2026-02-14, Simply Saturday.

Administrivia.

Wheatie Wisdom.  If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.  No running with scissors.  No food fights. 

AI stuff posted, requires a link. Please use spoiler, for longer posts.

Wolf Speak.  No obnoxious behavior towards fellow QTreeper(s). Freedom of Speech is honored here QTree.  But Do Know, every poster, IS personally responsible for what they post. 

America, needs to embrace the following TRUTH…

In No Particular Order, The House AND Senate MUST.

1. Impeach Activist Judges & Fire Activist Magistrates.
2. Pass SAVE Act
3. Pass banning Sanctuary States and Cities
4. Trash Filibuster
5. Trash Blue Slips
6. Confirm Trump Nominations.
7. Codify Trump Executive Orders.

Speaking of embracing…THIS…

If nothing follows KK below, Night Crew, you are on your own.

KK

Fresh Stuff.  May be worth a read, listen, watch or scroll on by. 

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APMEX https://www.apmex.com   Bitcoin https://www.bitcoin.com/

Prices pulled last evening.  Gold $5,060.20.  Silver $78.14.   Bitcoin $68,819.

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Road To Liberty. (A series)

The White House Salute to America 250 Task Force has partnered with Hillsdale College to provide a history series that tells the remarkable story of American Independence.

It will highlight the stories of the crucial characters and events that resulted in a small rag-tag army defeating the mightiest empire in the world and establishing the greatest republic ever to exist.

This is the story of America. This is our shared heritage and our proud destiny that will continue to lead us to unimaginable achievements in the centuries to come.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/america250

Back by popular demand. Another, Double Feature! More bang for your buck. 🙂

Road to Liberty: Valley Forge

6:19

Road to Liberty: Intolerable Acts

2:20

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Articles, Xs, YT…

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IF DP were around AND saw this Chiefio, she’d embrace it. Buy a some 40W incandescent bulbs, Y adapters, perhaps a few Tri adapters.

Chiefio 

Making 75 to 100-ish IC “bulbs”… A How To.

Posted on 7 February 2026 by E.M.Smith

Do LED bulbs keep you awake, or just bother your eyes? How to replace them.

FWIW, some folks have “issues” with LED bulbs, and I’m one of them, The excess blue causes insomnia, and the way they pulse (even if you don’t see it) means the peak brightness is higher than the average and it feels like the light is too bright or even hurting to look at it

So long long ago I laid in a lifetime supply of incandescent bulbs. I do not need to do, at all, what I’m going to say here, BUT this is / was my long term Aw Shit strategy, and one I use when on the road and staying in hotels with LED bulbs. Yes, I have a “kit” I use and swap the lights as needed.

First off, the current “law”: You can buy IC bulbs under about 40+ Watts and over about 2oo W and those designed for “rough service” (basically to mount on vibrating big machines or on the end of long cords dropped on the ground and otherwise abused). Those 2 are the core of the strategy.

The other category still available is 3-Way bulbs, because when the “law” was made, they were not available as LED Bulbs. That’s the second leg of the strategy,

The Y Adapter

When traveling, I try to pack a Y adapter that turns one socket into 2. Currently running between $3 and $4 on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Leviton-128-W-Light-Socket-Adapter-White/dp/B008SDHX6U

Y Light adapter

I have a small box of 2 x 40 W “appliance bulbs” that I carry with me. Together this gives me one 80 W “bulb”. Enough for most hotel rooms. IF I need more, pretty much every hardware store sells these, and every hardware and grocery store tends to still have 40 W “Appliance” bulbs.

I don’t mind re-buying these if I find myself without “my kit” and checking in to a hotel. Having more just means more places I can use them at home later. I also have a couple of “plug to socket” adapters and a couple of “socket to 2 plug-outlets and a socket on the end” adapters for odd cases. I regularly would use the Plug to Socket adapter with a small bulb when working in dark ares (closets, under desks) that had outlets but no lights. Very helpful.

The 3 bulb adapter

I just bought 3 of these ( I have 4 closets that could use them plus the 2 sockets in the garage). I also had bought some 25 W and 33 W decorative “flame shaped glass” bulbs that just were not working where I’d thought to try them. So as of now, I have 2 x 33W + 1 x 25 W = 91 W of IC light in 2 places to use up those otherwise “useless” bulbs. One is my office closet (that will likely take forever to wear them out as I rarely use the light in it), another one is in the garage ceiling fixture (“shop lights” around the perimeter – this is just the “get enough light to turn on more” light), and the last one barely fits in a 2 bulb floor standing lamp just over my shoulder in the “front room”.

