T-storm

Hi, folks! Just a reminder that the registration forms for competition events and meal packages must be received by the Boy Scouts by March 17th... that's just 2 days away! Also, we have some news on the bonus cache first finder's prize! Though complete details are not yet final, it will at minimum include a battery charger package containing a rapid charger, 4 AA 2000mAh NiMH batteries, battery carrying cases, a battery tester, and both AC and DC adapter cords for home and auto charging! This is a package worth about $50. I've heard a rumor that more items may be added, but you can count on the battery package. Hope y'all will make it! T-storm

This sounds really cool... I wish I could attend! But I'm having a baby a couple of weeks before this and just can't see myself travelling, much less competing! The 2004 Texas State Geocaching Extravaganza event is kinda similar to this... Hey, Brawny, you were at that one last year, weren't you... and I REALLY enjoyed it! If events like this are still being turned out in a couple of years when my kiddo is old enough grandma will keep the 2 little ones for a weekend, I will DEFINITELY attend! Y'all have a GREAT time!

Brokenwing and I sent their marketing department a message: I figured it might be one reason that toasting their subs is so important to them... trying to disquise putrid rodent meat flavor, perhaps? Oh, well, at least the 4yo enjoyed the commercials...

However enjoyable it would be to never see a cache unavailable for more than a few days, automated archival, particularly on the short-term schedule it has been proposed, will create more manual work for the few, errors, and bad feeling than someone who is truly annoyed with a bum cache making the effort to either restore it or requesting it be archived. There are simply too many different reasons for a cache to get in this condition and too many reasons why a reasonably responsible cache owner might be unable to check on, repair, post notes to, or respond to e-mail from a particular cache for more than a few weeks. In lieu of a detailed description of all such scenarios I can imagine, please accept my vote that AUTOMATED archiving remain unused on this site and cease and desist in posting multiple threads on the subject over a few hours or days, regardless of who closes one of them. For a clearer picture of my impressions, which have moved beyond a simple, "I don't really think this is a good idea, wow, what a lot of ways I can think of that it could go wrong!" to simple annoyance, please see the below: Techniques for dealing with responsiveness of deceased equines

Hey, if you have a rental car, you might swing by my one and only virtual cache on the way from the airport to your hotel... Smack The Ground ... it's right on the edge of airport property, but yes, completely legal and safe!

Here's some ideas for you to look up cache listings near your hotel: Coords near: 32 52.668 N 097 01.330 W Nearest cache: This one's a SHOCKER! Nearby zip codes: 75247 or 75235 or 75212 I can't do much to recommend specific caches because I live in the next county west and my caching activity has been so curtailed that I don't make it that far into Dallas! Hope that gets you started...

Hey, Weasel, I just thought about that rock hard pink bubble gum. Guess I'm really naive, huh? On the topic of the meth labs... I've found something quite similar to Sparky and CYBret's pix in a remote area of a city park here in D/FW. Thought it looked like meth stuff at the time but got poo-poo'd. I know it's been reported as a problem in the National Forests of east Texas too. Not only that, but around the same time they had some folks turn up murdered and mutilated in one of the same forests, suspected to be in relation to the drug activity. And finally, try asking folks that work in collegiate chemistry departments about drug problems. I know of some that have had stuff stolen for drug production and others that have been offered cleaned up chemistry hardware by police organizations taken from drug busts. I don't let it stop me from caching where I want to, but I do pay attention to my surroundings and take precautions if necessary, just like I do during hunting season. If the topic does nothing but make one aware of what meth equipment looks like and how very hazardous to one's health it can be, it's done it's job.

March 26-28, 2004 Sid Richardson Ranch, Bridgeport, TX http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?ID=118438 Hope y'all don't mind me posting a link to this event here. Last year we had folks from this region attend the event, so I wanted those who might be interested to see it. If you have questions or comments about the event, please post them in this thread in the event's home region forum. There are more details on the event in that thread. The GC.com listing is up now! There is also additional information at the Longhorn Council BSA website (see links below). Costs for the activities at the event range from $5/day to $15/weekend depending on what you participate in. The Night-O is a free event. Meals are offered individually or as a weekend-long package price. They've been trying very hard to get more substantial meals than one would usually get at a Scout camping event. Camping accommodations are $5/weekend/person for those who are not members of a Longhorn Council Scout troop. More meal and lodging info, including additional lodging options, are available on the registration forms and the Longhorn Council BSA site. I hope y'all will save this spot on your calendar and pick one or more of several ways to become involved!

