09.14
So I’m sitting at the keyboard, hacking away at something or other when suddenly the light dims for a bit. Uh, oh, brownout, I thought. Crap, and no UPS on my desktop machine…
I take a quick look up at the light fixture. I have a ceiling fan with 3 lamps and to conserve energy in each I have a 13W Sylvania mini-florescent bulb. One of them is flickering. Oh cool, so this is how they burn out.
Man I hope not. You see then it kinda quietly ‘popped’… and then ‘popped’ again… and kinda hissed. No good can come from that… I glance up again and what the hell?!?… is that smoke or spider webs? Oh crap, smoke!
I kill the lights and grab a flashlight. I carefully remove the offending bulb and sure enough it’s scorched and kinda melted. And it smells lovely, like an electrical fire.
A thought occurs to me, how much energy does it take to put out a house fire? How does that compare to replacing a 100W incandecent bulb with a 13W florescent bulb?
Tomorrow, my wife will come in to check her email — after I’m at work — and say “What smells like it’s burning?” Hopefully she’ll read this first 
. It’s the stinky light there on the desk, dear.
Anyway, for the spiders and the search engines: Sylvania, 13W CF13EL/Minitwist, smoke, scary, melted, fire. Very bad, go away!
