Louise_Gerhard

To me this is the wrong comment at the wrong place and at the wrong time by a chartered member group. I will not comment on the American forum out of respect to the Anderson family but it was a shocker to me to read this. This annoys me. This belongs away from this specific topic and I am not saying it is right neither wrong but give the family time to grieve and let them first come to terms with their loss before we get any clever comments. I hope you read this comment and at the same time I hope the family do not read your comment. This is not cool. Gerhard

Thanks, I have some homework for this weekend to complete before I can call myself a platinum earth cacher. Tomorrow we are off to Botswana for 2 days and guess what – only one cache is in the area and he had a DNF so I have a very slim chance to add Botswana to my list. Just maybe I must start to plant a cache for every visit we do in Botswana. We are planning to do one next to our factory in the little hills as a test to see if it last. Again, thanks.

Danie, thanks for the stats. At least I am not going over board. Ok, I will increase the log length from now on. I will stop at volume 2. Danie, is there a way to connect GSAK with Google, same as Gsak is doing to determine… 1. Cacher that have to most caches at the highest ASL. 2. Cacher that have done the highest cache above sea level. Gerhard

My condolence to the family in this difficult time. Gerhard, Petra, Abi, Rex

This is sad and most tragic. My sincere condolences to this family and team. Does anyone know the waypoint and the cache in question? Gerhard

Wazat, this is a puzzle, try to solve it. Who is going to get an extremely long log on his listings during my next visit? Hint: He has a red little bug which rides on turtles and he love FTF’s. (Lol) Yep I think it will also be nice to see a list of the cachers with the shortest logs. At least if they visit one of my caches I will be able to understand their logs as normal. I have one which say “found” and then another one that have no words except a smiley. This type of log confuses me – is it a bad cache, he does not like it, or does he like it, is there something wrong with the cache, is the smiley the opposite of what it represents or is it just his way to say thanks? I wrote an e-mail to this cacher to get more information and he never replied. I assume that my cache was not to his standard or else he does not like conversations. Who knows? Gerhard

Duplicate.

Danie this looks like the real reflection. Wazat and the lovebug are still watching over Tinkerbell. I have no reason to complain about a DNF. At the end of the day I still hate a DNF. It is strange to see a DNF note – but I need to read more in detail all his notes to see the pattern. I think there is a method in this madness. The one DNF that he logged was gone for sure and it was verified. It appears as if he uses notes for “not sure if it is there or not”. He uses this technique for verification the next time around. While I was glancing over his notes I notice a couple of good notes. He warned a couple of cachers that he will visit their area and he need to know if the cache was replaced or the status of the cache. Those that did not respond were never visited. He even contacted owners that a TB tracking number was added to some logs. Just a pity that the cache owners are not responding to his requests. This must be quite frustrating. It looks like he is very persistent in his planning. He does plan his caches in advance and if I look at his finds then I can see why he selects certain caches and others he just ignore. Strange how much you can learn from a cacher if you start to analyse his logs for any patterns. One stat that fascinates me is the length of the log. According to GSAK I used a total of 93 819 words in 1074 logs with a character count of 477 932. This is about 87 words per log. Maybe this is the reason why my right arm is so strong. Gerhard

Well done to Wazat for finding the FTF’s in Gauteng published after the event. It looks like another 4 for the day and total of 21 for the lovebug. Next stop is Durban. I am getting worried now. One of these days he will pass me. Well done, it is not easy to bypass the Gauteng cachers. Was this planned? Take them all for a hike, make them tired and then find the FTF’s? Gerhard

Danie, there is a snake in the grass. I just ran some quick queries and I found a problem. I was running a query with one cacher name and who posted a note. My database unfortunately is divided in an archived, default, found database and others. I ran it on the default database and 4 notes were returned. Guess what these notes were saying “I could not find it”. This cacher is not logging DNF’s but he logs it as a note. I then ran the same queries on the “caches found” database, another couple of notes were returned and then I saw it. There was a little man which was not smiling. So he has at least one formal DNF and a couple of notes as DNF’s. I stopped at this point. If you want I can combine all the fragments in one huge database and ran one query on it to see the total effect if needed. This is going to change the names on your list. You have to redo this. The names are not correct. Please remember if you place my name on the top it will seriously dent our relationship. Ok there goes my lesson out the window with compliments from the Geo936 team. Gerhard

You just gave me an idea. I have his name so I can easily recall all his logs. I will verify if he logged his DNF’s as a note. See you later with the answer. Gerhard

Goodness, the price we have to pay for experience and school fees. Cincol, luckily this was not thousands. But a loss is a loss. I guess the economic situation do have his impact on all. I think some more will follow. I ordered some stuff from geotees.com via Paypal. Up to present I just had good service. After the event in Pretoria I went home (Ermelo) and my wife pointed out a double payment to them. On Sunday night I send the owner an e-mail informing him of the problem. About 1 minute later he replied with an e-mail. The monies was corrected and reversed. This was well done. But again this is now history and not the forecast for the future. I am getting some of my coins from them and even if they are more expensive I would rather stick with them then to go cheaper and to worry. Again, sorry for your loss and I hope you will get some return for it. Gerhard

