CacheCreatures

While I agree that the Axim is a great choice for PL caching, I'd ask why you preface it with the "only for caching" label RK? I use mine for work and love it. Yeah it is huge (X5) but because of that I seem to treat it with more respect and thus it seems not to get broken. All my smallish toys seem to disappear or break right away. Anyway, I'd have to vote for the Axim. I've got the extended battery and it will last all day. Also, pop on over to the GPS Units and Software board. Lotsa good info there.

My wife and I recently hid our first cache. We are both animal lovers (Mrs. CC is a vet tech and volunteers regularly). We hid this cache in the hopes that other animal lovers might come and visit some needy cats and dogs. We also hoped that not-so animal lovers might come and find they have room in their hearts for a fuzzy friend after all. I guess ultimately, we hold a secret hope that someone might actually visit this shelter because of our cache, and find a cat or dog they can't be without. Today, it looks like we might have succeeded (see the cache log). So this prompted me to wonder if anyone else has visited an area or local because of a cache, and found something more than they expected; in a positive life altering way. Where did you go? How did it change you? I realize caching in general has changed all our lives for the better, but what about a specific cache?

I love seeing unique names for dogs and cats at work. It is great when there is a story to go with a cool name. Now this is my kind of topic, ok here are my suggestions: Cito (for Cache in Trash out) Tuppie / Tupper (for tupperware container) Navi (for Navigate) Hunter Datum I'll keep thinking... By the way, she is adorable, CONGRATS! *If you need any puppy advice, just ask!

Hey Leprechauns, why bother posting? Is it somehow beneath you to have fun? Lighten up! This is supposed to be fun, remember? Not everyone has 1600+ posts and has been reading the forums for years.

You know you're addicted to Geocaching when.... *You see a commercial for the new "Folgers AromaSeal Canister" and think "Wow, that would make a great cache container!" *You are considering buying a new car and before you worry about airbags you think....is this a good caching vehicle for a terrian 5? *A dollar store is exciting. *You plan your vacation with cache density in mind. Add to it! How your geocaching addiction enters your daily life in odd way.

Agreed! What an adventure. Although, I've got to ask... do you live in a small-ish town or something? If I tried pulling anything like what your describing your students did, I would have been in detention my entire life and when I died the administration would expect me to come back for community service. I grew up in the Bay Area and the overwhelming majority of teachers here are so bound by "The Book" they forget how to make education fun (no offense to any BA teachers, its just what I've seen). Anyway, keep up the good work! It seems your students are learning how to learn, how to be respectful and yet still enjoy what school has to offer. Thanks for sharing!

Or, they don't like you after all and there is no second part. You'll just be searching and searching and searching... Seriously though, that is a great story. It sounds like you've been able to connect with kids at a stage in their lives when they typically don't like to connect with anyone. You've got a gift for sure.

I just had a feeling many geocachers came from an EQ (or similar) background. Something about the two concepts just seem so much the same. I actually played on many different servers. Oowomp was the big quest ogre in Timorous Deep. He dropped all that chipped bone stuff and the batskull earing. He was perpetually camped. Jabar by the way is what peoples pets always seemed to be named. Mrs. CC and I are so glad we've become addicted to something far more healthy. Everything EQ wasn't for us (or for that matter TV or other video games), geocaching is.

Oh my. That is one beautiful piece of software. Thanks for the tip Rosco. Geo, I agree with you. Actually, the nature of your application lends itself to a staying-open approach. Just minimize when not needed, and page to it when it is needed. I see no reason to change that. If anything I think what I was seeing was an "undesirable feature" (aka a bug), that by the way is still unreproducible.

Ahh excellent! I didn't realize the tap and hold option. Thanks! One thing you said confused me: How does one skip POI maps? To the best of my knowledge, the POIs are included in the county maps. Is this not true? Also, that brings up another question. What if I don't know the county name of where I'm heading? Lets say I want to navigate to a cache located outside of the map region I've got loaded. I think when I try it now it navigates using some base map, however the detailed map isn't loaded. As for the exiting issue, I'm not using any special battery meter or closing application. However, when I uninstalled and reinstalled the problem was fixed. You may want to give that a go. Thanks again!

