Oh boy! Oh boy! Oh boy! Today is THE day of days and I know two guys who can really dig into this day…..me and Wapiti Dung!
The National Holiday today is a very special one in my mind and anyone who knows my fetish will understand.
National Flashlight Day!!!! Shine on big boy…let the lumens light the way! To go along with that it is also National French Fried Shrimp Day AND National Hamburger Day! How can one day be so filled with joy?
It is going to be so bright outside today, the sun just might stay home.
OH DEAR! It is also the end of the Mayan Calendar day…..doom, doom, doom.
So let me add right now that I declare among all the other National Holiday events of the day….I declare it National My-An Day! Of course it will only be for this one day only…like a midnight madness sale. Let’s hear it folks….just say “my an” over and over and over all day…there was a movie out once with a bunch of seagulls in it saying that word, I’m sure in preparation for this day! Only in seagull brogue it sounded like “mine, mine, mine”…..
National Flashlight Day! I thought it would never come. Better than Christmas for sure and I’m going to shine all my flashlights at the same time.
Trust me when I say that this is not all the flashlights I have. Every vehicle has at least one in the jocky box, the toy has one in the saddle bags and in the tool compartment, my hunting fanny pack as two in it just in case I’m caught out after dark, my work bench in the garage has one hanging in a strategic spot and no doubt I have forgotten where some others are. I love flashlights….pick me, pick me!
Looking at the picture above you sure can tell which flashlights have the Duracell batteries in them….dull yellow light. I’ll have to change them over to EverReady batteries.
Let’s recap what day it is today…National Flashlight Day, National Hamburger Day, National French Fried Shrimp Day, National My-An Day….oh and I almost forgot…It’s Fat Ducks Birthday! Happy Birthday Fat Duck!
Fat Duck! Stomp your feet…. Fat Duck! Stomp your feet… Fat Duck! Stomp your feet!…Fat Duck! Stomp your feet…Fat Duck!
Fat Duck in Spanish…according to Baby Boy on the Dream Hunt is “Gordo Pato”…I just thought I would throw that in for fun.
Now listen to this idea…Take Fat Duck out to an all you can eat place, have a cake with about 80 flashlights stuck in it and enjoy all you can eat fried shrimp and burgers. Then after the song…Happy Birthday to you….Gordo Pato….. everyone starts saying “My-an, my-an, my-an” until the management throws you all out. What a celebration it would be!
Sherry and I were trying to decide what RSVP actually meant we searched the web and found that is was French for :
R.S.V.P. stands for a French phrase, “répondez, s’il vous plaît,” which means “please reply.” The person sending the invitation would like you to tell him or her whether you accept or decline the invitation. That is, will you be coming to the event or not? Etiquette rules followed in most Western cultures require that if you receive a formal, written invitation, you should reply promptly, perhaps that same day. For hosts who are planning a dinner party, a wedding or a reception, this is important from a practical point of view, because they need to know how many people to count on and how much food and drink to buy. More important, though, is the simple courtesy of responding to someone who was nice enough to invite you, even if it is to say that you regret that you will not be able to attend.
Well in todays language RSVP is replaced with WYFLMK.
I just have to put my 2 cents down on this subject.
The incident in Connecticut was horrific to say the least. The worst kind of thing to happen in a grade school in American history. I came to tears as I read and continue to read the stories and watch the videos being published. Truly an extremely sad and awful thing to have had happen. I offer my deepest sympathy to the people involved in every way possible, from the victims, their families, the close friends, the surviving teachers and others in the school at the time, the dispatchers and emergency personnel… the list goes on and on and on.
Closer to home Sherry works for Smith and Edwards, a local all purpose type of store catering mostly to outdoors things. One of the long time employees of that store had his Granddaughter killed in that awful event and she will be buried this weekend here in Ogden. When it gets that close it is even more heart wrenching.
BUT…..
The healing process will take a long, long time for those very close to the incident and we have to be sympathetic to them and help where ever we can. For most of us we are too far removed to be of much help in that regard. So the best we can do is be vigilant in our effort to be the eyes and ears to try and stop another tragic event such as this one. AND trying to stop such an occurrence from happening does NOT include increasing gun control laws, banning gun sales, at any level, or destroying the weapons we currently have in our personal possession.
