EOY Thoughts
As the end of the year nears, I thought I would write of some of the silly thoughts I sometimes have.
Things everyone knows that simply are not true. Like: 1- Eskimos have 65 words for snow. 2- Aerodynamically bumble bees can not fly. 3- Thomas Jefferson misspelled unalienable in the Declairation of Independence. 1- The guy who wrote that (too lazy to look up his name) said that he just made it up. 2- According to early simple aerodynamic theory that was correct, but soon they learned that the fuzz on the bees body lowered the drag to the point where the lift/drag ratio was OK. 3- Unalienable means “Can not be taken away”. Certainly since the complaint was that those rights had been taken without trial from many he knew that was not so. Inalienable as he used it means A free person “has these rights”, so if you take them away the he is not a free person. My reason for thinking about these kind of things is that it points out how many people are willing to accept something without thinking about it or checking if it is true or not.
My own contrariness. It is not even stubbornness, for instance, I seem to be into bicycles and bicycling in the middle of the winter when I should be into indoor stuff, and into sewing in the middle of the summer when I should be outdoors. My mind seems to like to do everything backwards to what everyone else does. Sure sometime there can be advantages like it is cheaper to take your vacation in the off season. But I do not do it for avantage, I seem to do it just because I am out of kilter with everyone else.
Related to that is the fact I have all kinds of project to do, but never seem to get to them. Some times it seems like I spend so much effort thinking about them that I do not have any energy left to actually do them. But it is more than that, it is like I am not going to actually get any benifit from the effort so why bother. That feeling is vague, but there most of the time. Of course I do realise that fixing that slow leak in the right front tire will help insure I do not get a flat out in the middle of nowhere, but still I do not bother. Then I get bothered because I do not bother. Oh bother!
May 2009 become the best year you ever had,
–Graywolf
‘Tis the Season
To buy, buy, buy…
Holiday blahs here. I do not actually hate the holidays, it is the commercializm. On the other hand for many merchants this is the make-break season, the rest of the year they figure they are doing good if they make expenses, so now is the time for profits. Only I hate it when they try to guilt trip us into spending more than we can afford.
I think this kind of thing started back in the Great Depression. Before that stores expected to make a month to month profit, and any holiday sales were just icing on the cake. But many were just stumbling along and they got the idea that if they advertised heavily they could make their profits over the holidays. One can see their point of view. Only they do not seem to see the consummer;s point of view.
So instead of a time to get together with friends and family and exchange token, it has become a time to do Potlatch. For those who do not know that quaint northwestern american-indian tradition, it is a way of showing your superiority to your neighbors by out giving them, often to the point of impoverishing yourself. Sounds like christmas, huh?
I no longer have any family, but I tell friends to take whatever they were going to spend on me and spend it on themselves; and that I will do the same. That has the advantage that at least you get something you want, not something you hate but can not throw away without offending the person who gave it to you. And if you chose to use it to pay bills instead, at least that means you will have enough to pay the rent in January.
So by all means, get together with friends and family, enjoy good fellowship, give the kids a new toy, and pat yourself on the back.
Happy Holidays
Flashlights
All my flashlights went belly up at about the same time. The batteries in the 3 cell Maglight I keep in the Blazer froze and burst. The flash is history, can not unscrew it even with a vise and vise grips. The Mini-Maglight with the LED conversion has one LED working, one flashing, and the other one dead; I can not find the reflector to convert it back to a regular bulb. The very cheap 9 LED one I got something one the plastic lens and it is now a frosted lens. The keychain light simply needs a new battery. So I have been looking at flashlights in the local stores and online.
Golly, I think a buck is about the right price for a flashlight and a good one should only be ten bucks or so; seems I am living in the distant past. Would you believe there are folks out there that will pay $500 for a pocket flashlight???? Ten buck is the cheap end, hundreds is the expensive end, 20-25 bucks seems to be common.
And they all seem to be designed to blind someone. I have been trying to find one that gives just enough light to get by with in an emergency situation for hours on cheap AA batteries. I found a couple, they are about $100 and have a dozen modes or so, one of which is very low powered giving the long battery life. Now I can find one that will give lots of light for 30 minutes for a reasonable price but the other way around. Apparently brightness is what sells the lights. If it will light up your living room at noon, or stun an attacker it is bright enough never mind that it burns the hand holding it
The ideal flash for me, what I wanted in my backpacking days, would use a single double A cell and give 12+ hours of light bright enough to read by when held a foot from the book, find your way to the outhouse and check it for spiders and such, or keep you from stumbling on a trail at night. I wound up using a mini-maglight because that was the closest thing I could find back then, it was brighter than needed and the batteries lasted only a half hour or so. The same light worked work for a tool box flash for me to see into dark crannies and corners.
The other use I have for a flash is as a spotlight in the car to read house number, streets signes, etc. on dark rainy nights; the 3-cell Maglight works really well for that, except for the frozen battery problem, and only costs less than $20.
So what am I going to do? Well, I went down to Advanced Auto and bought a couple more of those 9 LED flashlights. At $2.50 each with batteries it is actually cheaper to buy a new one than to replace the batteries. The three AAA ’s do not last very long, however they are quite bright for about 20 minutes. I will keep one here by the computer, and one on the bedside table ready to hand if the power fails or I need to see inside the computer case.
I will replace the battery in my keychaing light an Inova Microlight that was given to me, I would not pay that much for one. If this little thing took a AA battery it would be just about what I am looking for, however it uses a tiny button cell so is really only good for find the right key on my keychain.
The big Maglight can wait until spring when the batteries will not freeze. The freeze in October most likely is what killed it. I did not expect it to freeze that early or I would have taken it out of the car for the winter.
That leaves an EDC light. I know, what the heck is an EDC light? I had to look it up myself. EDC is an acronym for Every Day Carry. The Mini-Mag in its belt holder has been that for me for the past three decades, but maybe I should move up to a high tech light of some sort. There are a lot of them in the $25 price range. The Mini-Maglight is less than $10, but it like the Swiss Army knife is not made like they were a few decades back, is anything?