One of the things I love most about lighting is just keeping track of different lights around the community. I have memorized hundreds of different lights around my house along with the dates that they failed or got re-lamped. One of the reasons I like HPS in particular is because it's relatively easy to tell the age of the lamp.

There is an HPS streetlight near me that started cycling recently and it's already doing about 48 seconds off, 58 seconds on. This one is unique because it almost strikes up to full brightness right away. I know of another light that has been cycling for many years, and the on/off timings haven't really changed overtime. How is it possible that some the lamps basically continue to cycle indefinitely, or at least 5 to 10 years. That's longer than the entire rated life of the lamp, just in EOL state!

There's this one abandoned parking lot by me that had it’s HPS floodlights left connected after the building was knocked down. Out of seven, one is completely out, one works properly, and the other five cycle. It's kind of cool will see them all cycling at different rates at night. The streetlight right in front of my house, when it comes on at dusk stays blueish for about 15 seconds longer than it did when I moved in about a year ago but the final color has not shifted as pink as the ones that are actually cycling yet.

There is yet another building with HPS floodlights and one of them has gradually been turning more white/blue mercury color. When I moved in about a year ago it was only subtly different than the other HPS lamps, now it's like completely white and you can't even tell it's HPS by the color. I wonder if it's one of those anti cycling lamps and someday soon I'll be out there and it simply won't be on, and it will never come on again. Another one of these same flood lights on that building likes to behave differently every night. Some nights it runs perfectly fine without any issues, some nights it cycles occasionally and some nights it barely comes on, never even making it past the blueish mercury color.

Do any of you guys keep track of the status of all the individual lights in your area? Let's hear some stories.

Oh that's something I started doing LONG before I joined L-G!

Say this fixture. There used to be an LPS wallpack in its place back around 2000. Then this thing. And as of today it's been kaput for almost 10 years, if not more.

This historic specimen is now gone unfortunately.

I was surprised to see that this OV-50 is still there, but I don't know if it's still working. Last time I drove by last month it wasn't lit, so I can't tell.

I could go on and on here.