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the key to configuring a heavy backpack load
Saturday, August 29 2015
Part of the problem with my various attempts to backup and restore that Windows 7 installation was that a couple forms of media I'd tried to use turned out to either be defective or to not have the amount of storage they claimed to (there's a way for unscrupulous sellers to hack small thumb drives and other flash media to make them appear larger). This was not my problem with Microsoft Backup & Restore, since at that stage I was using a good hard drive as my media. But the backup I'd made using DriveImage XML was onto a 64 gigabyte thumb drive I'd bought on eBay, and by this morning I seriously doubted it contained a 64 GB chip inside it. It had more or less completely stopped working anyway, so I opened it up, and sure enough the chip it contained was a SDTNRCAMA-008G, which is only an 8 GB chip. Unfortunately, I'd bought it back in May (for the too-good-to-be-true price of $10), too far in the past to leave bad feedback for a US seller named zoomvalue. But I'd also bought a 64 GB flash card within the last month, and when I tested that, it turned out to contain 8 GB media. The orginal listing had received so many complaints that eBay had yanked it, leaving only the following text in my order history:
We had to remove this listing from the site and you're not required to complete the transaction. If you've already sent payment, the sale should process as normal and you don't have anything to worry about. If you have any questions about delivery, please check tracking or contact your seller. If you run into any trouble along the way eBay is here to help. Please visit the Resolution Center to help resolve any problems you may encounter.
I actually had to do other research to confirm that that item was indeed a 64 GB card I'd bought for the suspiciously-low-price of $8.79 (hey, maybe it had fallen off a truck!). When I initiated a return (which will actually be either a refund or a replacement), the seller said something about a "bad batch" of cards, but of course, it wasn't as though he'd reached out to me. Such drives aren't completely useless; if I just remember to store less material than the actual storage (and not try to take advantage of the listed storage), they're perfectly useable. A great application for such cards and thumbdrives is loading them up with must-see Golden Age of Television teevee shows and giving them to friends, since (with the exception of Susan and David) friends are generally very bad at returning borrowed flash media.
Today I gathered firewood from fairly low in the Chamomile Valley, down near the place where a lower trail connected to the Gullies Trail fords the Chamolile on the way to Crazy Dave's cabin (he's the only person besides Gretchen who routinely walks dogs in these forests). I cut up a big beautiful skeletal Chestnut Oak that had fallen across Crazy Dave's trail some years ago, causing him to reroute it slightly. Strangely, the wood was moist, containing enough water to be squeezed out of the wood (like a sponge) when I later split it, a phenomenon that is common with some species (such as old Red Oak and green White Ash and maple) but which I have never seen with skeltonized Chestnut Oak, which is usually so dry that it can be burned immediately. Getting that wood back home meant climbing a steep section of trail that I've never used for firewood salvaging in the past. I'd only put a load of 110 pounds of wood on my pack, so I thought I would be able to make it up that slope, but the climb proved physically impossible. I had stop about two thirds of the way up, dismantle the load (which contained only two large pieces), and carry it piecemeal in my arms up to the Stick Trail. There, I reloaded the wood onto the pack. This time, though, I actually added a couple small pieces in hopes of making the pack easier to carry. The key difference from old configuration was that I put one of these smallish pieces on the bottom of the pack so that it would force the bigger pieces higher up. Though this rejiggered load was 18 pounds heavier, it proved much easier to carry. This confirmed a suspicion I'd had about low-hanging loads: that they are much harder to carry than much heavier loads strapped higher up on the pack. My theory is that the dampening effects of the low-hanging pieces as they swing with each step acts to bleed away useful energy.
For those keeping track, today's firewood weight amounted to 128 pounds of mostly damp Chestnut Oak.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?150829 feedback
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