Leatherman please bring back the retired – Genus Pruners!

Call Leatherman Tool Group, Inc. at 1 (800) 847-8665, (503) 253-7826 or email Leatherman Customer Support to request this super cool Genus Pruner Multi-Tool LM830909 to remain in their Multi-Tools product lineup.

Leatherman: Genus Pruners – 9 Tools in One

The Leatherman Genus landscaping tool will have you rotating your thinking. Introduced in 2008 and unfortunately now retired – pruner multi-tool features an industry-first: A rotating handle that stores a full set of professional tools. Just push the button and flip the handle around and you’ll find a knife, Phillips screwdriver, sprinkler head adjustment tool/flat screwdriver, bottle opener and very aggressive saw. 9 tools in one. The Genus is simply genius!

Leatherman: Genus Pruners – 9 Tools in One

Leatherman: Genus Pruner and Landscape Multi-Tool Shears with Nylon Sheath

Features
Stainless Steel Bypass Pruner
420HC Clip-point Knife
Sprinkler-head Adjustment Key
Phillips Screwdriver
Flat Screwdriver
Saw
Bottle Opener
Soft-wire Cutters
Open-end Adjustment Wrench
Diamond-coated File
Made In: USA

Specifications
Length: 8.5 in. / 21.59 cm closed
Weight: 11.2 ounces / 318 grams
Materials: 6061-T6 Anodized Aluminum (body), Stainless Steel (pruners and tools), 420HC (knife)
Part No. LM830909

Leatherman: Genus Pruners – 6061-T6 Anodized Aluminum (body)

Leatherman: Genus Pruners – Replaceable Stainless Steel Bypass Pruner Blades

Leatherman: Genus Pruners – Saw

Leatherman: Genus Pruners – 3” 420HC Clip-point Knife

Mike Richter Promotes Offshore Wind Power on Long Island

The Sierra Club launched new radio ads on major stations across Long Island featuring the former New York Rangers goalie Mike Richter calling on Governor Cuomo and LIPA to lead the way with a commitment to offshore wind power. The ads will run for two weeks ahead of LIPA’s December 17th Board meeting where they’re expected to announce the winners of new renewable energy contracts. If they choose offshore wind, it will bring hundreds of new jobs and millions in economic growth to Long Island.

“This issue is important to me because New York has an opportunity to be a national leader. Governor Cuomo and LIPA could make a commitment this month to build one of the nation’s first-ever offshore wind projects off the coast of Long Island. We can’t afford to miss this shot at a healthier, more prosperous future for New York with offshore wind power,” said Richter.

“Whether you’re an environmentalist or not, most people think that it’s about the trees and the birds and the fish, but it’s about humans. It’s about our health, our quality of life.”

In 2010, Richter launched Athletes for a Healthy Planet (A4HP), which aims to promote “better understanding of the relationship between the health of the planet and our health, economy, jobs, national security, social justice, and quality of life.”

Sierra Club Radio Ad for Long Island Offshore Wind Power

The A4HP TEAM

Mike Richter, former NHL goalie, who helped lead the New York Rangers to the Stanley Cup and the U.S. Olympic Hockey Team to a silver medal, is a founder of A4HP. Climate change hit home for Mike when he realized the frozen hockey ponds of his childhood had disappeared. Sports born in the outdoors now are played indoors. “No one has a greater stake in a cleaner, healthier planet than athletes,” says Mike. Our team now includes tennis greats Billie Jean King and John McEnroe, Olympic medalists Connie Carpenter and Angela Ruggiero, NHL icon Mark Messier, Professional Race Car Drive Leilani Münter, and more.

Former New York Rangers goaltender Mike Richter promotes Offshore Wind Power on Long Island

New York Sports Heroes

The GREAT Mike Richter former New York Rangers Goalie #35, is one of my all-time sports heroes. He played goalie like an offensive position instead of the typical defensive mind set. He brought a poise and intensity to the position and game. As for myself when I played Varsity Soccer I was chosen and forced to play defense “not by my choosing,” but because I played defense like an offensive position and shutdown the opponents best strikers. As a Full-back (LB, FB) & Center-back/center-half/central defender (CB) you must be strong, fearless, and good at timing tackles and having an advantage to win the ball in the air, an essential skill in corner kick situations. With that said I always admired Richter’s offensive/defensive play.

Two other New York sport legends on the Athletes for a Healthy Planet team is tennis great and bad-ass John McEnroe and NHL icon Mark Messier, whom I both met at the 1994 MTV Video Music Award – After Party in Bryant Park. Mind you this was right after the New York Rangers had just won the glorious Stanley Cup back in 1994. So their these two guys were somewhat unrecognizable in their nice casual clothes because McEnroe was not wearing his old-school sweatband and Messier was not in a Rangers jersey. Their they were right in front of me and I was quite stunned to see them hanging together, and I was like “thanks Mark” and McEnroe was like “for what” and I said “come on.” I shook both their hands and said “it was an honor and a pleasure to meet you guys” and thanks for being such kick-ass athletes.

