Happy Bubbles

It's definitely not Japanese, I can tell you that much. Those are Chinese characters, but they don't seem to be making Chinese words. I googled a few of them and got nothing. If "夫存国" (the last part of the bottom row) was a real word or name, it would have turned up a ton of hits on the search engine, wouldn't it? The frequency of the characters is wrong, too. There are thousands of characters used in Chinese writing, but I counted quickly and saw only 31 unique characters here. Normally in Chinese you would see a greater variety of characters. In the main body of the text, excluding the lower part, I counted 23 different characters, which could mean it's a substitution for English letters, but adding in the bottom row means there are more characters here than there are letters in the English alphabet. I thought it could be a list of names with the bottom row being the title of a group or institution, but these don't look like characters normally used in names. Hmmmmmm.

I was happy to see that the cache I was planning to find yesterday had a coin. Yay! Something fun to look at, and in a micro no less! But I was disappointed to find the cache and discover that the "coin" was just a piece of paper with a picture of a coin on it. Booooring. I totally would have moved a real coin, but that card didn`t interest me. If people don`t care to make a tiny investment in a real object for their traveler, I`m not going go to invest any effort in moving it to another cache! Am I the only one that thinks like this? What do the rest of you think of these wannabe-coins?

I do not advocate dropping a throw-down in every case, but only under certain conditions, as outlined in the post you quoted. Why are you trying to pick a fight? As for the ONE time I have done so, GCN4RC : How did I know it was really missing? Because it was a 1-star cache with very few DNFs that had suddenly started getting nothing but DNFs, AND a previous finder had revisited the site and confirmed it was missing. Because I couldn`t find it? Because I thought this is where the cache was? Yes, actually, again because of a previous finder. Someone explicitly said "it`s under the mailbox." There is only one mailbox at that location. "Why should we waste our time with a DNF option?" I log all my DNFs. Then I go back later and search for the cache again, maybe find it, maybe log another DNF. As for this cache, I was done with it. Next time I`m in Kyoto I`ll do a maintanence check, but I don`t need to see it on my list of unfound caches. "Logging a find when in reality you did not find it, misleads others to believe the cache is still there, up and running." There is no misleading in this case because now there IS a cache to be found. In the last year and a half dozens of cachers have found the replacement cache I hid and all of them have written positive logs. "Logging a "find" when there is no cache to find is obsurd." Absurd, you mean? I don`t think so. I`m a very visual person, and I rely on the gc.com google maps when I check an area I will be traveling to. Now when I look at Kyoto, GCN4RC turns up as a smiley face. Leaving it as a box would have me clicking on it all the freaking time because I would think it`s a cache with something left for me to find there. I don`t want to ignore it, because I want it to come up on my search results and it`s a good reference point - when I look at my map, I can quickly find Gion thanks to that smiley face. I don`t give a rat`s patootie about my total number of finds; 284 is the same as 283 as far as I`m concerned. So I`ll take a slightly inaccurate find count in order to have my map the way I like it. It`s my account, and I`ll manage my information however I like.

Other than caching, the main thing I use my GPS for is when I go running or hiking and want to keep track how far and how quickly I'm going. I'm thinking of getting a new unit to replace my old etrex Summit, and I was wondering if anyone has suggestions for units that are good for both caching and running. Any thoughts?

Post a Should be Archived log. It might be the kick in the pants the owner needs to get up and do something about the cache. If not, the reviewer will wait a few weeks and archive the cache. Then, if you really think it's a spot that needs the cache, you can hide one there yourself. Replacing the cache container yourself is an option, but one that should be reserved for certain circumstances. I've done it once, and in that situation: 1. I knew exactly where it was supposed to be 2. It was a really good cache, with a long well-written description of the very interesting area it was in 3. It was in a city that gets lots of tourists, including many cachers, but had few caches to be found 4. It had a long history, with interesting logs and photos from cachers all over the world 5. It was a bit too far away for me to easily maintain my own hide in that place Usually, replacing a neglectful owner's cache just leads to the same problem all over again. The container will eventually disappear again, the DNFs and NMs will pile up, and you'll once again face the decision of whether you should do anything. Unless there's a good reason to keep that particular cache listing alive, it's usually best to just let it die. If it's your container and you're the one doing the maintanence, why let someone else take the credit on the "Hidden by . . ." line? Hide one yourself, get that star on your map and be the one who gets the contact emails and the one with the power to disable, re-enable, etc. Regarding question #2, if you do choose to replace someone else's cache, logging it as a find is your own call. Purists will say that you did not find the cache and did not sign the log and therefore should not get a smiley, but in my view if I've been to the location and done everything there is to do and would have signed the log if there was one, I might as well get the red checkmark for that cache on my search page.

http://boudinot.wordpress.com/ Exciting! I hope I can get my hands on some of these stories! And I really hope they don't disappear as quickly as some of the TBs I've seen . . .

