Christmas Tree Ornament Touch Dimmer
Way to liven up my dragging Monday. We just turned the clocks back this weekend, but despite that extra hour of shut-eye we got just 36 hours ago, earlier today I was taking Monday morning a lot harder than usual. That’s until I started working my way through my accumulated weekend e-mails, and came across a pre-Christmas electronics sale. Christmas? Electronics?
Those two little words reminded me of the AmerTac™ Westek® Ornament Touch Dimmer, a very cool piece of electronics that resembles a golden snowflake ornament, but isn’t just there to look pretty. Get this: it actually lets you dim your Christmas tree lights! I’ve been wanting to take it for a spin for quite some time, so today was the day to make it happen. I rifled through our sample box, came up with the magic ornament, and returned triumphantly to my desk. Luckily, despite my nerd-girl appearance, deep down inside I’m a Buddy the Elf at heart, and have a string of Christmas lights stashed in my filing cabinet year-round. So I dug those babies out, plugged in, and started yelling to my coworkers to come and check this thing out.
All you do is plug a string of lights into the dimmer’s adapter, plug the adapter into a power outet, and you’re ready to go. From there, just touch the “ornament,” and you can adjust your lights to low, medium, and bright settings, or turn them on and off. The dimmer itself hangs right on a Christmas tree branch like any other ornament, and no one will be the wiser. The AmerTac™ Westek™ ornament dimmer is great for conserving energy and extending the life of your Christmas lights, or it could just be a fun thing for those with a flair for the novel to have around. You can either wow your guests with your “magic” skills, or just discreetly mess with them by changing light levels every time they glance in the direction of the old Tannenbaum. Either approach you take, you know it will be fun to watch (wink)!
AmerTac™ Westek® Screw-In Lamp Socket Dimmer
When I was a kid, I was always fascinated by the fancy lamps at my aunt and uncle’s house – you know, the kind that would automatically change the brightness of the light if you just touched the lamp base. That was back before I understood what dimmers were and how they worked, and needless to say, it didn’t even occur to me that they could help conserve energy. No, back in those happy days, dimmers existed purely for my entertainment.
But know that I’m all grown up and paying my own electric bills, I really appreciate the fact that dimmers can help reduce the amount of money one needs to hand over to the utility company every month. Over the past few months, more and more energy-saving products have crossed my desk, but one of my favorites has been the Amertac™ Westek® Screw-In Lamp Socket Dimmer. It turns out that you can actually transform any lamp into a 3-step lamp by just screwing one of these Westek® dimmers into your lamp’s light bulb socket. Once the dimmer is installed, it takes only a light touch on any metal part of the lamp to adjust its light output. Pretty neat, right? Not bad for something that costs less than $12 and requires only a few turns of the wrist to install.
And this lamp socket dimmer doesn’t just save you money on electricity – it also cuts back on your light bulb costs, because you don’t need to use the more expensive 3-way light bulbs. Standard bulbs will work just fine – just keep in mind that these only work with incandescent bulbs, not CFLs.