Looking to save energy costs in the worst possible way, I relented and bought some of those new bulbs everyone is talking about. They were seven bucks for four of them and you can't put the ones I bought into sockets with dimmer switches active. The theory is to eat the costs now and get energy savings for the rest of my natural life.
And they work just fine. They put out like zero heat, however. It's possible that I am full of shit, but I suspect that having a few incandescent bulbs raised the heat down here a little. So I am wondering if the light they put out will be offset by me bumping the heat of the house a degree. Who can tell, who can tell.
The odd thing is that they don't come on right away. You turn your switch and you think, "Fuck, did the light bulb break?" It's just enough time to begin having that thought. But no, the light comes on. Not at full power originally, however: within 30 seconds the room lights up to full brightness. It's actually a little cool to see the effect go on.
At any rate, if you're like me you don't care about paying a little more for bulbs and you don't hold that cost against the energy consumption prices later on. It's two separate things, in other words. I'll be buying these from here on out, unless we learn that the energy savings is really a tree-hugging hippie scam. In that case, I'm going straight back out of spite.
