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MOCKBA

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Everything posted by MOCKBA

  1. This solves the specific issue between CO and MScott, I hope, and I have to side with the admin in that I don't see any rudeness in communication, but I see how forgetting a customer's request in the queue can irritate customers to the verge of unreasonable. Hence a more general technical question: What queue management tools are available to the approvers? Can they see their request queues sorted by date? User? Status (such as "waiting for user's response, possible violation of XXX guideline", or "waiting for user's response, no guidelines openly violated", or "waiting for consultations with other approvers"....)? Are the queues perhaps unduly clogged with zombie requests (like maybe dozens of items which are in limbo for months) - this would preclude effective tracking and elimination of lagging requests?
  2. We can rule the original RM holes, those weathered away by the time of 1938 recovery. There is no ring of stones on the summit, all the rocks which could be lifted have been moved to build a wind shelter (visible on the pictures). GPS error is probably irrelevant for our mark id, since we relied on existing RMs to the narrow down the search. But the arrows are probably giving a general direction only, not too precisely. Black Dog Trackers is absolutely right, we should have brought measuring tape every time. My 2003 pictures are certainly closer to RM2, and more distant from RM1, then the datasheet suggests. Back then, I dug in the depression in the rock which was pointed to by the RM arrows... should have known better. And I should say that I originally discounted this hole because from my earlier recovery on the other end of this mountain range, I expected a quarter-inch bolt, and this drill hole looked wider. But this BM is 5 years younger, and now I know that USGS was switching to a larger-diameter bolts around that time. So possibly CGS switched too. OK everybody, the question is still open. Gotta pack a tape and retry!
  3. Question to the gurus: we revisited this 1892 benchmark and found a drill hole in the area where the surviving RMs pointed to: No bolt here, and I see that after we headed back down, other participants of the hike agreed that it is a 'destroyed mark'. However its location is adjusted, and it is not a vertical control as far as I can tell, so I would argue that the position of the drill hole is sufficiently precise with respect to the geodetic info. I.e. that even if the marking on the bolt wasn't pos-id'd, the drill hole itself is sufficient to recover it. Any help with this?
  4. Gee, I guess your paraplane is never going to fly BTW the kites may be blocking kids' prayers from reaching heaven, so the Taliban issued a rule banning kite flying alltogether. Moral? Rules made without checks and balances may be good only when not enforced.
  5. Ain't gonna work without modifications, because most of the people excited about caches are newbies, and most of their excitement is either about caching in general, or about swag. Not about something comparative and lasting about caches. However it is possible to use a "cachers who liked this hide (or group of hides) also recommended XX, YY, ZZ..."
  6. What confusion? No confusion here. The site would like to know just how the cachers are planning to misuse the site and to loophole around the rules, so as to adjust the rules to preclude the future creative deviations. Constant reinvention of itself, indeed
  7. Cool, will try to apply this to our next team hunt. My last attempt had everything imperfect (I shouldn't say wrong, it was fun), maybe I should share the list of what not to do on a roadside cache and benchmark hunt: We were together with '39Geezer and both of us share some ideosyncratic peculiarities, as it turned out: - no waypoints ever entered into a GPS - the GPSr turned off frequently to conserve batteries - the maps are hand-drawn and the area is not too familiar - the descriptions are not read in advance (thus we ended up hunting one multi which was spread over 12x3 miles area, relying on chat with gas station attendants instead of maps) - my pooch may be a great hiking companion, but taking an unleashed dog on a roadside hunt could cost you a lot of extra nerves and time. We did have one key ingridient right though, which was the attitude
  8. There is a thread in our local forums kind of bashing the event because of the huge numbers of caches logged in a marathon, and because CCCooper Agency participated (and you know a lot of cachers couldn't stand her and everything associated with her). So they are basically saying that all the Geowoodstock numbers are cheating and people couldn't possibly ... etc etc. It just hurts me to see a fun get-together to be badmouthed in this way... I guess Nashville TN is simply a home to huge numbers of easy urban caches? Could someone post a synopsis of the Marathon, to counter the ad-hominem attacks? How wide was the area covered by the marathon? What were the challenges? The most productive quarter-hour? These kinds of details, it would be so fun to read! (Of course if all I need is a markwell, or a patience to wait for the next Today's Cacher issue, then just lemme know)
  9. well if you ask, honestly... GC.com's definition of WOW is numeric. Top 1 percentile of all cache submissions to a reviewer (of this narrow group, some may not be apoproved for other reasons, of course). But since they are too sheepish to admit that there is a numerical quota, they come up with a silly notion of regional unique-ness. For example, a Confederate attack monument at Gettysburg is not unique, but if there ever existed a plaque commemorating a Confederate attack in Central Park, that might have qualified as unique, despite its inherently lower intuitive WOW measure. You are in especially good shape if you invent a totally-unique category for you cache (should I submit the world's largest chemical weapons depot? You count the storage huts in the 3rd row from the South? I'm sure nobody submitted this kind of cr*p before. Gotta check a few things first - the info may be available on Terraserve for one thing, and I also need to come up with a specific GPS target since the depot itself is just too big ). The bottom line is, things which universally wow people are unfortunately non-unique most of the time. Peaks and canyons and waterfalls, buildings and ruins and monuments are everywhere. Which means that the virts like my latest submission are gonna rule, unfortunately. The one I got approved got a WOW factor of sorts ... it certainly wasn't the best view around here, but it beat the other viwpoints easily on the uniqueness criteria. It had only one visit since it was approved, and in so bad weather that the finder didn't see what was supposed to WOW him anyway. Maybe that's the ultimate intent of Jeremy's? To approve the new virts in such way that very few people will ever want to visit them ?
