Here’s an excerpt from an update I wrote in early January 2017:
On Christmas Eve I installed a new light bulb in a lamp inside the bunker that will supposedly last for 22 years. Ha! I give it four months. Am I wrong? I have a backup bulb for when it burns out. But I guess I’ll be 76, so maybe my surly nurse can screw it in for me? Oh, she’ll be mouthy, but will have a heart of gold.
Well, I was wrong when I predicted it would last four months. It made it nine months. The box it came in said 22 years! Where did that number even come from? Is it based on anything, or did some whistledick in an exotic land pull it straight out of his speckled ass? Is it even possible for a light bulb to last 22 years? If so, I have a feeling it would cost more than what I paid: 99 cents at Ace Hardware.
A 99 cent light bulb that lasts 22 years would be the worst business model this side of the toothpick industry. Or the dog-eat-dog table salt racket. What everyday things do you rarely need to buy, but are crazy-cheap when you do? Help me out, won’t you? How about shampoo? I go through a bottle a year, maybe. What else?
Speaking of light bulbs, I’ve noticed in old movies (1930s/1940s) general stores, or whatever, sometimes had a screw-in bulb socket right in the top of the checkout counter, so people could test ’em out before they left the store. Apparently a lot of bulbs were duds back then, and were not exactly inexpensive. So, you could twist it in before paying, and confirm you got yourself “a good one.” I don’t know why, but I love that kind of stuff.
But, that’s enough scintillating light bulb talk… I’m off work today, for no other reason than the fact I still have 135 hours of vacation time for the year, and can only carry over 40. I’m running out of daylight, my friends. Maybe I’ll take two weeks in a row? How cool would that be? It would translate to 16 days off, while only using 10. Yeah, they’d never approve that shit. But I might take two full weeks, separately. We’ll see how it goes.
What’s your vacation time situation? I get 144 hours of PTO per year, and 40 hours of floating holiday. We can carry over 40 hours of PTO only. When I left Warner Home Video in 2007 I had 500 hours of PTO, which was the most they’d allow you to have on account. If I wasn’t capped-out, I’m sure it would’ve been higher. It was nice when they paid me for all that, but something got screwed up and the IRS came after us. Years after the fact… So, there you go. What appears to be a silver lining is sometimes a knife blade, waiting to lop your wiener off. Pass the beer nuts.
Over the weekend Toney and I were in a Home Goods store, and they had a pepper grinder that was — I’m not exaggerating — four or five feet tall. I asked her to snap a photo of me holding it, and when she handed me back my phone here’s the precious memory she’d captured. WTF?? Not only is it a mind-boggling failure, in terms of photography, but also wildly unflattering. I just stood there looking at my phone and blinking for a long time. I don’t understand a lot of things, and this is one of them.
Speaking of Toney and vacations… she’s going to fly to Myrtle Beach this weekend, by herself. Remember when I went to Long Beach Island alone, back in May? Well, this is her side of the bargain. It feels a little weird, but she deserves some downtime, that’s for sure. And we still can’t go off and leave these two hooligans alone. Well, we could. But when we returned there would probably be a big black circle on the ground where our house used to be. I wish they’d grow up already. Sweet sainted mother of Cool Papa Bell! But anyway… she’s going to the beach and I’m going to try to keep a lid on this place for a few days. Wish us all luck! Especially me.
There was an insert in yesterday’s newspaper showing the results of a wide-ranging reader’s poll that I did not participate in or even know about. You know what I mean… Best seafood restaurant (Cooper’s), best craft beer selection (Backyard Ale House), best grocery store (Gerrity’s) etc. Most of it’s standard stuff. However, a few of the categories were a little bizarre in my opinion. Like best cancer center. Seriously? And best local sweet corn. What in the hell? Best basement waterproofing? It’s weird stuff, right? How about best sun porch builder? Best drug/alcohol treatment center? Best paving contractor? It’s some of the strangest stuff I’ve seen in the local paper since the Helen Keller fashion show. Or this bizarreness:
I’ve always said this place feels like a foreign country. It is very odd. The people are more cynical and angrier than anywhere I’ve lived. And I feel like it’s either seeping into me, or just the natural progression of a curmudgeonly son of a bitch. Nature or nurture? Who the fuck knows? But Toney and I have a plan to get out. I’m glad we raised our kids here, it’s better than Atlanta or Los Angeles in that regard, but now they’re raised. On paper, anyway. We have no connection to the place, whatsoever. Over the next couple of years we’re going to scope some places out, and make the move southward. We’ll prepare the house for sale, zero in on a specific location, and shake everything up. It’s exciting, just the thought of it. And God knows we’ve done it before. Several times. What kind of changes do you realistically see for yourself between now and, say, 2020? Anything big? Please tell us about it in the comments.
