In case you all haven’t figured it out, I’m not a rich person. The only reason I have nice stuff is that I’m old and have slowly accumulated this stuff/junk.

A few years ago, I purchased a replacement EDC light. Prior to this, I was using a Mini MagLite. The type that took two AA batteries. I had upgraded to the good bulbs.

The problem I had with these lights is that they were always dead when I went to use them. They would turn on in their holster or in my pocket. By the time I noticed, they were dead. While they had a spare bulb in the battery cap, I don’t like mucking around changing bulbs in the dark.

All of my MagLites were dead. The big ones, the mini’s. All of them. I had been using the cheap LED lights but decided to take a step-up. I purchased a $70 flashlight.

Given that I was used to spending $20 to $30 for a Mini MagLite, this was a big price difference.

What a difference. I use that little Olight every single day. Not an exaggeration.

First, it is tiny. Barely 3 inches long and about the size of a nickle. It comes with a reversible clip. When in the default orientation, the emitter is pointing out of your pocket when clipped to your pocket. This means that you can clip it to the bill of a cap and have an excellent light source.

It has a single control, a side push button.

So what makes this thing so damn amazing? The amount of light it throws along with its run time.

The mode I use most often is the “moon” mode. This is a 0.5 Lumen mode. This is the mode I use at night, moving around the house when the lights are out. It makes more than enough light to see 10 to 15 feet in the dark, but it doesn’t blow out your night vision.

A single click turns it off or on.

If it is on, you can press and hold, and it will cycle to the next brightness mode. 12, 60, 300 Lumens. 300 Lumens will nicely light the world. At 300 Lumens it has a 60-minute run time, at 60 Lumens it has a 4.5 hour run time. At 12 Lumens, 33 hours. If you are only using the 0.5 Lumen mode, it has a 15-day run time.

That is a heck of a long time.

In addition to the normal modes, there is a 600 Lumen mode and a 900Lumin mode. When I’m going after trash pandas, I will sometimes use the 600 Lumen mode. I had forgotten how to get into the 900 Lumen mode.

There is also a 13hz strobe mode.

One of the reasons I chose this light was that it was rechargeable. It has a magnet attach charging connector. Put the tail near the charger pad and they jump together. The charge indicator goes red. When it turns green, the battery is fully charged.

But wait! There’s more! Rechargeable is all well and fine, but what if you can’t recharge your battery? That is another outstanding feature of this particular light. It takes a regular 123 cell. This is not rechargeable, and non-olight rechargeable batteries don’t recharge in the light. This means that if you need light, you’ve got it. My package came with both the Olight rechargeable battery and a regular 123 cell as backup.

One of the side benefits of that magnetic charging system is that you can attach this light to any steel item. The other day, I was replacing the igniter in my oven. I had the light in 12 Lumen mode and just stuck to the roof of the oven. This gave me more than enough light to work with. Because it is so small, it goes into places where I could not get a big work light.

The S1R Baton is no longer made. They have follow on versions that have nearly the same features. I would not hesitate to buy any of them.

Which takes us to the Odin Mini. Because the Baton is side activated, many of the tactical light grips don’t work. It is also so small that sometimes it is hard to orient. This has become an issue when dealing with trash bandits.

I picked up the Odin Mini because it was a weapon mount light that had a quick detach. It can easily be used in your hand as well as when mounted on the provided M-Loc mount point. The package came with a charger that works with my Baton, the mounting hardware. The pressure switch for weapon mounting is also included.

It all just works.

The control is in the tail cap. There are two brightness modes, 300 and 1250. Yeah, the low power is at the “normal max” for the Baton. The 1250 Lumen mode will really light up the dark.

Again, there is only a single control. To activate the bright mode, press hard. To activate the low mode, press softer. A quick click and stays on. Click and hold to have the light go off when you release pressure.

The pressure switch uses the same quick or long, but only activates high mode.

As an off weapon light, it works well. On the weapon it works well.

For me, the big thing was learning that there is a huge difference between what I need for a weapons light and what I need for every day. This thing is too bright for most everyday uses. As a weapons light, in my environment, it is damn near perfect. The only thing that would improve it is if I could select the low mode from the pressure switch.

If you want more, they have a version with a built-in green light laser. You can mount the light and then zero the laser to the point of impact. The GL is visible in both low light situations and most bright situations. The laser can be run with the white light, by itself, or just the white light.

There is a big brother version, the Odin (vs. Odin Mini). I considered it, but I didn’t need the extra Lumens, nor did I need the laser option.

I’m currently looking at their Warrior series as a second, slightly larger, EDC light. One of the requirements is that the light must have a tail switch.

Chicago.

Because, of course, Chicago.

Shortly before 3 o'clock Monday afternoon, two men attacked and robbed another man as he walked down a Bucktown alley. It was caught on video.

(Discretion advised)#Chicago pic.twitter.com/Xl8eCuVwGf

— CWBChicago (@CWBChicago) September 26, 2023

I always keep an ear out for running.

It’s one of those habits I developed, but the sound of someone running up behind me sets off every alarm bell I’m my body.

