paleolith

I had not used that technique, which looks useful. However, it does require manipulating GC numbers rather than just clicking links, and it still has to be done one at a time. (I tried typing a list into the box. It does not work.) It would be extremely useful to have a link on find results pages and on Google Maps pages saying "add all caches showing on this page to a bookmark list". I used another technique when I had about 60 caches in a GSAK database which I wanted to add to a bookmark list. I set up GSAK in split-screen view with the real cache page from gc.com showing on the bottom. That way I could click the cache in the list on the top part of the screen, click the "bookmark it" link on the bottom, and click to add. IIRC, after the first one, this made it three clicks per cache, much faster than most ways of going through a list. Edward

I agree ... since I do not schedule PQs at all but simply run them when I'm ready, this paradigm makes far more sense to me. The current interface caters to those who want to run PQs on a regular schedule, but looks quite kludgy to those of us who just want to fire them off occasionally. It's as though gc.com actually wanted to encourage us to run more PQs ... And I'm in the US, so the time difference is small. The kludginess would be greater if I were in Europe or Australia. Edward

Well, UTF8ISO doesn't do a darned thing for me. Not with any combination of options. (Win/Eudora 6.1.2. Never wanted to give Qualcomm any more money to support the brick wall that they called support.) OpinioNate said I should change from text to HTML. Why the heck should I be forced to use HTML email for messages that are just text? In any case, I was using the HTML option -- I think I changed from text to HTML in the hope of getting better formatting, but it didn't help. I have just now changed back to text and will see what that does. Look, people: if there's only an LF, not a CRLF, at the ends of lines, then it's broken. Period, end of topic. RFC2822 is abundantly clear on this point: lines end with CRLF. That's no matter what your platform of choice is. Most IMAP servers refuse to accept messages with "bare newlines" (that is, LF without CR). POP clients and SMTP software generally treat bare newlines as grandfathered to avoid isolating all the broken email software out there, but that doesn't make the offenders correct. Not only that, but the headers are fouled up. Technically I think header names are not case sensitive. But what mailer creates headers named x-mailer, mime-version, date, subject, content-type (all with a lower case leading letter instead of the traditional upper case)? Even if technically correct, this shows a major lack of attention to detail. Someone said that the HTML emails look OK in Outlook. I don't doubt it. When something that claims to be HTML displays as intended in Microsoft software and not somewhere else, I generally draw the conclusion that something is wrong with the HTML (like it isn't really HTML). Internet Exploder violates more of the HTML standards than all the other browsers put together. Eudora certainly has its share of broken stuff, but in this case it appears to be gc.com that's broken. Edward

Markwell, I don't think you understood the OP. The problem is knowing which day to use to schedule an immediate PQ. Is it the server's date or my date? If it's the server's date, how do I know what date that is? As the OP pointed out, the PQ page doesn't say "today is XXXday" or "the date used is the server's date, which is in timezone -0800". It's not an insoluble problem, but I agree with the OP that it can be frustrating. Even being entirely in the US, if I'm online between 9:00 PM and 3:00 AM, I have to stop and ask myself what day to use, and sometimes I get it wrong. For people in more distant time zones, I'm sure it's even more frustrating. Edward

My point is to show some flexibility. If someone finds my physical cache and reports the log book missing, I won't object to their claiming the find. OTOH if they say they found it TNLNSL and don't mention being unable to sign the log, and I find out later that the log book was probably missing and their sig isn't in the cache, I'll wonder if they really got there. If I'm doing an Earthcache, I'll certainly require finders to satisfy the educational component. Or if my virtual or mystery cache has an educational component, I'll insist on that. If someone logs "I'm sure I got to the location so I'm calling it a find" on my cache, I might tell them to put their find where the sun doesn't shine. OTOH, there was a thread about this not long ago, and someone went into quite a bit of detail about the different ways different people approach caching. I think that for me it's mostly about going to the place, but for some people it's even more so, to the extent that they get the sense of satisfaction from saying "I went there and I loved it". I think there's room for that, at least for caches that require a significant hike. Of the eight caches I've hidden, for only one is this even potentially an issue -- for the rest, if you have your eyes open when you reach GZ, you will find them. And for all but one (not the same one), you'll put in some effort to get there. So if someone puts in that effort, reaches the location (which I picked for the quality of the location, not because it was 1/10 mile from the nearest cache) and doesn't want to sign the log ... well, I have some problems with that, but I also think there's room in the world for it. At least sometimes. Edward

To my mind, yes there's a difference. For me the point is to visit the site; the logging requirements are just to keep it as a geocache and not an online game. If I were maintaining a virtual and someone logged several physical caches nearby and also my virtual but had trouble meeting the logging requirements, I'd probably give them a pass. Or if they had photos. Etc. Edward

