What did you use your flashlight for today?

[bykfixer]

At my work the unknown cable saga took a turn. A left turn on a red light if you will, but progress nonetheless. The GURU shrugged his shoulders and says "got me? I've no idea"… he and two other fellows had a huddle like a football team would and he pops he head up and says "sorry we couldn't help" and the three drive off.
What a drag!!

Yesterday the water knife truck returned and blasted some dirt down below the unknown cable looking to see if perhaps the Lumos owned cables were below it. Low and behold about 1.5 feet below it was a bunch of Lumos cables. Yippee!

About an hour after that a Miss Utility marker comes out with his sonic device and hooks it to the unknown cable. While tracing that the signal began to stray away from the Lumos stuff then suddenly no more signal!! Hooray! It's officially deemed a dead line.

Not time to celebrate just yet. See we know the unidentified cable is probably dead, but now we also know some major networks fiber optic stuff is in our way. We have a committment to have that moved soon but these days the word soon is being redefined by supply issues, a novel virus, worker shortages and other issues.

When the water knife was searching for the lines below the unknown line I was shining a beam from a flashlight into the hole to help the operator see. Ordinarily the sun helps light up the hole but this one was in the shade.

 

[Jean-Luc Descarte]

So what's the plan? Follow the dead cable down the other end as well to make sure?

 

[bykfixer]

A portion of other end was ripped out last light while installing another storm drain pipe that crosses the busy road, which is why it's done at night while most people who drive on that road in the day are asleep.
Same crew as mentioned a few posts before this one (#8654) with their low end flashlights and celphone lights. Last night one guy had a Millwalkee flashlight.

 

[Hooked on Fenix]

Pot holing in a street with a hydrovac truck was one of the more interesting jobs while doing electrical work. You have to dig up the road with a mini excavator with a jack hammer attachment to break up asphalt, dirt, and rock near the surface. Usually, you have workers block debris with plywood from damaging cars while making sure those cars don’t run anyone on your crew over. Then you use a hydrovac truck with a spray gun and vacuum to break up the soil and suck it out of the trench. The vacuum hose clogs all the time so you have to hit it with a baseball bat to break up the clogs. If you use the spray gun, put a traffic cone over it to limit the debris blasting into your coworkers’ faces. Have them use face goggles and mesh face shields or they’ll eat dirt. If the trench is decent sized, you place hydrolic trench shoring to prevent the trench from caving in. Then you have to find your damaged cables without doing more damage. Pull the bad wire out after tracing the circuit with a toner. You have to put a bandaid (not literally) on a pipe or replace a section. Suck a jetline in. Pull a rope in with the jetline. Pull in new wire in with the rope. Dump sand, then gravel in the hole. Use a 150 lb. whacker to tamp it down (Don’t let it bounce on your feet). Then pour on and smooth out the asphalt. These tasks are all complicated at night. Imagine finding a needle in a haystack underground at night with dirt flying in your face and cars trying to run you over. That’s about what that job is like at night. I kind of miss it.

 

[Megalamuffin]

I drove to the big park with the pup tonight. It’s a busy park during the day but only the wildlife is there at night. It was pleasant and the weather was nice and brisk.

I used my new lumintop edc aa (with 14500) clipped on my hat. It’s a total floodlight and is great for seeing absolutely everything about 15 feet ahead, beyond that it drops off quickly. In my hand was the C2 with M61W for spotting ahead. I brought a couple other lights to also play with. The microstream is a fun 10440 pocket rocket.

 

[bykfixer]

Mrs Fixer and I went for an evening stroll with his-n-her Maglites. Since it was right nippy the stocking cap went on my dome while she wore her Marvin the Martian melon warmer.

Being a flashaholic it was driving me nuts hers was focused with a slight donut hole so when I began to mention it she said "I like the little dark spot because it looks like a bulleye". Fair enough.

The lights in the photo set atop a dresser we restored last summer that is used to house work working tools and coatings. Top right is the edge of a window fan we keep in the room year round for ventilation at a moments notice.

Edit: forgot to mention she had a SureFire G2x Pro and I an Elzetta Bones for backups.
End edit.

 

[Megalamuffin]

The pup and I went to the park again tonight and followed the trail into the woods. I alternated between the e2d incan and fenix pd36r on turbo.

