“Don’t follow the lightsss!”
– – – Gollum
The news media was out in full force today, turning over rocks and raking up muck just to entertain you and the makers of various pharmaceuticals. Among the SHOCKING! things they found was that Jane Fonda was booed by veterans (like that’s never happened before) and Michael Moore (you know the very large person who will do or say ANYTHING to get attention) declared that (military) snipers are cowards.
So what did I do? Why I went upstairs and attempted to repair the switch on a floor lamp.
When I modernized from evil incandescent lightbulbs to CFLs, the lights would oscillate. Later, when I updated to LEDs, they still had a weird flicker. I think the switch may have been designed with a high and low setting that worked fine for incandescent bulbs, but not for the energy efficient ones.
So I bought a new switch.
It had to be small enough to fit within the pole of the lamp, and the only one I could find that had acceptable dimensions was at RadioShack (I’m going to miss them. If only they had stayed a radio parts/computer/geek heaven instead of trying to be another Best Buy, they would probably be doing just fine).
The switch, as luck would have it, lights up. Hey! That’s pretty cool. So I started taking the lamp apart and easily replaced the switch.
But…
Even though the switch was rated for 120 volt AC use, the light in the switch requires 1.7 volts DC. How was I going to manage that?
I spent hours modifying an old cell phone charger, building it into the base of the lamp, and running an extra set of wires up the lamp tube; finding that I missed a spot, disassembling everything, rerouting the wires and putting it back together.
All to have the stupid little switch light up.
The worst part?
Even with all my efforts, trials and tribulation, the news media never showed up.
sfnowak 