We have upper level government officials trying to put a stop on the sale of certain gun types…this is WRONG! Just because that type of weapon was used in this attack does not mean the rifle type was the problem. The problem was the man behind it. He could have easily been using a knife and done the same damage. Do we ban all knives?
This man stole the guns and ammo he used. He killed his own mother before he went to that school. He broke into the school to do it, the door was not unlocked for him to enter. He was a sick man! Beyond help in my opinion. Why he did what he did will never be known. But, again in my opinion, he had mentally decided he needed to do something that would put his name up in lights. Something that had never been done in his entire life. To shoot himself in his own basement was not how he wanted to be known. He needed to do something bigger and badder than the last big bad deal. And unfortunately he succeeded.
It is now in our hands to stop the ridiculous thinking by our government leaders that is tending them to initiate laws banning the manufacture, sale and/or distribution of certain gun types and the ammunition needed to make them operate. It is our job to let our media people know that they too are part of the problem. If the newspapers and news casters would change the way they report this type of tragedy, the next person thinking along those lines would not try and one-up the event that just took place. It is our job to let the people opting to drop the gun and ammunition sales in their classifieds ads know that we are a people who know how to control ourselves and our choice of what we want to purchase and use.
Right now the anti gun people really think they have all the aces in the game. They are playing up the crying and the horror of the event that just took place. They are letting their political power guys know that they helped get them there and they will use that against them should they not push the issue of stronger gun legislation or the banning of certain rifle types.
Along with that, we, ourselves are falling into the trap of “guns will be banned, ammunition manufacturers will be bought by anti gun people and not be made anymore” and so we are hitting the gun sales stores by the thousands, paying prices never before heard of for these guns, stripping the shelves of the ammunition even if we don’t have a gun that will shoot it. We are standing in line at the pawn shops hoping that when we finally do get to the counter there will be a gun left for us to buy. And here again we will pay an exorbitant price and not even know if it will fire a shell or not.
We need to stop…right here…right now! Take a deep breath, evaluate the situation and get on with our lives. The kids going to school need to think more about learning the lessons being taught and not about carrying in a gun to protect themselves and their buddies. Or worse yet, staying away from school because they think a situation like the last one will happen in their school.
Also, in all fairness to the kids and families in Newtown Connecticut, put back up your Christmas lights and get the tree back out and decorate it. Christmas is a time meant as a “new beginning”. Say an extra prayer and get back to your lives.
For us old people not in tune with what the younger generation is up to especially when discussing texting. I have often wondered how they can click those keys and suddenly begin laughing at the return text and then one day I looked over a shoulder and saw that they were not spelling out real words in most cases, but that they has some sort of secret code they were using. It made me wonder also just how everyone out there had discovered this code and were using it. How did the word spread so quickly?
Last Christmas Sherry and I ran into these little “code” books that told us what things like “lol” meant, or “lmao” stood for…that list goes on.
I discovered this web site that will help us all and I hope if you are one of the minority, like me, who don’t know the secret code that this site will help you to better understand what someone is saying if you ever get a text with all the garbeldygoop written in it. It might take you a while to figure it out in order to respond back, but at least you will be able to.
http://www.all-acronyms.com/cat/9
Put it in your favorites or bookmarks or whatever it is called where you can click on it and look for the sites you like to visit on occation. This one might get used a lot!
If you read my earlier post about the 4100 lumen torch flashlight you will get a kick out of this one as well.
I had a little bit of an issue with sleeping last night and my head was reeling into all sorts of different things. One of those things had to do with starting a fire using my mini mag light. My thoughts during the sleepless portion of the night had me holding a magnifying glass up and concentrating the flashlights light onto my char cloth and getting it glowing. In my dream it worked perfectly and so would be very useful to start a fire after the sun went down.
This morning I gathered up my char cloth and my flashlight, went to the fireplace and gave it a go. I was able to get the light concentrated just like you do using the suns light, but even after 3 or 4 minutes of that light being concentrated it did NOT get the char cloth to glow…sorry about that.
