Lost power in my office - geek saves the day!

Had to share with the group. I am the network admin at my office, around 2:00 we loose power. I work in a concrete building with windows on one wall only. Emergency lights only at the exits. The only flashlight in the building is on my hip, (trusty SF G2) Everi=one wants to "borrow" my light to see around - sorry guys I have to get to the servers and shutdown everything before battery backup drained. "In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king!" Everyone is amazed at the amount of eye burning light coming out of that little light. I did loan my infinity ultra to the group for potty duty,(tossed in the dishwasher when home) /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif I would have to say that I had a pretty good time hearing all the people in the dark complaining about not having a light handy! I can hardly wait for my KL4/e1e combo to get here for the next one!

You will love the TW4 . Excellent idea on the infinity and the dishwasher, you don't want to know if they dropped it in the target accidently. Good thing they are water resistant! I edited this since I see you have a G2 you already know about having spare batteries stashed.

Hello Blacksmithtech,

Welcome.

Isn't it nice to have the right tool for the job?

Tom

The TW4 is tailor-made for just such situations.

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Out of all of my various flashlights, it's my primary EDC.

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Allen
aka DumboRAT

I was having the most fun you can at work - I do have a question for the forum, I need ideas for a long lasting area light. maybe led and 123's in a smaller portable package, any ideas out there?

Maybe the X-5?

I love it!

I wonder if CountyComm still has those $1 LED lights. If you bought 20 of them and kept them in your desk at work, giving them away the next time you would really be a hero. Total cost $20.

GregR

Small, portable, area light:
Energizer 4AA 2LED folding lantern, about $8 at Walmart.
The $1 lights are a great idea.

blacksmithtech, this is a great story! I'm just wondering about the dishwasher with that Infinity Ultra... did you remove the battery first? Were you concerned about the hot water softening the epoxy that holds the head together? I'm not so concerned about the waterproofing of the light as much as I am the temperatures involved inside the dishwasher. Any comments on your experience?

Don't know how much light you would need, but, here's a great emergency light. Two output levels and uses 9v battery.

Sweet. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Wilkey

The Pak-lite is kind of a clever gadget but ridiculously overpriced (would be ok at $5.00). Also there's a bad taste left behind among some CPF'ers, from when the company agreed to a CPF group buy and then backed out of it.

The Countycomm lights are a great deal and I want to buy some more of them real soon (my first batch of 20 is all given out now). The 1aa cheap light you get free with an 8-pack of Duracells is also perfectly useable in an indoor emergency. It's not rugged or waterproof, but who cares.

My favorite general purpose EDC continues to be the PT Blast (waterproof incandescent 2aaa). It's about like an Arc LS or SF E1/KL1 in brightness, but smaller, lighter, and is well under $10.

I'd have to agree with paulr here. While I have no experience with the ill-fated group buy he mentioned, I'm looking at the product itself and their price is ridiculous. Also, their claims appear to be somewhat, shall we say, inflated. Case in point: I could take the basic electronics that make my Milky Candle (which is just entering its first "pilot" run) and build a regulated light of similar size that runs off a 9V battery for hundreds if not thousands of hours. The cost for such a thing? A few dollars, tops. That's not counting labor, but then again, it also doesn't count the cost efficiencies you'd get from a large manufacturing run. I'd be surprised if their light costs them $2 each to produce. And I have my doubts that it's regulated, which may be why they seem to push the lithium 9V batteries on their website. (Flatter discharge curve when using them.)

I'm not usually so negative in my posts, it just annoys me to no end to see a business wildly inflate their claims and rip off their customers. That's not cool. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Milkyspit - I had removed the batteries and screwed the head down. I consider my Infinity Ultra bombproof - ran it on the gentle low temp setting. I am in the habit of running my edc Spyderco knifes in the dishwasher to get the pocket dust bunnies out of the liners and just tossed the Ultra in there. I don't believe the water temp is high enough to cause harm in this case. It also came out squeaky clean! The wife ain't too thrilled to see all the hardware in there, but that's the "for better or worse" part of the deal-

An excellent emergency light is the PALight. Uses a 9V battery and has Low, Bright, and Strobe. It never turns off, 'Off' is actually a 'Super Low' mode where the LED is on just bright enough to glow in the dark, so in an emergency it stands out on your crowded desk because it's the only thing glowing /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

The great thing about the Blast is it's size and the surprisingly bright output (14 lumens) if the surefire e1 is rated at 15 lumens...then that's pretty good...in fact, I have read that some old 2-d cell light put out less than 15 lumens....I've let people use my blast in some really dark settings and they were more than impressed....

Saaby, thanks for the info. Never knew anyone who actually had a PALight. As for me, to date my top choice of power failure light has been my pair of TurtleLite II's loaded with lithium AA cells. Turn 'em on and leave in strategic locations throughout the house, candle-style. I haven't run a set of batteries down in one yet.

Now that I'm building Milky Candles, that will be my first choice for an outage, which brings the whole process full circle because the original motivation for the Milky Candle was a better power failure light! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

The Energizer 4AA 2 LED folding lantern someone mentioned above is also a good light for such situations. Not super bright, but long running and good area lighting.

Then again, as blacksmithtech demonstrates with his adventure, maybe the best power failure light is the light you have with you! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[ QUOTE ]
milkyspit said:
...Then again, as blacksmithtech demonstrates with his adventure, maybe the best power failure light is the light you have with you! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif


[/ QUOTE ]

EDC beats LMLAH (LeftMyLightAtHome)

Brightnorm

We're such geeks that we had a 275 KW diesel generator installed to run our entire building. Before that we just had a 10KW to keep the servers up. Still when we need a light around here I'm the one that has one.

Mutech

Blacksmithtech, It sure feels good being the hero everyone can depend on, huh? Kind of like being the only person with an umbrella on a rainy day.