Some of you will know that i finally moved out of the shoe box i lived in for 6 years and moved into a house (about 3 months ago) Since then i have replaced 3 different light bulbs at different places in the house.. Now this made me start thinking.. Surely when the house was new, they fitted in all the bulbs as brand new.. Now some sections of the house light a series of 4 or 6 bulbs at once.. yet there appears to be no link at all between “sibling” bulbs and their life-span..

It (only) then occurred to me, that ive never heard someone say “well.. its coming around to light bulb month.. going to have to change all my bulbs soon?” because the bulbs show no consistency at all. It is probably a good thing, since you dont come home and find the whole house in darkness, because all bulbs went off simultaneously but if this is design, then the bulb should have some sort of label indicating where on the curve it sits.. and it doesnt, which is pretty curious..

It sounds really strange that any piece of consumer engineering can have such an in-determinate mtbf.. there must be a better explanation and since we have such smart people who work here (and or read this blog) im hoping someone will save me the googling…..