Yes, yes, yes! You need eye protection in “sun on snow” conditions. (You also need eye protection from cold winds and from the debris that the cold winds propel.) The white guy’s equivalent is something like this. The marketing is crazy - they seem to want to sell only to soldiers and redneck militiamen - but the things are reasonably effective. I’ve had trips where there have been days at a time that the goggles haven’t come off for more than a few seconds outside my tent. In overcast but snowy conditions, switch to amber lenses.
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I think the whole idea of standardized “bulbs” is going to go away pretty quick. Light fixtures will simply be built with a non-replaceable light emitter with adjustable output and color temperature. I’m ok with replacing my lighting fixtures every 40 years.
How about every three to five years? They still need to be accessible and maintainable parts per building code. It’s not the LED diodes that fail but all the electronics converting 120V (or 220) to the 12 or 24V.
They’ve actually been working for about ten years to standardize LED pucks, but, I swear to god, discussions stalled on if there should be three screw holes or two.
That said, I like your optimism but reality is not going to bear it out. Look at car brakelights and see how many of those LEDs burn out and they’re starting on a 12V system that doesn’t dim.
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The connectors are easy enough to find. The hard part is finding a token.
I once heard about a place where they had to scrap their whole Token Ring system because some fool had unplugged a cable, the token had fallen out, and they weren’t able to find it or to get a replacement.
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I bought what I thought were regular incandescent light bulbs at Target awhile back, half-consciously remembering that some/most incandescents are no longer on the market. Indeed, these were halogen lamps encased in a traditional light bulb shape. Damn if those fuckers didn’t last much longer than a lit match.
I assume I ought to take these back to Target, that they’re supposed to last longer than that etc. etc. but I am guessing these are not supposed to be how halogen lamps are implemented.
Also, I presume they’ve gotten around the heat issue? A friend had an anecdote about a moth flying into a halogen floor lamp and starting a small (i.e. moth-sized) fire, but I also recall the fire that consumed most of Lionel Hampton’s belongings was due to a halogen light.
I used to notice some extra noise, whenever I’d walk past a neon sign while listening to a cassette w/ headphones.
I’d suggest giving autopal bulbs off ebay a try. Not the blue or extra wattage ones, just standard replacement. I don’t know if they’ve gone downhill, but I had a pair in my jeep for the 7 years before one burned out this spring. Low hours, since not a lot of night driving, but still, 7 years and a lot of vibration. The remaining one was still running brighter and whiter than the new phillips “xtravision” that I replaced them with. (there was a rebate, so the phillips were kicking around the glovebox - another pair of autopals will go in the glovebox when I get around to it)
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Definitely take them back, they should be lasting about twice as long as a traditional incandescent. I’ll bet they got dropped in shipping.
The heat issue was from a, I’m assuming, 300-500 watt standing lamp, about six feet tall with a shoddy metal screen to protect the lamp? Yeah, those were always a bad idea.
The lamp envelope itself, which is what contains the halogen gas, is a small glass encasement inside your standard A19 lamp size. This inner envelope is designed to allow heat flow in a specific manner for long life while the halogen pushes the tungsten filament away from the glass and back onto the filament while burning hotter and thus, brighter, at the same time. Anything in a A19 shape is going to be 43 watts or so for a 60 watt equivalent, about 75 watts for a traditional 100. But the heat is at the inner envelope for the most part. It’s also not a 300 watt lamp that’s a quarter of an inch in diameter and waiting to light those curtains on fire.
As long as you’re avoiding those terrible 1990’s fixtures in the first place you should be fine. They still make those lamps, but they need to be fully enclosed these days behind a lens to prevent contact, like a stage fixture or something like that.
But take the ones you have back, I get about two years out of them.
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Poor theory applying the old world to the new technology. People will be replacing their lighting technology as often as the innovators in the market can convince them to. Look at TV’s today. People threw away perfectly good 20" Tube TV’s just to get an equal LCD TV and now people are giving away or throwing away 20-32" TV’s as they upgrade to the latest and greatest. The same with cars (people trade them in long before their useful life is reached).
Where will this technology go? For starters, dimming LED’s are still expensive so today people are buying non dimming and will upgrade in the future to get dimming. Then they will upgrade again to get Wifi controlled. Then they will upgrade again to get the new model of LEDs that allow the user to fully control the exact color output and again when they build them to sense our mood, time of day and level of sex drive and adjust color accordingly.
The sky is our limit and building something that lasts 42 years definately does not mean that we will use it for 42 years.
oh man the CRI of LEDs is just awful. For that reason alone I avoid them like the plague.
purpose-built
…doesn’t mean proprietary. Unless the purpose has nothing to do with making a valued product.
Guilty… One of the two doors on my car still opened perfectly well when I traded it in! 
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