charis_sophia

I am still 50/50 on this. I am preparing tonight and will get up at 4:00am and listen to the news and weather reports. I'll make my decision by 4:30am. I plan to go to the P&R if I go. Marcus Aurelius or TotemLake, do you have a cell phone number I can call in the morning? If for security reasons you don't want to post it here, my personal email is charis underscore sophia at yahoo dot com (spam-prevention format).

(Cross-posted from geocachingwa) Current forcast is for 2-6 inches of snow in the Puget Sound region AFTER MIDNIGHT TONIGHT (Fri). I am concerned the roads won't be cleared by 5am for the Bellevue/Willburton carpool. I have the right equipment to drive in the snow, but I'm not sure I have the driving skills. (My husband is the inclement weather driver and he's not available to go.) Two of my carpool (nudecacher and Detective Elizabeth) have already cancelled. Much as I want to go, I think I'm with evergreenhiker's likelihood of 50/50 of making it.

Am I a lurker? This is a surprisingly intriguing question to me. I don't really consider myself a lurker even though I have fewer posts than some who do. Perhaps it's because I don't comprehensively read all of the threads. Perhaps because I do post when I feel I have something to offer. But the more I think about it, the more I think I am a lurker. I haven't actually participated in hardly any of the conversations here even though I've pondered many of them and even discussed them with friends and family offline. I think that does constitute lurking. Like many who have commented in this thread, I have no desire to jump into either vitriol or the "me too"'s that go on forever. Neither constitutes interesting conversation to me. I am also reluctant to respond to a post that is already buried by other, unrelated posts even if it is something I would like to participate with. Thinking about this issue further, I wish the forums would accomodate branching threads with titles for individual posts. I would read more of them if I could browse through titles in branches to hone in on conversations that interest me without having to sort through the noise of other subthreads. I would be a more active participant with such functionality. Reading this thread has gotten me thinking about perception and forum posts, though. I have impressions of people and their character from their posts, especially regular posters such as sept1c_tank, Snoogans, and Criminal who come to mind immediately. It isn't likely that people have much of an impression of me because I haven't posted much and I only have 74 cache/TB logs. Come to think of it, forum avatars play into that, too which reminds me that I haven't successfully uploaded my greek lady picture yet. : ) Now you know some of the things I ponder about. That's a pretty good introduction for me. Peace, Friends!

Thank you, Marcus, for setting a specific meetpoint! I will be there, perhaps with additional folks. I have 5 seatbelts in my CRV and would be happy to drive or ride.

Good evening, All! I've done quite a bit of caching the past two days and noticed that the territory is very different from last June when some of these were placed. Nettles are no longer to be found, fall storms have changed tree landmarks, things previously hidden in trees are no longer, and things previously clear are now well buried in leaves. Since this sport has grown dramatically, I thought it would be worthwhile to start a topic on this. I hope it will be a reminder for cache owners to go out and check their caches (and adjust clues where needed) as well as a place for long time cachers to share their wisdom with newbies like me. : ) What interesting effects have you noted this fall so far and/or in past season changes? Peace and blessings! Charis

CurmudgeonlyGal and Gaviidae have talked me into this one for my first cache machine. (Hopefully I'll have my own GPS by then.) At this point, I plan to drive to it from Bellevue. Anyone want to carpool? I see the draft route in a map format. Is there also a list of what those caches are (i.e. waypoints)?

{sigh} I just noticed my old avatar is still showing. The one I'm trying to upload is a drawing of a lady in an ancient greek costume.

A few days ago I successfully uploaded an avatar image and it displayed nicely in the forums. I have another picture I like better so I went to change it. The upload screen showed that both old and new images were uploaded, but I couldn't ever get the second image to display on my account info page. Thinking that perhaps I could only have one at a time, I deleted the old one. My account info page showed no images uploaded. I have deleted, uploaded, and waited (in case of refresh timing) in various combinations, including uploading to the "photo" site as an alternative. I have logged out and back in. I have even rebooted. I've decided I don't understand what's going on in the background well enough to know whether I'm doing something wrong or if I've fallen into a glitch or what. It worked a few days ago. What am I doing wrong now? My picture is listed on the "upload picture" page, but not on my account info page. Could someone please point me in the right direction?

How does one get a warning? Do the moderators trigger them?

LOL!!! Thanks, everyone. I really needed this today! (And J5, you should have seen Mystery Woman's response coming. It was obvious.)

On the Dragon Hunter cache, how did you determine what game to play? I think I'm missing something here.

I wonder if we should celebrate by finally starting a new Eastside thread. ; )

Never mind! After I hit post I found them in the drop box on my screen. Now I just have to figure out how to get to them more directly. : )

Please don't take this as pestering, I'm just curious. I looked for info about it but didn't see anything. Thanks!

