firstbass

Add me to the list of people thanking Flux56. Chipset software updated. Panic averted.

Since you're a premium member, you can set up a notification for newly published nearby caches. Be prepared -- your plans might change at a moment's notice! (Slightly off-topic: as an experiment last week, I set up notifications to send me email every time a cache was logged, found or not found, in a 10-mile radius of my home coords in the middle of the Twin Cities metro, just to see how much caching activity would taper off after a snow storm. It did, by the way, but still I wouldn't recommend this unless you want a BLIZZARD of email!)

I bought a waist pack at Target for $7-8, and the clasp has been opening spontaneously ever since. I recently replaced it with REI's "full lode" waist pack. Seems like it'll work out okay.

Hello, here's an edit of a post I made on a related thread. I hope this works for you. I have a Garmin eTrex Vista and a Mac iBook G3 running OSX 10.4.10. I bought a USB-serial adapter from Radio Shack and use it together with the cable that came with the GPSr. Here's the problem: the Radio Shack USB to Serial cable that I bought comes with a driver for Windows on a CD, but no driver for MacOSX. I found a Mac driver for the cable here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/osx-pl2303/ I use the program MacSimpleGPS: http://www.macsimplegps.com MacSimpleGPS sends/receives .gpx and .loc files to/from the GPSr. Here's the detail that I had to figure out for myself: After you connect the GPSr and launch MacSimpleGPS, go to MacSimpleGPS>Preferences...>GPS Unit and select Port PL2303-181 or some number like that, not the modem port. After that I had no trouble. Also, make sure that on your GPSr, under Main Menu>Setup>Interface, you choose Serial Data Format=GARMIN. None of the other data formats worked for me.

I left out a crucial step: the Radio Shack USB to Serial cable that I bought comes with a driver for Windows on a CD, but no driver for MacOSX. I found one here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/osx-pl2303/ If you're having trouble getting a program like MacSimpleGPS to recognize your GPSr, this may be the issue. Sorry I forgot to include this earlier.

Let me ask a related poll question (and I apologize in advance for a possible thread hijack; I'd rather do that than start a new thread, and in any case it speaks to the question of frequency of maintenance.): What is the greatest distance between your home coords and one of your active caches? I am asking because I would like to hide a cache in my parents' town (my own family and I visit 4-6 times per year), which is a pretty cache-free area, in another state. Is this a no-no?

I just went through this, and it took a little fiddling, so I'll try to describe what has worked for me. I have a Garmin eTrex Vista and a Mac iBook G3 running OSX 10.4.10. I bought a USB-serial adapter from Radio Shack and use it together with the cable that came with the GPSr. I downloaded the programs MacSimpleGPS and gpx2ipod. http://www.macsimplegps.com http://www.birdhouse.org/software/gpx2ipod/ MacSimpleGPS sends/receives .gpx and .loc files to/from the GPSr. Here's the detail that I had to figure out for myself: After you connect the GPSr and launch MacSimpleGPS, go to MacSimpleGPS>Preferences...>GPS Unit and select Port PL2303-181 or some number like that, not the modem port. After that I had no trouble. Also, make sure that on your GPSr, under Main Menu>Setup>Interface, you choose Serial Data Format=GARMIN. None of the other data formats worked for me. gpx2ipod is pretty simple; it converts .gpx files to a Notes file on your iPod. The main thing is to "Enable Disk Use" on the page where you set the preferences for your iPod. If you don't have an iPod, there are programs that do the same thing for a PDA like Palm. I just didn't want to have another device that I had to connect to my laptop. So my usual routine is to take the unzipped .gpx files that Groundspeak sends, open them with MacSimpleGPS, and then after I upload the waypoints to the GPSr, I drag the .gpx files to the Input folder of the gpx2ipod folder. After that program does its thing, it moves the .gpx files to an archive folder. Trust me, after you get this working, you will never go back. It is a revolution, and you'll be doing Pocket Queries all the time. My only problem is that the Vista has room for 500 waypoints; jeez, a pocket query can send 500 waypoints all at once! Good luck. Let me know how it goes.

Enjoyed all the suggestions. I would just mention in addition that there are websites that offer 250 business cards for $0 + $5 shipping. I won't name them here; searching for "free business cards" should do the trick. They'll also do magnets, which would eliminate the need to laminate the cards, and personalized pocket stamps.

in Saint Paul for 2.7 months into geocaching for 2.1 months premium member and paperless for .5 days