And I’m going to call it a day, my friends.
I have to take Toney to the airport on Thursday morning, so I might not update again until Friday. We’ll see how it goes.
In any case, have a good one!
Now playing in the bunker
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I just changed a bulb in the kitchen overhead light. It lasted almost 8 years.
I think it’s an urban legend, but I always hear that “the first LED bulbs tested in a lab are still burning”. That may be true, but as soon as the market became infiltrated with every incandescent bulb manufacturer switching to LEDs the quality of the product took a nosedive. I’ve had to replace two LED bulbs so far that didn’t last any loner than an incandescent. And the cost is exponentially higher. If you’re gonna go LED, try to stick with Cree.
There’s a bulb in Edison’s workshop that’s been ‘on’ for 100 years. Or so they say.
I thought at least one of you kids was away at school, or did that change? Anyhow, I guess I’m lucky in the kid department, as we’ve left our 2 guys at home for a weekend or two and the only negatives to come back to are an empty fridge and full sink (though they have learned Mama’s reaction to that so at LEAST run the dishwasher before I get home). Counting my lucky stars!
That pepper grinder picture – CHRISTMAS CARD.
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/06/c2/88/89/giada.jpg
There will be no moving here. Had our house built 4 years ago, on 8 acres of awesome.
Everyone can leave me the fuck alone.
There is also this one:
The Centennial Light is the world’s longest-lasting light bulb, burning since 1901. It is at 4550 East Avenue, Livermore, California, and maintained by the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department.
Right, so if you ever needed a 4-watt bulb to bathe a room in light, you’ve been getting ripped off all these years. Also, these are not exactly hassle-free lumens: it takes an entire fire department to “maintain” this fine old bulb; I assume that means hitting the usual lubrication points fairly regularly, flushing the carburetor as necessary, and hosing the thing down when it overheats. I think it’s actually pretty cool — just not real useful.
jtb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIB2zX1CgCs
http://www.centennialbulb.org/
Damn, it was glowing last night and it’s still glowing today. I think we might have a long-laster here.
jtb
My family left me home alone at 14 while they vacationed abroad and I only burned *some* of the house. Alcohol plus cigarettes and no supervision, yes great idea. At least I didn’t crash the car.
To me, Scranton always felt like the land that time forgot. I was always surprised to see late-model cars as we drove into town, like they were an anachronism or something.
Wow, PTO; don’t get me started. Oh, too late. One week ago today I started a “new” job – same gig, but now I’m working for the prime contractor instead of a sub. And now I have a princely 80 hours per year of PTO. Pro-rated, that’s 2.9 days from now until the end of the year. And PTO is supposed to cover vacation, sick time, snow days, hurricane days, Inauguration Day – basically all time off other than the 10 official holidays. It’s better than zero, but it’s still somewhat insulting, like leaving a 10-cent tip at a restaurant. You know you’re supposed to, but you’re too cheap to make it a decent amount. This is why people go to work sick.
Big changes? How about a job that gives a reasonable amount of time off. Or at least one that allows leave without pay.
When LED “light bulbs” fail, what fails is the miniature switching power supply built into the base. The LEDs themselves are probably fine. The technology only appeared in the 1970s, so I’m not sure how long they really last. But they are a little less forgiving that the good ol’ laht bub.
Once in the past you told us to ask you about your salt stock.
So, how’s your salt stock? Do you have plenty in the barrel down in the basement crawl space?
I don’t even know how much leave time I have. My boss and my boss’ boss are always hassleing me about it. I am in a perpetual state of use or lose. I pray that people get cancer just so I can donate my leave to them in order to get rid of it (this rarely happens, all the worst things befall upon my brow). sometimes my boss will walk into my office and ask if I have any meetings scheduled for the next day, if i say no then chances are he’ll go as far as he can to tell me to take leave the next day. He can’t out right direct me to not come to work, but he’ll eat up and hour of my time with thrilling convesation such as:
“The weather is really nice. I bet you’d like to go to the dog park tomorrow and see if you can meet some women. You know there’s a new micro-brewery in Tucson, you should really check it out tomorrow for lunch.” “we don’t want you here bccause you smell bad and you’re ugly, can you give us a break for a few days?”
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You must have been at the same store chincy Italian restaurants get their pepper grinders from. i always wonder what pirate or Civil War vet is hopping around behind the kitchen looking for his peg leg while the wait staff are out grinding dried up seeds with it over unsuspecting customers’ salads.
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I hate the way “restaurant” is spelled. It’s way too French. Resschrawnt, that’s better.
