A couple of new toys

"Da mihi castitatem et contentiam, sed noli modo" A prayer in Latin: "God give me chastity and continence, but not just yet" - St. Augustine of Hippo

UPS delivered the box from Amazon today, with goodies inside.  It's nice to have Christmas whenever you like.  Both of the items are practical, so that's always welcome.  

The first item was a cordless leaf blower that uses the 18V rechargeable batteries that I already have - batteries in the background.

 

I tested it out briefly.  It's not *quite* as powerful as the plug-in blower, but it's a heck of a lot more convenient!  I was able to chase dust all over the shop, around all sorts of obstacles, without having to wrangle a power cord, which was super sweet :)  It will be nice to blow grass clippings off the concrete without also having to worry about running out of power cord, or having the clippings come to rest against the cord.

During this past outage, one of the guys here at work showed up with a nice headlamp affixed to his hard-hat.  People in the electrical generating business have been using cave explorer's headlamps for about 20 years now.  My first good headlamp was a Petzl, with dual incandescent bulbs, and a battery pack that held 4 AA size batteries.  It took a long fall one sweaty night when my hardhat fell off.

There have been several LED replacements over the years, but those tend to be very directional.  You have to turn your head so that the spotlight is pointed where you want to see.  This new design is very, very cool!!!!!  The entire front of the band has LED bulbs embedded in it.

It has a bit of 1950's sci-fi movie appeal as well :)  Below: A still image from "The Day the Earth Stood Still".

 

The light fans out up and down, as well as in most of your range of peripheral vision, so that you don't necessarily have to point your head to get the light where you want it.  In addition, there is a spotlight on the side, if you need that sort of focused light.

The headlamp also has a sensor to turn it on when ambient light is not good enough.  The right hand button activates that sensor.

I'm a bit finicky about charging lithium ion batteries.  I never put them on charge on the wood bench-top.  This magnetic bolt and nut holder is perfect - just in case the battery decides to go up in flames.