So I went on line and searched “starting a fire using your flashlight”….here is what I got.
There are basically 3 different ways you can use your flashlight to start an emergency fire.
Two of the ways utilizes the batteries and “0000” steel wool to get the fire going. One of these ways forces you to have on hand two small gauge wires. And the third way makes you use some char cloth from your flint and steel fire starting kit.
Battery way number one:
The video I copied the link to and will post up here shows the man using one of the large square type batteries to accomplish the task. By using some deductive reasoning you should be able to see that any battery with say 9 or more volts would do the same. I will leave it up to you to try a “AA” or “AAA” size battery, they probably would work just as well but would take a bit more time to figure out how to do it.
So, in essence what happens is you are using the “0000” steel wool to short circuit the battery. Any time you take a single small gauge wire and touch both the positive and negative ends of the battery, the current traveling through the wire will cause it to get very hot where the two polarities meet (usually the middle part of the wire)…that is exactly how a flashlight or light bulb works. Current is coming through a single wire, positive on one side and negative from the other. The center of the wire glows and gives off the light you see. Flashlight bulbs and light bulbs in your house have the wire encased in an oxygen free vacuum so the wire can not actually burn, it just glows.
If you have something really hot and glowing and you introduce oxygen and some combustible substance, fire will be the end result.
So, by using the steel wool and touching it to the two ends of a battery, the steel wool gets so hot it bursts into flames because it is a really fine and fluffy type of steel and there is a whole lot of oxygen surrounding it. Be careful when handling this. You will see in the video, he has placed the steel wool into his tinder nest before touching the battery to the steel wool.
If you are trying this with a smaller battery, make sure you have a way to get the battery away from the burning steel wool quickly as a fire could cause it to explode and then your emergency situation will instantly become a worse affair. I take NO responsibility for your actions.
Number two way to use your flashlight to start a fire:
Take the top off your flashlight, the cone shaped shiny part with the plastic or glass lens cover. If your flashlight bulb stays inside the cone shaped part, you will have to remove the bulb. Please be careful not to break the bulb as you will still be able to use the flashlight once you have a fire. Take a piece of your char cloth from your fire starting kit and roll it tightly in a long shape, the end of the char cloth is going to be placed up inside the cone where you just removed the bulb.
Now face the lens portion toward the sun and you should soon see the char cloth smoking. The sun rays will focus down onto the char cloth just like using a magnifying glass to accomplish the same thing.
Of course now you know to put the glowing char cloth into a nest of tinder and begin blowing until it bursts into flames and then add small twigs etc. to build your fire up. See video on these two methods:
Number three way of using your flashlight to start a fire.
This again requires the use of “0000” steel wool, and it also involves the other two small gauge wires.
A flashlight like a mini-mag light is best for this. Take the top off the mini-mag flashlight and pull the little bulb out. Set them both aside as you will want to re-assemble your flashlight for use as a flashlight later on.
The bulb comes out and you will see two small holes in the end of the flashlight. Stick the ends of the two wires, one into each of the two holes and make sure you do not allow them to touch each other.
Now you touch the two wires to the steel wool nest and suddenly you will have flame and be able to build your fire up. The two wires make the connection of the battery’s positive and negative poles and shorts it out against the steel wool causing it to get hot and burst into flames. The following link shows you this method:
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Now in my search I did find a fourth example of using your flashlight to start a fire, but in this way you will cause your flashlight to be useless for anything else but perhaps a “one time” fire start.
This method will only work with a larger bulb type flashlight as the mini-mag lights and LED flashlights will not work.
Be very careful with this one: Break or remove the glass or plastic lens out of the end of your flashlight. Break the glass bulb without breaking the wire inside (not an easy thing to do). Place extremely dry and fine tinder in the cone and around the fragile wire of the bulb, be careful you only have one try with this method. If you are able to do this without breaking the wire I commend you highly. Now turn the flashlight switch to “on”. The wire inside the bulb will get very hot and glow and hopefully start your tinder on fire. When it does, tip the flashlight down and dump the ignited tinder into another larger pile of tinder and begin your fire build up.
