Replacing light bulbs can be tricky

We spent some time trying to figure out the right replacement light bulb for the guest room ceiling fan. That room is not used all that much, and we had one that was supposed to be the right configuration, but it flickered when the dimmer was turned all the way up. That was not something that we noticed immediately. However, after we knew it was happening, it was something that seemed to be problematic, so we had to head out to the hardware store to find another lightbulb. This time around, I actually opened a ChatGPT session to try to figure out the best options. Apparently, back when we were in the market for ceiling fans, we had purchased some Casa Habitat-branded ones. FEIT Electric makes LED light bulbs that are sold at our local hardware store. They make some multiple-stage dimmable lightbulbs that seemed to be a good configuration. While they were the more expensive option, the features seemed worth it, and we bought two sets of them, one with the soft white brightness and the other with true white brightness. Both of the sets work, and we have no more flickering. This was a good outcome. We really should have some standard lightbulbs by now that have multiple configurations.

Making the thumbnail for this post was more problematic. Right now, I’m 720 hours away from being able to generate a thumbnail using ChatGPT Plus. The limits on these services are the worst. You finally get into the groove of using a technology and then all of a sudden you hit the wall. During my ChatGPT session, it would not generate the image, but it did share back a prompt to use, “Make a Substack preview image for the title: Replacing light bulbs can be tricky. Use a 14:10 rectangular format (minimum 1456 × 1048 px), textured blue-green background, bold centered beige text, and optionally include a minimalist light bulb icon.” Using that prompt, I switched over to use Gemini instead of ChatGPT, and you can see the thumbnail that was produced below. It did not make something that exactly matches the theme of my previous thumbnail. It did generate a passable image, and that is good enough to get this post loaded up to Substack.

You might be wondering what episode of Stargate Atlantis I’m watching… the answer would be episode 12 of season one. My big game plan of enjoying the afternoon while watching some Stargate and eating an apple as a snack worked out swimmingly. It was a pleasant Sunday with no hint of adventure or shenanigans.