It was about an hour before dark, there was a large 'Bang' and our electricity went south. We declined to order out pizza and feasted on gourmet sandwiches and salad with mood lighting offered in our darkening dining room by Luci solar powered lights - on hand and ready to go.

I found out to my surprise that my wife had more lights in the bedroom than I did - eight to my three! Three of these were small AA battery powered lanterns. One had rechargeable eneloops (worked right away), another had the never-to-be-sufficiently-cursed alkaline batteries which fortunately worked and yet another with alkalines, which had discolored terminals. I replaced them with charged eneloops and the light still wouldn't work. There was mild corrosion on the terminals, which I will fix today.

I have been on a crusade to replace all the alkalines in the hikermor domain with rechargeables, but I had not detected these. This incident is exhibit A in my preference for cheaper (in the long run) NiMH over unreliable alkaleaks.

Not really an emergency, but just a dress rehearsal incident for a more significant event. My Zebralight headlamp performed flawlessly - the lowest light level was superb in providing enough light to navigate in the dark without blinding others.

Can you tell that I don't care for alkaline batteries? (and why)