Category: Uncategorized

“Look at all this cool stuff we can finally do! We’re only two years behind all other cellphone manufacturers now!”

A slightly longer version of last year’s announcement.

This past weekend, Naienko and I attended Outsidecon.  It’s a small scifi convention that takes place every year at a local state park (hence why I like to call it “when geeks go camping”).  It being in the middle of a heavily wooded park where many of us stay in tents, you tend to need some form of portable illumination.  Flashlights work ok, and the little Fennix E11 that I wrote about yesterday worked well in that role, but for the tent or playing games you really want a lantern.  This is also the case if you ever have power outages, which is not unusual in my area.

A while ago, I ran across a a couple neat items by Coleman.  The first one is fairly small on the scale of lanterns.  At roughly 5″ tall and 3″ in diameter, the Microburst Mini-Lantern will slip into a cargo pocket fairly easily, and each of the four pods produce 10 lumen, for a total of 40 lumen.  I used this one at last year’s outside con, and hanging it from the ceiling of my tent, I had plenty of light to read into the night.  They claim that it will run for 25 hours before you need to replace the 4 AA batteries that power the core unit.

The second is the big brother to the Microburst.  The Coleman LED Quad Lantern is about 13″ tall and roughly 7″ in diameter, this is more in the class of serious lanterns.  They claim a total of 190 lumen, so I’m guessing that splits into about 42 lumen per panel.  I do know that it was bright that folks were joking about my tent being bright enough that they could see it from space.  It is pretty hefty due to the 8 D cell batteries that power it.  The company claims that you should expect about 75 hours of run time before changing them.  I threw fresh batteries in before going to the con, and left it on between dusk and retiring for the evening (around 1 or 2 am) both nights.

The thing that sets these lanterns apart from your standard lantern is the four removable pods.  Each one has it’s own power source (rechargeable batteries in the case of the big guy, CR2032s in the case of the mini).  While on the base station, they are controlled and run off the base station, but can easily be detached and carried separately.  This can be especially handy if you’ve got multiple folks hanging around and one or two need to do something away from the group.  Sure, everyone *should* be carrying their own flashlight, but it’s nice to have a backup plan.  This is especially true for power outages or other emergencies where the flashlights are in another location.  Naienko snagged one of the smaller pods for wandering around at night over the weekend, and it provided plenty of light.

As with any product, these guys are not perfect.  I would like it if it was possible to configure which lights came on when attached to the base station.  They’re either all on or all off.  It would also be nice if the mini lantern had a proper dedicated handle on the base station.  These guys also aren’t cheap.  You can probably get a brighter lantern for less.  The detachable panels feature means that it’s more complexed, and therefor more expensive to make.

At least one of these two lanterns will be with me when I go camping, and will be one of the first things I grab when the lights go out during a dark and stormy night.

Well, it’s part way into a new week of prostrate cancer awareness month, which means it’s past due for me to torment you guys with another shot of me in a kilt for Kilted to Kick Cancer.

I wish I had remembered to throw my Dragoncon badge over my shoulder for this shot, but I’m guessing at least Linoge will get this shirt.

If not, here’s a good hint:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEn6UlJdLIA&w=560&h=315]

(I apologize for the terrible shaky-cam, but that’s the best vid I could find of the song)

Back to the serious topic, please remember to throw a couple bucks in to the effort of researching prostate and testicular cancer.  I’d love it if you guys did that here, but, honestly, donating with any of the guys participating is a good thing.

Because I can’t forget.

CNN, however, would love for you to forget. Kudos to the for referring to the Family Research Council shooter as a terrorist. Negative kudos for trying to use today to paint anyone to the right of Lenin as a possible terrorist in waiting.

For a couple years now, I’ve carried an INOVA Microlight on my keychain.  Handy little light, but at 6 lumen on the bright setting, not very bright.  While i have several other flashlights around the house and in the cars, they’re all a little too big for me to slip into my pocket with all the other crap I carry.

I recently picked up a Fennix E11, which is a pretty handy little light.  At 105 lumen, it’s not as bright as some of the “OMG I’m blind!!!” tac lights out there, but it is sufficiently bright to illuminate most situations.  I’m also guessing that 105 lumen is bright enough to seriously distract a thug in the night.

It’s also a good size.  It’s about the length of 2 AA batteries, and about 4mm thicker.  I use that as a gauge because it runs off of 1 AA.  I know all the cool kids are running around with flashlights that use CR123 batteries these days, but I like knowing that I can run into any drugstore, gas stations, whatever and find what I need to feed what I think has become my EDC light in addition to the little LED that hangs off my keychain.

