![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.puzzlemaze.org\/df\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/031013.jpg\" "\\"031013\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nBut, there’s more.\u00a0 And its all interesting, IMHO.\u00a0 In fact, this entry would not even exist were it not for the following.<\/p>\n
First, its the cop.\u00a0 As a bit more background, I just pull into this field and park, cause there ain’t no beautifully lined-striped macadam parking with those blue handicapped spots where obese, but otherwise able-bodied folks park their Lexus’s and Benz’es with their handicapped placards (and yeah, as an economist with a severely handicapped mother, I specifically observe this phenomena, and an contemplating a paper on the subject), and after about an hour I see this cop pulled up next to my car.\u00a0 Of course I stop what I’m doing an go over, and he asks if I have permission to be here, and I say I have permission to detect any township property (which is actually true, and he’s impressed that I actually know its township property), and he chats me up, telling me he’s thinking about getting a machine, and asking me for recommendations, and so forth, and that all goes well.\u00a0 And I tell him, don’t detect here, cause there ain’t nothing, but I do give him the location of a 41 silver site honeyhole on township property.\u00a0 The advantages of office.\u00a0 Ok, too much background for the punchline.<\/p>\n
And the punchline is simple, and is this.\u00a0 He’s telling me that he sees people constantly detecting a private property site near the police station.\u00a0 Its a rather famous site in the area (even I know about it, and I’m clueless), and I’ve even asked permission there.\u00a0 They said NO with a capital N, and told me stories of all the detectorists they chase off the property.\u00a0 I guess some things never change, and while I’m saddened by the lack of ethics by my competition, I take solace in two probabilities — a) its likely hunted out by the parade of assholes who didn’t get caught, so the modern assholes are in a bad risk\/reward proposition, and b) once again the predictions of the Dismal Science are affirmed.\u00a0 Its nice to know that you are in a line of work that will never fail, so long as humans (and hence human nature), exists.<\/p>\n
But there’s even more, and that’s story #2 from today’s hunt.\u00a0 Its about the Big Unit (the Detech Ultimate 13), and software.<\/p>\n
I’m hunting this dead field, pulling the random thing that looks like a copper but isn’t every half hour, but otherwise having nothing but pure boring threshold (which is actually rather soothing when composing cop-related blogs in your head) to listen to, and all the sudden things get all wacky.\u00a0 All sorts of low tone sounds both when the coil is on the ground and when in the air.\u00a0 The exact same symptoms when my first Big Unit went bad.\u00a0 Are you kidding me?\u00a0 All I need is another bad coil.\u00a0 I noise cancel every three seconds, and it ain’t fixed.<\/p>\n
Then I turn the machine off, and on, and it is fixed.\u00a0 Are you kidding me?\u00a0 I remember an entry from quite some time ago where I write about improved success after lunch (where I always turn off the machine), and I said I wasn’t gonna attribute anything to turning off the machine (if I was a real blogger who cared, I’d link to the entry, but I ain’t and I don’t (more likely, it was one of my “stories” on American Detectorist; it was a long time ago)), but now there is no question in my mind that it matters.\u00a0 I’m an ex software guy (and good riddance to that life).<\/p>\n
Software guys have a fancy technical term called “waxy buildup”.\u00a0 In layman’s terms, what this means, is that the longer a software program runs, even if it is essentially doing the same thing (“running the main loop” in software guy jargon, which no doubt the E-Trac is doing), its performance may degrade (there are technical terms to throw about here as to why, but nevermind); as time goes by.<\/p>\n
The solution to waxy buildup, other than find another software guy, is to reboot the program or system.\u00a0 The fact that rebooting the E-Trac fixed this problem is suggestive of a waxy buildup problem in the E-Trac software.\u00a0 This is the second observed instance of improved performance after turning off and on, and sadly, this will now have to become part of my hunting protocol.<\/p>\n
(As an aside, when the Big Unit coil did go bad a few months ago, I did lots of turn off, turn off tests, and waxy buildup was not the problem.\u00a0 The coil was genuinely bad, as apparently verified by KellyCo.\u00a0 Hopefully that is not the case this time, and it is a software issue).<\/p>\n
But, there’s even more, if you can believe it!\u00a0 As I said, Lots of Words<\/em>.\u00a0 One further wonders how I could write so much when I found not one f***ing coin.\u00a0 The answer is simple — I like to write.\u00a0 You obviously like to read, but as Umberto Eco (my literary hero) says, “who needs readers?”.<\/p>\n But here is story #3, and its about iron falses.\u00a0 I’ve always wondered about iron falses.\u00a0 I’m detecting this park, and that park, and got the sens cranked at 30, as always, and of course you get your share of iron falses, and the deep iffy ones you dig, cause you have to, cause once in a while its a deep barber or seated, but more often than not, its a rusty nail, and we all know how VLF machines love to false off the ends of deep iron nails.\u00a0 We’ve all been there, haven’t we?\u00a0 (And if you haven’t you ain’t gonna find all the shiny).<\/p>\n Every park I go to, I come back with piles and piles of deep iron nails that were probably iron falses going in, but you have to dig em.<\/p>\n And the one question I always ask is this — why are there so many nails here, deep in the soil of this old park or school?\u00a0 Did people carry them in their pocket?\u00a0 Did people bury them as good luck charms?\u00a0 Were all parks and schools sponsored by a nail manufacturer who gave out free samples?\u00a0 Did students and teachers at that 1930s schoolyard that has been giving up the shiny and the occasional iron false also smoke iron nails on their cigarette break?<\/p>\n Who knows?\u00a0 Why so many iron nails in parks and old schoolyards?\u00a0 They are just everywhere, at every such site, even when most such sites have no evidence of old buildings or other structures which would generate said nails.\u00a0 I always figured it was from before the park or school use, like from old wagons or other farm equipment that plied the site before it became a park or school, where iron nails would not seem to be really prevalent.\u00a0 And I just accepted that, sort of an Occam’s Razor explanation.<\/p>\n But, in today’s old farm field, there were no deep iron nails, or deep iron of any kind, despite it being farmed since the 1700s.\u00a0 So the old farm equipment plying the land before it was a park or school theory just doesn’t wash.\u00a0 I have no answer as to why there are deep iron nails that sound like silver and silver sites.\u00a0 Maybe its a semiosis, but I don’t think so.\u00a0 Maybe an intelligent gamemaster f***ing with me.\u00a0 Who knows?<\/p>\n Nailed it baby.\u00a0 Exactly what I wanted to do, especially for an entry that described a hunt that produced nothing.\u00a0 Just goes to show what the constant drone of the threshold does to your brain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is gonna end up being lots of words for a hunt that did not produce one goddamn coin.\u00a0 But that’s cool, isn’t it; isn’t that what blogging’s all about?\u00a0 Its not about the shiny or otherwise material success in … Continue reading