rosebud55112
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Posts posted by rosebud55112
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Did the "List newest caches in" State link disappear? I'm not seeing it for Minnesota on my account.
Uh, is this the right room for an argument?*
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You would think that people whose hobby entails searching for hidden items would know enough to look around them, but I've seen other events where people complained about not seeing a table selling shirts and coins that was literally two feet from the table with the log book.
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There are a couple of Challenge caches for which I do not yet qualify, but have signed the log book. For two of these, it was accidental-on one I thought I qualified, but as I was finalizing my bookmark I realized the cache I had for a given date was not in the correct state, on the second, I had misread the cache page (and wondered why what I thought should be a 2 star difficulty was a 4.5 star difficulty-the answer is because I'm stupid).
For all of these caches, I log a write note on the date I sign the log book. That gives the CO a chance to verify that yes I did at this date physically sign the log. I usually state in this note how far along I am toward completely qualifying, and when I expect to get there. That also gives the CO a heads-up. When I finally qualify, I then add a Found It log for that date, referencing my earlier Note.
One thing I don't do with these Found It s that I do with all my others is to dip my personal geocoin. Because I may be physically quite a ways from the cache, I don't want my mileage messed up. Usually I had already dipped my coin into some nearby caches on the day I originally signed it, so my true mileage stays pretty close to that shown on the coin.
I mention that the CO can delete the FI if they don't like this approach, but I don't believe I've ever had that happen.
Publicly stating in the Note that I am working on a Challenge does give me a little more emphasis to keep searching for qualifying caches. Otherwise, I might just let the whole thing die off. Sometimes I need to give myself a push.
Usually though, I don't sign in advance at all.
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Because it makes it obvious where the finals for the local puzzles, multicaches, and wherigos are.
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As a puzzle cache owner, I’d like it if people solve the puzzle the way I’ve designed it to be solved. I try to make my puzzles have a logical step-by-step route from beginning to end, and I’d love it if you take that route that I’ve laid out for you, like a tour through the neighborhood, rather than just rushing through to the end. I do realize that I can’t control that though. I think a well-designed puzzle should have that pathway built into it. It may be difficult to see, or require complex logic, but it should be there. That’s not at all the same as saying I want to be in control of how you solve it.
There are lots of ways to ‘solve’ a puzzle, some that I can foresee, some that I can’t. These include stumbling across the final location, solving in a different manner, brute forcing the answer, brute forcing the location, asking the CO for help, asking prior solvers for help, tagging along when a solver goes to GZ, copying the GZ cords from a posted solution site, and many others. It’s a multi-dimensional space, and somewhere snaking through all of that is the line that separates “Good for you!” from “Really?” That division is going to vary for each CO and each puzzle.
I can’t stop anyone from crossing that line into the “Really?” territory, and won’t even know that they had unless they state as much in their log or other discussions. Someone who does so will get points for being honest, but if you’ve crossed that line I do have the right to have that influence my opinion of you. When I hear you bragging about all the high-difficulty caches you’ve found, and I know you basically borrowed some stars on some of mine by being a tagalong, well, ……
The only two times I’ve ever deleted a find from a puzzle cache of mine (or any cache of mine) were:
1. An obviously fake find by a new cacher who logged finds on caches in five other states and the UK on the same day he “found” mine in Minnesota (and yes, I did check the logbook before deletion); and
2. When a new cacher logged as “Found” a challenge cache of mine he could not possibly/did not qualify for. In that case I sent him an email stating he could make it a Note and then at some future date, upon qualifying, add a Found IT log with that future date.
I don’t make puzzles to force people to jump through hoops. In large part I create them for the following reasons:
1. I like to solve puzzles, and following the idea of “Hide the type of cache you’d like to find”….
2. Creating a well-designed puzzle is much like solving a puzzle itself—what pathways will a solver go down? How do I direct him to/away from the right path? What clues do I leave in the cache page, in the cache name, in the posted cords?
3. We’ve got a lot of great puzzle creators and solvers here in the Twin Cities, and I want to give back.
4. I want to create caches with high star counts, but I’m not personally a big terrain person, so I up the ante on the difficulty side by making you work for the rating.
5. Having a puzzle allows more of a theme to carry across all parts of a cache.
Some people in this conversation have stated that a puzzle is not well-designed if it is open to solving by brute force or other methods not anticipated by the hider. That is not at all true, in my opinion. For one thing, a puzzle cache’s final location may become compromised innocently by one or more future hiders saturating the surrounding area such that the only possible solutions can be found by viewing a map rather than attacking the puzzle.
I don't expect everyone to solve my puzzles in the manner I've laid out. I don't delete finds if someone doesn't follow that path. But solving the "I need to get coordinates" puzzle is not he same as solving the posted puzzle.
