MotorBug

I'm almost 3 years out of contract with Verizon and have decided it's time to take the plunge and get a smart phone. The iPhone is not under consideration, primarily as the phone part is the worst by far of the several smart phones I have tried. Everyone I have asked with an iPhone has said basically the phone function is poor. But clearly it has THE geocaching app. Additionally, AT&T is not very good even if available where I travel. That is why I am staying with Verizon. It has been mentioned in other threads that Groundspeak is not yet going to develop apps for other than the iPhone. Could someone there be more definitive? Maybe order what phones will be supported and when? I'm waiting for Verizon to release the Storm2. I read today that will be Oct 14th. But I will wait for the PalmPre rumored for 1Q next year on Verizon if Groundspeak has something for it in the pipeline-- or a different phone altogether for that matter. Thanks for any info.

Last week I saw three new copies of the discontinued norcal DeLorme Atlas at the Pep Boys auto store in Sunnyvale, CA. Never thought that store would be a source but perhaps there is one in your area and they have a copy. Or possible another chain auto store. The grids are different for the Golden State DeLorme (GSD) and both the socal and norcal DeLorme Atlases. So get them all cause if you are going to do one, you might as well do them all. Never go through a grid or county without a couple of caches! You will of course get the 58 county challenge by doing the GSD. And don't forget GC1TVK1, the State of Jefferson County Challenge. Some norcal counties and a few southern OR counties. And you might as well pick up to OR DeLorme Atlas since you are going to be up there. It never ends. I did it all backwards-- 1st the 58 counties, then norcal, then the remaining socal and GSD together. Of course that is the way they were published. I have been to Adin 3 times and will probably go again. As SKWERL and I joke about, "All roads lead to Adin." When you go to Adin, be sure to stop at the "The Oney Place" restaurant on the main road. You can get a large ice cream cone for about $1.35 I recall. Oh, and get a date shake at Furnace Creek in Death Valley and a fresh peach shake in Loyalton. All 5 star stuff!

That is not my experience with the ASUS 1000HA. I've had it a couple of months now and it has been rock solid, works fine bouncing around in my dusty 4x4 off-road. I find I am using it more and more and my desktop less and less. Yes, the screen is small and the keys are tight, but I soon made the adjustment. It is the perfect size and I take it with me much more than I took my other laptop. Drivers were/are no problem. Battery life is probably about 6-7 hours depending on what you are doing (mine has the 160 HD). It is slow loading Google Earth and all the stuff I have in it, but Groundspeak has removed the single most useful tool so that is not as much as an issue. I totally disagree. It is now the single most useful toy I have.

Since I think you mean the San Francisco bay area (you posted a note to one of my caches today), you will find Geocachers of the Bay Area of interest. Sign up for the site (free, no spam) and then navigate in the forums to Caching Contests. Several bay area challenges are discussed there.

Most other challenge caches are silent on this category of caches or just say that the posted coords will be used. Why not do the same thing? That is the way the two owners you referenced do it.

Has anyone been able to use the Field notes file created in the Nuvi 500 to upload found caches for logging? I see the file, geocache_visits.txt, the same name as the gc.com page says to upload, but nothing does.

It will? That would be useful. How is that accomplished? BlueNinja provided a detailed process a couple of days ago for doing a route in S&T, but I'm still trying to figure that out. Prior to that I was making the route totally with waypoints instead of the freeform tool. Have to get back to his method..... a 4 week/ 5000 mile/10 state trip starts day after tomorrow!

Need some help with this. I can make it work fine with GE so I have the concept, but no luck with S&T. I am using S&T 2006 which is not listed in the GPSBabel beta drop down menu, but it appears to convert okay. I have created a route with about 70 turns and selected Route, then selected GPX 1.1 in the output section. However, it will not upload to the gc caching along a route site. No error message, just nothing. Any ideas? Thanks.

This is a teriffic feature! I'm leaving next week on a 10 state, 5000 mile, month long trip. This will save me an enormous amount of time from creating detailed routes in Streets & Trips, many, many queries and a GSAK database of thousands. Thank you very much! EDIT: OOPS! I posted a question here (now deleted) on my first query. I discovered I made the difficulty level 3 PLUS instead of 3 MINUS. Looks like you get what you ask for! Thanks again!

While planning a trip to the mid-west, I ran a couple of PQs by state. North Dakota returned 263 caches, while Colorado returned the max 500 caches but had some blank areas when plotted. What I would like to know is, for a state that clearly has more than 500 caches, how does a PQ by state identify the 500 that are provided?