March 26-28, 2004 Sid Richardson Ranch, Bridgeport, TX http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?ID=118438 Hope y'all don't mind me posting a link to this event here. Last year we had folks from this region attend the event, so I wanted those who might be interested to see it. If you have questions or comments about the event, please post them in this thread in the event's home region forum. There are more details on the event in that thread. The GC.com listing is up now! There is also additional information at the Longhorn Council BSA website (see links below). Costs for the activities at the event range from $5/day to $15/weekend depending on what you participate in. The Night-O is a free event. Meals are offered individually or as a weekend-long package price. They've been trying very hard to get more substantial meals than one would usually get at a Scout camping event. Camping accommodations are $5/weekend/person for those who are not members of a Longhorn Council Scout troop. More meal and lodging info, including additional lodging options, are available on the registration forms and the Longhorn Council BSA site. I hope y'all will save this spot on your calendar and pick one or more of several ways to become involved!

March 26-28, 2004 Sid Richardson Ranch, Bridgeport, TX http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?ID=118438 Hope y'all don't mind me posting a link to this event here. Last year we had folks from this region attend the event, so I wanted those who might be interested to see it. If you have questions or comments about the event, please post them in this thread in the event's home region forum. There are more details on the event in that thread. The GC.com listing is up now! There is also additional information at the Longhorn Council BSA website (see links below). Costs for the activities at the event range from $5/day to $15/weekend depending on what you participate in. The Night-O is a free event. Meals are offered individually or as a weekend-long package price. They've been trying very hard to get more substantial meals than one would usually get at a Scout camping event. Camping accommodations are $5/weekend/person for those who are not members of a Longhorn Council Scout troop. More meal and lodging info, including additional lodging options, are available on the registration forms and the Longhorn Council BSA site. I hope y'all will save this spot on your calendar and pick one or more of several ways to become involved!

March 26-28, 2004 Sid Richardson Ranch, Bridgeport, TX http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?ID=118438 We have a GC.com listing up now! There is also additional information at the Longhorn Council BSA website (see links below). Costs for the activities at the event range from $5/day to $15/weekend depending on what you participate in. The Night-O is a free event. Meals are offered individually or as a weekend-long package price. They've been trying very hard to get more substantial meals than one would usually get at a Scout camping event. Camping accommodations are $5/weekend/person for those who are not members of a Longhorn Council Scout troop. More meal and lodging info, including additional lodging options, are available on the registration forms and the Longhorn Council BSA site. I hope y'all will save this spot on your calendar and pick one or more of several ways to become involved!

Hi Bret, check your e-mail. I'm in a tizzy getting ready for baby when my brain isn't so hormone scrambled that it can't function. Kept forgetting to ask Brokenwing's opinion. Your e-mails made it to both of us, btw, so BW finally asked me about it! I know there's been a problem with the e-mail link for me on our homepage in the past and supposedly BW fixed it, but it keeps coming back. I haven't used that ferret@innocent.com address in over 2 years! Good to hear from you. I'm due in 16 days now and convinced I won't be ready! T-storm

I wouldn't mind a way to help easily identify caches that aren't maintained for adoption or geo-trash cleanup purposes, but I still feel your idea is flawed. Marking EVERY cache out there for this purpose is not a good way to go. My caches are maintained. There aren't strings of complaints that haven't been addressed on them. I often post a note, though not always, when I make a maintenance visit, and I do monitor the logs. I am due to have a baby pretty shortly though. I could easily be unable to visit my caches for a month or longer, particularly if I wind up with a C-section and given that I will be baby's only food source for months. If there's no problem, why would TPTB wish to create an artificial one? And if a note alone suffices (who's gonna prove whether or not I physically went to the cache after all), then why bother? Seems to me that the "This cache needs to be archived" log is a good way to put a cache owner on notice. Are these searchable with a PQ? I don't know, haven't tried. If they are or could be made so, those who would care enough to adopt or trash cache out would have a way to look for problem caches needing a followup visit. My $0.02.

I don't know how much help this will be to you Skeeter or DiverMan, but I just posted in another thread about an event the weekend of March 27 & 28 involving Boy Scouts, orienteering, and Geocaching. It is held at the Sid Richardson Ranch, a few thousand acre ranch owned by the Boy Scouts, located just outside the town of Bridgeport, TX. The event is a Boy Scout hosted orienteering meet with the addition of special competition courses designed for GPS users, up to 42 caches including a bonus cache with first finder's prize, a geocaching clinic or two, and a night competition. I went to a planning meeting this evening and someone mentioned a GPS merit badge program that has been done by one of the fellows in the local Council (Longhorn) and they were hoping he could lead this, but he is also the assistant course setter for the orienteeing competition courses and may be too busy. I can ask to have him contact me (he wasn't at the meeting tonight) and see if he'd mind me sharing his contact info with other Scout leaders privately. See last year's archived listing here. Hopefully the 2004 listing will be up in the next week or so... the registration packet is hoped to be complete within a week. You can choose competitive events or you can choose to participate on a simply fun and caching level. Read more about what's anticipated for this year here. This event was attended and enjoyed by a wide range of folks, including geocaching families with kids, scouts who had been introduced to caching, and caught the eye of the famous BruceS, who joined with my partner and I to conquer the GPS class of the Night-O event, not to mention claiming the GPS competition course as his own! Most of the accommodations are tent camping, but there are some limited spots in other types on the ranch or hotels if one is willing to commute!