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MooseJawSpruce- thanks, good to know. That's about what I expected.
TriciaG- nope, no Lab caches. I meant to mention that in my original post but forgot.
The A-Team- no, I don't think I can. I just knew that I have one duplicate find and figured that would account for one of the seven differential.b i assume that once the communication issues MJS mentioned are cleared and my five caches for today are accounted for, then instead of seven different, I will only be off by two (my traveling cache and my duplicate)
Thanks all for the info!
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Does the "Distance to Finds" table get updated on a less-than-regular basis? I noticed that although the rest of my stats page shows the 3088 finds on 3087 unique caches, the table at the bottom only shows 3081 total caches.
I do have one find on a cache which "travels", so even subtracting that one and my cache with two "FoundIts", I would expect to see a total of 3086.
I noticed that the distances didn't update to include the caches I found today; the numbers are the same as I wrote down yesterday. That's what makes me think there's a delay in updating, rather than caches not being counted.
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Welcome. Here's what I would do:
1. Log a DNF. ThatKs not a black mark for me or the cache, simply recognition that I didnt find it. Mention the trimming in the log.
2 also log a Needs Maintenance. Not because you DNFed it, but because you have a legitimate reason to believe it is gone, and needs owner maintenance. A typical DNF would not require a NM Some may say that's premature, but its what I would do. Again, mention the trimming in the NM log.
3. Come back after the owner has replaced it, find it, log a Found It.
4. DO NOT leave a throwdown!
Thanks for recognizing the unusual nature of your situation and trying to determine the correct course of action.
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Why do people think drug dealers leave their wares out in random spots for someone else to come by and pick up? How is that a workable business model? Does it really happen that way in real life?
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Never done one, but think that you should hide what you like and can maintain. If people carp about that, tell them to go jump in a lake.
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WMIM--
I'm interested in how you came up with an average of 15 years for a typical cache to get its first favorite point. The first cache was hidden less than 14 years ago, and favorites are only 4-5 years old. Are you using some type of poisson distribution? What are your assumptions?
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Not a safe assumption. Also, don't assume that your reviewer isn't a dog.
That explains why I can't get any caches published unless their camoflaged using a dead squirrel.
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I may get a chance to travel for business next month. I will be travelling by my personal car, and so get a chance to pick up a cache or two on the way. However, due to the schedule I'll be on, I won't have a lot of extra time on the way.
I do think that I will have a chance to stop at a particular EC on the way that sounds interesting. The issue I have with it is that it requires a comparison of rock at the EC against that at a nearby EC. Neither EC lists additional waypoints for the other. Although the second EC is only 2.2 miles away from the first, I'm not sure if I'll have the opportunity and time to go to both locations.
I know that occasionally ECs require you to visit more than one physical location. Is there a limit on distance in this case? Should these two ECs be combined into one? I'd really hate to cause that to happen, as each site looks interesting on its own (and I don't want to cause people to skip either just because they cant do both), and the one I might visit happens to be a key player in a local challenge cache re ECs.
Of course, I'll try to work my schedule to allow me to visit both, and see both neat places, and make it moot for me.
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I've jokingly considered placing a "Chalenge of a Cenchury: Mispelled Cash Names" where you have to log 100 caches with a typo in their titles, but had these three thoughts:
1. I don't want to point out other people's errors in public. It's kind of rude--although I am guilty of doing it anyway at times.
2. Sometimes an apparent typo is done intentionally, as a clue or a pun.
3. Challenge caches need to include the word 'Challenge', and mine would include the nonword 'Chalenge' instead.
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Have you been invited on one and are trying to figure out what the expectations are?
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There is a rather nice geotrail near here. I don't want to say powertrail, as the hides are all unique, even though it does have identical descriptions on each page. The other day I received an e-mail from a cache on my watchlist that was not on the trail, but near it.
Replaced Quite a few missing Containers.
There shouldn't be any DNF's on this trail because you are asked to replace any missing caches. we replaced quite a few today ,some of them are just a log in a pill bag under a rock.
I checked and it does say something to that effect on the pages now, although I don't think it did when I did part of it. However, I don't think its such a good idea to be replacing containers on geotrails that do not have identical hides. And I don't think leaving a pill bag under a rock is a good idea for any cache. The next finder, and several others would report that it needs maintenance. Then the cache is found right where it should be, and in fine shape.
If you are going to leave a throwdown, how about using an actual container? And keep it limited to the geotrail? With the copy and paste logs, nobody can tell which ones, or how many were "replaced" this way. The finders probably do not remember either.
