Christmas Lights REVEALED (?)

Christmas lights: why must you be so complicated?

Why can't you - and I mean all of you - just be plain old parallel circuits?

Oh sure, you might *claim* to survive a bulb failure or two, and maybe you do, but not 3 or 4!

And you're not fooling me - I can spot your extra wires.  You should only need *2* to run the whole length.  I'm guessing some of you are still series circuits at heart, just that you are a combination of 2-3 of them.

Why does this have to be so complicated?

My guess is you are using your bulbs as a poor-man's voltage regulator, and that's why if too many bulbs go a whole bunch more go up in smoke.

And I'm going to further guess that while one can make a large (or medium) 120V bulb, no one knows how to make a 120V miniature, and no one wants to bother putting a bonafide voltage regulator in there along with a dual circuit (one low-voltage regulated for bulbs, one line voltage for the daisy chain socket on the end).

You can do anything in 3 syllables or less - part 1

"You can't judge a book by its cover", some say.  That is, of course, bogus.  I can and certainly have done so and will do so again.

Would "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"?  Probably.  But it won't smell at all if you've never heard of it enough to find one.

And therein - to borrow from Mr. Shakespeare a second time - lies the rub.  Some names function better than others.  Some names stick.  Some names like my beloved "Super Duper" college grocery store make us happy just in saying them.  

And now I'm going to tell you why.  I'm also going to humbly stick my name on this theory which is mine and what it is too.

Matt's Conjecture: "Companies / brands / media are far more likely to succeed if they choose three or fewer syllable names".

"No way", you say.  "Surely, the goodness of a company transcends syllable counts!".  My answer: "not really".

"Oh!" you reply mockingly, "so you're saying I can throw a {1, 2, 3} syllable name on my loser company and cash in?".

I say, "actually, I wasn't going to say that, but now that I think about, yes.  Or at least maybe."

The advantages of having a 3 or less-syllable name (and/or, the disadvantages of having a 4+ syllable name) seem to be enormous.  Let's try Internet company names on for size:

1 syllable	2 syllables	3 syllables	4 syllables	5+ syllables
Ask Bing Digg Fark go Pets Skype Yelp	About Apple Archive(.org) Blogger Blogspot craigslist DropBox eBay Etsy Facebook Flickr github Glassdoor Google Hotmail huffpo(*) hulu IE(*) Inktomi LinkedIn Lycos memway myspace Netflix Netscape (*) Orbitz PayPal Pinterest reddit SalesForce Snapchat Tumblr Twitter Wordpress Yahoo Youtube Zombo	Amazon AOL del.icio.us GoDaddy Instagram imgur LendingClub livejournal mozilla msn Pandora vimeo	deviantart imdb dailymotion metacafe stackoverflow stumbleupon Travelocity Wikipedia	rottentomatoes Travelocity Wikipedia

I mean, whatever happened to Expedia(4)? Geocities(4)? Konfabulator (5)? networksolutions (5)?

I know where I'd want to be on that list.

Lots more to come...including what the (*) mean, but refute away in the meantime...if you dare.