WalruZ
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Posts posted by WalruZ
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The ones that take me out into the woods are certainly my favorites.
But that said, I try to do them all (except puzzles). An oft-heard piece of advice to complainers on the site is "don't do those".
Thing is, you really don't know what a cache is like, not really-really, until you've found it. Some of the caches that the PPs dismiss may very well be nice memorable caches, but they bypass them because they think they know what's there already. And some of them aren't, and how would you necessarily know without visiting?
That said, yes, if the cache description says "watch out for the homeless encampment", or "please be respectful of the neighbor with the barking dog on the other side of the fence", or "it's just a lightpost, nothing fancy", I choose somewhere else to do my caching and give that one awhile to see if it will die a natural death. If i'm in the area might try it, and if it's badly done I'll leave an honest log, and if it's really awful I'll leave an honest sba. But I don't usually rule things out offhandedly - you never know...
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I too use the NHF rule.
Joanie, of Marky & Joanie, has what we know as the Joanie rule, which is 15 minutes per star of difficulty.
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That's a laugh. Stockton caches are always stuck under trash in a vacant lot. The only one I've ever done there that I liked was the golden bear one downtown.
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That's pretty reasonable actually, although the "either solicited or unsolicited" part is iffy. If someone solicits my knowledge of a 3rd parties cache, what happens next is my business.
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That is exactly what I do. smile.gif Puzzle caches do not exist in my world. user posted image Or at least in my GSAK database.
Me too.
Although what I'm finding lately is that only slightly indeterminate caches are being listed as puzzles, sometimes by the advice of reviewers. I have a special PQ that retrieves *only* puzzles and I occasionally run it and scan it for "puzzles that aren't really puzzles", or at least ridiculously hard. I suggest giving that a shot, you may be suprised with what you see.
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Of course, I stand by my second point. If a person truly believes that a cache placement goes against the guidelines, post an SBA. Otherwise, he/she should mind their own beeswax and skip the cache if its not their cup of tea.
Sorry, but I don't buy this.
1. As a rule, you don't usually know where you're going to end up, cache-wise, until you get there. Certainly you can call off your search if the area is "not your cup of tea" - like a homeless encampment, a filthy patch of palmetto next to the highway, a cyclone fence next to an interstate or perhaps even the landscaping outside a warehouse. Still, once you're there, you're there - it's too late to skip being there, you *are* there.
2. If a cache placement isn't against the guidelines but is in a crummy place, someone who has been subjected to that crummy placement has every right to make their opinion known in their log. When you put a cache out you're inviting comment, and an honestly given negative comment does not constitute not "minding your own beeswax".
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474. I was suprised the pq came in under the 500 limit for 100 miles.
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I've seen some fairly wanton FTF persuits. I suspect that if they just posted the lat/lon of an item that carries a bounty of $60, you'ld see some wanton violent free-for-all goin' on, especially in Texas.
Given the types of vehicles needed to navigate the terrain and the price of gas, I would think there's a low profit margin overall. This is probably the real reason you have to stake a claim to a SOG before you can go retrieve it.
I wouldn't mind seeing a post from someone who actually does this.
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I would be interested in seeing a graph of active caches over time. Unfortunately, not having history, you would need various details from all cache pages in order to do this.
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AND he was brought in by two other serious GC'ers at work.
have you mentioned this to those two?
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How odd. One of the best puzzle makers in our area listed a doozy that requires you to run a java applet to solve The Sphere. No issues from the area reviewer, although I'm sure they are acquainted with each other and thus there is an element of trust.
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Great tip. what i like about refresh on demand is that I can zoom out on an area, retrieve 100 or so cache points and then zoom around within it without having to re-retrieve the points.
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A 30 hour-per-day clock.
My biggest problem finding geocaches lately has been getting the time to do so.
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I enjoyed seeing the pictures of your store. Thanks!
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Just as an aside, I hate fenceline caches.