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Jeff, Tell Toni I’ll meet her at the Gay Dolphin Sunday at 2. 2 o’clock is Hubsters nap time so I’ll mosey down. I’ll be the woman holding a starfish, on the back sidewalk next to the beach. I’ll treat her to a cheap beer at Peaches Corner.
I can hit 180 hours before I have to use it. I generally don’t take days off unless I need to do something. There is talk that we are going to lose our vacation time/sick leave. I think they want to go to a system where everyone gets 20 days a year to use how they want. Apparently, a lot of people use sick leave as vacation days. I never do that. I let that time build up. Unless I am really sick.
I get 200 hours of vacation a year and I can carry over 40 every year with no total limit. 3 personal days a year to use for anything. 80 hours of sick/dependent care and you can carry a max of 40 hours of that. We also get 10 hours a year of what is called Excellence in Education and Community hours that you can use to do community service or volunteering in local school. I use it to go kayaking and pick up trash in the Ohio River.
I work the DuPont rotating 12 hr. shift schedule. This involves working 14, 12 hours days/nights in a three week period and then 4, 8 hours days followed by a week off. I have enough time off to pretty much take all the 8 hour days off from May through December so for me it is pretty much 3 weeks at work and two weeks off for 8 months.
I don’t understand people who don’t take their vacation. Life is too fucking short to not take paid time off.
The wife and I have just over four years to go before we can retire and then are moving to North Carolina from Cincinnati. We recently bought 3 acres of wooded waterfront property and will build a house about half the size we have now.
Relocating just before or after retirement is a tricky business. The places we grew up in no longer exist in the form we remember (“You can never go home again” effect) and finding an amenable new area always involves serious compromise. Many of my friends moved to Florida immediately after retirement only to move back a few years later. Most complained of the intense summer heat/humidity, whacko traffic, fire ants, no friends, etc. Most admitted that they hadn’t anticipated the downsides of relocation, only the upsides. Relocation by choice is a very tricky decision.
A while back, I got a pack of 22yr light bulbs through a veterans group. Out of a pack of four, two didn’t work and the other two were ko’d within 6 months. “It isn’t a lie if you believe it,” – G. Costanza. Fool me once.
I got a whopping 5 days off this year. Next year I’ll get 2 weeks. And, in June, July and August we get 1/2 hour lunches but can take 1 day off per month. So that’s nice. But you have to take the day off in the month. Can’t roll them over.
The power company in Rhode Island is giving us FREE LCD light bulbs. they also just did the blown insulation in our attic and crawl space FOR FREE. And they’re loading us up with power strips, 2 WiFi thermostats and aerators for our faucets. All for FREE.
Oh yes, I see myself living permanently in Rhode Island in a few years.
Oh, and we actually own a gigantic pepper mill. It’s got to be at least 2 feet high. We never use the friggin’ thing but God forbid Beloved should part with it because, you know, it still works. Works at collecting dust! I think it’s time to order one of those enormous dumpsters and clean house. The pepper mill weapon will be the first to get tossed.
Got my vacation, as my resschrwant was closed for a hurricane. Power was out for a week. Spent the week riding it out and picking up debris and shit. Don’t move to SW Fla. It sucks. NC Mountains were great. Move there.
The Gay Dolphin is a maze. Never could figure out the direction of the door I came in from was. Did biker week in 2016 there, but have been there many times. Myrtle rocks!
My daughter just did 4 years of college right outside of Myrtle. Now she lives in Charlston and calls it Dirty Myrtle.
In a fond way.
Myrtle proper is becoming like DC in the late ’80’s. Don’t go downtown at night. Daytime, don’t wander off the Blvd. We live south of town, thank God. We’ve moved a lot over the years and this is the best by far. I love it here, dirt and all!!
AWG, did you spend time at the Suck, Bang, Blow during Biker Week? It is so crowded we couldn’t get close.
Then we were in your neck of the woods for the eclipse, we went down to Georgetown to watch. You have some serious humidity!
No shit! The humidity has been freakishly high this summer. We aint got no Global Warming here in South Carolina.
Um, I think that’s global climate change. We also had a really unusual summer here in the Great Pacific Northwest. Only four days of rain (just sprinkles), high temps in the low 90s, humidity over 50% many days; there were many nights that the temp failed to dip below 60. Hey, I want my money back: a man’s gotta sleep.
John
Same deal. Tried to get there tho.
When I was a kid every so often my mom would take our burned out bulbs over to a local Detroit Edison branch. She’d hand over the bulbs and get new ones in return. No one ever bought regular light bulbs back then. That program lasted into the early ’70s.
