Have you tried the newer ones in warm white? Warm white is very close to incandescent light, and the new bulbs are close to instant on.

I haven't heard of them before. I'll try them.

I'm waiting for LEDs to come down in price.

LEDs are SO bright and SO white, I think I'd find them painful in a light fixture.

CFLs are a transitional technology, but incandescent bulbs are such a waste of energy.

I like how incandescent bulbs warm up a room! I know, I know... bad me, no planet.

There's also a daylight CFL which is quite close to real daylight, but it turns out that most people don't really like the way they look in daylight.

I like how I look in daylight... hell of a lot better than how I look under the CFL in my downstairs bathroom.

Okay, I'm done hating on CFLs. Maybe they'll get better.

I'd like to find the sadistic sumbitch who invented "self-evaluations" and punch him in the liver.

(Copying myself from Twitter, because it's so true I needed to say it again. Anxiety-born rant ahead.)

I've been up since way-too-early in the morning because the self-evals are due today and I still haven't done it, and I HATE IT. It's basically a guessing game: What does my boss want me to say? How does she want me to say it? What is she going to use to screw me over this year? This makes me very anxious and angry. I'm having kind of a meltdown.

I think this is why, tangentially, I'm having trouble re-doing my resume. It feels like the same thing: being called to account for what I've done and what I haven't done, and no matter what, I'm wrong and not good enough.

And of course, I can't tell my boss that I'm freaking out over self-evals because it hits ancient trigger points of self-hate and ACOA impossible people-pleasing.

edited to tone down the rant a little

I've never had the experience of doing a self eval but it sounds like torture. Advice is likely more helpful from the experienced, but I do offer my sympathy. Is there anyway to step outside yourself and do this more objectively? Help your friend Zen with this arduous task?

I've reminded my friend Zen that we have copies of this crap from previous years. We're C&Ping right now. We'll update things a bit and hope Boss doesn't ask for documentation.

You are a good friend. I think Zen should pamper you later as a reward.

Indeed! Chocolates and wine, all around.

I've tried to switch over to mostly CFL bulbs, but I'm a little irked that they aren't lasting as long as advertised. If I'm going to fork over $2-5 per bulb, they damn well better last the 5 years they advertise. Instead, I'm got one lamp that eats them up as fast as incandescent so I've gone back to putting those in that particular lamp at least. Room overheads are still CFL and hanging in there pretty good. I think I'm going to start looking for the daylight ones, I don't think any of mine are.

I like the warm white ones myself. To me, the daylight bulbs are a little stark.

CFLs don't last as long if they're turned on and off a lot.

The lighting in my living room and kitchen is spotlights embedded in the ceiling. I had to go to CFLs immediately because of the amount of heat the incandescents gave off. It was crazy. But that was four years ago and I've had one blow out since then. (Six weeks ago. Replacement bulb is still sitting on the counter waiting for me to drag the ladder out.) I'm pretty sure I got the daylight ones. They have the CFL coil-style bulb inside a more standardly shaped spotlight bulb.

I wonder why the performance varies so widely. My mom's electrician was completely new to them, but somehow they go out regularly for her. We built at the exact same time and I have yet to change a bulb. I fact, I was an early adopter and put them in the past several houses where I've lived, and I never had to change any of those, either.

They do come on slower these days, but that's it. Not one failure yet in four years.

Re: Online Dating - I thoroughly recommend my own method, which was to find a chat room dedicated to an actual interest (i.e. a tv show), make friends with the regulars, and start flirting with one. First time, it worked out ok. Second time, it worked out even better. Plus, it got me away from those horrid scorpions.