mvigor

I've had fairly good luck. I dropped 3 travelers...the first one about 2 months ago hasn't done a whole lot of moving. The next 2 I dropped less than a month ago in Illinois. They moved together to California and now one is in Sweden and the other on Long Island.

So is all of this currently kept track of by hand in plaintext HTML, or is there already some database and either automatic or player updating involved?

Someone must have sent them a message the day you posted this because your post and that person's last visit to the site were on the same day.

No

I had the grand idea this winter to coat the tin with Plasti Dip. It doesn't close after that.

Well...Alaska is BIGGER than any other 2 states combined. Makes sense.

Sorry, it's fairly complicated. If you were already proficient in that language you could Google 'PHP cURL', but I'm sure the same thing can also be done in a variety of other ways I know nothing about.

WOW.

It's interesting that one of those travel bugs was last tracked on 11/17/2007, but the other 7 hadn't been tracked since early 2006.

Well then...where will they draw the line between SNACK and SMALL? If I have a heat sealer and I divide a snack bag in half did I just create contraband? Or do I have to divide it in thirds? LOL! That's hilarious!!!

Koos, you're right...that really does stink!

What language is your code going to be written in? Using PHP you can use cURL to open a travel bug's web page and return you the entire document as HTML in a string variable. It's a simple operation to then strip out the mileage from this line: < span id="LogHeading" >Tracking History (5415.1mi) < a href="./map_gm.aspx?ID=229038" >View Map< /a >< /span > Many web hosts turn off the cURL command and will only reactivate it after you tell them why you need it and show them that your site will only query the remote site at reasonable intervals (i.e. once a day).

Probably just tiny swag left by one of your local finders?

Mine was just published last night. I have a set of 4 identical locks and keys, so hopefully this won't be a huge problem for a while.

I'll agree that this web site needs work...but $1,000 a year??? ... perhaps for the hosting--but this website is all custom programmed from scratch! I'm guessing that Nate and probably a couple others get $30-$60K a year each making this thing work.

I have yet to place this, but the idea is ready... KEY TO THE CACHE

Nobody is allowed to mess with any existing buoys. They are there for navigation reasons, safety reasons and fisherman/lobster type reasons. You could be fined huge amounts for messing with buoys. And that would defeat the idea of having it float to somewhere else so someone could find it. The episode of TV's 'Dirty Jobs' that I saw most recently showed Mike helping a boat crew clean the barnacles off bouys. They completely haul the thing out of the water and on to the deck of a big boat and work on it for a few hours. If that happens randomly every year or two, you're definitely going to be finding that cache muggled sooner or later.

It's really not that important, but no, you were not the first to find it. Not your fault, but no.

You know, when I asked you to 'please explain the game' I was serious. I am a PHP/mySQL web developer with a total of 12 years design experience and a very real interest in travel bugs, geocaching and project marketing. If people can't understand these TB's missions, they aren't going to help them along towards their goals. My criticism was meant to be constructive.

The layout on the web site is REALLY confusing. What the heck is going on there? Please explain the game.

Did you guys decide yet if we are or if we aren't?

Next finder: "That's some great swag right there!"

Who carried cache gear in a bucket As she wacked through the bush And branches she'd push She yelled back 'You ought to duck it.'