WalruZ
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Posts posted by WalruZ
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I enjoyed that.
FWIW, I recently finished "Under the Black Flag", a non-fiction treatment of pirates. Apparently "walking the plank" is completely made up - real pirates never had any such thing. Other tidbits were that if a Pirate captain was deposed they just threw him overboard. The Jolly Roger was flown to convince ships to surrender without a fight - if they did not, it was taken down and a red flag was flown. Most pirates were common criminals whose loot was mundane cargo.
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This is one of my bigger peeves. Admin notes are the solution, usually. One a month or so.
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ooh ooh... let's start the rumour that it's Joanie again!
ha! you're just trying to deflect the suspicion from yourself!
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It's not necessarily a bad idea, but you might want to see if the area already has a regular schedule of events and then just go to one. There is such a thing as event overload.
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Congratulations Marky and Joanie on hitting 3000!
Help!! 911!! someboyd stold my post!
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Norcal = Hemlock, Socal = SocalAdmin. Hemlock has been incommunicado recently, so SocalAdmin has been turning loose batches of caches now and then. It's a bit annoying, as Hemlock had a nice predictable schedule - he always approved a bunch of caches at 10pm and then went to bed chuckling, knowing that geocachers around the bay were scrambling for their cars and those midnight FTFs. I miss him...
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cruise missles and drones and such use gps, as do military units trying to find their way in unfamiliar territory. Being able to jam the signals would be a significant capability. Of course, there already is SA, which can be turned on whenever they like. Military grade GPSs can receive a signal that is accurate even when SA is turned on.
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yeah, are you going to pick something, or just let serendipity do it?
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I've actually come to like virtuals, provided they are of quality (like other cache types). They don't get muggled and are always maintained reasonably well.
That said, there is a Park in San Francisco that has a fairly lame virtual in it (the k-leave me cache) that could probably support a more creative physical hide. Since the virtual can't get muggled, the park is blocked forever (relatively speaking). That stinks.
Something else to consider is that not all of our newbie geocachers are always following the program as well as we might expect them to. Put a virtual 50 feet away from a physical and you could very possibly have some confused people. A seperate 'virtual space', like benchmarks, would be necessary to keep things straight.
I guess I've talked myself into that. Virtuals are still worth doing though, and I'm not sure that "You don't need a GPS to do them" is an evenly applicable argument. They should stay on the site and should count.
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I entered the drawing for a full sized jeep even before the TBs were out. If I win one I'm going to make a travel bug dog tag for it, to scale.
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I know I know, and most of mine are stumbling around more or less ok too. It's just that one I'm bitter about.
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With 4000 of them being placed all over the country, Im sure theyll be plenty to go around.
I disagree. I think they're going to all disappear within the month. 4K was nowhere near enough. These are just going to boldly illustrate how broken the travel bug feature really is. I am always running across geocachers who cannot figure out the feature. Travel bug pickup HAS to be integrated with the cache log page. Period.
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I have a 'gimme' out there. It's in a community garden in SF. I don't want people doing anything there but finding the cache, signing the log, and looking at the pretty flowers and beautiful view of India basin. The cache description tells you where the cache is, in a rock in a cluster of rocks at the bottom of the stairs. The point is to go there. There are other caches in the area that are hard to find.
Diversity is good.
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A couple [of YJTBs] have been held for over a week now...
not suprising. Travel bugs die every day. These will be no different. 4,000 wasn't nearly enough.
I released a bug, You Can't Go Home Again and it passed through two hands before disappearing. I re-released it recently and someone (cough) carried it to Canada and someone else stuck it so far out in the woods that it'll never be seen again.
Perhaps what will happen is that these will sink out of sight into the great morass that is GeoCachers, dead almost every one. Then TPTB will see that the Travel Bug feature doesn't quite work.
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I think the Jeep TBs are being carried from cache to cache. I've come across 3. One I gave to a cacher in Marin. Two I put in "Alum Rock Overlook". Both have been picked up, as far as I know.
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That is a very cool picture.
I have said before elsewhere that the yellow jeeps are no big deal. They are not owned by real people and they do not offer the "person to person" connection that a 'real' travel bug has. Touch one, log one, get over it.
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I've just done this.
1. Already a premium member.
2. Started using G)eocaching S)wiss A)rmy K)nife - aka GSAK. I set up some pocket queries and receive them by email from Groundspeak. I made sure to choose the GPX format, not the LOC format. GSAK reads the .zip files I receive via email and shows them in a grid which I can maniuplate and edit offline.
