Going Green

I'm all for energy efficiency. I'd like nothing more than to save a little on the power bill... and maybe the cost of replacing light bulbs. We bought some of those compact fluorescent lightbulbs. Regular incandescent bulbs just can't handle the strain of running for about 14 hours a day, and they burn out constantly around here. They also blow out when emotions or energy runs a little high. I always stop, take a few deep breaths & count to 10 before hitting light switches when I'm revved up (I can turn the television off without using the remote or hitting the power button, too, but one day that tube is gonna blow and then I'll feel like an ass). So anyway, back to the fluorescents. I'm not real sure about these things. We had to get smaller ones for the hall lights - the regular sized ones won't fit inside the light covers (strike 1). They have a different quality of light, more diffuse (unless you look right at them, anyway) and not as bright (strike 2). So we put two in the hall & one in my secondary bedroom lamp. Tried to put one in my main bedroom lamp, but the bulbs have these big plastic safety thingies on the bottom, next to the part that screws into the socket. My lamp has a lyre-shaped wire holding the shade on, and the bottom part of the wires are too narrow to accommodate the fluorescent bulb's bulbous bottom (strike 3).

It seems to me that manufacturers of energy-efficient and green energy alternatives have been paid well by producers of traditional fossil-fuel dependent energy sources to make their new products not as good as, more expensive than or more inconvenient than less-energy-efficient ones. And it's not like these fluorescent bulbs were cheap, either.

In other news, things have definitely quieted down around here. No more household goms run amok, no more unfortunate accidents. Except for me falling over while trying to pull my shorts up today. I cannot wait til I can put weight on this fucking knee. Went to my third physical therapy appointment. The therapist is working the incision sites to 'desensitize and mobilize the scar tissue'. I also get deep-tissue work on my calf to loosen things up for the cramping I've been having. I thought massage was supposed to feel good. This crap they do to me just makes me want to climb the walls to get away from their probing, prodding fingers.

Hey, it works!

I put a guestbook on my geocities webpage, and I finally got the test entries I sent yesterday! Woohoo!

I am not good enough to program a confirmation page to pop up after the 'submit' button is pushed, so I wasn't sure if it actually worked or not - that and my Norton AV interfered.

Yay me!

Sometimes it's the small things that make me feel like I've achieved something. Registered for summer & fall classes. Taking one over summer - Psych 101. This will be the 2nd time I've been through this class - the first time was for Alex. For fall, I'm taking an ecology class (ah, it's Biology 220) for my 2nd science class, going to try and get through a technical communications class again, another Introduction to Programming (which hopefully won't be Java - it's with the same guy who is doing the Web Development class I'm in now), and A+ Software, which is a prep class for the A+ certification exam. A+ certification shows you are basically entry level tech support. I'm trying to decide if I want to take the A+ hardware class, too, but I don't know if I can handle 5 classes. Once I find out what the Intro to Programming is like, if it turns out to be Java, I'll drop it & take the A+ hardware instead. Spring of '08 will be pure computer courses - finally!