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My number one rule for doing urban or suburban caches at night is to NOT park in the park parking lot. Ie, if the cache is in some sort of small park, find legal parking out on the street somewhere and walk to the site. In more general terms, park your car in a manner that will not arouse suspicion. A little extra walking won't kill you.
I generally prefer LED flashlights for night caching unless I'm out in the woods, and even then I bring one for backup because of battery life. LEDs don't advertise themselves like bulb flashlights. Wearing a headlamp is an open invitation to have the neighbors call the cops. Take it easy with the flashlight.
And yes, if you're going any distance through woods or such, take plenty of intermediate waypoints that you can navigate back through. I recently found myself bushwacking on the side of a local mountain at night and in the underbrush I was taking a waypoint every 100 feet. It really made a difference on the way back.
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Mapopolis is an important part of my geocaching setup. I use a geko for my gps, just an arrow (and a compass, it's a 301). My palm has cachemate for caches and mapopolis for mapping. Cachemate has a mapopolis plug-in that will export caches such that they show up on the mapopolis map. It does do turn-by-turn, although I'm not a big user. In unfamiliar complex areas it can be very handy. Naturally it doesn't show you where you are on the map, but I can usually figure that out for myself. The map is easier to manipulate than a map loaded into, say, a legend. If your palm will run it I recommend trying it - the cost is pretty reasonable.
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Speaking as someone who has no problem getting caches aprroved, (not as a reviewer, which I ain't), I *always* leave at least one reviewer note with any cache describing...
land ownership where the cache is hidden
physical description of where the cache is hidden
how it's hidden
-- sometimes even why it's hidden, ie, why I put a cache there. I do this because I know my reviewers and I know they enjoy keeping up with what other members of their caching community are doing.
On occasion I have posted pictures of the hiding site to the reviewer note.
If it's a puzzle or multi I repeat this for initial, final and intermediate placements.
i also supply the name and GC # of the most proximate cache, as I can determine it, mostly just to show that I'm paying attention.
As far as I can tell, the reviewers see far more caches than they ever get a chance to persue. giving them information like this isn't "spoiling" the cache, it's more like "sharing" it.
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As far as mistakes go, the most common mistakes I see coming out of the process are bad coordinates. I also see a fair number of stupid hides, but the apparently process for eliminating stupidity hasn't been worked out yet.
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In this situation, the discussion of a yet-unfinished policy was used to recruit members to a commercial website. It was immediately realized from the content of UtahAdmin's email that this information was leveraged outside of the Admin Only Forum for the benefit of his commercial web site. Not only was Groundspeak upset by this, but other moderators were offended by this breach of trust.
This is the only meaningful bit of information I've seen in the whole 3 page thread.
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This may appear in some other thread, but...
If I search "all caches found by a username" for myself, I get a significantly different answer than if I look at my profile page.
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Thanks juggler - up to v1.5 I go!
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I can't believe people are still responding to this thread. OP, the horse you are beating is dead and won't get up.
The cache you want approved is just like some existing caches, even one here in San Francisco at the main library, but they don't approve caches just like that anymore. The ones that still exist are Grandfathered, but that doesn't help you any.
Change the cache as follows. Put a sticker (waterproof) somewhere on the library grounds that has nothing on it but the call number of the logbook. Make the coordinates of the sticker the coordinates of the cache. Make the cache a multi. Talk about how much you like the library. A good geocacher will know what to do...
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Well there goes my idea of hiding my bucket cache under the middle of the Golden Gate bridege.
fwiw, the golden gate bridge is in the golden gate national recreation area, which is NPS land, and no (new) geocaches are allowed there. There is a nice multi that starts on (or under) the bridge. Recommended.
edited to add, my future wife & I were FTF!
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GSAK and Cachemate.
I also use Mapopolis for mapping. I find that maps on the palm are easier to manipulate and deal with than maps on, say, a legend. If your palm has the oomph to run the program then I recommend it.
How Long Till You Give Up?
in General geocaching topics
Posted
In the San Francisco area we go by "Joanie's Rule", which allots 15 minutes per level of difficulty.