I'd say you have an extremely strong case. My first thought was that the few caches around that date could have been part of a family vacation where the other family members didn't want to spend time caching. However, his previous "finds" in Kansas, Minnesota,several other states, and Germany cannot be so easily explained. This is a new variant to me. Apparently he is "finding" armchair caches to avoid gaps in his caching-days record. His page shows that he "found" caches every day June through November 2007. The days when he found out-of-state virtuals are exactly the days when he did not find any physicals. Now why he doesn't just back-date a few physical caches the next time he goes out, I don't know. But clearly it's all about the numbers for him. Since it's about the numbers for him, he'll notice (although he logged another armchair virtual on that date, and could always log another if you blanked a date on him). Did you ask him point-blank if he visited the physical location of the cache? As I wrote earlier, if you make it a find-the-answer game, then the armchair cachers will beat you. This guy clearly isn't lazy, and his web page picture includes his wife and kids. Make it a matter of honesty rather than a game of wits, and send him the URL to the guidelines (cited earlier in this thread) if he disagrees. And then delete the log if he refuses. And if he really pulls your chain, email all the other virtual cache owners that he did armchair logs on and try to create gaps in his record. Though there's nothing to stop him from back-dating a new virtual find (even a real one) to fill in the gap. But remember the point made earlier: that the term "virtual cache" is often misunderstood to mean a cache that you don't actually have to visit, as in "virtual reality". Give him a chance to say he misunderstood, unless it's already obvious that he realizes what he's doing. Edward

There is the web page and the history to adopt. Sometimes this is worth it. Not always by any means. If it's a long-running cache which was a Good Cache at one time but whose owner is MIA, then I'd try to adopt it. If it was lame from the beginning and never maintained and only found a few times, I'd ask for it to be archived. To adopt a cache whose owner is MIA, see these instructions. Edward

The ruins aren't as impressive (because they mostly burned to ash) and I don't have any photos beyond what's on the web page, but my Decker Plumbing GC157P3 is a tour through some abandoned artifacts at a former home site, now part of a state park. Edward

cezanne, Sorry I didn't respond sooner on the thread in the German-speaking forum.. It seems that Groundspeak is somewhat inconsistent in providing notice of replies. Your points are good, and I thank you. In particular, I take these points: -- virtuals are rare in parts of Europe, providing cachers in those areas little experience other than what they see online or from friends. -- the term "virtual cache" can be quite misleading, even to native English speakers. -- the guidelines are a long document in English. I had not realized that there was no German translation of the guidelines. Actually I hang my head to admit that I hadn't even thought about that. Someone pointed out that some of the armchair caching groups are US-based. This only points out that language issues are not limited to which language is your native one, but also to how well (and whether) you read in your native language. Plenty of people in Germany and other countries in continental Europe read and write English better than the majority of Americans (cezanne being an example). Yeah, I too find automatic translation tools to be pretty useless -- it's amazing how often they are unable to translate even a text of a single simple word. Yes, I should have noticed that I was looking at a very small sample. I preach this point myself. Thanks for the correction. In the case of the cache I cited, the landmark is not well known, and I very much doubt that you can find the number of steps on the Internet, unless it's someplace devoted to armchair caching. However, the number is small enough that at least some of the armchair loggers are probably just guessing it, although they may be passing it around as well. Or they may be using one of the many programs around which crack MS Word passwords. Nothing "proves" someone visited. A photograph? I have one word: Photoshop. If we make it into a contest, then the armchair loggers will unquestionably win. I don't think that increasing the difficulty is the answer. Asking for a photograph is probably effective because it makes the requirement to visit the location clear, rather than because it's "proof". Since you've pointed out that most of the armchair logging is probably well-intentioned, it seems that education is the best response. A simple statement in the description that "a physical visit to the location is required" might stop many of the armchair logs. Deleting armchair logs with feedback on the reason is likely to get the cache removed from some of the armchair log bookmark lists, if those lists are also well-intentioned. The biggest problem here may be that so many virtual cache owners are long since MIA, something seen a lot more for virtual than for physical caches since virtuals require relatively very little maintenance. Edward

I have to come down on the side of those who say that fraudulent logging does affect others. Oh, if you never read logs and never watch caches, then it won't affect you (and that's one of many perfectly OK ways to approach caching). But I like to read logs from previous visitors (and in some cases just read the logs of visitors to caches I'll never visit), and having a lot of armchair logs dilutes the fun of reading the logs. In the case of the cache I originally cited, I've been watching a bookmark list which includes that cache, and lately about a third of the logs on the 60+ caches in the list have been these armchair logs. That dilutes the fun I was trying to have with that bookmark list. Nah, it's not the end of the world. Nor would it be the end of the world if gc.com went belly up. But both are/would be in the category of spoiling some of the fun, or at least diluting it. My issue was and is with regular virtual caches which are intended to be visited physically. Whether caches intended to be armchair caches should be allowed is a different matter. The answer on whether gc.com allows them seems clear, but their existence would indeed not bother me, since I would not seek them or at least would not seek them as part of the same game. The problem for "real" geocachers arises from armchair logs to caches not intended for armchair caching. Finally, I totally agree with the sentiment that the proper action is to archive offending cachers, not caches. Part of my interest in this cache was specifically because of its age (and of course by definition all virtuals on gc.com are fairly old). I certainly don't want it archived -- on the contrary, I want it protected, Edward

