Zor

Ok, this thread has gone WAY farther than I wanted but it has brought up a few interesting things. For starters, Geocaching.Com may claim to be "just a listing" service, but personally, I think that's a pile of crap since they have many rules, and guidelines about how caches can be "listed" that in turn create rules about the game itself. But that's a whole other topic. Those of you that said "if it's your cache, do whatever the hell you want with it" are just plain ignorant of the spirit of this sport/game and it really shines through in the regional differences between players. The very nature of this sport is to FIND things, and to HIDE things. Hiding and finding are both the biggest parts of this game, but are also completely opposite to each other. Hiding a cache does not mean you should be able to log finding the cache because you didn't have to go through any kind of work to find it, because you were the one who hid it. How many caches have you gone to multiple times in trying to find it and finally got it, and felt good about it? I have had a few of them and I'm only at 230 finds. If I worked my a** off to find a cache, I would certainly feel like the owner had cheated if they simply log it as a find. They didn't have to try several times to find it. They may have worked hard to find a good spot to hide it, but that is not the same thing. Whoever said that being able to log your own caches as finds is like cheating was right. It's poor sportsmanship and I think it's very sad. The whole logging an adopted cache was not what I am referring to, and as far as event caches are concerned, the owner should be able to log it because they may or may not attend, depending on the situation, and if they actually ATTENDED the event, then they should be able to log it.

I had an idea for a puzzle cache where the user would have to play a flash based game on the listing page. It would not be a commercial game, just something written specifically for the cache itself with no ads. Is it possible to embed a flash file into a geocache listing?

Psst. [whispered]....books don't have feelings and all books are not created equally....[/whispered] I have done a library book cache but not with a container in it. It was very cool. It was a puzzle cache where the GPS took you to a spot downtown and the description simply said that the only thing you needed was the name of the cache. The name of the cache was something like 910.480 MI. So if you were standing in that one spot looking around, thinking of the title, you would eventually turn and see the library. You went into the library, looked up the book with that DD code, and the book itself was nothing more than the logbook. You opened it up, and saw the logs of all the past finders. I signed the log and loved the cache. VERY cool.

I think my point here is being missed. I understand the idea of logging a find on a cache you have adopted. That's not my issue. Here's the issue I have. I go out and hide a new cache called "Zor's Cool Cache". It is a brand new cache hidden today (June 4th, 2008). I fill out the online form and submit it for review. The reviewer approves and then publishes the cache. I then go to my public cache listing page, click Log It, and log a find on the cache. I now have increased my finds by +1 but didn't actually FIND a cache. I hid one. I do not think that users should be able to log a NEW find on a cache if they are its owner. In the case of adopting, you would have logged the find long BEFORE you were the owner. That's fine. You should not be able to log a find on a cache you are NOW owner of.

I am relatively new to caching (6 months into it) and I have been doing a lot of hides recently, and I noticed that on the cache page, I as the owner have a lot more options than I would on a cache I don't own. However, when I look at the public listing, and I choose "Log It", I actually have the ability to log my own cache as a find. Why is this allowed? If someone has hidden 300 caches, they could feasibly log each of those 300 as a find, and increase their find count by 300. Does that not seem a little illogical? Should you be allowed to log your own cache as a find, since obviously you didn't have to "find" it? I would think that the website would remove the found/did not find options when logging a cache that you are the owner of. What's the scoop on this?

My story is kind of weird. After I got divorced, I still used to check out my ex's blog. Some sort of obsession thing at the time. Well, she ended up with some guy who was into Geocaching and talked about it on her website. It sounded REALLY cool but I didn't want to get into it because I figured it would look pretty lame if I started geocaching just as she was. So, I left it alone and never bothered. Last year, I decided to ask a good friend of mine what it was really all about so he took me out around Christmas time and we went caching. Man, I had a blast. Been at it ever since.

At the recent Gsak event, I learned how I could change the icons for caches on my Garmin unit so that the icon was more reflective of what the cache actually was (micro, puzzle, multi, etc). The problem is, if I do that, now when I navigate to a cache, I no longer get the "Found" button on the bottom of the screen since the Garmin thinks it's a regular waypoint and not a cache. I can change the Geocache icon to any other icon and that's all well and good, but that will only work for one type of cache. For example, if I change the Geocache not found icon to say the "traditional" style icon, then I can now use the "Find Geocache" function on the Garmin and it lists all of the traditionals but it would not list the other types because as far as the Garmin is concerned, the others are not geocaches. Is there a way I can tell the Garmin unit (Legend HCx) that more than one type of icon/waypoint is a cache so that I can "Find Geocache" and get all of them? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I tried a test of the data features yesterday and I just did not like the interface at all and besides, I found a Palm Tungsten E on eBay for like $35 + shipping so I figured I'd snag that and do the paperless thing that way. I would like to have done it with a RAZR but for that price, I'll snag it.

Or you could activate the data connection on the phone and use wap.geocaching.com to have description, logs and hints on 500,000 caches available anywhere there's network coverage. Yes and get gouged with data fees. I think I'll find another way.

I currently use a Garmin eTrex Legend HCx for geocaching and I love it. However, there's no good way to store more info about each cache on that model of GPS. I do however have a RAZR phone that I can install Java apps to. I had the idea of using a "notepad" like app for the phone that could then store Geocache location/log/hint info for me to reference if I needed to. Yes, I know I could buy a Palm and do it that way but the Razr is a device I already have and I figured I'd put the question out there if anyone else has done anything similar to this?

Funny you should mention poker chips. I wanted to do a sig item for myself with coins but decided that the whole "geocoin" thing was too expensive. For me, I just ordered custom ceramic poker chips that have my own design on each side. The cost was not too bad and it didn't take much time to come up with a design that I really liked. Plus, being ceramic, they are a little bit more weatherproof but still cool. Nice to see someone else had the same idea with using poker chips.

When I originally signed up for Geocaching.Com, the username I wanted, Zor, was taken. However, I have gone by this online handle since back in the BBS days so I wanted to continue to use it for Geocaching. Like I used to do on IRC, I added ^ marks to either side of my name and I was able to register with my nick as ^Zor^. Tonite, purely out of curiosity, I looked up the user on Geocaching.Com who had the nick "Zor". Turns out this user signed up for an account in late October of 2006, and has never signed on ever again. Last visit says the same day he signed up. So my question is, since this user is no longer using the website, is there any way I can claim that nick? I'd like to drop the ^ from my name since I only used them since the original nick was taken. It really isn't a big deal but I thought I would ask. I am still new so I figured it couldn't hurt. Any useful feedback/info would be appreciated. Thanks.