Vietnam, II Corps, 1968-69 USA, 173rd Airborne Brigade Shared a base camp with the 1st Cav for a time at An Khe, but mostly we were in the bush. Did a bit of LRRP when I was thinking of extending. If that is remotely similar to being a scout, well, good luck and stay safe. My personal connection to Iraq is a cousin's step-son in the Army was killed there last year. If I can get one coin, I will give it to her. If I can get two, I'll keep one. Three would be teriffic! Two other family members are in Iraq now, a Marine and Special Forces. Thank you for your service and sacrifice.

Well said. Different beasts, different game, notwithstanding same ownership, sorta like Ford owns Jaguar (or whatever it is this week). You don't buy a Jag and expect to get a Ford instead of a spare tire for the same price. Keep it totally separate. If it *must* be consolidated, provide an opt-out function to keep the McDs and Wal-Mart WMs from polluting the GC micro ivy hides and vice-versa. If I'm playing (and paying for) GC (or WM), I want my PM fees to support that ONE game. Right now GC is getting ripped off. A little slack is called for since WM is a beta offspring, but it must soon stand on its own. If WM is as great as some say, then a $30 annual PM fee shouldn't be a problem. That's less cost than a tank of gas for a day of GC. A bargain whichever game you choose. Keep the apples and oranges separate.

This is probably the best definition I've seen yet. I couldn't get a grasp on why someone would want to repeat a "find" on a WM from a LC point of view. The virtual analogy makes is clearer for me. Multiple logs of a WM take away from the uniqueness of the find, IMO, but I now see the distinction to play WM in a virtual manner. It's still not something that I see doing much and I wish PM fees would go to GC improvement. If WM and GC are separate as everyone keeps shouting, make them separate and charge for each, not dilute GC funding for WM. Likewise, keep the statistics separate, they are different things. Let WM stand on its own. That will settle the question as to its viability. Who knows, when I finally get tired of micros in ivy I might go for WM. In many ways I prefer LCs to other caching now. I would have preferred to see LCs, et al, grand fathered into GC but I've been getting clearer on why not, although I don't agree with the second part of the stated reason that LC logs were "near impossible" to validate. Piece of cheese with a couple of tools out there. I do it nearly every day, quickly and accurately. I've converted one of my LCs to WM. I'm waiting for Groundspeak to advise per their memo when I did convert last month: "Thanks for agreeing to list your locationless cache on the new Waymarking.com site! We have created a category based on your cache and will be sending a transfer request to you soon. Please click the link in the email to accept management of the category." I haven't seen the category on WM nor received an email link to accept management so I have just left the LC as it is and am accepting logs there. I assume I am in the queue. I closed my topic on voting. My mistake for being slightly sarcastic. At my ripe age I have learned that seldom works. I would have posted something there but no can do after closing. No big loss.

So what's your smilie?

Let's vote on WM with smilies. Maybe TPTB will get an idea if WM is like New Coke or is it really better than sliced bread. = New Coke = Better than sliced bread = Jury is still out = What, me vote? = Anything Jeremy wants = Let's fix GC first = Get Over It (by Jeremy) = The world is ending I'll start. (Smilies only please. Log your text opinion elsewhere.) --------------------------------------------------------------- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: New Coke, renamed Coke II in 1992, was the sweeter drink introduced in 1985 by The Coca-Cola Company to replace its flagship soda, Coca-Cola. Public reaction was devastating, and the new cola quickly entered the pantheon of major marketing flops. However, the subsequent reintroduction of Coke's original formula led to a significant gain in sales, which some theorize was the original purpose all along.

Borrowed a bike and going to the Mission 9 Ape cache in the morning if anyone is still interested. Leaving Vashon Island on the 7:35 am ferry for West Seattle, need about a 1/2 hour stop at a nearby cache to look for my Rx sunglasses I lost this afternoon, then to exit 54. Estimate I should be there about 10:00 am. I'll be in a dark blue Ranger pickup truck with a camper if the parking lot is a logical meeting place.

Great! I called my muggle buddy and he has two bikes that haven't been ridden for a while but should be okay for that short trip. I'm open to days-- I'll throw out Saturday in case work is a consideration or others may be able to join. We will be driving from Vashon Island so I'd guess a late morning start.

I will be there this Wednesday 8/3, departing 8/10. 5 weeks would be nice, but...... The digitalfish from here were planning on coming up for the APE cache and some others, but had to delay their trip. If a group does get put together for mid-September let them know and they might be able to join you for the fun. I'll be dropping some of their trackable sig items this trip. They have a great web site at: http://www.lynnmurphy.com/index.php where you can read all about the sig item. Also, the digitalfish designed and host our local web site, "Geocachers of the Bay Area" at: http://www.thegba.net/ which has a lot of good information if you are visiting the San Francisco bay area.

