... has anyone ever heard of "Boneless" or "Cloud" couches? These couches have no springs or wood frames, at all, and show up to your door compressed in bags/wraps of some sort, in a box. I've got two of them that I bought for the loft:

Got a lamp that reached an EOL today? Post about it here.
Unfortunately I've got a lamp that reached EOL unexpectedly... one of my better CFL's... a 15w GE BIAX CFL, went EOL today. A component within the base
failed, so it did not light up when I flipped the switch on. Showed no signs of EOL earlier in the day and worked perfectly fine. I'm assuming it might've
been the starting capacitor that failed but I'm not sure. This was a Programmed Start CFL... the tube portion did NOT fail, so there was no EOL show, and
fair weather end blackening from years of usage. I've used that GE BIAX CFL in my kitchen since 2020. This is unfortunately the second 15w BIAX to fail
unexpectedly. The first one failed back in 2022. I took a pic of that one back then, shown here:
https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=1854&pos=40&pid=209478.

Well if/when you can, hold 1 if not 2 Westinghouse RMA 100 watt NEMAs for me. A family member of mine did a dump run a few years ago and threw away some of my fixtures which included one of those Westinghouse NEMAs. I don't mind saying I was quite ticked off at him afterwards because I got it pretty much the same way you're about to. I wouldn't mind paying for shipping if necessary.

@Ash, From what I have read in the 1992-1993 National Catalog, it was mentioning that the energy saver mercury vapor lamps were somehow rated for the same lumen output as the lamps they were intended to replace.

@Patrick - Correct. That Reddit thread sounds somewhat similar to what I’ve been experiencing. I really wasn’t sure if it was the magnetic ballast causing that, and after @sol mentioned getting it with incandescent lighting, I’m now almost certain that it is just a coincidence. I do wonder if it could be the fact that the lighting is now brighter after the magnetic ballast went in though, as the old electronic ballast was only a 0.75 ballast factor while the magnetic is 1.0 of course. Maybe the magnetic ballast pushed things bright enough to cause the flickering sensation. And as I’ve thought about it more, I think it may have occurred a couple of times with the electronic ballast, but it became pretty much every time I left the bathroom in the middle of the night after the magnetic ballast went in. I definitely think it is just eye strain though. These are two F40T12 lamps, so quite a substantial difference between light on and light off.

I do also get those colored patches you refer to as well. I usually get them if I look at a light and shut my eyes. The patch will be the shape of the light and sort of drift around a bit. I also see fainter patches in very very dark conditions (like under my bedcovers) or when I shut my eyes as well. As far as the flickering goes, I have never stayed up long enough for it to disappear (next time I get it, I’ll wait for a little while to see how long it takes) but it goes away immediately when I shut my eyes.

I have tried using nightlights before, but they are just too dim for me.

So it's only in your vision and not the actual lights like in that video from Emersyn?  I think I've experienced something similal, and here's a post on Reddit.  I've never associated it with any particular form of lighting, but it usually happens after an abrupt shift from brightly lit to pitch dark.  However, what I've had sometimes lasts a few minutes but isn't very pronounced, and does go away once my eyes adjust to the dark.  After that point I'll sometime notice various kinds of "noise" including colored dots and patches that might be some amount of visual snow, phosphenes, or closed-eye visualizations.  I'm not sure I actually have "Visual snow syndrome" however considering it's all this visual noise is minimal when light levels are higher.

On a side note, like @sol I have a nightlight.  I like these which are motion-activated.  It's a good way to be able to use incandescent without wasting power and going through lots of bulbs, and you can simply stick a C7 christmas light in them if you want a different color.

@sol - Interesting. It must just be related to eye strain.

@Emersyn - What I’m referring to is a general “lightening/darkening” effect in the eyes, it doesn’t linger only where the lamps are like that.

I think I've seen this with magnetic RS ballasts in the cold.. https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-266800

Yeah, even with their bigger 10kW one it still uses 2.45GHz, which could definitely be a problem. I would assume that some RF can escape, but I have no idea.

You could probably just have the cavity made by an online CNC service, I am sure whatever is in there isn't worth trying to figure out how to make myself with a manual mill lol.

You are fully capable of connecting with friends if and when this matters - As seen here whey you came to write to us

May that be the sort of friendship you might be missing, overlooking, or were unable to find in your real life contact circle of people ?



When your friends are not too close by all the time like in college, which forces you to interact with them at times you don't get to choose

A real best friend at our age (i'm at about the same age as you) is the one who is open for you to chime in when you have something of interest (good or bad), even if sometimes you dont even contact at all for a long time, and sometimes a short and intense burst of contact all at once

He does not "require" (or make you feel like he requires or expects) your presence at some frequency just to show that you exist, like the meaning of friend in the understanding of young kids. That sort of contact eventually may evolve to e.g. "the company at the pub" for some people, but clearly this isn't the sort of contact you are missing

So long as you two really consider each other friends and try to be so, it'll just work out. With all your emotionality (and he might too), all the things you might think to be huge mistakes but aren't, come as you are

It's not a friend intended to evolve into being your girlfriend. So it does not matter too much who this friend is (he/she/age) and how (on what occasion, based on what interests, ...) you found each other



Maybe you may define (for yourself, without us) what you are missing, then you will have better abilities to find it