:Six Feet Under… and then some.

This post has alternately been called "giving myself a hand", "hand-job", and "fun with dead cats."
In the spirit of Halloween, Feliz and I decided to replace the pumpkin/bags on her front lawn with cheap decor.  By cheap, I mean cash out had to be minimal.  So rummaging through the odds and ends in our respective garage cabinets, we found materials we could use for creating a macabre graveyard scene.  Hardiflex for the stone tombstones.  Wood for a cross, some old paint, cadena-de-amor for effects, and some bones of 2 long dead cats. I’m sure I could’ve made a hand with chicken bones, but I didn’t have any, so I settled for the cats.  The carpals are made of vertebrae, the metacarpals are all humeri (humeruses?), and the phalanges are all tibias - cut into three parts, with some radii tips for the fingertips.
I kinda like it.
My big worry is now some kid is gonna see it in Feliz’s front lawn and make off with it.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.  That’s some bad juju right there.
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Can light Mk 3

Alright, this is it.  I think I’ve finally managed to come up with a workable cannister
light.  I know this has been a project since last May - and I did come up with a Mk 1 and 2.  The first 2 versions, while initially successful, both eventually succumbed to switch failure.  The trouble with using toggle switches without o-rings or any boot is that they WILL allow water in at 90 FSW.  Thus, while the light head and batteries remained okay, the corroded switches left my lights useless.  Anyway, I should’ve taken the fact that oil would seep out of the top of the cannister when I’d fill them before as a sign of potential failure.

Fast forward to this week.  After the failure of the light last week in Dive and Trek, I decided to rework everything.  Starting with the light head, I switched from a MR16 bulb to a MR11.  The casing for the lighthead came from my secondary light (which also flooded last week, and has now been reincarnated).  Both endcaps have been replaced with thicker material, And now, with an o-ring sealed switch, I’m hoping that maybe, just maybe, this’ll be it.

Oh, but I’m still using the same Coca-Cola bottle cap

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Damn, I’m good.

My camera lens got busted again recently, and after the repair guy said it would cost the same to repair as before (around 2K)  I decided to do it myself.  Heck, if his warranty was only good for 2 weeks, then i had the option of either busting it every two weeks, or learning to do it myself.  After a little micro-soldering I got it working fine - even better than what the repair guy did before

To celebrate saving this dough, I ended up splurging on a new mask.  My old dive mask was a large TUSA Visualator OEM, and as such, was incapable of having corrective lenses put in.  Thus, for all of my dives (except for the time i borrowed Paulo’s mask)  I’ve been unable to see very far.  The large school of jacks?  sorry didn’t see that.  Mantis shrimp?  Nope, didn’t see that either… (thank goodness I was using Paulo’s mask when I saw my first shark).  Anyway, after a spur of the moment visit to my LDS, I found a tube of Aquaseal and a very good deal on a mask with corrective lenses.

Now if only I can find the time to use ‘em.

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