  10. Couldn't figure out where to go from this page. And googling 'Gaging station description" returned only 29 pages from usgs.gov, almost all of them are individual station descriptions posted on the same md.water.usgs.gov site. I found some sort of data for "my" station at waterdata.usgs.gov through their station selector, but it is not a detailed description.
  11. OK, it occured to me that my "GAGING STA" must be be just one out of a long list of USGS gaging station marks co-opted into NGS database. An indeed, a search for designation GAGING returns 100 entries. this one for example is described as "A UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY STANDARD GAGING-STATION DISK" and has DD = SURVEY DISK for marker type, but this one is described as a standart-issue USGS gaging station reference mark. Some other are described as benchmak disks, or as DO = NOT SPECIFIED OR SEE DESCRIPTION (with descriptions referrring to A STANDARD U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY GAGING STATION DISK. GC1246 is described as A UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY STANDARD REFERENCE-MARK DISK, but marker is SURVEY DISK: Same discrepancy between description and marker fields holds for OE1107 SY0162 is a less clear case because of short description, but the finders' picture is a familiar RM. Similar situation for GZ2135. Hmm, maybe I should change my log to find.
  12. It might be a nice option to be able to view archiveds by distance, e.g. when planning a new cache to see if other caches in this area have muggle problems, or approvaibilty problems. Obviously the admins have this tool at their disposal already, but giving an option to the rank-and-file cachers may releive some load from the admins. We just recently had a cache placed almost exactly where a cache has gone MIA a few months before. Guess what? The new one didn't last either, much to the disappointment of the unwary owners.
  13. But I don't think anybody commented on my point that a virtual cache requires virtual maintenance only, and the maintainable distance rules may not even apply. Indeed, I don't think that our rules require pro-active maintenance of any caches, trads included. The owner is not required to visit them monthly or quarterly. What the owner should do is to respond to cacher's DNFs, notes, and e-mails. Basically, if several cachers noted a problem, and the owner didn't correct it, only then we are speaking about 'maintenance issues'. The same holds for a virtual, presumably. Proper maintenance doesn't mean 'scheduled periodic check-up', but it does include responding to the problems noticed by other cachers. So if a few cachers look for a virt and report that the plaque is gone, or the cave collapsed, or the tree fell on the ground, the virtual cache owner should communicate with them, double-check the details, and modify or archive the cache as appropriate. All it requires is resposible attitude and a valid e-mail address. No need to physically visit it every now and then.
  14. I am a hapless rookie owner of a geocoin which has a stated goal of going peak-bagging. Not too many cachers up there, so perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised when it was moved from one mountaintop cache to another by a climber. I mean I wrote on an accompanying note that one shouldn't take it if one isn't going to record it online, but of course the notes get ignored fairly often. And I have no real reason to be upset, because the guy actually advanced the traveller's goal just nicely. But I'd love to have the coin's current position to be accurately reflected on the geocaching website ... Well it turns that my options as an owner are pretty much limited to moving it to "unknown location". I.e. if I know that the location changed, I can't record this info without a tracking number? Not even post a note alerting the bug hunters about the change? That was a bit surprising. Certainly I haven't read about this problem in the owner's part of the TB FAQ. Or, am I missing some obvious solution?
  15. You mean three disks, *all* labelled as RMs? (It sort of makes sense for me because they probably need durable vertical reference points for the gage itself ... it also explains the absence of the usual RM arrows) Or there should be some *main* monumented mark, in turn referenced by a separate set of RMs? With respect to description of LO0303, the problem is that there is no momumenting report by USGS. There is a later-date report by National Geodetic Survey, which surveyed this highway in the 60s, and the description is very terse and doesn't mention any other marks. The rest of the BMs along the road were monumented by them, and they were benchmark disks. This one has DD = SURVEY DISK for a marker type. Can anybody markwell me to a complete list of marker types? In any case I doubt if survey disk is the right marker type for gaging station marks ... or is it?
