Note
slept:5.0 (rest day)
A rest day. Doing rest dayesque things, like some crunches and pushups. Apparently at least part of the MBTA's $9 billion debt is due to the Big Dig and unbudgeted modifications to the MBTA infrastructure in conjunction with street modifications.
Yay Big Dig.
Note: Orienteering irrelevant blogesque entry to follow.
I have a bit of a flashlight obsession. I have found myself in many situations where light was needed; a flashlight enables and empowers action in darkness, whether that action is searching, signaling, reading, and so on. I find you can never really have too many flashlights.
The attributes of a light can be loosely classified into power and convenience. In the category of power, you have the opposing qualities of intensity and duration. Convenience represents almost all other aspects - size, switch mechanism, grip, lanyards, a ring for keychain or lanyard attachment, holster, ease of use, accessibility of batteries, aesthetics, and so on. I like to have two lights for regular use - one of a 2x AA variety, 10-40 lumens, for regular daily use, and a smaller one for instances in which a 2xAA light is too bulky or obtuse. Under extenuating circumstances (for which you can plan), you might use a headlamp, a bigger, more powerful light (e.g. 3xD cell, > 50 lumens), or other special purpose equipment.
The company Surefire makes excellent flashlights, if cost is no object - their primary customer is the military and police, who need lightweight, reliable, excessively powerful instruments. I consider these lights the embodiment of flashlight excellence. Models like the E2L and 6P are about 5 inches long, but produce intensities of order 100 lumens for durations of about 10 hours. However, they're not very convenient for daily use - do I really need 100 lumens to read? - and it's hard to justify the expense and specialized batteries.
Anyway, my primary and secondary lights both broke over the past year, so I went to Sears to procure new ones.
I'm extremely impressed with the compact light I obtained - the Coast model 7830. It's 2.9 inches long, produces a 15 lumen output for 76 hours, has a keyring, and is black metal. My two concerns are that the switch is a push-button on the back (and so might be depressed accidentally) and that it uses AG13 batteries. Nonetheless, I am impressed and strongly recommend this to anyone looking for a powerful, compact light (it's also only $10).
For anyone curious, my other light is unremarkable: 1.3 watt 2xAA battery Dorcy LED light; it should be adequate for all my purposes, and while it's not that powerful, it has a nice mix of qualities that I expect from my workhorse flashlight.