All kinds of electrical stories to share from the past couple days...
-I scored another Norelco F40CW that appeared to be NOS. However, I don't think it has vacuum. (It won't even light on a F32T8 ballast with 560v OCV which will in my experience get at least some action out of anything with vacuum and at least some electrode remnants (Although a bad lamp left like that WILL lose vacuum eventually.) If I had a NST I'd try that but I don't. Oh, well. I have one just like it already.
-I also relamped a light at school that went out right above my head during my lunch break the other day. I was sitting there eating my lunch when it started pulsing and then went to dim-flickering. The offending lamp was a GE Watt-Miser. A couple days later the janitor and I stuck in a Sylvania 5000K lamp.
-I replaced my house battery bank today. (I'm off the grid as you know.) It was getting to the point that the batteries wouldn't last the night without them getting so low the inverter would shut itself off. The old ones had a manufacture date of 2/11...so over 2 years of daily service...those can only take so many charge/discharge cycles. Hope the new identical batteries will do just as well. I'd had two more batteries to add on to the existing two but that never happened and once these started dying we just stuck those in service. You're not supposed to mix new and older deep-cycle lead-acid batteries more than a year in age I think so after buying them this summer we decided not to. If you do it will drag the "floating" voltage (What the battery will sit at without much load when fully charged) down to the level of the other ones. If the older ones are still healthy that will be fine but these were past their prime so it would end up ruining a brand new pair. I've been running my generator all day since replacing them so tonight when I shut it off will be the test...we'll see.
-Here's one I'm excited about. So my neighbor and I went over to their storage (another whole 2-bedroom house full to the rafters of tools, etc.) looking for an impact driver. While looking around upstairs I discovered...get this...a 2-lamp F96T12 slimline fixture- I've always wanted one of those. It has a pair of 60w Sylvania SuperSavers. I couldn't tell if they were Eco ones or not since I didn't study it very long and it was pretty dark in there. There were also a couple LOA shoplights. I commented, "You collect fluorescent lights too!". I may try to get this one sometime in the future. Assuming the ballast is rated for those 60w energy-savers I'll keep using them till they die, then go with 75w daylight or 5000K lamps. Come to think of it, the two nearest home improvement centers I frequent (Not even all that often; a few times a year) don't sell F96T12s IIRC...at least not on display. They could probably special-order a case for me but that might be pricy so I'll probably jus wait until those lamps die, and then the light will probably sit dormant for awhile till I come across some (preferably 75w) lamps. I'm still kinda excited; I've always wanted one of those! If I end up with it it will go either in my room or in my garage.