Is it OK to take my dog on the trail as long as I'm using my gun to kill the cows that are knocking over the ducts? If so, does it matter whether my sleeping bag is down or synthetic, and what kind of water filter should I use? Though somehow I think I'm in the wrong forum ...

Despite the age of the cache, the owner asnwered my email within a few minutes. I think he is going to look into the situation. I have not followed the trail to the other probably bogus logs from the same group. A lot of virtual cache owners are long since gone from any contact with gc.com, so the problem is more with those than with the cache I cited. For a while it was not obvious that these logs were bogus. The log entries generally sound innocuous -- "greetings from Austria" sounds odd now that I know they really were "finding" the cache in Austria, but a slightly odd phrasing from a non-native speaker doesn't generally raise my eyebrows. I had been watching it for a while for other reasons before I got suspicious. So a lot of Europeans like SoCal virtual caches? Doesn't seen unreasonable -- there are quite a few European tourists in SoCal. Finally I noticed too many similar wordings. Also, the number of valid visits has been quite a bit larger this year than in recent years. So I don't blame the owner for not having noticed -- he said that (like me) he was getting the feeling something was wrong but that's all. I mentioned the new policy to Big Eagle a few weeks ago, and his response was the same as yours. If you are interested in helping, you might contact him. Zuma Canyon is another area in the SMM which is seriously underused, and some caches could help draw a few more people in. Edward

There seems to be a gang of Austrians intent on giving their country a black eye by logging virtual caches they have not visited. See Rocky Oaks GC42B8 for a long list -- it looks like about 25 of the visits in the past year are from people who did not physically visit -- who have never logged a physical cache in the US and in some cases logged distant caches on the same day. I've emailed the cache owner and get the impression that he is going to review them. But is there anything more general to be done? Is it worth writing to these people individually, or do they not listen? Writing to the owners of the other virtuals they are logging? Individually these steps are easy, but together will take quite a while, so I thought I'd ask what others have done first. (And yes, I did search, but the only forum search method I can find "or"s the keywords rather than "and"ing them, making complex searches nearly impossible. I welcome links to other threads.) Edward

Great timing on this thread! I'm considering buying a new GPSr, and now I know that I should not bother too much about having a "real" compass. Edward

I'm using Adobe Reader 7.0.5. When I say "print", the print dialog box has a checkbox to "auto-rotate and center". Look for that box. (I cannot imagine why Adobe would remove it, but OTOH releases 6 and 7 got steadily more cumbersome to use, so it's entirely believable that they have made release 8 even harder to use.) I have not found the generated PDFs useful. For one thing, they force a page break when the first page is nowhere nearly full. If I'm printing them, this is either a waste of paper, or a waste of space which could be used to print more logs. (Hey, why can't they offer an option of how many PAGES of PDF I want?) So instead I simply format the web page as I want -- all logs, hint and logs decrypted. Then I say Print. Set print options as I want. Ideally this is two-up (two logical pages on each physical page), duplex (double sided), four or eight pages. The first two depend on the printer driver and the physical printer, so I often have to compromise depending on where I am. Best result is to use Docucom PDF Driver from pdfwizard.com and concatenate all the prints into a single PDF file. This results in the most compact result, since I'm not restricted to multiples of a sheet of paper per cache. Usually it's more trouble than it's worth though. And if you don't already have some kind of "print to PDF" software, there's money involved. Edward

Thanks. Yeah, forgot to mention, already looked for updates and there are none. I suppose I could call, but based on what I read, that's likely to be an exercise in frustration. I have enough of those already. Sounds like this is likely a unit problem. Thanks again, Edward

