Spent the past 2 days helping my friend with a 2000 BMW 528i wagon change the oil pan gasket. Hellish ordeal on those cars, had to drop the whole sub frame out, unbolt the motor and support it from above, and degrease the entire lower engine bay with about 3 cans of brake clean. Quite the messy affair, but its doing well for 260,000 miles now despite the coolant issues and the cancer rust per BMW standards...

I bought a cobra-head...

I found a FSL 30w tube. While going somewhere, I saw a tube with chinese style endcaps, so I got it.
This may not seem so rare, but here in India you are lucky if you find anything other than 4ft T12, T8 or T5.

I touched on this in another thread, but I now have logging implemented for the gallery.  Deletions of photos, albums, and comments will all be tracked.  For those still on approval, approval and declines of photos and comments are recorded as well.  If you are having trouble locating a picture or comment, please feel free to contact me and I will track it down.  Don't necessarily assume it was or was not removed by the moderators.  When in doubt, don't hesitate to ask.

Also as a reminder, I can usually restore old photos and comments to the site, provided they were online for at least a week prior to deletion and were removed within the past four years.

The Home Depots in my area did a reorganization in late 2023.

• All the fluorescent lamps and LED fluorescent lamps got moved to the lighting fixture section
• I think they still have F20, F40, F96T12, F96T12HO, F17T8, F32T8, and F96T8 but the range has shrunk. No more F15 lamps or 5000K lamps
• The sole remaining HID lamp, the ED17 70w HPS is now on clearance
• The last of the fluorescent fixtures (2x4 T8 troffers, striplights, and wireguards) are now on clearance
• They still sell a 2 lamp T8 ballast, 4 lamp T8 ballast, and 2 lamp T12 ballast
• The regular screw in LED lamps, CFLs and incandescent lamps are still in their old location

I recently visited my local Home Depot in Ontario Canada and noticed the lightbulb section took up less of the space compared to before and there was no sign of any fluorescent lamps! Not even LED T8. Just all LED filament lamps. There was still a few incandescent bulbs offered as well.

Now I didn't have time to walk the whole store or see the light fixture section, so it's possible and I'm hoping that the rest are just moved there.


If anyone else has been to a HD lately, let me know what yours had. Hoping the tubes were just moved elsewhere in the store. I was hoping they still had F48T12HO as I need a few.

Thanks again. I will try to understand things you said here  But here is some more specific information about my devices:

My computer doesn't have an HDMI port, so I use a Mini DP to HDMI adapter. Then, I have a cable with HDMI on one end and then DVI on the monitor.

And the speakers have an external amplifier that seems to be homemade, at least partially. The cord in the right speaker was extended so it can reach the amplifier that is on the left side of my table.


Hope these would help with troubleshooting.

Well, too many words and no concrete recommendations, as usual. i assume original poster uses HDMI cable connection to the monitor. HDMI is particularly sensitive to impulse interferences as it uses weak signals (~800mV) at rather high frequency. Especially with a cheap cable having thin shielding. My advice is just to ignore this (I had this too when connecting my monitor to a Blu-Ray player with a long cable) or to use a better cable, with a thicker shield and preferably interference-suppressing ferrite core molded in the middle. Ferrite core breaks ground loops at high frequency, working as a transformer, and so makes the life in that respect better. You may try to clip a ferrite core / tube on the cable yourself if you have a spare from some other equipment.

Yeah I just checked and Ace does still sell it, although only one of the stores I see in my tri county area has it in stock. They have them on Amazon too.

The only commercial post top I saw on a house was a GE PM series post top that's painted black. Haven't seen it at night but it's been around (and still is) as long as I can remember.

@Cole D.: I have seen the Caretaker sold at an ACE Hardware. I think 29w 4000K for about 130 dollars and the refractor (sold separately) was either 20 or 30 dollars. Not sure if that ACE still sells them though.