3. Bought a used Palm Zire 71. (other models apparently work just as well)
4. Downloaded and installed Cachemate software for the palm. Purchased and used the code emailed to me to unlock the software so it now supports 100s caches rather than the 10 you get in demo mode.
5. Used the Export feature of GSAK to create a .PDB file, which is what the palm uses. GSAK automatically puts the exported file in a place where it needs to be in order to be transferred to the palm when I hotsync the palm.
6. After hotsync, I run Cachemate on the palm. It sees the newly uploaded files and offers to import them. I choose the 'not found' category when I do this.
7. I also use GSAK to upload the same waypoints to my GPS.
Now I have 100s of caches in my palm, the same set as is in my GPS. I can turn on my GPS and see what's closest, and I can use Cachemate on the palm to see it's details, size, hint, etc. I can also make notes on that cache page for later reference. In fact, I change the cachemate category from 'not found' to 'found' or to 'did not find' (a category i added), as I search. At home later I can filter the cachemate records by these categories to see which I found and which I didn't, along with the stored notes.
If you're only going after one or two caches, and you know pretty well what they are and where they are and you're traveling to them expressly to get them... then a scrap of paper is all you need, imo.
If you live in a cache-rich area and you travel with your kit, and you're never really sure if you might want to find one or four... or if you go out on expeditions where you're gathering up 10 or 20, then having something other than paper is durn helpful.
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when...
caches go unmaintained. DNFs pile up and nothing is done. They linger upon your nearest page.
I am also mildly annoyed at the people who have nothing better to do than to fill up the forum server with twaddle.
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a cache buried in sand is lame.
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So far I have had a great time by going not just paperless, but infoless. All I have are 6 character waypoint 'smart names' from GSAK. I take off after something and wing it, then take off after whatever is next nearest. It's always an adventure!
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my own suspicion is that the jeeps will be all over the area in short order. After all, they're just travel bugs - you move them, right?
I've thought some on them as well. In my opinion these are not 'real' travel bugs.
I have a TB right now called "Patty's Mr Bill". It is owned by a real person, on it's way to another real person (patty), who is undergoing chemo. When the TB moves, a real person who cares about it sees it move and is happy. If I spend time on that TB, that real person is even happier. Were something to happen to it, that person would be sad. We've all been there, pretty much.
The yellow jeeps aren't owned by any 'real' person. if the move or get muggled, who really cares? the owner? the owner is some advertising agency. Their logs get printed and scanned by some guy looking for something that would make good ad copy - that's it.
The more I think about it the more I come to think that although cute, they lack what so many things in the world today really needs, a person on the other end. Travel bugs are an organic growth within the Geocaching body. The Yellow Jeeps are bio-engineered growths, and they're just not the same.
I'll still take one and move it though.
There are a whole bunch dropped into the Marin event. -
I left a note for Groundspeak telling them that BADGES was the logical distribution choice for the Bay Area. I'm not sure what's been done about that.
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I too am seeing locationless on my nearest (filter finds) link. This is just plain annoying, as they come up depending on some arbitrary location when what i'm looking for is physical caches.
Not that I have anything against locationless caches. I think you should auction them off on ebay occasionally to make extra cash.
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This is something that's been bugging me for a few weeks and I just want to vent. It is cumulative and not directed at anyone in particular. Most of my local cohorts are very responsible and responsive.
But....
GeoCachers who hide something expect their cache to be approved as soon as possible. Same day is nice, same hour is even better. more than a day and many of them get all huffy. After 3 or 4 days they're up in arms and ready to stick their local approver in the public stocks for rotten tomato practice.
But let that same cache come up missing a few months later and where's the sense of urgency? DNFs pile up on caches and nothing happens, or perhaps a flip note about how the cache will be looked at or replaced 'soon', followed by no activity (other than a few more DNFs) for a month, or two, or even far longer. Even if the cache is disabled it often sits for a good long time. I see this happen alot. Do you?
I feel like if approvers are held to a 'speedy' standard, so should cache hiders. Maybe even a rule that caches won't be approved if you have outstanding disabled caches, or caches with 'issues'. Ok, that's a little extreme, but why shouldn't what goes around, come around?
AFA excuses go, there's wintertime. I live in california, I'm not talking about wintertime. (chumps). Don't give me wintertime, I don't wanna hear about it.
There are a whole bunch dropped into the Marin event.
SF Bay Area geocachers
in West and Southwest
Posted
1000 for Motorbug! It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. (provided you don't get between him and an FTF opportunity)