26/03/2006 @23:32:57 ^00:43:49

Clock and Bulb Enumeration

With the passing away of the ancient bulb in the cupboard under the stairs and the transition of the local timezone to BST both happening in the past week

Clocks

I have lots of clocks.

• My 16-year old watch
• Digital alarm clocks:
  • black, ancient, indeed it's as old as my watch
  • silver
  both of which, despite being very loud, can run for two hours without waking me up (compare an external authority's ability to wake me up instantly)
• Wall clocks
  • Gold one over the door
  • White office clock (with day and date) on opposite wall, though I should move it as I never look at it
  In the past visitors have told me the ticks are quite distracting. However, I never notice them.
• Small alarm clock stuck to the top of a monitor. There is a clock on my computer desktop but I never look at it.
• My stereo, which these days is nothing but an amplifier for the computers, has a clock in it
• The computers all adjust themselves when there is a timezone switch, so I don't have to remember them.
• Gadgets:
  • My phone has a clock in it but doesn't seem to have the ability to self-adjust like the computers do. I hate my phone and I wish I didn't have one but there you go.
  • My camera also has a clock in it. Everything has a clock in it these days. I forgot to change the clock in my camera last time and now have a bunch of pictures whose datestamps need adjusting

And that's just in here - elsewhere in the house there are

• More wall clocks
  • Kitchen
  • Middle room - I don't know, there isn't a better name for it. We don't use it for much.
  • Another gold coloured one in the front room that is the third of the four wall clocks I rescued from my step-grandmother's house. The first two are as above. The fourth I never could find a place for until my aunt happened to mention her kitchen clock had packed up. I was happy to find a home for it.
• The video has a clock in it
• The boiler has a clock in it (so the heating can be turned on and off at given times)
• The cooker has a clock in it but it doesn't work (this one doesn't really count)
• Ros also has two alarm clocks and a watch

Bulbs

I have tons of lights as well, I prefer lots of small ones to one big one

• Ceiling light is an 11W compact flourescent (55W tungsten equivalent - most of our bulbs are compact flourescents, they last longer and don't use so much power) in a pink lampshade (my room is painted bright green, so when you turn the light on everything not green turns pink, it's fantastic)
• Spotlights in the corners of the rooms:
  • I have a 60W spotlight by my bed for reading but it's pointed at the wall so when you turn it on you don't get a harsh bulb light but a softer light reflected from the wall (and thus tinted green)
  • I have another 60W spotlight on the other side of the room on my writing table. It has also been turned to the wall for a diffusion/uplighting effect, I don't like working under a spotlight.
  It would be nice to replace these with compact flourescents as they are used quite a lot, but they don't make compact flourescents that are sufficiently compact yet...
• Finally there are two sets of fairy lights wound around the shelves over the computers. I bought them in a sale just after Christmas one year and I never take them down. Lots of small lights are better than one big light.

And in the rest of the house

• All the rooms have ceiling lights, obviously
  • Front room, 20W compact flourescent (it claims to be 100W equivalent but it blatantly isn't)
  • Middle room, 20W compact flourescent
  • Kitchen, flourescent tube of unknown power.
  • The bathroom has two lights because it's split into two rooms for some dumb reason (don't ask me, I didn't build it)
    • 60W tungsten in the little antechamber, with the sink (probably replace it with a compact flourescent eventually)
    • the rest with the shower, bath and toilet actually has a spotlight pointed at the shower. It doesn't get used much, I always try to have showers in daylight hours
  • 11W compact flourescent at the top of the stairs
  • The back room upstairs is the last remaining large room to still have a 100W tungsten filament. It doesn't get used much and so hasn't yet needed replacing.
• The cupboard under the stairs has a 60W tungsten bulb in it. This is a new bulb, the previous one having died after lasting for nearly 10 years. It's never been replaced in all the time we've lived here. It was such an old bulb it wasn't even pearl, the glass was clear and you could see the filament directly. It was also very, very dusty.
• There is also a table lamp with a 60W bulb in it in the front room. As with my spotlights this gets used quite a lot but unfortunately the shade is too small to have a compact flourescent put in.

Conclusion: Yeah, I just wanted an excuse to use the word "enumeration"