I'm going to regret this, but I'll ask anyway. What's the Nilbog reference? Peace be with you! charis

Good morning! While I agree that byebyecaching seems to be taking "credit" for all these, I'm not sure s/he is actually responsible. Looking through the first 35 or so, the evidence isn't compelling either way. The dates the listed caches have gone missing span from early spring to very recent, so there is time for someone to trach 200+ caches. But why wait and announce them all now? And, if one is trying to harm geocaching, why not blanket an area and trash all of the caches? It looks more like someone spent a few hours on line going systematically through all the area caches, made a list of the ones that had been trashed, and then posted them altogether with hints of culpability. Do we have a rogue? Or do we have someone trying to fan controversy? Peace be with you! charis

The primary reason is it keeps people from being able to log the bug without actually having found it. Peace be with you! charis

That is a really good idea! TBs were the first thing that interested me about geocaching and yet most of the ones I've gone looking for have not been in the caches. I was almost put off the sport right away. I think a flag would be great! I only hope that seeing a lot of MIA flags wouldn't discourage folks. Peace be with you! charis

I'm sorry to be so late, I've only just started reading the NW forum. Is this Scott-the-Bear "released" in Magnolia? My daughter and I went out twice trying to find it and were unsuccessful. We combed the area pretty thoroughly and pulled out a lot of litter, but no TB. I'm sorry, but I think it has gone missing. Peace be with you! charis

quote:Originally posted by Team GPSaxophone:You seem to know an awful lot about this whole thing for being so new to the site Well, I was interested. I found a looted cache, went to the web site, followed the clues to another cache ("Harvesting the Tide"), rescued it, had fun, and have paid attention to the pirate controversy on both their site and this one ever since. BTW, I have the same userid on both boards. : ) Peace be with you! charis

quote:Originally posted by Team GPSaxophone:I took a look over there and saw a post supposedly by Jomarac5. I saw some other names as well from here. I wouldn't trust any of those to be who they say they are. Absolutely right! The webmaster only put controls on that board a couple of evenings ago. The posts with more info under the name are likely more reliable. Everything earlier is suspect. Peace be with you! charis

quote:Originally posted by Jeremy (Admin):I find no difference between activity at piratecaching.com and any other piracy. I believe most people are fired up about _all forms of piracy_, not just the "bad kind." I respectfully think this is a mistake. I believe there will continue to be no remedy if you treat all the groups as the same with the same motivations. How can you set up disincentives if you aren't aiming at their motives? By the way, I didn't intend to make any good or bad judgements on any of it. If you feel that everything that has been lumped anyuwhere under "pirating" or similar words needs a remedy, that's great. I am simply trying to suggest ideas for how you can be effective. Good luck! Peace be with you! charis

Good afternoon! I do not need to join the private topic, but would like to go on record with a plea for that thread. Please, when you are discussing remedies for piracy, please be clear on which proposed remedies belong with which activities. Remember that you have different groups of people with different agendas on these various activities. The pirates on piratecaching.com are different from pirates who do not follow their rules are different from vandalous geo-muggles are different from thoughtless cachers are different from . . . (you get the idea). If you lump all of these together, any remedy you come up with will not change the behaviour you are trying to change. Please also be specific in what you are trying to prevent. Generalizations such as "people messing with my cache" are not helpful. You have to define "messing with". You also need to consider what the problems are by geographical region. The issues in AZ are likely not the same as the issues in BC are not the same as WA are not the same as NJ, etc. You might consider a private thread by region rather than a general one. Please be thoughtful about what you are doing. I know your feelings and/or belongings are hurt. It is perfectly understandable. That should make you more careful to prevent hurting someone else unintentionally. Good luck! I'm curious to see how it all comes out! Peace be with you! charis

Actually, it wasn't my cache that was plundered. I was planning a day trip to Anacortes and one of the caches I planned to go to had been plundered, but the clues to the location were posted on the pirates web page. It was practically on the way for me, so I decided to treat it as a multi-cache. The clues were easy to follow and the pirate trinkets were fun. According to my topo map, it was a little over 3 miles as the crow flies from the loot to the cache, maybe 5 miles by road. There are two "official" multi-caches in Anacortes that I think are spread even farther than that. The whole pirating issue really flared a week or two ago and the reaction was pretty strongly negative. Someone did mention the same point I brought up, but it wasn't picked up in discussion. I kept seeing accusations of removing caches, trashing them, and other things like that, but it seems to me that those activities aren't the pirates. I think those are pure vandalism by geo-muggles or inconsiderate cachers, but my only evidence is the lack of the pirate cards and that isn't much evidence. Of course, I tend to be the half-full glass type anyway. Peace! Charis

I'm sorry, I don't understand how the pirating is fundamentally different from any other geocaching. I am new to geocaching, so I am certainly open to feedback about this, but earlier this week I enjoyed following pirate clues and "rescuing" a cache here in Washington. Here's what I've seen: Geocaching: - find the cache - sign the log and return it to the cache - put a trade item in the cache (optional) - take something from the cache (only if put something) - rehide it where it was - log the find on geocaching.com Pirate caching: - find the cache - "sign the log" (with a sticker in the case I saw) and return it to the cache - put a card, letter, map, and some trinkets in the cache (trade items) - take all the other trade items in the cache - rehide the cache (with log) where it was - rehide the entire contents somewhere else (with additional pirate loot) - log clues on piratecaching.com for someone to find and "rescue" the contents (sometimes a delay on the clues) From a cache owner's perspective, what is the difference? The contents of the cache are intended to be traded. The pirates seem to be ultimately giving more to the game than they are taking (especially in BC) which is more than I can say for some regular geocachers (based on the contents of caches compared to the published original contents). I have chosen the spot for placing my first cache and I would like to hear comments on this before I do. What is really the controversy? What is at the root of people feeling violated? Peace be with you! charis sophia