  16. We found one exactly like this disk, also with the circle in the center of the disk, and words 'GAGING STATION' around it, and 'REFERENCE MARK' below it. It has a designation GAGING STA in the database. It was positioned precisely as described in the datasheet, but since it was labelled an RM, I assumed that it was not what we were looking for. Although most of the RM disks have arrows on the disks, rather than circles. I tentatively logged it as a DNF, but my trip partner thought it was a find. Could the forum gurus please help us to decide if it was "it"? And maybe append jeff35080's image to DustyJacket's library?
  17. Not wanting in the original poster's context didn't read like "I do not want to conform to guidelines", but rather, "I do not want to hike back again soon" IMHO. Since maintenance of the virtuals is generally virtual in nature (verifying answers, chiding illegitimate finders, archiving if the object is gone) and doesn't require many trips back to the location, I could imagine how a cacher may be willing to share his secret, remote WOW spot with the community only if it is posted as a virt. Sounds like another situation where rigid enforcement of the guildelines stifles the creativity for no good reason...
  18. As I already mentioned, this rule, if literally interpreted and truly enforced, would totally abolish any remote caches. Indeed, if there are no caches (or very few caches) within a few hours of travel from a submitted cache location, then the owner can't establish a pattern of 'caching in the area' almost no matter how one tries. edit: grammar
  19. Happy to report my first XIX century find of the season, an 1897 copper bolt on top of a beautiful 10,000 ft mountain. Hunted for it before, but got skunked by the snow. This bolt isn't like the older ones I found last year. Those were quarter-inch in diameter and had a crosshair on top but no other markings. The one we found yesterday was quite a bit more massive, and it had enough space for 4 miniscule letters USGS.
  20. It's a pretty important point, and I'd love the past contributions of our community members to be taken into account in the future. But I am afraid that this is not going to work. Or, at best (worst?), that the contributions to the community will be recited only when we discuss an admin or an avid fan of TPTB. You all remember that in the past, whenever there was an appearance of conflict between TPTB and a cacher, it always degenerated into cries "Love it or leave it!" and "Let the door hit you on your way out!". Most of the time we were speaking about cachers who contrubuted a lot to the game, and whose inevitable conflict with the rule-setting establishment was directly related to the creative, envelope-pushing nature of their work. I think it started with Dave Ulmer himself. Of course, after years of acrimony, his contributions seemed to have been honored at last ... although the present scandalous story with the Plaque called it to question again. To cut the long list short ... can we, as a community, give TEAM 360 and other great contributors to the game of geocaching the respect they deserve in times of arguments and conflicts? I wish we could, but I don't believe we ever will.
  21. Well, I just tried to explain why I think we are NOT OWED an explanation (which is why I stayed away from most of this interesting but nearly pointless discussion), and next thing I know, a huge admin brick is hurled in my direction By the same admin who seemed to agree with me that calls for Jeremy or CO to explain the situation just don't make sense. Go figure.
  22. Exactly. This is geocaching, guys. This is the game where the things are kept hidden. This is the game where your intuition & your best guess is what leads you to the goal. I certainly don't need any whitewash from TPTB. My intuition told me exactly what it was, and I'm happy to stick with whatever conclusions The Force prompts me to make. As to El-Diablo's blacklist-compiling ... you know, in the flamewars of old, the moment you compared your opponent to Hitler, you were considered to have lost
  23. Good point. I also thought of it when I decided to drop out of the current discussion. I thought, if Groundspeak come totally clean, and makes amends, and maybe puts in place policies to prevent future uses of caches as hostages of sorts, to gain leverage against their owners... it'd be pretty cool. But if they don't, and if the stain remains on TPTB reputation ... big deal, it works perfectly well for me. I kind of like the world in which the powers are to be cursed for a good cause, and not just because they are TPTB. Give it a thought.
  24. Magic cards are of some value for those in the game - and there is a bunch of kids and grownups in it. It's not just have many cents an individual card is worth. There is some story and some recollections behind each card, so the players in my family take the cards from the cache, and study each one ... the point is, it's meaningful swag which cachers will peruse and exchange. Cards are sold in nearly random sets, so every player has some duplicate or unnnecessary cards which came in a bundle. Few of those who still play Magic will leave really rare and powerfull cards, but we left and took some fairly desirable cards at times ... not something super, but something pretty good. But to the general points. 1) Why vent because of swag exchanges? Especially if there was nothing valuable in the first place? 2) Many cachers do not consider TBs a swag, and grab rather than exchange TBs. The question has been discussed at length before, and there was no conclusion, except that we should keep in mind that opinions on this do differ.
  25. You shouldn't have any problem logging it as a find. The only thing archival does is removing a cache from searches by area and by name. The finds still count. 3 of my finds are archived caches. One has the owner's request to remove it, so I was LTF. Another one was stolen & archived, then we found it in the woods and returned to the owner, but the owner never replaced it and it remained archived. The last one was re-listed at a competing site, but since I've got a traveller in there, I really had to log it at gc.com. Your logs are searchable, you count goes up, and your picts are in the gallery no matter if the cache is archived. Go ahead please!
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