I have a whole box of 40 W “appliance” bulbs, and 25 W bulbs are readily available, So I can easily “make” anything from about 75 W (or even lower should I want to buy even lower powered bulbs) to 120 W lights. The only caveat is that it is not going to fit in all lamps, Most of them have a harp that is too narrow at the base, or a shade that is too close for long “decorator flame shape” bulbs. But for closets and other overhead bare fixtures, it works great.

There are a LOT of “socket adapters” on Amazon including even 5 and 6 socket ones, so you can make a much more powerful light should you wish, and maybe find one that fits lamps better too. I just chose this one as it will match my closets just fine (CFL bulbs are slow to brighten in a rapid on-off closet use, so IC is better there).

I presently have large (6 inch) glass IC Bulbs in the closets, but bought these “for that day”, as replacements of the large ball bulbs are running about $27. That’s another “allowed” category – specialty or decorator bulbs. But for how long?… so prepared.

The Amazon search link: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Sockey+Y+adapter

The particular one I bought: https://www.amazon.com/Toplimit-Standard-Splitter-Heat-resistant-86V-240V/dp/B00T5JD2P2/

3-Bulb Adapter

The “Dimmer” Strategy

It turns out that running an IC Bulb at lower volts/watts extends the life exponentially. At about 95% of full brightness, you get many years of added bulb life. Below about 75% to 80% bulb life is longer than my remaining life so “infinite” as far as I’m concerned.

So I put dimmer switches on all bedrooms and bathrooms. AND I bought “corded dimmers” to put on the lamps. This has extended the life span of my existing inventory of IC Bulbs so much that I’ve had to replace only 1 or 2 (that had already been used a while in California before the move) in the last 3 years of use.

AND that isn’t even considering the High Wattage bulbs I have in inventory. I bought a dozen or so of 200 W and a couple of 300 W bulbs so that, run at 100 W to 150 W light equivalent, I’d have “lights forever” even if I ran out of my inventory of regular wattage IC and Halogen bulbs.

Note that Halogen bulbs do NOT like to be run below about 90% of full brightness. The halogen gas in them scrubs tungsten off of the bulb and redeposits it on the filament as long as the filament is very hot, but at low dim, it corrodes the filament instead. Not an issue now unless you already have an inventory of halogen bulbs. But if you do, be aware…

Turning 3-Way bulbs into “normal” bulbs

You can still buy 1C “3-way” bulbs in several sizes. These have 2 filaments in them. A lower wattage and a high wattage. Both, run together, give the highest light output. So a 50, 100, 150 Watt bulb has a 50 W filament and a 100 Watt filament. The base has a center connector for the high wattage, and a “ring” for the low wattage (that sits between the high watt center and the outside shell) and the outside shell is for the ground for both.

Run at low wattage until that filament is “used up” will leave you with a bulb that will still work in regular sockets at the high wattage. So I have an inventory of several different 3-Way bulbs “for that day”. One is presently running as a “night light / ambient light” in my office at 50 W. When it “burns out” I’ll be left with a 100 W bulb to use in any socket I want. I presently have one of them on a dimmer in my Front Room lamp, I run it at about 60 W light equivalent so it will likely outlast me at this point.

I am presently, even with just one 3-Way lamp, “manufacturing” full power bulbs faster than I am consuming them. A nice place to be, really. But it means I have a lot more inventory of bulbs than I’ll ever use as I bought most of the inventory a decade-ish ago before I worked out the whole strategy and process (some as low as a few cents each when companies were dumping them 😉

So in Conclusion

That’s the bulk of it all.

FWIW I also have an inventory of CFL Bulbs and generally run them (especially in summer when added heat load is NOT desired) anywhere they work. You can still buy CFLs and they are made in IC Color temperature (2700 K), a nice medium white (3000 K to 4000 K) and garish “daylight” (5000 K to 6000 K) that doesn’t have the “feels brighter than it is” of LEDs, but is just as prone to too much blue insomnia inducing.

So I only run the 2700 K to 3500 K range, and that works very well.

It IS possible to escape the LED Bulb Hell that Gang Green has pushed us into, and it takes only a little bit of money and work.

I think that’s pretty much everything. IF I think of anything else, I’ll put it in comments.

https://chiefio.wordpress.com

^^^ That was prolly over-the-top. ^^^

Gotta admit. Chiefio identified a problem. Created work around. Shared.

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Serious time crunch yesterday. Chiefio info timely for me. Perhaps helpful for some. DP sure could have used it. If pressed, The Engineer (DPs Father), could have figured it out.

Saturday also tight schedule. Will try to post stuff….

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The Who Saturday

Baba O’riley

I Can See For Miles (Tommy Live At The Royal Albert Hall)

The Who – Pinball Wizard (Live at the Isle of Wight, 1970)

PAUSE The Scrolling Guys….

Guys, Pay Attention… 🙂

Night crew, your nickel.

KK