So with that said it is super cool to see these great New York Sports Heroes stepping it up with fellow athletes dedicated to finding breakthroughs for a cleaner, healthier planet.

I absolutely agree with former New York Governor George Pataki’s assessment and opinion regarding the antiquated power-grid in his article at the Wall Street Journal website titled In Sandy’s Wake, Time to Upgrade the Power Grid.

The Federal State and local municipalities along with the utility companies need to create a smart electrical grid and to finally start burying our power lines underground. Not all power lines can be or should be buried under ground in low-lying or flood prone areas, but for the majority it is time to take action and invest in our modern day infrastructure. To have one fallen tree take out an entire town’s or state’s power grid is unacceptable. The industrial spaghetti of power lines detracts from the natural beauty of our environment and is just not aesthetically pleasing to the eye. We need to think outside the box and come up with creative solutions and implement them. It’s time to start using alternative power sources and focus more on renewable energy such as wind, solar, hydro and thermal power along with capturing methane gas from our local landfills in order to power our future’s ever growing energy needs. So what are we waiting for? Let do this already!

Superstorm Sandy exposed perhaps the greatest flaw underpinning the American way of life: insecure and unreliable electrical infrastructure. Four weeks after the storm, thousands of people in New York and New Jersey remain without power.

How did this happen? Under normal conditions, the energy systems of these areas are a complex but reliable network of pipelines, power plants, poles and wires. Under the stress of a major storm, however, these systems have proven inadequate in responding and recovering.

To make our electrical grid more reliable, serious consideration has to be given to burying electrical-distribution networks underground. This costly but critical investment would eliminate the need for utility poles and overhead wires, drastically reducing the need for repairs caused by wind and tree damage. New York’s Consolidated Edison is considering burying power lines, but it won’t be easy because utilities must earn government approval for rate increases before making most improvements. New Yorkers already pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country, so hardening the system while keeping rates down will require creativity.

Another priority should be to harden and modernize the transmission systems that carry high-voltage electricity from large power plants down to the local distribution level. Modernization includes increasing the use of high-voltage direct-current (DC) transmission lines, which are less prone to failure than the alternating-current (AC) systems used throughout the country. DC lines can be buried underground or underwater, as is the Cross Sound Cable between Connecticut and Long Island, helping to enhance their reliability. (Conventional high-voltage AC lines can be placed below ground, but doing so is very costly when long distances are involved.)

Damage to substations, poles, transformers and power lines causes most power outages during storms. Even so, improvements to other parts of the grid can protect us against disasters. One improvement would be to expand the use of distributed power generation through fuel cells, microturbines, and the simultaneous “cogeneration” of both heat and power.

Such distributed power sources have very small installation footprints—fitting even on the roof of a building—and can provide secure power regardless of other outages on the electrical grid. During and after Sandy, cogeneration allowed pockets of New York City (such as the large Co-op City neighborhood) never to lose electricity or heat. Crucially, favorable amortization schedules and tax treatment, along with operational cost savings, can make these power sources attractive investments for building owners and other investors. They can even generate revenue by selling excess electricity back into the marketplace during times of peak demand, a practice known as demand response.

Finally, the way the Federal Emergency Management Agency works with electrical utilities after disasters needs reform. Under the current system, utilities receive federal emergency funding to replace damaged electrical components only if they replace them “in-kind” with the same technology. This means that all sorts of antiquated components are simply being replaced. This makes no sense. The federal government should promote modern technologies and best practices.

Officials at all levels of government should work to ensure that structures rebuilt after Sandy are more resilient and energy-efficient than their predecessors. They can do this by continuing to expand smart-grid technologies such as advanced meters, which communicate concise and instant information to repair teams in the event of an outage, instead of relying on customers to report general information via telephone.

Likewise, so-called self-healing transmission and electric-system technology can help the electrical grid react to system damage as it occurs by isolating outages. So instead of a blown transformer triggering a widespread power outage, the grid can automatically reroute electrical current to avoid the damaged area. Some parts of New York and New Jersey already use this technology, but it can be far more widely adopted.

No matter what, our utilities and governments will spend tens of billions of dollars repairing the damage caused last month. The question is whether Hurricane Sandy will be remembered as the moment America began embracing strategic infrastructure change, or as yet another wasted opportunity to move the country in the right direction.

Mr. Pataki, counsel to Chadbourne & Park LLP and chairman of the Pataki-Cahill Group, served as New York governor (1995-2006) and led the founding of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in 2003.

A version of this article appeared November 26, 2012, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: In Sandy’s Wake, Time to Upgrade the Power Grid.

