I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW

Yesterday, Tropic Storm Isaias hit New York and it sure was nothing to sneer at.  Not that much rain, at least for where I was, but really high wind.  The wind just blew right along the street outside my house, along with traffic too.  I am sure a block over it was going against traffic.  Electrical power went off many times, each time just a second long, but by 3:30 P.M. it finally did enough damage wherever power was flowing from and there was no power for a while.  The occasion finally made me install the iOS app from Con Edison to report the outage.  Supposedly power wouldn't return until 3 A.M. next day.  Luckily, power did come back around 10 P.M. same evening, a few hours ahead the scary estimate.

In recent months I started using these so-called cabinet LED light-sticks and love them during the blackout.  They are very bright, have a USB port for charging so you don't need to worry about regularly buying alkaline batteries (be it AA or D etc).  They are motion-sensitive so they are great for hallways and other places that don't need constant illumination.  The first one I got only had two mode - ON with timed shut-off and OFF.  The next three I got, from a different company just to see how different they are, also has a ON-until-manually-powered-off mode.  As if to further convince me to get away from D-battery lanterns, and their ilk, one of the old lanterns the batteries busted so badly that the spring parts that help keep the batteries in place corroded right off.  I am tempted to cannibalize another flashlight, or anything else that's broken but has a similar springy thingy, to repair this one, with some Crazy Glue, but I definitely will not buy any more of them old flashlights.  LED rules!