Read a blog post about an old friend's power-outage experience...

Weird coincidence, it seemed. Today, with the threat of freezing rain I've been charging batteries in preparation for a potential blackout. Then, this evening I happened to check in on the blog site of an old friend from high school who's living in California. Turns out she'd just recently had a 24+ hour power outage due to storms. She even posted 2 beamshot photos!

The bad news is that the lighting sources were:

(1) a "Duraflame" log
(2) an LED crank light

As you can imagine, the light from the crank-light was pretty dim; she was using it to read by holding it just 5 or 6 inches away from the page. I'm pretty sure that a Quark on low would've outpowered that light.

I wanted to write her a message giving some advice for some good, cheap lights (RiverRock 2AAA for 10$, for example). The lights would have to be cheap because I know they don't have much money. Or, better yet, I'd box up some good lights and mail them over.

Problem is, we pretty much lost touch a long time ago (after high school), and she's married w/kids, AND she lives on the opposite side of the country from me, so it'd probably be kinda creepy to get a message out of the blue from a stalker flashaholic! lol


Anyway, just thought I'd share.

It kinda sucks seeing someone I used to know in dire need of some decent flashlights, and not being able to do anything about it

I would like to suggest something. Imagine, if you will, that this person is the same sex as yourself. Holding this in mind, write to them, say hi, explain who you are, and offer to send a couple of your old flashlights to an old classmate. Congratulate them on their children. It's a friendly gesture. No creepiness involved.

You have (so far as I know) done nothing creepy or stalkerish. They put themselves on the net in readily identifiable form, that they should be spotted and recognized by old acquaintances is reasonable. Now, if they had themselves under some obscure alias, and don't specify anything about their past online, and you write and offer to "swap a nice light for a lock of hair and a shirt that they have worn", that would be creepy.

I would suggest nothing that uses LiOn or custom batteries. You might go so far as to include rechargable batteries and a charger if you care to.