Alright, I know... I've read the official statement. "On May 3rd, a container of goodies was hidden by a someone outside of Portland, Oregon" yadda yadda yadda... Now the truth: One day, this guy was playing Everquest. He had just completed a 19 hour camp that included 4 corpse runs, 1 level demotion, 3 kill steals, 1 run in with a guy named D'Veers, and a bag of loot split 58 ways. Wiping the crust from eyes that hadn't blinked in over an hour he rubbed his hands, trying to bring feeling back into his carpel tunneled wrists. As he sat back he began to think to himself that there must be a better way to spend his time. The next day at work, after being written up yet again for saying "/bonk" to his boss, he realized this has gone to far. He asked himself, what is it I like best about EQ? Is it the scenery? Is it the quests? Is it the endless travel running around looking for a dadgum piece of useless junk? And then, it hit him. "LOL!" he exclaimed "BRB AFK" was all that was heard as he ran out the door. Today, we now have the result of his epiphany. We now have a quest system that doesn't stink. One where, when we find a broken part, we have the power ourselves to either fix it, or inform those who can, and we actually get a response! We now have stars that tell us how hard it will be to find that useless piece of junk! Never again must we sit in one spot playing "/gems" for hours on end waiting for the spawn! Free we are! Free! That man's name is unknown. Some say it is Jabar, other say it is Owoomp. Still others think he was some sort of priest of discord. Regardless, his legacy is geocaching. I thought you should know.

Geo, file(s) on the way. The uninstall/reinstall has (for now) fixed the problem. I'll try and pay attention to what I do when I do it, in attempts to figure out what went wrong. Believe me, if it can be broken I'll break it I started my software engineering career as a software tester (aka software breaker). Ahhh how those sw engineers hated to see me coming down the hall... dadgum I miss those days

Hi Geo! Thanks for the quick response. Let me walk you thru my exact steps, just to see if I'm doing something wrong: 1) Open GPXSonar 2) Select the .gpx file (its the only one currently on my Axim X5) 3) Wait for a bit while it loads 4) Select a cache from the list by tapping and holding 5) Select "Cache Details" 6) This opens IE with all the details 7) Close IE (using the "X") NOTE: If I leave open IE and skip to step 9 I get the same results. 8) My desktop is now shown. 9) Start->GPXSonar 10) Loop back to step 2. This happens every time now. What am I doing wrong? Edit: Added Note to step 7

Clown, indeed that is the key. It is blank because the Destination field is also blank! Plug in a destination, and up comes the range value. We've now used this setup for 10 caches and have found every one. The Range field will get us as close as 7 feet. So far, that has led us right to the spot. Also, now that we have a few caches under our belt with this setup, I can say that between the RhinoSkin and Aquapak, this setup seems nearly as ready for the elements as our GPS V was. Don't get me wrong, we wont be dropping it out the window flying down the street at 35mph, but it will (and has!) certainly survived a few drops and some serious water (we took it out in a huge rainstorm today with no problems!)

Hiya all. Well the great PDA/CF GPS experiment is working out wonderfully for us! Its been exactly what we were hoping it would be. Now that I've had a chance to play around, I've got a few advanced type questions I'm hoping you can help out with: 1) GPXSonar: Every time I switch to it (using PPC03) it asks me to load the gpx file. This can be a bit frustrating as I'll look at "Cache Details" then close IE and find GPXSonar needs to be reloaded, and the file along with it. We then have to wait the 30 seconds for the file to load... ect... I seem to recall remembering this isn't the way it first worked. Any thoughts? 2) Mapopolis: Can categories of landmarks be deleted? It can take a very long time to search for caches because if I have a lot of maps loaded, it wants to search/organize all the landmarks each time I use the search function. 3) Mapopolis: If the answer to 2 is no, how do you search for caches quickly? I use the Tools-?Find->Place by Category or Tools->Navigation->Find Route->Select Landmark. Each of these methods loads the entire landmark database each time I use it. I like the Tools->Maplets feature, but there is no way to enter a search string (you need to look manually for the name). Thanks in advance guys!

AHHH a breath of fresh air! Thanks Brian!

Somehow we never posted on this topic before, so I will now: Me: Veterinary Technician Him: VP/Software Eng: Robotics Dog: Faithful, fuzzy companion and cache sniffer We cache whenever possible: afterwork, weekends, vacations, and sometimes on lunch breaks.