For folks who might be interested in competitive events to some degree or another, here are a couple of examples: The listing itself doesn't explain in great detail, but there is this eventweekend of March 13: Further details can be read here. Basically regional teams hide tokens and then compete to find another teams tokens. Timed event, token point system. Much loved last year and getting enthusiastic interest this year. Lots of good food and caching company in a Texas State Park! Two weeks later there is another event further north in Texas that has competitive events or you can choose to participate on a simply fun and caching level. See last year's archived listing here. Hopefully the 2004 listing will be up in the next week or so. The date is the last weekend of March... the 27th & 28th and is held at a few thousand acre ranch owned by the Boy Scouts. The event is a Boy Scout hosted orienteering event with special competition courses designed for GPS users, up to 42 caches, including a bonus cache with first finder's prize, a geocaching clinic or two, and a night competition. Read more about what's anticipated for this year here. This event was attended and enjoyed by a wide range of folks, including geocaching families with kids, scouts who had been introduced to caching, and caught the eye of the famous BruceS, who joined with my partner and I to conquer the GPS class of the Night-O event, not to mention claiming the GPS competition course as his own!

I read that story a few weeks ago on a motorcycle riders' forum. I laughed until I cried , and once I recovered, I e-mailed the link to several folks even though I usually won't send a joke or such via e-mail. The story reminds me of the sort of tales Jerry Clower told. Good fun!

Oh, and on topic now... I have volunteered quite a few hours to local organizations, but I don't really think much of that would count for the prez's proposal. The neighborhood association where I live has a much smaller scale volunteer program encouraging an hour a month or less. The stuff I do qualifies for that... Been on the board / executive committee for a couple of small non-profit clubs. One promoting and protecting pet ferrets and helping to provide re-homing for the abandoned and community and animal control education. The other is a MOMS Club serving mothers who stay at home with their children full or part time. The MOMS group also has a program by which we support a local child or family related charity each year. In the 4 years during which I've been involved that has been Ronald McDonald House, Alliance for Children (support and streamlining of services for abused children), and Women's Haven (battered women's shelter & services system). I can't see myself getting involved in some of the larger scale stuff until my kid(s) are quite a bit older. Habitat for Humanity would be one I'd enjoy working with. Oh, and do we get to count hours spent in CITO?

Well, you've got that right, Sparky. It IS the slow season for T-storm. Well, at least it is THIS year. And yeah, it's certainly possible that I'll try to get fired back up in a couple of months. But what a great guy to take several days to help out! I'm sure we can find lots of household tasks to keep you busy and help us out. Can you cook? Well, heck with that, I see from a later post you can deliver babies! It can't be a bad thing to have someone around that knows how to handle a baby! Pssstt.... Huh? What's that, Mopar? Whadda ya' mean he's not talking he's not talking to me? Are you SURE? Well, no, I wouldn't REALLY want a cat for a babysitter... Brokenwing's horribly allergic. OOOOooohhhhh!!!! Stormspotter, eh? Ummm... oops. Umm... HI, SPARKY!! nevermind.... it's just placenta brain.

They didn't delete the note logs from TB pages. All they're talking about is what parameters define a "TB find" for purposes of creating the list of bugs you've found on your "My Cache" page. Your notes should be intact. But if you don't recall any bugs you logged only with a note, you may have a harder time looking them up to see what's happened with them since.

I have a similar story on one of my cache listings... it was getting dark and the party in question was in a hurry to get back to their car. They had no waypoint, but saw a bright light in the distance and decided that it was at the location they were parked. They began bushwhacking toward it... unfortunately it was nearly 180 degrees off of their car's location. They whacked themselves through a marsh, back up onto solid land, and came up against a water barrier separating them from the light they'd been headed toward. Complete dark now, and a chilly December evening. They wound up calling 911 and were lost 3 or 4 more hours before folks found them with the help of dogs and equestrian patrols. At first no one could figure out the coords, then they were stumped by the island reference they got from the map location... which may have been true several years past when the lake was higher, but no longer!

Welcome! I'm nowhere near you, but another place you might try posting to meet Texas folks is at www.texasgeocaching.com. There is a south Texas forum, but it's been silent 2 months. However, other folks on that board will know where to find the San Antonio group, which has it's own mailing list, and maybe folks from your area will pop up there?

