Where Was The First Drive-In Restaurant?

 

Q: Where was the first drive-in restaurant? 

A: Royce Hailey's Pig Stand opened in Dallas in 1921

What city was the first to use parking meters?

 

A: Oklahoma City, on July 16, 1935

Christmas Lights Can Be A Real Pain In The Butt!!!

 

Yea, Christmas lights can be a real pain in the butt! Then of course if your lights are old like mine, it means more troubles being the bulbs can burnout at anytime. I always that it funny that when you put the lights away for next year they are all working, but when you get them out the following year, half of them don't work!

So, last evening I had a set go out. It was pretty late so figured I'd fix it the next day (today). So, I took them off the timer, plugged them in and soon found out there was two sets of lights, not just one. The one set was lit, the other wasn't. I couldn't find out where the problen was with a "checker", so I ended up removing each bulb and checking it. What makes it even worse was that it was on garland, which makes it hard to find bulbs hidden in the garland.

So, I pull and check every bulb and all seemed good but one. Maybe its a fuse? So I remove the fuses and check them, they are ok. Keep in mind it was only 32 deg. F. outside so my hands were pretty cold. Not being able to find the problem, I decided to take the whole set down and take it in the house to operate on it.

Once in the house I plugged them in and still nothing. I then started the process of checking each bulb again being I could have missed one in the garland somewhere. I got to about the 20th bulb and surprise, no bulb even in the socket! The socket was buried deep in the garland and of course I was just going along checking the bulbs I seen, not looking for an empty socket.

I got a new bulb and put in the socket and the string of lights came on! What happened was the past day or two it's been really windy and some how that bulb came out of it's socket. After I seen they were working, I took them out and but the sting of lights back up, pluged them in and both strings were working! I then plugged them back into the timer, hopefully they will come on this evening.

When I put the lights back up, the bulb that came out was laying on the ground which I didn't see before. This evening I'll be going around checking all the lights around the house before more then one or two bulbs burn out and a whole set goes out.

If you are like me and change a lot of bulbs and you haven't figured this out yet... You can buy a pack of like 10 bulbs for around $3.00. Just be sure to check what voltage your string of lights take before buying a pack, should be the same voltage which is on the sting of lights sticker (by the plug), or in the instructions.

To save money, you can do like I do. A lot of lights take 2.5 volt bulbs, some 3 volt, and some even 6 volt. So if you have a lot of bulbs you might have to be changing, don't buy the little 10 pack of bulbs for $3.00, buy a set of 100 bulb string for $2.98! That will give you 100 bulbs for the price of a 10 pack.

Just be sure you use the "bass" from the string that has the burned out bulbs in. I pull all the bulbs and bulb holders out of the new string of lights I bought and put them in a baggie with a piece of paper stating the voltage. If I need a new bulb, I take one out, remove the bulb from it's base, then remove the burned out bulb from it's base, then insert the new bulb into the base of the old bulb and plug it in, done! As for the base from the new bulb, I just throw them away.