I filed a police report and they were impressive in their follow up, though I could give them nothing to go on. I can’t see the mailbox from the house.
Kids playing Mailbox Baseball would not have bothered me as much. It was the targeting of the lock that bothered me.
There’s a camera on the new one now.
But none of this has anything to do with routinely turning off lights at home, so I’ll drop it now. 
It depends. There’s a difference between room lights in a room where the light switch is conveniently located by the door, and rooms or hallways where I’d have to go through the room in the dark to get to the light switch.
My last few power bills have been quite large (for me). I know it is due to the electric heating I use in my place which, I think, isn’t near as efficient as it should be (something to research this summer).
But, it has made me kinda crazy turning off anything I am not using (mostly lights…and I use LED lights which are efficient so probably not saving much but I do what I can).
I guessed it well enough from the context – pretty much had to be somebody living with them, at least.
My point is that it’s better for people to be clear about shit.
I hate overhead lighting so all rooms except the bathrooms are lit by multiple lamps. I turn them on at dusk and off at bedtime. It would be silly to turn them off when I leave a room. For instance, the living/dining room has seven lamps. There are different configurations of lighting depending on what activities are happening in there. So even with just four on, the most common arrangement, it would be annoying to turn them all off and on as I come and go. Same for the other rooms.
I don’t know about shortening their life; it might. But the extra juice used on startup is absolutely trivial. Probably less than one second of operation.
I generally try to keep lights off when not in use. And they are nearly all LCD. The one exception being my wife’s bedroom light. When I tried to replace it with an LCD light, none would fit under the harp. My bedroom light looks identical, but the harp is enough different that I could find one. For our ancient eyes we need 150 W equivalent and they are hard to find.
You might be able to buy a new harp.
Not so hard to find at all. Amazon has loads of them (in various shapes too). Willing to bet you can find them at local stores like Home Depot.
Always turn off lights. I do it at work, too 
Shortening life is true for CFL, not really for anything else. I posted a Department of Energy link upthread a bit.
I hardly ever turn on the overhead lighting when I am alone. I have a floor reading light that is on a timer switch. It comes on about dusk and goes off about the time I go to bed. I usually only have the rangehood light on in the kitchen. In the bathroom I have just a plug in night light. I mostly have my windows and blinds open so there is plenty of ambient light. So, at night, I mostly only have to turn on my bedside light and turn off the rangehood light. If am not going to read I don’t even turn on my bedside light, I can find my way without it.
Oh man, preach it. Does she also leave cupboard doors and drawers open?
I even get perturbed when she gets the gol-darned mail and leaves the mailbox flap up. 
mmm