</rant>
How about changing that sentence to: "If you are going to leave a throwdown, DON'T!" Saves a lot of discussion about what is a valid/legal/correct/etc. container.
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Yeah, that's another casualty of all the spew-venirs from last month. Your friend may want to consider counting only the geographic-based souvenirs for a challenge, but then would have to rules-lawyer it up about things like whether a souvenir for a mega-event was geographic-based or date-based, or other. And I suppose GS could do something next year that somehow pulls the rug out from under that one too.
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If the owner wanted to prevent this he could have added the common challenge rule that only caches published prior to the challenge count (or even only 10% can be newly published).
It definitely looks like this was created to make that challenge go from a 5 D to a 1. That's what happenes when the CO does not put restrictions. Although since 40 people completed it prior to the Z series it was never a 5.
Guidelines specific to Challenge caches were updated 3/20/12 and the new "date restriction" caused a bit of angst.
http://support.Groundspeak.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=206
3. 2. Challenge geocaches cannot include restrictions based on 'date found'; geocaches found before the challenge geocache publication date can count towards the achievement of the challenge.B.
Strictly speaking, this doesn't seem to prevent a challenge from requiring that all the qualifying caches be in existence
prior to publication of the challenge cache. I hadn't noticed that.
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I enjoy Challenge caches for the most part, but have definitely seen the cheapening of challenges due to this phenomenon.
Here in Minnesota, we've had an explosion in the past two years of caches that start with "Welcome to", or contain a random element or State name, which in my opinion were set up mainly to get visitors from people attempting to work on a challenge. The local "Welcome to" and elements challenges were truly challenging when they were created. Now, not so much. In a sense, its like taking the camo off of someone else's cache, to make it easier for other finders to find (or qualify for).
Of course, no one says you have to search for the caches you suspect were set out for that purpose, or ignore them when you determine whether you qualify, but somedays, when you're out running errands, and you see you happen to be near a cache called "Van Buren Nebraska Orange Catfish Iridium", its kind of demoralizing to think that its purpose was meant less so to be an interesting location and more to be a cache to fill a spot in a bunch of challenges. I call those "attention-whore" caches. Lately I've started seeing these in the names of Event Caches, as well.
I do agree with the statement above that messing with the D/T ratings is worse than messing with the name, though.
I own a couple of challenge caches myself, that I tried to make true challenges, that couldn't necessarily be messed around with in that way. I'm not sure if that can actually be done, though.
And yes, I know that "Van Buren Nebraska Orange Catfish Iridium" may be named that for perfectly logical reasons that have nothing to do with challenges. And sometimes two cachers both want to do something with a series of something-one chooses to make a challenge, while the other makes multiple caches each referencing the members of that series. That's fine-I don't mind separate cachers creativity.
But the blatant 'pick-me, pick-me' naming makes me shake my head in wonder.
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We found our first geocoin today. I have now been reading up on how to log it correctly and I might as well be reading martian!
I took it from the cache it is listed as being in so understand I need to log it as retrieved not grabbed. (if I had found it in a totally different cache I would log it as grabbed - am I right?!)
But, then it says something about other players grabbing it from you and to log the find asap... how can someone grab it from me? I literally have it in my possession. I am going to place it in a cache at the weekend... can anyone please explain what on earth all this means?!
Thank you!
Anyone else with the code can enter that and as far as the system knows, they would then have the coin. Of course, you would still physically have it in your possession, and you could grab it back, etc.
You've done it correctly for now, having listed it as you retrieving it from the cache at which you found it. Now, find another, safe,secure cache-hopefully one that will get the coin a little closer to its goal, if it has one--and leave it there. Make sure when you log your visit to that cache, that you mark the coin as being 'dropped' there, and then the next cacher can continue to move it on its way.
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These are quite cool looking. A definite possibility to try to get one for my mileage tracker for 2014!
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I hope you didn't just give away the final location to a soon-to-be-published mystery or multi-cache.
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There was one near here just a couple of months ago that gave the address, told where on the front property the cache was etc., followed all of the good avice mentioned here. The only problem was that the guy moved and forgot to archive his cache.
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Just finished up my first 100 consecutive day streak. Another 7 dys and I'll have 100 days of physical caches in Minnesota. I think I may end my streak after hitting that--especially since my daughter's wedding is in two weeks and I thinkmy wife has every minute of that week before it planned out for me.
Release Notes - September 30, 2014
in Geocaching HQ communications
Posted
If removing the 'Newest in State' feature was a planned issue, based on the results of feedback from users and messages sent to Groundspeak, then why wasn't Geocaching HQ (http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?id=41118)made aware of it so it could be included in the original post?
This sure sounds like an attempt to justify a release mistake after its been noticed.