One thing that’s always annoyed me with a lot of the high intensity lights is the method to change modes.  Most of the ones I’ve played with have you cycle through the modes by pushing the button.  It’s not a big irritant, but it’s there.  The E11 avoids that issue by having you select the modes by twisting the lamp end.  Tightly closed is the maximum brightness, and twisted a bit back from full tight is a dimmer setting (they claim 35 lumen).  Of course, this light only has those two options, unlike many others, but those options tend to be flashing some sort of signal or another.  I guess having it automatically flash SOS is nice if you need it, but 99% of the time it’s just another button press you have to make before turning it off.  Oh, and button on the back of the light does turn the light on as you push down, so you can use it as a momentary switch if you don’t push down all the way.

So far, I think I like this light.  I know I can get a brighter one, or a smaller one, but this works and seems pretty sturdy.  At roughly $26, it’s not a bad deal.

Wait… I can claim that wearing a kilt is for a good cause?  Works for me!

I’m not going to subject you guys to my ugly mug everyday like JayG is planning, but I may manage one a week.  Of course, most of the pics are going to be from Dragoncon this past weekend.

This is my oldest kilt.  After 3 years of Naienko pestering me, I finally broke in and bought a Survival Kilt from Utilikilts.  Yeah, they’re expensive, but after 5 years of fairly heavy use, it’s still in good shape.  I’ve since bought 2 more kilts from them (that you’ll see later), and I was one of the folks that ordered the 5.11 April Fools Day tactical kilts (which you guys might see if they arrive in time).

Oh, and if you’re interested in buying one yourself, Alt.Kilt is running a special sale to support Kilted to Kick Cancer.  Just use the coupon code “KTKC” and they’ll take 20% off!.  I don’t have one of theirs, but they have a good reputation, and you can customize the heck out your new kilt.

On to the serious stuff.  I do have a buddy that is a survivor of testicular cancer.  I also lost two grandparents due to other forms of cancer.  Dealing with any form of cancer is not pretty, and is painful for not just the patient, but their loved ones as well.  Any ability to catch it early and possibly stop it before it becomes too serious is a truly great thing.  While I would love to see my donations reach or exceed the other folks participating, I’m not delusional.  I’m doing this purely to help a good cause.

So, if you’ve got a few dollars sitting around, head over to my donation page, and throw a few bills at a good cause.

Just got back in from geeking out with roughly 50,000 other geeks at Dragoncon.  As per usual, I had a blast, saw some good panels, met some good people, spent more money than I probably should have (hey!  I now own *3* Utilikilts!  And one of them isn’t black!), and almost certainly drank more than was healthy.  Oh… and I did get… some sleep… somewhere…. I think….

Somehow, the folks at Dragoncon have figured out a method of dealing with handling out prereg badges that completely eliminated the line.  For those of you who’ve never been, prereg badge pickup has its own rather large convention hall, which is usually full with the line going out the door and around the block on Thursday.  It’s not unusual to see beach balls being bounced around the crowd.

The actual con was good.  Saw some good panels.  Got to see several bands play.  I think for this crowd, the ones that you guys might know are Voltaire, the Cruxshadows (warning: link goes to site that autoplays music), and Emerald Rose.  All were good.

I think the only down note was with the City Of Heroes meet and greet.  As Erin has posted, NCSoft declared on Friday that they were ending the game and disbanding the development studio.  The meet and greet turned into a kind of wake as we all told stories about our experiences in the game.  I think there were  four other couples besides me and Naienko in the room that had the game play a major role in our relationship.

Oh wait… this is a gun blog… I’m supposed to post about guns… ummm… uh…. This is the best I got:

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to fall over and die for a few hours.

Horrific is really the only way to describe it. I literally came to tears trying to relay the story to my wife.

Here is the article in The Tennessean that is the most thorough. Be warned that the article is tough to get through. (EDIT: That article has been cut down to a stub as of 9/4/2012 1132am.)

A 14 year old Boy Scout, his 48 year old mother, and his 71 year old grandmother were stabbed to death by a neighbor at around 2:30 in the morning. A 9 year old girl escaped to her neighbors house, screaming “he’s kiling her” over and over again. That neighbor grabbed a gun and ran to the house, but couldn’t get in.

The suspect knew the victims well. Early indications are that he was a 9/11 paramedic who was suffering from PTSD and may have been suicidal the day this happened. He apparently tried to stab himself after the murders, and met police at the door saying “Please kill me.” He’s in ICU at Vanderbilt Hospital.

The scene is so gruesome that responding officers are in counseling.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go hug my son.

That’s a bacon-wrapped sirloin topped with bacon. Yes, it’s as awesome as it sounds. Longhorn Steakhouse. Apparently, the answer to the question in the title is “no.” We asked the manager and she said fully 25% of their customers ordered this in the last week.

Saw Expendables 2 on Friday.
People were shot.
Things were blown up.
I thought it was awesome.
Naienko was apparently expecting a coherent plot.
Silly Naienko.