I was Wrong

It's time to start reflecting on the past year, and I want to kick mine off with some admissions on places where I was flat wrong.

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs - boy, did I get on that train. When I found out that those little bulbs operated at roughly 1/3 the wattage of normal bulbs and they lasted for 5 years, I ran out and outfitted the entire house with them. I'm not some earth-worshiping, tree-hugging, enviro-nazi, by the way. I'm just a guy who loves technology, electronics, and efficiency, and who doesn't like to change light bulbs.

One place they worked great was in the flood light sockets over the driveway. Because of the reduced heat and wattage, I was able to put 150W equivalent bulbs there and just drench the driveway and street in light. This is cool since we don't have street lights.

The problem came in with the whole "they last 5 years" bit. They don't. Not by a long shot. I bought those dang bulbs this year and already we've lost 5 or 6 of them. One of the floods is out over the driveway already. It was a total rip off. The only way to offset the cost of the bulbs (about $3 a piece) was if they lasted the 5 years and operated at the reduced wattage. They didn't even make it one year. Wow, was I wrong.

Another area that I had to "chiggity check myself" this year was with ethanol based fuel. We got a Suburban back in 2006 and when I found out that it could run E85, I was all over it. Again, my focus was not on some ridiculous notion that man can in any way affect the environment of the marvelously created planet earth, but was on patriotism. I really wanted to embrace a fuel that was made in America, by Americans, and not send money to regimes that could hurt us. E85 looked like the answer.

Now, there are people out there who want to crush people who advocate the use of ethanol as fuel - the anti-ethanites. These folks will exaggerate and emphasize on all the negative aspects of this fuel while ignoring any positives. It is unfortunate, but hating ethanol turned into a religion.

One place where ethanol would have worked wonders was in developing and using it regionally. You see, oil is pumped out of the ground (or melted out in Canada), then transported great distances to be refined, and then the final product is transported great distances to the end users. I think that if a fuel could be made in the midwest and used in the midwest, then that would eliminate a whole lot of distribution energy and cost, as well as providing another level of national security and independence.

Unfortunately, as ethanol's use as fuel was increased dramatically through law, nobody planted more corn. It turns out that we use corn for almost everything we eat in America. We eat it as corn, we use it to sweeten our soft drinks, we feed it to milk cows as well as other animals we eat for food. So, we made our fuel compete with our food without planting more corn, and ethanol flopped. It flopped in a huge way. So, I was wrong, again.

Don't get me wrong, these two instances aren't the only places where I was wrong this year. Ask my wife. But these are the only two I'm going to share here!