No, this is not a "which GPSr question". I'm pretty sure I want a Garmin etrex Vista Hcx, though I'm waiting until I can go to a store and hold one in my hot little hand. But first ... am I expecting too much? I don't think so from what I read, but I haven't encountered my problems described. I have a Magellan eXplorist 210. Cheapest thing I could find ($100) when I wanted to try out geocaching but didn't know whether I'd get interested. The problem I have isn't just inaccuracy, but inconsistent inaccuracy. GPSr will be pointing me somewhere totally unlikely. So I'll reboot it. Sometimes that will point me to the cache -- 100' away (when previously it said I had a 24' error with WAAS). Other times it'll point me 100' to some other unlikely place (still with 20' error and WAAS). A week ago it pointed me to three such dispersed locations, and when I went home and looked at the Google satellite maps I could see exactly where the cache really was (that I never found), and it was in yet another place, again well outside the error radius of any place the %^$^&* eXplorist 210 was showing me. Once it has locked in to a frame of reference it seldom shifts. In other words, if I can tell that it's wrong by 100', then I can walk a couple of miles through varied terrain, or just stand still for an hour, and it'll still be wrong by the same amount. Reboot it and it might still be wrong, but more likely either correct itself or be wrong in a different direction. I can deal with fuzziness -- I know that GPS isn't going to make me sit down on every cache. But I'd like for 95% of the caches to be within the error radius that the GPSr is showing me, which is my understanding of how it's supposed to work. So what kind of error is this? Do other 210s have this problem? Other eXplorists? Other GPSrs? Is my problem unique? As a software engineer with some experience in numerical software, this strikes me as a software error, a case of an iteration getting stuck in a local minimum that isn't a global minimum. But what do I know ... Edward

The email malformatting continues to be a major annoyance for me. At least in my case, it's also causing extra load on the gc.com servers. The reason is that I often don't even try to read the email notifications, just locate the cache page link and click it. Edward

I would prefer to see Ammo Cans Found: 697 Tupperware containers Found: 0 Edward

I think the OP's point is to be able to use the "show my DNFs" on the account page to keep track of what caches he/she is working on finding. The "my DNFs" includes caches which the user later found. The desire is to have a list of caches DNF-ed and not later found. tozainamboku's approach is, to me, the most flexible way to address this. If you keep a bookmark list of "DNFs to rectify", then you can populate it with exactly what you want. In this situation, the idea would be to add a DNF and remove a find. But what about that DNF on vacation to a place you'll never go back to again? You probably don't want that on your "DNFs to rectify" either, nor the one that led you into a back alley with lots of garbage and broken glass. If your "DNFs to rectify" list is too long to manage manually, consider whether you really are going to try to rectify all those DNFs, or if you really are happier just going on to other places. I just did a breakdown on my DNF list. I've logged 24 DNFs. I'm surprised it's not more ... Of these, I found 6 later, may try again on 11, am unlikely to retry 6, and 1 has been archived. This seems to me more like a bookmark kind of thing. Edward

Why 30 days? Suppose I have a 75-day-old GSAK DB that I want to update? Suppose Markwell has a 3-yo DB that he wants to update? What's the limit? There is no "natural" limit, which implies that this is a Bad Idea. As others have pointed out, this feature amounts to supporting an offline mirror image of a subset of the gc.com database. If they start down this road, there is no natural stopping point short of supporting mirror images fully. That's a huge task and would be a huge load on the servers. Those of us interested in seeing much more useful features on the web site will oppose such uses of resources. Edward

So it seems. Lovely. FWIW I submitted a support request on terraserver.com. I'm not holding my breath. Ed, yes, I prefer to pay for services I receive on the web. Unlike most people, I'd prefer that those providing the services be beholden to me rather than to the advertisers. That said, I can't quite reconcile the added value of topozone with the $50/year cost of Pro -- not for geocaching maps alone. Mind you, I'm not arguing that you could do it for less -- my image of you does not have you driving a BMW. But if topozone and gc.com had an arrangement by which I could pay $15 extra with my gc membership to be passed on to tz and which allowed me access to tz maps in the regular gc map window, and only there, I'd pay it. It would be worth $15/year just to be able to get this kind of problem reported and fixed. To how many is it worth this ... I don't know. For the kind of caching I do, topo maps are as important as street maps and somewhat more important than satellite photos. Those who do park and grabs aren't likely to go for it. And if there were no topo maps at all on gc.com, and $50/year would get them integrated with the gc.com maps, then I'd pay it. Just linking me to a topo of the area isn't much help; I want the map overlayed with the caches. However, you (like a lot of providers) are in the unenviable position of not only trying to provide value for payment, but of trying to provide added value beyond advertising-supported services and free services for payment. (As far as I can tell, Terraserver is still in the category of free rather than ad-supported services, though I may have missed something.) And of course you are also competing with libremap.org on a slightly different front. I have no good advice. Even I, despite my preference for paying for services, still evaluate the difference at least as much as the absolute. Edward

ummmmmm - they do. On every listing page.Not as part of a map that shows caches, or can be swapped between topo, satellite, and street. Edward

Well, I just tried searching directly on Terraserver for the coordinates of two of the caches I mentioned. And guess what -- the results are correct. So it appears that the problem is NOT Terraserver's underlying data, but some miscommunication between Terraserver and gc.com. I wouldn't doubt that it's a Terraserver problem, but the assumption we've all made that the problem is in the underlying data appears to be incorrect. Edward