It started by a general search for help with my Northgate Omnikey Ultra keyboard that had recently developed a couple of stuck-key problems, the first since I bought it new in the late 1980’s.

Eventually I ran across your article dated 2/8/2001. Meanwhile I found several websites letting me know that Northgate is now being remade under another name.

I agree that for anyone who does more keying than mouse-clicking, there’s nothing like the Northgate.

Meanwhile I searched on eBay hoping to find a new one that had been brought out of someone’s forgotten storage to make a buck, but no such luck. Only a couple of used ones, or the new replacement-brand, but not the model I was looking for (to be a backup for my Ultra).

Well, yesterday the ebay notify-svc contacted me that a used/refurbed Northgate was up for sale for $99 plus a [hefty] s/h fee.

I will have to pass for tough $ reasons but if anyone out there wants to check this out, then I’d rather someone get it who would appreciate it,even if I can’t have it!

Thanks (and no, I have no connection with anyone from ebay, or whoever it was that had listed that used Northgate).

P.S. Keep writing. It’s nice to hear how you’re doing.

So I returned the digital thermostat, and bought a new house that came with them. 😉

The thermostat shouldn’t be a big deal to install, especially for a tech guy. The smarts are all in the unit itself, and you pretty much swap it for the older unit, reconnecting the same control wires. Changing your air filters several times yearly, and cleaning the fan and lubricating the blower motor annually help reduce the energy bill quite a bit, too.

I’d have to agree with the others about the fluorescent lighting, though. I’ve had better luck purchasing higher quality incandescents. They cost more, but the quality of materials and manufacturing mean they hold up much longer, while still providing the warm light to which we’re accustomed. I’ve tried several different styles and shapes of fluorescents in the house (wanted to avoid having to change them so darned often) and they just didn’t do it for me and the spouse.

But I would agree, $400 sounds like a marginal furnace over the course of a winter. Or else faulty insulation.

Fluorescent light is not capable of producing as much of the visible light color spectrum as ordinary incandescents and this has a very visceral effect on the body and one’s consciousness. A nice illustrative analogy is with digital and analog sound recording mediums. High quality analog tape is much more capable of rendering the complete sound medium during recording than a recorder with poor digital audio converters which ‘represent’ the sound rather than physically mirror the sound. And when you listen to a recording made in high quality analog, your sound is massaged by the warmth and you physically feel good (and so much more so when the composition is good) whereas a bad digital recording can make sensitive people feel nauseous and less sensitive people feel that there is just something missing from the recording; and there is! A large part of the sound spectrum is missing from the digital recording.

I think the ideal light to have in the home is light that best represents the light of the sun: full spectrum lighting. With the right full spectrum setup, homes feel very cheerful and fun to be in.

Try these guys: http://www.lumiram.com. I don’t know if these are sold at Home Depot but we sure have them: http://www.candelacorp.com.

Not everyone at Candela shares my view on full spectrum lighting but most everyone would agree that there are many better options to interior lighting design in the home than a fluorescent solution in regard to quality of light.

mb

That’s fine. The difference is so little (say 12 watts versus 22 is only 10 watts per hour) that you might as well just go with the big guns on everything. In fact, I’d say must. However, I’d also say it’s a somewhat cold, soulless light. Now, with ordinary stick-light flourescents you can get a “warm orange”. I don’t know whether they offer such in the mini-fluorescents. However, I’d take a while looking into the question, and in the meantime just use one major-wattage (for a mini-f.), and assess how you react, and how your girlfriend thinks you’re reacting. It’s amazing how bad the effect of a “cold, glacial, soulless” light can be on some folks, and how little it worries others.