I'm visiting the Seattle area from 8/3 - 10/05 and want to do the Mission 9 Ape cache and surrounding ones. No problem walking the tunnel alone, but if there is a group, or someone who wants to do those sometime during the above time period let me know. I couldn't make the road trip with the San Jose cachers a few weeks ago with Marky, workerofwood, etc., but have been wanting to get there for some fun and the APE cache in particular. Icons, you know! I'm staying with a friend on Vashon Island and hope to cache some, not marathon, during the week. Okay, marathon if I can talk him into coming along. Thanks, MotorBug (motorbug@earthlink.net)

Well, I thought I was posting this to the SF forum, but not being here often I goofed. Can I move this thing or should I just repost there? Note added by Hemlock: I merged the extra thread in here and deleted a duplicate post.

This morning I expressed the opinion in a note to Want Fries with that? that shared/multiple FTF claims were not okay. The Petoskey Stones and I had a couple of email exchanges about that, and we sorta thought it might be interesting to see what the thoughts were here. I'm of the opinion that only one cacher can claim an FTF. TPS disagrees, and bullit has posted a log that he agrees with TPS. To paraphrase an email I sent to TPS and bullit: ---------------- Maybe we should bring it up in the forums to see what the real old timers have to say... I am a little surprised at the practice, especially among the FTF hounds. It seems to me in this cache crazy area and for the FTF hounds, FTFs are a "big" deal. We (I?) race around like crazy at all hours of the day and night just for the "bragging rights" of a FTF. Or if not bragging rights something-- I'm really not sure why I do it. Perhaps it's "The smell of a virgin log sheet drives me insane! " (or some such statement from boulter on one of his FTF logs-- priceless!) Perhaps I need to get a life. If FTF didn't matter, more work would get done, more sleep would be had, and fewer dinosaurs would be wasted. It just seems to me first is singular. I haven't looked it up, but I bet that is the definition. Why do we all have PQs that we check constantly if not for the FTF? ------------------------------------------------------------ If I claim an FTF all the times I was a close second, I owe far more new caches than I already do according to Marky's Rule of FTF replacement (at least that's what I call it.)

Congratulations to stbk on his one-year anniversary AND find # 600! He picked a great cache for those milestones!

3.5 years, USA in the '60s. MOS 71542. Mostly airborne, mostly overseas. Found a very interesting travel bug about the airborne called Airborne T-10 Parachute which asked for the finder's military story. Mine is here.

I was out caching one day with a friend, "The Rat." I had just started and at that time was using my email name. We met a couple of other cachers and the introductions convinced me that I needed a name that wasn't so boring and could be remembered. So I thought about what I was interested in-- motorcycles, travel, and travel bugs among other things, and MotorBug was born. Now if I could just solve a few more of The Rat's puzzles....

Hi Joe, Well, well, what an interesting and informative thread. First let me express my thanks for the way in which you have maintained the cache since I handed it over to you last June. I took a break from even looking at it for a few months as it was a consuming thing. When GC gave me the cache last February (it had obviously been abandoned from the start) it was a mess. Many duplicate logs, horrible photos, or no photos, bad coordinates, no coordinates, non-qualifying targets, no GPSr in photo, etc. I tried to clearly state on the cache page what was required, then spent a lot of time working with people to fix their logs. In some cases they were deleted, depending on a number of things, but I always sent an email telling why. I got some grief for that. I also got some thanks for that. It was a lot of work and hours, but it was also rewarding. As you know, it still had some problems when you took it. You have fine tuned "the dasher" as I called it, increased the watch list, and have put up some great targets. I know the time and effort you are making is substantial. If for no other reason you are entitled, and to my way of thinking, obligated (as am I for the two LCs I still have) to "enforce" the rules. That's the nature of a "game." I appreciate it when the rules are enforced on the LCs I log. That makes it a fair game and worth looking at the logs. I don't bother to look at the LCs that while interesting, are poorly managed. There are a couple of really great LCs out there besides yours for not only targets, but the management. The Bells of El Camino Real by Parsa and anything by Anton are my favorites. I still have to work with folks on my current LCs concerning their logs, photos, coordinates, etc. That's fine, but I wish people would at least check to see if the target has been previously logged. A duplicate log is the number one reason I delete a log. With boulter's distance finder, linked on your cache page and mine, that is a slam dunk to determine if the target is available. I also require a legible photo. I have accepted a few "bad" ones, but part of the game is taking a picture to not only prove you were there, but to show everyone an example of the target. I also require coordinates that are at least plausible. All these things are stated on the cache page. I check every log for compliance. Sure, someone can still cheat, but I have at least tried to maintain the quality. An LC can be quite entertaining, educational, and informative if the logs are good. I think part of the reason so many people watch the dasher is not only the opportunity to make a find, but to see some interesting stuff. I know I do. It boils down to standards and rules I guess. As you do, I put in a lot of time and effort into maintaining my LCs. All I want back is a log in compliance with the requirements stated on the cache page. Regards, MotorBug