Never ever again will I complain about a DNF. I was very quiet when I read that they want to publish the list of the DNF in relationship with the finds – I was sure that my name is going to be there somewhere at the top. Danie, this would have seriously ruined our friendship. (LOL) So my DNF’s is just average and acceptable. This made my day. I also discovered a new fact. Danie was so kind to send me the name of the persons with the least DNF, in this case this person have zero DNF’s with high finds. What does this point to? It only means one thing and one thing alone. He is the person with the most telephone numbers and he does phone when he gets stuck. He did phone me a couple of times for help and it was given. Maybe I should point him in the wrong direction the next time. (LOL) Tinkerbell what happened? You are topping number 2. I thought Wazat was looking after you – looks like I have to have a serious talk with him. Wazat where are you? I do have great respect for the person with 19 finds and 68 DNF’s. That is what I call gutsy and honesty. With time this is the person that will continue until “death we part” with geocaching. If you hit 50 I will personally make sure that you receive a 50 finds coin, this is an effort worth rewarding. Never say “die”. Danie this was very interesting stats and I learned a lesson. I hope you survive when the other cachers read this. In my personal opinion this list is reflecting the most honest cachers with regards to DNF’s and who is not phoning for every cache that they battle with. Thanks Gerhard

Yes, we now know who is taking time to record DNF’s. I would like to see a list that never recorded any DNF’s. A list of the lucky ones that do find the ones all the time. But maybe this is not politically correct to publish a list like that so please e-mail me the list if you want. I just received a number of logs from new cachers. During the event another team joined. The youngest team I ever met. They were cachers for one day when they attended the event. So something is cooking. The graph is quite interesting and the exponential growth confirms my suspicion. Thanks. Gerhard

Yep, looks ok. Today is November and that one is October. I think there was a shift during the last two months. Gerhard

Danie/Anton, Maybe this is my imagination. I have a bookmark on some of the caches and I also receive the logs on my own caches. During the last two months I noticed a couple of new cachers and it feels like that they are on the increase. Is there any way you can measure the growth of cachers in a form of a graph? Maybe use the last three years on a monthly basis to answer this one. Sorry for the homework. Gerhard

Dankie Besem & Wazat. Ek probeer maar ek sien dit is nie so maklik om weg te kom nie. Gerhard

What about Coert Steynburg. Last time I was there I had a couple of elderly people breaking themselves with laughter. It is hard to search while someone is laughing behind the curtains. Guess, I was in the wrong area or maybe I just look real funny to them. I will send you my phone number offline. To get to 500 before Christmas is possible and your target is set. You like challenges so you have one with your name on it. I like it when my e-mail is flooded with cache finds. I hope I can say well done to many more cachers for this festive season ahead for example RedGlobe planning for Natal. This year many cachers have reached new milestones and if I look at the graph of yearly finds then 2010 will be a new year with many more good milestones with a couple of new names. Is there any one that is planning for some milestones in December – always interesting to read about them? Gerhard

Wow, Wazat got to them !!!! You are going to receive a lot of phone calls from me. You did some difficult ones which gave me problems. Well done - 500 before Christmas is now on the cards. I am going to Pilansberg somewhere in November – drop me an e-mail if you want to go with. You should enjoy the caches in this area. The Americans with me during the previous visit was not impressed when I asked them to leave the vehicle so that we could get closer to the lions. This was done at one of those fences off areas. I noticed that the lions are ready for the hunt and when they started to run closer to the fence to get in position I knew that they are ready for a kill and I could see the target. About ten of them was lining up in one huge line. When I turned around the Americans were back at the vehicle. At that point I could not determine if the fence is intact. I noticed damage to the trees inside the fenced off area done by elephants and the security of the fence was thus in question and I had to leave quickly. By the time we drove around the hill the lions had their kill and we missed it. Well done to the Wessies for the 100. Yes, they are from MP. I noticed their name for the first time at the Botsabelo caches and then again at Baboon rock and then again at Machado. Keep going guys; we are only a few in MP. Gerhard

Hou op praat Wazat en log hulle. Ek wil sien waar jy gaan stop. Dit is amper al 24h00 en ek moet nog slaap. Jammer dat jy nie die event kan bywoon nie. Goed gaan. Hierdie is in Afrikaans want daar is mense wat dit moet leer. Gerhard PS: Wat beteken "I am a proud ...."

I think this was less than 20 seconds. TB is doing good in your life. She make sure you visit GP for her and the caches. Gerhard

+Bouts777, +Wazat, +The Blorenges, +the pooks, +GEO936 The I and 0's are flying on the Net again. Good eveving to all. Gerhard

Well done Wazat with number 400. See I am watching you. So good if a cacher have a TB that he moves from cache to cache. Gerhard

I hope Besem do not suffer from claustrophobia with all the cachers following Pinky the main brain in this park. Forget about the water bottle, there is enough to carry you as well. Some interesting stats of the caches not found by me. There are 7 caches less than 1 km radius including the event. Then there are 10 caches between 1 and 5 km range. Then there are 19 caches between 5 and 20 km range. In this range there are two caches not available. AROMERC-EHCAC could be a problem as 4 DNF’s were logged. Small stream VII is a no no cache. The owners threatened to call the police the last time. If all the cachers arrive at this location all at once we could have a picnic in a weird place. The last person had a lot of comemnts about this cache in no uncertain terms. It should be a good event. Hope the rain stays away. Gerhard

Well done on the following achievements. adysally (400), The Huskies (450), Lord Drinian (100), Danie Viljoen (600), Antron (800), rodnjoan (750), Gasman (100), battlerat and pussyc..., (900), ECMJ (100), GreenJaM (850). Danie is going for more and more. Looks like his trying to get to the 1000 before Christmas. (LOL) I noticed that the cacher finds are growing exponentially. Gerhard