The regular old HB pencil is cheap as dirt if you need to buy ’em. Last pack I bought was some back to school special of a dozen Dixon pencils with eraser tips for a quarter. Holding up fine, I was half expecting them to be the tip breaks off soon after sharpening, but they hold up admirably in the workshop.
No plans on moving. At least not unless something too good to be true comes along (lotsa land, big shop, small house kinda thing).
We live in a place in Ohio that’s good for raising kids, and ours have flourished here, but my hubster and I decided when we got here that this was just a stopover in our lives and we’re outta here once the kids move away.
I know some people move away and then wind up coming back, but frankly, I can’t see pining for Ohio.
Back when “they” were starting to outlaw 100 watt bulbs, then 75 watt bulbs, my wife went into panic mode because she could not find what she wanted at the store. Eventually, she could not find the 150-100-50 watt three-way bulbs and nearly melted down. We do have, you know, about ten lamps that use the three-way bulbs. High, medium, low, and off.
We were NOT going to be forced into those shitty CFL bulbs that hum and cost upwards of five bucks.
Soon after our discussion about illegal light bulbs, a good friend returned from working in Sweden for a two year stint, and he told us about the black market in Europe where good old fashioned incandescent bulbs sell for 5 to 10 Euros. People want what they want.
I went on a mission and found bulbs dot com, and proceeded to load up on all of those discontinued and illegal bulbs no longer available at Wal Mart, or whatever.
One day I received an email from bulbs dot com that they were BLOWING OUT all remaining stock of these bulbs and made the mistake of telling the wife. She literally stood over my shoulder instructing me to buy two extra cases of these and three extra cases of those. We now have enough light bulbs to open our own mall, theater district, and several airports.
I’ve been seeing incandescent bulbs in higher wattage again, mostly at Target. Got a couple of packs of GE 100W bulbs (package says uses 28% less energy) over the weekend. Price was pretty normal for incandescent, too.
Funny…I’ve never seen a plaid pepper grinder before! I think I know how this picture happened, because my phone camera does it all the time–you press the button and as you begin to put the phone away, it snaps the picture! I HATE that!
LED light “bubs” have come a long way over the years. We have a fixture in our stairwell that is hard to reach, so I replaced the CFLs (hate them) with LEDs. So far so good, but I doubt they’ll last as long as the one at Livermore Fire Station!
By God, it’s Wednesday and the folker is still on.
I haven’t done the math for a standard stairway area, but four watts might not be enough. I say “might” because I don’t know how to calculate the reflection differential. I CAN tell you that painting everything including the handrail white will help.
jtb
By God, it’s Wednesday and the folker is still on.
I haven’t done the math for a standard stairway area, but four watts might not be enough. I say “might” because I don’t know how to calculate the refraction differential or the additional illumination provided by reflection. I CAN tell you that painting everything including the handrail and your clothing white will help.
jtb
I can’t seem to post a comment only once. I think it’s because of my inability to spell the names of WWI fighter planes (it’s Fokker). That’s pretty sophisticated filtering software. Damn, or maybe Gotterdammerung.
jtb
Who cares how long light bulbs last? The real issue is when the Fokker should I remove the dead stink bugs from the kitchen fixture.
I wouldn’t wait until the never-ending-story lights burn out. I’d hustle those little messerschmitts out the door this evening. Achtung baby.
jtb
Finally something I know about. Those “Best of (Your region here)” supplements are an advertising scam {Yes Scam} I formerly worked for a newspaper company that was in 5 or 6 states and every paper would do them and I as the web guru had to build them. The advertising staff puts the list together based upon ADS. So if the local Cancer center or Basement water proofing want to buy a 1/2 page ad they are going on the list even if there is only one in the area. Further I learned from another web worker that sometimes buying advertising also adds to your total so while the ‘people’ voted Bob’s the Best Pizza slice in (Your region here) Marco’s bought a full page ad and SURPRISE they are getting the Best of (Your region here) Banner
This is shocking, Girl, and a fine job of investigative reporting. Next I suppose you’ll be telling us that Kars For Kids is an Orthodox Jewish front organization that uses funds from donated cars (kars?) to fund summer camps whose purpose is to convert Reformed Jewish kids (cids?) to Orthodox Judaism. I’ll be shocked then as well.
Nice piece.
John
I currently get 160 hours PTO, earned in 6.65 hour increments every payday. We can carry over up to 240, but get no sick time. I took the maximum allowed 12 weeks for maternity leave, 6 of short term disability, 4 vacation I had hoarded, 2 unpaid.
We must take the 10 government holidays, no floaters.
Major changes by 2020? I should finish my college degree at the age of 43 in 2019, and in 2020 I’ll be 44 with 2 kids under the age of 5. That’s enough…