There is something to be said about an enjoyable suspense walking the woods with a focused incan beam that is not super bright and doesn’t light up a large area. The pd36r is killer bright, but it does take that element of fun away where a fairly dim light combined with classic horror movie scenarios come to mind. Aside from all that the e2d incan is just so dang pleasant to use.

 

[Jean-Luc Descarte]

Had to look for some books yesterday in the 2nd floor of the workplace. All the lights were off up there – due to quarantine the upper floors are not open to traffic, so we don't turn the lights on unless needed, and as a flashaholic worth his salt, I used my S2+ 219C to do it. Quick and easy and the beam quality really made the dusty yellowed paperbacks pop against the sterile white shelves

 

[PhotonWrangler]

I used my Tattu U15 365nm flashlight to look for signs of water damage on some electronics in a wall mounted cabinet where a pipe had allegedly burst above it. Only found a few colored specks from miscellaneous debris left over from the initial installation.

 

[twistedraven]

Used a 2000k Fireflies Nov-MU for some glow disc golf last night. The magnetic tailcap was perfect to secure the light in the baskets, and I set the light output to its lowest and attached the diffuser cap for a very faint and warm glow affect while it was inside the baskets. Between baskets, I would use it without the cap to illuminate the ground so we wouldn't trip over rocks or roots or the like. The 2000k warmth assured that we never lost our night vision. Anduril's smooth ramping made it easy to adjust the light output to the perfect amount while walking.

 

[TurkishCoffee]

Working on fixing my 2 year old dishwasher, which broke, with my 100 year old 3D Yale, which still works fine.

 

[JimIslander]

Used my tiny Olight I1R 2 EOS to check critter traps in my MIL's attic.

 

[ledbetter]

Are they done yet? Besides time and temp, color is the most important factor tellling you when these coffee beans are done. Tried a lot of lights but lately just using M61NLLLL in a G2. Warms tend to exaggerate color a little. 16650 runtime with this module is great. And those beans needed about another 5 minutes.

 

[bykfixer]

Working on fixing my 2 year old dishwasher, which broke, with my 100 year old 3D Yale, which still works fine.


View attachment 23232

Is that Yale still stock?

 

[TurkishCoffee]

Is that Yale still stock?

It is, I even have a vintage Mazda bulb for it (1950s?) although it has a newly made miniature screw bulb in it at the moment. Zinc-carbon batteries too, of course. I've been looking for a source for really old school paper jacket D cells of the original run time but haven't been able to source any.

 

[bykfixer]

Nice!!
I use #222 bulbs in some old fisheye lens lights for more focused beam. Working on a dishwasher or other closeup stuff that original type globe bulb disperses light nicely through the lens.

PM headed your way.

 

[Megalamuffin]

I didn’t do much yesterday except used my 6p original with an M61WL for a runtime test with 16340’s. I got 3 1/2 hours full output until a no warning shut off. It’s nice to know just how much time I have to work with this setup.

 

[Jean-Luc Descarte]

Used my S2+ SST20 to wake myself up this morning. Bed was a little too cozy, so I had to turn on a light or I'd sleep right through a workday. Switching the S2+ and bumping it up from 0,1% mode to 1% was just the shock that my brain needed to get in gear.

 

[Kitchen Panda]

After 30+ minutes struggling with the living room window shade to remove it (broken cord needs replacing on warranty), the love of my life turns to me and asks "Do you have a flashlight in your pocket?" Why, yes, by some remarkable coincidence, I do. The S2R Baton II (in titanium, thanks to a happy accident) emerges and does some useful work for a change. She proceeds to inspect the gap between window frame and top bar(head rail) of the blind, trying to figure out what we were doing wrong.

Long story short, what we were told by tech support was "Use a flat screwdriver to open the clips, rotate the front of the headrail up to remove. " What the instruction manual for our exact style of blind said was "Push firmly on the front of the headrail to open the clips, then rotate the front of the headrail down to remove." We could have saved half an hour and much cussin' if any of the YouTube videos we happened to watch actually matched our blind!

Other useful things the S2R has done include verifying every night that the garage is still there, searching for tiny dropped surface-mount components on the shop floor, and using the magnet to verify if something is really steel or not.

 

[tech25]

Used my HDS to light up a car accident next to my house. I live on an avenue where there are 5 blocks with no lights or stop signs between two bigger avenues. Vehicles go speeding to catch the light at the other end.

There have been way too many accidents that I have personally seen since I moved in about two years ago.