A brilliant grasp of the obvious...

I've done 2 on private property. One wasn't bad. It was in a rural area and only about 30 feet from the intersection of 2 county roads and clearly identified as being on the owner's property. Didn't have me skulking around houses or crossing fences lines, etc. Pretty clear that I wasn't wandering along the edge of more than one person's land too. The second one was also in a rural area. The description also included text describing how to get to the best parking that I couldn't quite match to the physical location, but it was kinda close so I thought it might just be the difference in perceptions and someone who isn't very good at estimating distances (200 ft. vs. 500 ft.). I hunted and hunted... finally decrypted the clue. The cache was supposed to be in plain sight near a large fallen tree. Well, the coords and my GPS put me within 30-35 feet of a large fallen tree, but no ammo box was to be found. I e-mailed the owner once I got back home. Described my approach, gave county road numbers and directions turned, described houses along the way and the spot I parked. Described woods and proximity to a nearby fence dividing woods from pasture. Described tree and my search around it. Owner still didn't catch on. Said sounded like I was in right spot and theire coords had been checked with 2 GPS units. The property was the cache owner's father's land, and he had just left the country for a few weeks. I told them to let me know if they decided to check up on it, but that I wouldn't return and possibly be wandering all over someone else's property... trespassing... to hunt the cache without some verification. Several weeks later, "Dad" got home and took his nifty commercial GPS from the fire department out and checked the coords. New coords were posted. They were 1/2 a mile from the originals!! Not EVEN off of the same county road I'd parked along! And not just a simple transposition of numbers as far as I could see. That stopped me hunting stuff on private property. Another in my state was on private property next door to a state trooper's property, hidden near the property line. There was a small misunderstanding between a cacher poking about for a cache and a trooper coming home in uniform with gun at his side wondering what this stranger was doing snooping about. It was resolved with minimal conflict, considering, but still, not a good picture of geocaching. If you're going to place on private property, make it as hard as possible to get on someone else's place while hunting. Remember that you never know how someone will approach the cache site, what tools they do or don't use, or how much experience they have. It wouldn't be worth an unpleasant result, so try to insure that none of you gets one!

PayPal... oh, yeah, those folks that let someone else open up an account with my name on it! And that loser made a payment on a loan he was months overdue in repaying via PayPal, so that if I wanted my money, I HAD to set a password and give personal info to retrieve it. Fast forward a couple of years. Now I'm selling items for a non-profit organization via eBay as a fundraiser. To be an effective seller, you need to take electronic payments. I try to find out my PayPal account info to accept such payments, but it's been a long time. Password I tried won't work, and I spent over a month going back and forth with PayPal explaining that I apparently did not have the correct password, that their online password retrieval function generated an error stating that I must call in for assistance, that I couldn't simply open a new account (no double accts with some info the same), and couldn't close the old one to start over (since you must log in to do that). Sat on phone, long-distance on hold over half and hour on at least 2 occasions and never got to speak to anyone. Sent e-mail. Got helpful suggestion that I use online password retrieval. Pointed out the part of e-mail quoting their error saying that online retrieval failed for my account and that I must call in. Got other suggestions asking me to do the very things I'd already tried and explained how they failed. Finally sent an actual paper letter with full explanation requesting password be mailed to my home address on file or account closed. Got (eventual) response telling me to use online password retrieval, and that I was the only one who could close my account... just log in.... Started an equally difficult campaign to get them to close the account for me and remove my personal info so that my financial info was no longer hanging out there. Used eBay Billpoint. All was fine until eBay and PayPal crawled into bed together and Billpoint was eliminated. Expressed my concerns throughout the process. Finally, Billpoint was no more. For the benefit of the non-profit from which I was selling, I tried again with PayPal. Even though I was assured my account had been closed, I could not open a new account with my current e-mail address... said I already had an account, and no duplicates allowed. Contacted eBay, more successfully by phone this time, but was basically told they wouldn't allow me to open a new account because some of my info was the same (physical address), and that info had been blocked from being used in the system when they closed my original account. Suggested I might try to log on under the old account... I thought it was closed? Oh, yeah, wouldn't work.... End result? I finished selling the stuff via check/MO payments and said I couldn't do any more. And decided I was better off without PayPal having any of my correct financial info because they were clearly not logical nor entirely ethical. Wouldn't give this to them again. I think hubby may have a PayPal account, but it's been unused for a long time... and if I could, I'd close it too. Just hope the card it's tied to is one I got rid of....

You know, Elias, that was NOT what I was hoping to hear... you guys are much more responsive than my web hosting company. And to make it worse, several months ago they moved their mail servers to a third party company, so you know what it will be like to try to get someone to take responsibility for fixing it. Sigh... But thank you for looking into it.