Get tackled from behind once (school bullying incident) and your brain never forgets it.

And be armed.  Yes, a gun is probably optimal, but many people don’t want that, and there are places where that’s still not an option, so at a very minimum, pepper spray.

Shit is getting wild out there, stay safe.

In keeping with NYC v the rest of the country.

I’ve been to NYC a couple of times. My senior class went to see a Broadway play. It was something worth doing. Never again.

The Hotel we stayed in was expensive and felt cheap and run down.

The next time I had to deal with NYC was, I rode the bike up with my daughter on the back. We were looking for a particular restaurant. Early GPS days. We rode around these three blocks about a half dozen times and couldn’t find the actual street, much less the restaurant.

Finally, I spot a cop, roll up to him, and he starts screaming at me for running a stop sign.

Said stop sign was in the middle of the block. My line of sight to it was completely blocked by a box truck. The cop was still angry.

I talked my way out of the ticket and asked for directions. Cop kindly gave me directions. We thanked him and rode off.

We were following his directions when I realized they were directions to the Holland Tunnel and would take me off the island.

Turned back and finally found the place. Turned out that it was located a half block from where that cop was standing. The “road” I was looking for was actually an ally. The end of that ally was about 20 ft behind me when I stopped to speak with the cop.

We also did a ride through NYC with a large group of bikers. I just remember how freaking dirty everything was. I didn’t want to touch anything. The sidewalks were narrow in most places, broken, and full of garbage. The drivers were rude.

I have not seen the things that J.Kb. has seen, I’ve been luckier in some ways as I have been able to live rural for the last few years with no need to visit the cities.

Last Sunday I took USCCA’s USCCA Introduction to Defensive Shooting and USCCA Increasing Practical Marksmanship classes for a total of 4 hours of training. It is not a secret that my shooting skills are rusty as hell for lack of trigger time, so it was good to diagnose how bad I was and what I needed to do again. No surprise: go back to basics and get it right was the answer.

If you just bought a gun, I would not recommend this class just yet. I would ask you to take NRA’s Basic Pistol class first to get yourself used to the proper manipulation and safety standards and then go to a class like this. Even if this class is quite basic and you are all Ninja and sh**, it is never a waste of time to revisit the basics and to expose yourself to new techniques that may or may not work for you, but finding out is part of the fun. Did I learn anything? Well yes, it seems my trigger work sucks, and I need to practice more the right way.

PS: Check your sights as in “can you see the frigging front sight clearly?” I haven’t retouched the paint of darn thing, and I kept losing it making for truly shitty accuracy.

When Hillary Clinton was running for president, she was speaking before a large black audience and said she caries hot sauce in her purse.

It was a racist and superficial attempt to pander to black people.

Today, Trump did the same to the gun community.

Trump was in South Carolina and stopped at the Palmetto State Armory store.

I’ve been there, it’s okay.

According to social media, he bought a Trump Glock.

The Trumpers loved it.

Trump triggers libs!!?

WATCH: Trump Buys A Glock While Touring Gun Store In South Carolinahttps://t.co/a7WnGBuxPT

— Sheri™ (@FFT1776) September 25, 2023

Rational people had questions.

Trump is a Florida resident so can’t purchase a gun in South Carolina.

He’s also under indictment for 34 felonies and can’t pass question 21.c on a 4473.

So what exactly did he do?

What he did was not buy a gun, just pose with it.

This feels a hell of a lot like Hillary’s hot sauce.

This was a shallow pander to the gun community that, “look, Trump likes guns and buys them.” When it was really just a stupid photo op.

I hate this sort of pandering.

I started a new job today and I am still coming out of the crud. No idea when I will be able to get some sort of normalcy, but it will probably take the rest of the week.

Good news: I have a daylight job, weekends off and holidays like a regular human being. Haven’t had that in possibly 40 years.

Reader Eric sent me this and I did need the chuckles.

Four Rules of Woman Safety:

1 – treat every woman as loaded, ready to go off at any time.

2 – keep your finger off her trigger until you are on target and ready to “fire”

3 – Don’t aim your woman at anything you aren’t willing to destroy. It may happen.

4 – Be aware of what’s around your target before aiming your woman at it. Are others safely clear of your woman?

Don’t forget that certain accessories are forbidden as they turn your regular woman into an assault woman. If your woman is under a certain length she must be registered on a form 1 or 4 with the AFT(ATF) before you can make or take possession of her. Also her purse isn’t allowed to hold more than 10 items in certain states. If you live in a state which allows it and you wish to quiet her yelling to a hearing safe level, be prepared to pay an extra tax, get finger printed, and go through an extensive background check before you begin your year long wait period to quiet her down. Remember that your woman is only allowed to speak one word per time you pull her finger unless she was born before 1986 and was properly taxed and registered with the government. If your woman violates these standards and you don’t hold a special license you can be subject to fines and imprisonment. I can’t wait to go pass my woman safety course and carry specialized expensive woman insurance so I can pick out my woman on the list of women certified for sale before waiting 10 days to take her home. Ahhhhh freedom.

Look, there IS still a use for them! 😉