Another CFL bulb stops working

Yesterday we lost yet another of our supposedly long-lasting CFL bulbs. This one was an interior floodlight made by Bright Effects and sold by Lowes. It apparently got hot enough to crack the bulb’s base. Yes, bulbs that hang upside-down do get hotter at the base but bulbs designed to hang upside-down should be designed with this in mind, and CFLs operate cooler than incandescent bulbs, anyway.

These bulbs are supposed to last seven years but this one made it just 15 months. I’m going back to Lowes again to complain. This is the third bulb from that batch that’s died early.

New media vs. old media

All day Friday, this wedding video kept being posted to Facebook by my friends and relatives. I got around to seeing what the fuss was about and immediately posted it myself. It’s the video from Jill and Kevin Heinz’s June 20th wedding in St. Paul, Minnesota, when they danced to Chris Brown’s Forever instead of the usual heavy formal wedding march. In the span of about 24 hours, that video was viewed a million times.
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MT.Net outage from 3 PM to possibly 9 PM

MT.Net’s provider will be performing work on our server this afternoon beginning at 3 PM and will be down until possibly 9 PM. The expected outage is two hours, so MT.Net expects to be back by 5 PM or sooner.

This would be a good time to watch wedding videos.

Slice

I guess I was due for a good finger-slicing since it had been a while since I had one. This morning, Kelly asked me to hand her the bagel slicer from the cabinet. I agreed, and bragged about how I use one of these every week at work.

The next thing I know, I’m fumbling it and then blood is spouting from my thumb. I’m still not sure how it happened.

After putting a band-aid on it and finishing breakfast, I headed over to my local doc-in-a-box (a.k.a., the urgent care practice) to see if it needed stitches. Though it took some time to get seen, the helpful doctor said I was good to go. It was a big relief!

Also, I was happy to learn that the urgent care practice can take your number and call you right before its time for you to be seen. This cuts you loose from the waiting room so you can do something more productive than read outdated magazines.

Q+E Photos

I blogged about these before but wanted to share some of my Q+E software photos again:

QE_Support-1QE_Support-2QE_Support-3QE_Support-4

If you know/remember who’s who, drop a comment and I’ll try to get everyone labeled.

Late-night fireworks

I guess it’s the time of year when late-night summer thunderstorms drift slowly overhead. The skies were looking pretty calm until about 8 PM, when lightning chased us from the kids’ swim meet at Lake Johnson Pool. It rained a modest bit at home but was largely quiet when we went to bed.

I awoke at 1:30 AM to thunder and lightning. The dog was freaking out and doing all he could to squeeze himself under the bedroom door so he could join us. The storms lingered for a while, with popping lightning and earth-shaking thunder. Then about 20 minutes later it would move on and all would be quiet. We got another batch of storms a few hours later with the same activity: slow-moving, lightning-spewing clouds.

Kelly and I awoke today feeling like we never really went to sleep. I don’t think it’ll be a late night for us tonight!

Choosing a calendar server

So I’ve got a few things going on between my home life, my work, and the various boards I serve on. I would never know where I was supposed to be without a decent calendar.

I’ve been using Google Calendar for most of my events and it works well for that. However, I want to keep a separate calendar for the East CAC that members can subscribe to. This can be done through the setting up of a CalDAV, ical, or WCAP-based calendar server.
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They

I’m down to my last 15 hours of free Pandora for the month. Yikes! Guess I’m in their top 10% of listeners after all. If the music industry were smart (now THERE’S a ludicrous thought), they would comp Pandora’s licensing fees. No one markets music better than Pandora!

They (YouTube)
Jem (warning:self-playing music)

Who made up all the rules?
We follow them like fools,
Believe them to be true,
Don’t care to think them through

And I’m sorry, so sorry
I’m sorry it’s like this
I’m sorry, so sorry
I’m sorry we do this
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Alberto Contador

Stage 17 is done for the Tour de France. On the climb, race leader Alberto Contador dropped his Astana teammate Andreas Kloden, leaving himself isolated and dropping Andreas to fifth in the rankings. Seven-time champion Lance Armstrong is fourth in the standings, behind Contador and the Schleck brothers.

Contador tells interviewers that it takes a team for a cyclist to win the Tour, yet he seems to disregard this when he’s riding. He’s certainly a talented rider but his attitude is beginning to wear on me. Dropping your teammates is a good way to not have a team the next time around.

The Onion has been “sold” to the Chinese

This week, The Onion (formerly “America’s Finest News Source”) was “sold” to the Chinese. Since then, The Onion has been running articles as if they were written by the Chinese Communist Party. Some bits miss the mark but some are quite clever.

In that theme, The Onion posted this status update on Facebook and made me laugh out loud:

The Onion NEWSWIRE: Disgusting U.S. Citizen Allows Saliva To Collect In Mouth.

As one person commented:

Chris Ross
Whoever is writing this I think has been to China – yes, that’s right, saliva (with the various “additives” they can add to it) belongs on the sidewalk and if that isn’t possible – indoor potted plants.

Any Westerner who has visited China nods knowingly at this fake headline. I saw it myself when I visited China. Thanks, Onion, for the memory and the laugh!