Flashlights

Trustfire XP-E F23 1xAAA flashlight, DX sku.24291

Ultrafire WF-504B 1x18650 flashlight with XR-E R2 drop-in, DX sku.24200

Uniquefire S10 1xAA flashlight, KD ID 10303

Other things

18650 Charger, DX sku.6105

Universal NiMH/Li-ion Charger, DX sku.14885

So I found this other charger for $7.92 shipped that has two independent charging bays, supposedly charges at 1000mA, and stops charging at 4.20V like it is supposed to.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.6105

• A bigger reflector to focus all the light


• A lot of battery power to drive the LED's to full power


• Good heatsinking to carry a lot of heat away from the LED

I'm not sure if it is because I am using twice as much coffee, or if the thing really works, but it does seem like the coffee is better. If I followed their instructions they would have me using 4 times as much coffee as I use in my Mr. Coffee. So to make it stretch further, I am increasing the stirring time and adding more hot water. The water is probably a little hotter as well. I know if I used freshly ground beans, it would go way up in quality, but I don't have a grinder or any beans, so that is something I may do later.

I have made coffee with it three times now. The most time-consuming part is heating up the water in the microwave. It takes about 3.5 minutes to get 8 oz of water to the right temperature. While it is heating up I can load a small filter in the bottom of the maker and measure out the grounds. Then wait on the microwave. As a hungry Homer Simpson said on meatloaf night "Isn't there anything faster than a microwave?!" So then you pour most of the water into the maker, stir, and just set the plunger in to make a good seal, but don't press. Now add some milk to the rest of the hot water from the microwave and put it back in the microwave for another 30 seconds or so. The reason you put the plunger in first is otherwise the water will all gravity feed through the filter. So then you press and you find out you press the water out pretty quickly and most of the time you're just pressing air through the filter. It seems kind of silly to press air, but it does help in the cleanup because the plunger is like a squeegee down the inside of the other chamber. Once you've done that, add the rest of the hot water to the cup (the coffee has drained directly into the mug).

One thing is you don't get that coffee smell in the kitchen, which I guess is good because maybe that lost flavor is going into the cup instead. Once you are done it seems like there are a lot of parts. There is the plunger, and then the container and the filter cap plus the stirrer and you have to have a second mug to heat the water in originally. With the Mr. Coffee there is just the basket and the coffee pot and they all go back together to air dry. So I don't think cleanup is as easy, but you can heat up water any way you want, so you aren't dependent on electricity. Some people have a special boiling hot water tap and that would really speed things up. In fact, this would be ideal for people like that. There are a ton of reviews on Amazon and some people take this to work with them because the community coffee isn't that good and they want to make their own.

They seem to take a little while to get to full brightness. It isn't just a few seconds, but maybe 30 seconds or more. The tint of the light is decent, but they aren't quite as bright as the old bulbs I had in there, which are labeled as 25 watt while these CF bulbs are labeled 15 watt (and actually use 3 watts). Here is a mix of the bulbs installed for comparison with the incandescent bulb on the left and the CF bulbs in the middle and on the right:

Long story short, I got suspended from the flashlight discussion board. Not long, just for a day. Here's how it happened.

You always want the yellow line (the current value) to be above the pink line (total of my contributions). If the yellow dips below the pink, I am losing money. It has happened twice, but is not happening right now. The neat thing that happened in June 2000 was the blue line (gain or loss) crossed the pink line. That meant that my gains exceeded my contributions, or, in other words, I had doubled my money! At the time I had an average annual return of 33%, which was clearly unsustainable. About two years later, I had lost every penny of my gains and was showing an average annual loss of 1.18%. Five years later, I was showing a lifetime average gain of 11.3% but nowhere close to doubling my money yet. 18 months later, I had lost all my gains again and had an average loss of 0.31% per year over the previous 16 years. Now I'm showing a gain again of 4%, which is pretty lousy, but I'll take it. Though the account value is back to where it was before the 2008 crash, you can see that today's gains are about half of what they were then.

The main high-end US flashlight company, Surefire, sells innards of a flashlight called a P60. It consists of three parts: a reflector, a bulb, and the electronics that drive it. Surefire uses this assembly in several different models of flashlights. It has become a standard part and now many off-brands offer P60 drop-ins that can be used in Surefire lights. And because there are so many P60 drop-ins and Surefires are so expensive, now people make P60-compatible bodies that will accept the drop-ins. So instead of spending $150 on Surefire's system, you can spend $18 for a generic.