Three years later ...

Three years since my last post. Time slips away.

I wrote a few stories for an online backpacking magazine. Fun, lots of work and rewarding.

Mentioned this to my boss in a weekly meeting, and 15 minutes later she suggested I move into science communication - writing about science for non-scientists.

That triggered a lot of changes!

Speed Bump revisited

I had to laugh reading the latest "What If?" by Randal Munroe:

Stupid Hiking Story #3

April 1976. I'm three days into a PCT thru-hike with a 55+ pound pack at Mount Laguna Post Office. The balls of each foot are one giant blister, snow is falling, and I'm cold and wet. I decide my PCT hike is over, and it's time to head home. “Home” is a couch at some friends' house in Riverside, since technically I'm homeless and jobless. I stick out my thumb to hitchhike there and figure out what comes next.

That's when my adventure really started.

Results of "Latest backpacking tweaks"

Took all the latest tweaks on my August 8-day loop through the Santa Cruz mountains.

Here's how everything worked out ...

Latest backpacking tweaks

I enjoy fiddling with my backpacking equipment and food, but I'm not really a gearhead or gram weenie. I'm trying to solve a problem, usually trying to reduce base weight.

This year's tweaks include ...

Goodbye Google Shopping

I've used Google Shopping since it was a beta service called Froogle, to research and source millions of dollars of purchases over the years. I used Froogle because I trusted the results to be neutral.

Google Shopping is just another advertising channel now.

Google is making more money, and retailers with deep pockets are happy to drive more traffic.

But this move is a serious dis-service to the eyeballs (consumers) being sold by Google.

So this set of eyeballs won't use Google Shopping any more.

Reinforces the old saying:

If you aren't paying for something, you aren't the customer, you are the product.

Tape in the Cloud?

Why don't we have access to tape storage in “the cloud”?