With God on your side, the wire that is exposed from your bulb will still be in tact for another attempt later on should you need it. If it breaks you had best keep the fire you just started going and hope rescue comes soon.
Again, I take no responsibility for what happens to you while you are using these methods to start an emergency fire. I place it on here as information only and hope that if you are ever stuck in a place and need to build a fire and all you have is a flashlight that you will be able to start a fire and get warm, cook some food and eventually be rescued.
This morning I got to thinking about flashlights, my favorite thing you know and just how powerful the most powerful one is being made today. So went my search. The web is such an incredible source of stuff…some useful…some not.
Well, in my quest I just might have found THE most powerful flashlight made to date. This little baby won’t run long on a full charge, but it does do some incredible things while it is running and it just might save your life one day.
I found out that a typical automobile headlight runs at about 1400 lumens of light. That seems like quite a bit to me. I also found out that the most powerful “headlamp” made in the world is kicking out 3,000 lumens….that baby would give you whiplash just turning it on. Over twice the light of a normal car. Why on earth would you want something that bright? Talk about turn the night into day.
Of course as time goes on research is finding smaller, better ways of doing things and flashlight making will be no different. Thanks to space age technology we have many, many, many things that would not have been possible even just a short 10 years ago.
So, what did Bears Butt find this time? A flashlight that kicks out 4100 lumens! Can you imagine that? On full blast the batteries in this flashlight only last about 15 minutes AND it creates a lot of heat while on full like that. So the makers of it had to put in a special heat resistant glass lens and of course the body of the flashlight has to dissipate the heat while still being safe for the user to operate it.
They tout in their advertisement that you can cook eggs with it! Imagine that. So you go hiking with a pan and a flashlight that’s all you need. Heck who needs a pan, just break the egg on a rock and shine your light on it…if the light will cook an egg it surely would kill any bacteria that might also be harbored on the rock right?
The flashlight comes with a whole lot of warnings about not doing things with the light that might hurt someone and from what I just saw, you would not want this thing in the wrong persons hand.
So, even though I would like to have a bigger and better flashlight I think for safety I am going to have to limit myself to a smaller “gun” than is currently the biggest and badest out there. Sort of on the same line as buying a self protection pistol in say 45 acp, rather than a 50 cal fmj.
So, check out this video of the flashlight they call “The Torch”…it will light up your world…in more ways than one.
Today marks the first day of the elk rides up at Hardware Ranch and it also kicks off with the Elk Festival! Bones, Tracker, Wapiti, Winemaker and I are headed up to do our part to welcome the guests and help kick things off.
We had about 2 inches of snow fall last night here in the valley, so the Ranch should have gotten a good 6 inches. It is a perfect day for this event.
The Ranch hands should have their ski sleds out instead of the wheeled ones and the guests will really get a treat going out among the elk today.
Meanwhile back at the visitor center we will be set up showing folks blackpowder things and mountain man lure. As well as allowing them to wear our capotes and holding weapons for pictures! The DWR people will be there with crafts for the children and showing how things happen in the world of the wild.
The archers will also have their 3D targets set out and the DWR will have their airgun trailer there to let the kids shoot targets. What a fun day is ahead of us!
Bears Butt
Dec. 15, 2012
I didn’t get outside to take any pictures today as when we got set up here came the people and I was not afforded another chance to get out there. But there were some archers and a shooting trailer sponsored by the Mule Deer Foundation. Here are some of the pictures I took of the events.
Fish Prints was done by painting the outside of a fish and then pressing it against a paper. All the kids had a blast doing that!
Making bird feeders using pine cones, peanut butter and bird seed! A little messy but again all the kids had fun doing that and taking home their own bird feeder!
Pressing a raised wooden track into the sand and making the tracks of different animals!
This biologist had stopped at the Blacksmith Fork river and gathered up a bunch of specimens and showed everyone what he caught. Fun to learn about all the bugs that inhabit a river.
Of course we had our own table filled with good stuff to see and touch. Lots of furs for the kids to feel.
This is part of the Hyrum Youth Group who were there helping people make their own Christmas Ornaments using browse and Other things to fill the clear containers.