Ok, keep in mind the following: I'm a software engineer, used to P4 2GHz + speed, having unlimited storage space, large readable screens, essentially no need for paper (except those pesky user manuals...) Remember, keep the above in mind. My wife and I have used a V for 3 months now. Its defiantly one rock solid unit. Just holding it, you get the feeling it could survive a nuclear attack. However, we cant shake the feeling its a bit outdated. Route calculation can take quite some time, we cant fit our normal driving area in the limited memory (about 2/3 of the SF Bay Area fits leaving significant gaps), the screen can be a bit small to try and read while driving, holding signal inside or under serious cover (even with WAAS) is hit or miss... basically, having seen today's computing power and resources has spoiled us to the point where the V feels like a step backward. We recently acquired a PPC'03, a XTrack dual mode CF GPS (this thing holds signal EVERYWHERE, truly the future of consumer grade GPS's), an 8 hour battery, and various caching/GPS apps; all for about the same $$ as the GPS V Deluxe package (eBay is a wonderful thing). One major drawback is the durability; one drop and its all over for this setup. But ziplock bags and a rhino case would go a long way toward evening that playing field. Just one, very spoiled person's take on the V.

Come now Watts... what fun is that!?! Ok here is a screenshot: This might work, but you'll probably notice that some key info is missing. Oh, and FYI here is a shot of waypoints (called "Landmarks") look like: I forgot about a recommendation I received a while ago for a program called GPS Tuner. That definately will do the job. However, there doesn't seem to be a nice way to add the waypoint directly (without manually typing it in)

Hi Guys! Well it all arrived today! So far I'm in love. Here is what I've got Dell Axim X5 running PPC03 Fortuna Pocket XTrack Dual Mode CF GPS Card Mapopolis 4x Navigator Package GPXSonar to manage GPX files on the Axim I've figured out how to convert the GPX format into MLP and load it into Mapopolis. This is indeed a very nice way to manage waypoints. I'm learning how to quickly find the desired location and navigate to it. The issue I can't seem to resolve though, is what to do after Mapopolis gets me close. I see the GPS screen in Mapopolis, but its missing (I think) some pretty key info. That is, distance from the location, and current accuracy. Am I misunderstanding the GPS screen? If its not what I should be using, what do you use? I realize a separate GPS would work, but I really REALLY don't want to do that. Maybe there's a different application I should use? If there is a different app to use, how do you transfer the coords into it? Ahh I'm pumped! Thanks in advance for the help guys! Mr. CC

Hi there. I'm sure this is a very old question, but for some reason the searches I did on the form didn't show any results. So, what do you use as an off road pointer on your PDA? I plan to buy an Axim, run it with a CF GPS card and Mapopolis. The FAQ on Mapopolis don't directly address this. What I'm basically looking for is that trusty bearing and heading pointer, distance from reading and any other helpful info on one screen. Thanks for the help!

Much has been said regarding the durability of PDA units "in the field." Given their relative fragile-ness when compared to true GPS units, what provisions have you made to protect your PDA? I'm going paperless and just bought an Axim. I plan to use it with a CF GPS card. I was thinking of using a neck strap to try and prevent dropping it. Any other suggestions?

A recent post on a topic I thought I knew something about has convinced me I need to become more lurker-like. That and Mrs. CC reminded me of a policy I had to adopt years ago; one that has probably saved my job more than once. That is, the instant I feel compelled to reply to something even remotely based on opinion rather than fact, I need to unplug the keyboard for at least 8 hours. I'm too quick to judge. I make my mind up and never look back. Not good, especially in a forum such as this. If, after the "thought time" I still feel compelled to post, I can. Usually I don't feel the need, and on the rare time I do, I end up saying something far more constructive and to the point than I would have. As a result, I will sit back and attempt to listen. My hope is to watch an evolution here. I'd love to see something positive for all come out of this open discussion, one that I might add the TPTB seem willing to foster. We recently turned a couple on to GC.com. It saddened us when we had to warn them about this forum. I don't think any of us want that.

Well as usual, every time I choose to open my eyes I learn something. You're right, this is a young sport. You're right, the numbers might be less compelling that I think, and even so, its a sort of mute point. Perhaps presentation is everything. If the "whiny" argument was presented without the whiny-ness TPTB might be more willing to listen? In that light, do you think these boards are doing more harm that good? Meaning, even if someone has a great point, the disagreeable nature of the presentation might turn off the powers that might be listening? I dunno. I for one, sincerely hope this sport flourishes, and that we posters don't end up shooting ourselves in the foot.