heh

I decided I don't like LED lights on my xmas tree, so invested in regular ol' bulbs.... which needs either 120VAC or a lot of rewiring. Since the dash is still open, I tapped off the wiring to my repaired lighter-outlet. I'd, previously, run wire to the back for 12V... but it was powered by a dangling lighter-plug which has since been repurposed, so the wiring's run, but ends were cut.

It's taken quite a bit of brain-rewiring to get to the point where I'm using 120VAC extension-cords for wiring 12VDC, but, seriously, $1 gets yah a plug, three sockets, and 6ft of wire. Nevermind those plugs actually stay in the sockets [unlike lighter-plugs].

Not advised. But, functional.

And, every socket needed gives two spares. I mean how can yah beat it?

So now that nice warm glow of multicolored incandescents. I'm really fond of that blue. Much nicer, especially in a chilly van.

Remember when blue T1-3/4 LEDs came out? They were so dim you could barely see them in daylight at 30mA, and $6 a piece when they first appeared in the Mouser catalog! I was so thrilled I bought several, and somehow got so fixated on keeping stocked I never really noticed that the light from blue leds is, frankly, kinda ugly. Maybe it's the narrow spectrum?

But for xmas lights, there's something special about the blue bulbs. I dunno what it is, they're much darker than the other colors, but the bulb itself glows, and yet somehow that yellowish glow still shines through, but only directly at the filament.

I dunno, maybe just nostalgia, but lights in winter were always about making long cold nights not only brighter but also warmer.

I had some "warm white" LEDs on the tree, first. They seemed nice alone [*especially* in comparison to the cool-white], but beside the multicolor incandescents they have a very weird feel, almost ghostly. It feels like they're ejecting dust rather than emitting light.

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LOL

And only *just now* it occurs to me I coulda left the inverter up front and actually ran those extension cords at 120VAC. Wow, brain. Wow.