They even had a tray of Wapiti Dung….No offense Wapiti Dung from the Willow Creek Group!
The mountain men also had capotes for folks to put on and have their pictures taken holding a real muzzleloader and wearing authentic fur hats.
Aren’t these kids having fun!?!!!
Even Smokey the Bear showed up and had to have his picture taken…..
You really would have been hard pressed not to have a really fun time at the Hardware Ranch today! A perfect day!
Here is an idea to overcome the ever rising cost of my favorite beverage…beer…I have been trying to figure out a way to have the “beer man” stop and deliver my beverages and then I would not have to travel to the store and pay their cost for it. A triple savings….gas,time and dollars.
So, would Utah allow me to form a cooperative?
Beer drinkers cooperative to be exact. All members would pay dues upfront for their first weeks supply of beverages and then pay a weekly fee for the next weeks supply in advance. Beer would be delivered to one of the members homes and each member would be responsible to pick up their delivery on the day or the day after delivery.
It all sounds so simple.
Someone please look up the legalities of such an operation and get back with me on costs, charter paperwork etc.
Yesterday is behind us and as you know a very large portion of my day was involved with sweet breads.
So this morning what better for breakfast than scrambled eggs, sweet breads, toast and a glass of orange juice?
Trust me….It was delicious!
Today is National Ice Cream and Violins day….those two just don’t seem to go together in my mind. I suppose across the nation there are coffee shops with hired violin players moving through the crowded tables of people eating ice cream and parks with stages of violin players and ice cream cone vendors everywhere. But I don’t think I will find that anywhere I plan on going today, if I do, I will tell you all about it.
Everybody seems to be talking about today being 121212 day and all the assorted things that are going on. One thing that did perk my interest for a minute was an email with a printable coupon worth a dozen (12) Krispy Cream Donuts…but I don’t know where the nearest KCD is, so that one went away as quickly as it came.
And with all the 121212 stuff going on I decided to write about something else, even though the 121212 bandwagon would have been a pretty good ride.
So, let’s look at some other things that are going on today. One thing I stumbled on was a group of young kids in Paraguay who live on or very near a landfill. This landfill is huge and several “cities” surround it. Nearly everyone living in these cities works at the landfill. Most of them are ripping and tearing apart the garbage and try to find things they can sell…call them recyclers. A very green thing these days.
You can imagine just what terrible conditions these poor people are living in and among. As it turns out there is a ray of good hope for some of the younger people living there. A very ambitious 3o something year old man decided he wanted to teach the kids who were willing to learn, how to play instruments. The biggest problem was not in getting kids interested, but rather getting instruments for them to play.
Thus along comes a garbage truck and dumps its load…behold…in the trash is part of an old broken violin! A miracle! It is brought to him and he fixes it with assorted things he has laying all around him and suddenly he tunes it and it makes beautiful music once again! This got him thinking and suddenly every student has an instrument to play. Violins, Cellos, Bass’, Drums etc. All made of trash and everyone tuned perfectly.
He decided he would make a movie to help these kids get out of the trash cities they were living in. They have a Facebook page….”landfill harmonic”…go and look them up. They call themselves the “Landfill Harmonic Orchestra” and you can see a trailer of the movie and see some of what they have to experience every day. A happy-sad sort of story. I wish them the best!
On a totally different note (so to speak) I found a story about a local, West Valley City Mayor, who got tired of hearing how his town was nothing but bad. The news carried such awful stories about gangs, shootings, drugs and the normal news stuff we hear and read about every day. He decided he wanted to paint a different picture of his lovely town and so he created himself a Facebook page, email address and got a job as a free lance reporter for a smaller town newspaper out in Magna…he called himself “Richard Burwash”! As my reading went on, he ended up getting reprimanded by his own city council, once they uncovered him. I see nothing wrong with a man wanting to show his city in a different light than an ugly one. I suppose he just went about it in a different, out of the box sort of way and people didn’t understand. They though Richard was really a Dick.
Enjoy the rest of your 121212 and I hope if you have a KCD place close to where you live, that they send you an email with a printable coupon…if not…give me a comment and I’ll forward mine to you.
Utah Fishing Reports