This evening September 15th, 2011 around 6:30 pm we had a power outage here in Port Jefferson, NY. After seeing a local LIPA truck near Mather Hospital earlier, I assumed they were fixing the lines, so I ended up going outside to see what was up and bumped into two neighbors that came out for a walk to see what was happening as well. It is amazing when the power goes out, people actually talk to each other, go figure. We were talking about the power lines and the damage from hurricane Irene and how burying the power lines would potentially lessen the occurrences of power outages and in the process preserve nature’s views. We were talking about nature and local wildlife, deers and such, and my November 11th 2008 at 11:30 pm amazing sighting of an eastern cougar (mountain lion) on our property here in Port Jefferson. I will call him the Port Jeff Panther, or the Puma of Port Jefferson, or Casey the Cougar after yours truly. I did report this amazing sighting to New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation, but nothing came of it to my knowledge, I hoped he would have been be protected and re-released into the wild. I was mentioning to the guys about the recent mountain lion sightings in Greenwich Connecticut and the one cougar that was hit and killed by an SUV in June across the Long Island Sound in Milford Connecticut this summer; Google it.

As I was looking up at the power lines talking about what would appear to be strange unusual sittings of large cats, low and behold, as I was saying that, I witnessed what appeared to be a small Pterodactyl. You say what? A small dinosaur bird, I swear it kind of looked like it. It was not a hawk, as I have see plenty in Southern New Jersey, some very large that cast huge shadows when flying above, what a sight! But this wasn’t even close; this had a huge wing span of over 5 feet. It was darkish brown and looked like it could have been a pelican. A pelican right above the treetops that swooped and glided above and over me and the neighbors, of course the older guys were facing the opposite direction and were too slow to turn around and see it. I was like “did you guys see that” and I chased it, then it flew out of view over the trees. Holy cow! What was that? A huge bird that looked like a Pterodactyl or pelican? Unreal, and I told the guys they needed to pay attention to their surroundings even in suburbia, and always look up; you never know what you might see.

After we went back to our houses and once the power came back on, I hit the computer and did a little research to find out what type of bird it was. Turns out, it was most likely an Eastern Brown Pelican, cool! What they’re doing on the North Shore of Long Island, I don’t know, but maybe global warming and climate change is to blame, and maybe the hurricanes off the Atlantic coast has brought them this far north extending their range. Why am I seeing these unusual sighting you ask, well I am known for my keen eye and my situational awareness. Just keep your eyes pealed; you never know what you will see, but first you need to get off the computer and go outside.

Radiation scan of Japanese baby

I am gutted about the earthquake and tsunami natural disaster in Japan. This is not just a natural disaster, which I think people can recover from in time, but it now has become a man-made nuclear toxic catastrophe due to the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant meltdown. It is very similar to the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill disaster that struck the gulf region of the United States this past summer and fall. The zero accountability by British Petroleum (BP) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DEO) was and is appalling. The health of our world’s oceans suffered greatly all in the name of oil, and if you consume seafood as I do, well that is not good. Hopefully this is a wake-up call for the island nation of Japan and the rest of the world to reconsider changing their ways to power their future. Maybe in light of this disaster Japan’s government and commercial fishing industry will curtail their over harvesting of our worlds ocean’s sea life and slaughtering of whales in the future. The way the environment goes, so do we.

Radiation scan of Japanese child

The nuclear industry puts its spin and lobbying into play with its deep pockets. I hope this is the nail in the coffin for the nuclear industry, with its lack of stability and its potential for meltdown and far-reaching nuclear fallout. Of course we can’t forget all the toxic waste generated that will never ever decay that has to go somewhere, not it in my backyard. It is time for change to meet our ever-growing global energy needs, which affects us all. Clean Renewable Energy: Wind, Solar, Tidal, Hydro, and Bio-Fuels will never have the irreversible ill effects on the global human population and our environment, which we all share and need to look after, so that it is here for generations to come. I feel the internal combustion engine is on its way out, and it is time the U.S. Government and energy companies to start making the efforts at a more rapid pace to start converting over to better solutions and infrastructures that can handle the conversion in order to have more efficient and less polluting carbon emitting energy sources. We need to start demanding change from governments, politicians, companies, brands, and they need to start making the transition soon, because the last time I checked, their wasn’t an endless supply of petroleum and dirty coal. The need to diversify is now! C02 emissions are choking our pristine air supply here on our earth. We have only this world to call home and it is ours to protect, so what the hell are we waiting for?

In the words of Kermit The Frog “It is not easy being green.” but I feel now we really don’t have a choice, and it is a good safe choice.

Element Energy Systems (e2sys) located in Mattituck, NY

If you live in the New York Tri-State area and need to contact an alternative energy company, I can highly recommend Element Energy Systems they are located on the North Fork of Long Island, and tell Jamie Minnick that Casey Gobbi sent you.