Friday, January 28, 2011

Watch out!

Contributed by Sam

Watch: MIL-PRF-46374G
Location: Music room 207

In class yesterday: The clock was all wrong and the teacher was wondering out loud how much time he had left to lecture... A few people scrambled to pull their phone out.. I briefly glanced down at my watch, "11:45."

"Great, thanks Sam"

That's how it's done.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Throw away a good thing

Contributed by Sam

Light: Ra-120w+2xAA
Location: Arcata Community Park
Time: ~6:30pm, 52ยบ

After taking a long walk through the redwoods I ended up at the community park. There's a huge grassy field that has become completely saturated with water, leading to about 8in. deep of mud, grass and sludge all mixed together. At the time however, I didn't realize how saturated it was. I stood there looking at the field and was struck with the desire to throw my Clicky as far as I could after setting it to maximum output. I thought I'd play a fun game of 'throw the flashlight' for a while before heading back to my apartment. Well... nature had something else in store for me.

I threw my Clicky about 70 yards, it was a sight to behold, that beauty spinning in the air in the pitch black night. It came down with a heavy thud and everything went black. 'Uhoh' I thought to myself. I made a mental location of the light and went searching for it... Searching, searching, searching... I pulled out my 5mm LED headlamp which I had brought with me, and was hunched over, moving slowly in a search pattern around the location where I thought it had landed.. I couldn't find it... That idea would make me sick.. Having a semi rare Ra-120w with a 2xAA tube attached buried in the mud.

I walked back to my throwing position and stood there. I looked over the grass and could see my footprints laughing at me in their methodical grid-like pattern which proved fruitless. By then I had been searching for an hour and a half.

I stood there and I looked, and my mind went clear.... I stood in silence in the stillness of the night and waited.. Waited for an answer... A coordinate... Then.. It came.

I visualized the light spinning in my head, I watched as it fell and went dark. Then I walked towards where I mentally saw the light fall. As I walked, the ground was burping beneath my feet, large earth worms were able to quickly move through it, ahead of my treading path. It smelled like heavy wet mud. The ground was alive...

Suddenly, the shape of the Clicky appeared apart from all the organic matter. It stood out as a foreign object.. Clip side up, covered in mud, still burning away. The mud on the lens was steaming from the LED heat generation.




Vacuum lighting

Light: Ra Clicky 100wwCT

This afternoon I spent some time helping at the Pewter Plough, getting the theatre's seating area cleaned up and the rows of chairs back into place in preparation for the opening of Glass Menagerie. The area was lit by the little marquis lights arching across the ceiling and by some tripod work lights, but the floor was not lit well enough to be able to see all of the small bits of trash that needed to be cleared before vacuuming. Of course the Clicky dealt with this problem. I also used it to navigate around the areas of the theatre beyond the seating area, which had been left completely dark.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Flood repair

Yesterday we got hit with a huge volume of rain all night long. After weeks of heavy rainstorms saturating the town, this one finally pushed things over the edge; the town's streets are covered in mud and small streams, a bush slid down the hill and into the BofA parking lot, erosion damage is evident everywhere, and it seems that everyone in my neighborhood had flooding in their lowest area. In our case, this meant that our downstairs bedroom was flooded with a couple inches of water that seeped in through the concrete walls. Not a lot of damage to stuff in the room, but the carpet is a total loss, so today we got started on pulling it out and vacuuming out the water left pooled on the concrete below. We mostly just tore the carpet since it tears in a straight line without a huge amount of effort, but this was not my idea and I disapproved of the unnecessary strain on the back. For sections too awkward to pull, I stepped in and used the Pacific, which, despite my complaints about the edge, was able to tear through the material very easily.