For the railroad station cache, be sure to email your reviewer beforehand or at least add a note on the cache page making it clear that the cache is not on active railroad tracks. The reviewers won`t publish caches that are too close to tracks, and sometimes the maps they use to check are really outdated.

No weasels here . . .

Sweet! Thanks!

Does there need to be .1 mile separation between a webcam cache and a traditional cache? Or, since there is no physical cache at the webcam location, can they be closer together? I am of course referring to the grandfathered webcam caches; I am well aware that new webcams will not be approved.

Some Japanese cachers use automatic translation programs to translate their text from Japanese to English, and the results are terrible! Sometimes it's so bad it's almost impossible for a native English speaker to understand what they're talking about. It makes it difficult for foreign hunters to understand the cache descriptions, and I recently saw a mis-reading of a machine-translated cache description contribute to the archiving of a cache. I understand Japanese pretty well and occasionally do translation work as part of my job, and I've considered contacting some of these cachers and offering to help them write better English descriptions for their caches. But I don't know any of them personally, and I'm worried that it would be rude of me to contact them out of the blue and criticize their cache pages. What should I do? 多くの日本人キャッシャーが、機械翻訳を使って日本語を英語にします。しかし、機械翻訳プローグラムの英語はいつもすごくおかしいです。時々キャッシュページの英語はネーティブスピーカーが分かれないぐらいおかしいです。私は仕事で時々和英翻訳をします。最近この機械翻訳を使うキャッシャーをメッセージして、キャッシュページの英語を手伝いしようかなあと思っているけど、いきなり知らない人にメッセージをするのが失礼でしょう。どうしたらいいでしょうか？

Whoo-hoo! I was hoping for an option like this for a while. Thanks! Edit: Ooooo, just noticed that this cache ( http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...94-0a5761383c58 ) is listed under "Tokyo" when it`s clearly in Kyoto - that`s a big difference! Is there any way to fix this sort of thing other than to email the cache owner?

1. Write a log for the travel bug page, choosing "grab it from somewhere else" on the drop down menu. 2. Write a note on the page for the cache you found it on, "leaving" the travel bug as you do so. 3. Delete your note on the cache page. The bug page will still show the mileage. 4. Log it again on the bug page, choosing "Retrieve from [the cache you found it in]"

Did you change them back already? They look fine to me.

Be careful not to be too aggressive in your wording; wouldn't want the reviewers to deny your cache for promoting an agenda.

Yeah, the ninth cache would fall into the "blue question mark" Mystery category that encompasses puzzles and challenge caches. You choose a set of false coordinates within a couple of miles to be posted on the cache page, and in the cache description you describe how to find the real coordinates.

Reviewers can unarchive caches, but they won`t do it if they don`t meet the cache guidelines at the time of unarchiving. So if someone hid a new cache within 500 feet of where your old one was, they won`t do it, and if a grandfathered cache like a webcam or virtual gets archived it`s gone forever.

Oh, it looks like that other cache is hidden by a pack of cub scouts. It`s curmudgeonly of me, I know, but I cringe when I see caches hidden by a group of kids. They lose interest quickly and then you have neglected caches like this one. I wonder if the "pack" has a leader who is a regular cacher with another handle? Another drawback of a cache hidden by kids is that it makes me feel guilty when I steal the cache, post a DNF and SBA and then put my own cache in its place.

If you both search for it at the same time, be sure to ask her if she wants to you to tell her where it is if you find it first. Some people like to find things for themselves, in which case you should ignore the cache if you find it and give the other person a chance to find it on her own before you both sign it.

Two, both of them mine.

I like the word muggle, and will continue to use it.

11 in each row, times 11 rows = 121 per mile Oh wait, 10 square miles? Lessee, a square area with an area of 10 miles would have a sides that are the length of the square route of 10, or 3.162 miles. Start at the zero mark on one side and drop a cache every .1 miles, and you could fit in 32 caches. 32 caches per row times 32 rows would be 1024. It depends on the shape of your ten square miles. If, instead of a perfect square, you had a strip one mile wide and ten miles long, you could fit eleven caches along the width of each row for 101 rows, or 1010 caches. The narrower your area is, the more room you have along the edges, and the more edge room you have the more caches you can squeeze in.

I'm a radius slave, but that's because there is so little within my radius. There are only 11 caches within 50 miles of me, and I either own or have found all of them. If anything new were published within my radius, you can bet I'd be off to find it whether or not the cache itself seemed attractive to me.

Translation for non-Japanese speakers: Is there a way to delete a cache page that hasn`t been published yet?

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