken or sent to a landfill. But what I am excited about are the LED lights that are coming. They are much to expensive now but they are getting there. You see them in Christmas lights now. They claim that they can last a long time. As a matter of fact I was paying attention to something that was going on with the State Christmas Tree this past year. A company offered to sell the State LED Christmas lights for the tree at the same price as regular lights. The benefit is they use a lot less power and they should last for about 50 years (so they claimed). The lights that were normally used were thrown away at the end of the season since they were basically at end of life by the time they had been on continuously for most of 2 months (almost 1,500 hours). The LED lights I just looked at were good for 100,000 hours. I have seen LED trouble lights. I look forward to the bulbs that replace the current bulbs we use becoming more affordable. You are looking at over $35 now for even a small bulb. But I really think these are the way of the future unless they come out with something even better.

You know it is not just lights that I am a little dated. It is things like bands. I have no clue who most of the groups are out there these days. Here is less than one percent of the names I found out there and I left off the really bad ones:

Spanking Bishops, Spank the Monkey, Spastic Colon, Squeeze 'Em Hard & Make 'Em Fart, Stiff Dead Cat, Stiff Woodies, Tate & Her Mosquito Bites, The Dead That Arent Alive, Three Jerks and a Squirt, Touch Me Again and I'll Break Your Arms, Toxic Shock and the Tampons, Uncle Bob Touched Me, The Virgin Connie Swail, Operation Cliff Claven, Naked David Hasselhoff, Mini-Skirt Fetish, Life In The Fridge Exists, Sensitive New Age Cowpersons, Shitty Shitty Band Band.

And then we have cars.

My first computer job I had back 30 years ago (yes they had computer way back then) was working for a market research group. We did research on a lot different things including research on what people thought of their new vehicles they purchased recently. Back then I knew every car and truck that the American companies made and most of the foreign ones that were in sold in the United States. See I used to have to break down a Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) and tell not only what year a vehicle was but also what type of vehicle it was and what some of the major options were that this vehicle was built with. It was amazing how many different variations there where and then along comes October and I had all new VIN numbers to add to my pool of prior VIN number.

These days I have no clue what there is out there. At work I have a car park next to me that is a 300. A 300 what? Oh, 300 is the type of car. There are those wacky Scion Xb vehicles that remind me of the bamboo car that they had on Gilligan’s Island that they peddled around the island from when I was growing up. Not to far off of that you have the Honda Element. I rode in a Toyota Prius hybrid last year and fell in love with it. There is almost nothing I recognize these days. I guess that is because I just have not been in the market for cars much lately. I bought something a couple of years ago but I knew exactly what I wanted so I only looked at that and I specifically looked for a used one with low millage.

Well I guess times are just passing me by.