Let it make a happy glow for all the world to see

[austin_dern]

A capacitor of electricians has descended on the office this week. They're here at the owner's idea, we believe, or at least nobody has chased them off and it's hard to imagine they're spending this much time here on their own accord. The objective is, apparently, to replace all the overhead fluorescent lights with newer and different lights. The new lights are brighter, which should be a welcome change, and more energy-efficient, which is what motivates the change, and so that's why on Monday while I looked around for just where to deposit the food I'd brought in for the first Christmas lunch of the week (leftovers starting Tuesday, and a pizza party for Friday), I found the first floor was a maze of boxes of new lighting fixtures and new lights.

They started on the ground floor and worked their way up, so that I'd have my half-lit status (literally; one bulb each of my two fixtures would work only intermittently) almost as long as possible. But shortly before noon they got up to my office and started work taking out the bulbs and replacing the fixtures. It turned out my lighting fixtures were wired backwards, so that what should have been ground was hot and vice-versa, which revelation was maybe the least shocking thing I might have heard about the office lighting situation. This can't have been a universal mis-wiring or the situation wouldn't have been worth commenting on. They were sorry to interrupt my work, such as it was, but since they were working right around lunchtime it couldn't have been better for me. Now the office is refreshingly bright and much better color-balanced.

A few hours after that came a solid crash from the floor below, which got us third-floor dwellers to walk down and see if there was anything cool to see. While there were startled people there wasn't any blood or maiming or anything, just, as one of the electricians described it, the sound of 32 light bulbs all breaking at once.

On the way back up I noticed the box with the new light bulbs warns while shipping to ``Handle Like Glass''. I hadn't considered that whatever these bulbs are made of might fail to meet some standard of glass-ness. And now I wonder if they were fixtures, which might be fragile without having any glass in them, rather than boxes of bulbs. I do know the boxes swore the product leaves the factory in perfect condition, though, which seems to me an impossible guarantee to give.

Trivia: In the first thirteen months of attempting to identify the proper filament and gas to use in electric bulbs Thomas Edison spent $42,869.21 on experimental work, not counting legal, patent, and other expenses. Source: Edison: A Biography, Matthew Josephson.

Currently Reading: But Didn't We Have Fun? An Informal History Of Baseball's Pioneer Era, 1843 - 1870, Peter Morris. OK, this is more or less the book I wanted Opening Pitch last week to be. It's an exquisitely researched and well-written history of early baseball that's a story, that explains stuff, and uses a lot of contemporary documentation or quotes from people who lived through it. This is the good book about early baseball I wanted.

Comments

[moxie_man]

Thomas Edison spent $42,869.21 on experimental work, not counting legal, patent, and other expenses

The legal costs were partially due to court battles between him and Mainah, Hiram Maxim, who claimed he invented the incandescent light bulb before Edison did. I guess inventing the common mouse trap and the first automatic machine gun weren't enough for Mr. Maxim.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Hiram Maxim was ... a piece of work. Although it is to him that I credit my realization of how to someday make a fortune, and I'll be getting to that when I have some spare time.

[orv.livejournal.com]

They're here at the owner's idea, we believe, or at least nobody has chased them off and it's hard to imagine they're spending this much time here on their own accord.

This reminds me of something a telephone installer told me once. He said that if you show up in a hard hat and a day-glo vest toting a tool belt and a butt set, you will not only be let into pretty much any building, you will be shown directly to the most technologically vulnerable part of it.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Quite so. I can dress in a Chef's Jacket and get about anywhere in any hotel or casino of sufficient size, or just about any complex with more than one sit-down restaurant.

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

We had our fire alarm quarterly test today and realized how true this is. I told these guys what you said and they told me they've never been asked to produce credentials on a visit. They get into some pretty sensitive areas, too.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I should remember these tips. All I have to bulldoze my way into things is a clipboard and a willingness, when pressed, to introduce myself as Doctor.

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

the sound of 32 light bulbs all breaking at once.

Fluorescents have an uniquely identifiable 'pop' when they implode. 32 must sound 'epic.' (my youngest's word, not mine ;o)

[moxie_man]

I'm amazed the state EPA wasn't involved since there's a tiny bit of mercury in those things...32 imploding at once should have resulted in the building being evacuated. (chuckle)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'm actually kind of waiting for the state to realize the building we're in is actually made of compressed asbestos flakes held together with a glaze of tetraethyl lead. I have no specific reason to expect this, it just feels like it ought to be so.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It sounded clearly and resoundingly like something falling, but the breaking noise just didn't match any normal breaking noise. It didn't sound real. So I think we were justified in rushing downstairs to see if anything cool happened.