slukster
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Posts posted by slukster
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To give a different perspective on why someone would do this: I actually maintain 3 accounts on here. This one for myself and two for my occasional caching partners: my mom and boyfriend. When we come back from caching, I log my finds first and try to write something tailored to each cache experience, but then I have to log the same caches again for someone else. I run out of things to say. Occasionally I'll add something my mom or boyfriend said about the cache ("This is my favorite one we found today!" or "That's a cool container."). But sometimes, I just have nothing to add from their perspective other than "found this with GraceThalia".
Grace,
I do this with my 6 yr old son's account. I like to write long logs and I write the logs for my son. I usually write our logs to tell a story as if we were both together telling the story to someone. I write his logs from a kids perspective and try to take his mood or something he said during the trip and use it to form a log. So if I wrote in my log "The path to GZ was really muddy so I had to pick up my son to get him to the cache without him getting stuck in the mud" I might then write for him "Dad carried me to the cache. I really wanted to walk through the mud. It would have been more fun. Dad said he didn't want me to get muddy. Party pooper daddy" I haven't involved him with writing the logs yet but occassionally read what I wrote for him. He usually gets a kick out of it. I always enjoy going back and reading the logs on the caches we found together. Since the logs are usually pretty descriptive I am able to remember the experience and have a good laugh all over again. When he gets old enough to log his own caches I hope he enjoys looking back at "his" logs.
I have a handful of what I consider really good caches and always look forward to people finding them in hopes of a good log. I am definately dissappointed when I get the "TFTC" or completely blank log. I often have a hard time finding something to say about lame caches but I never leave TFTC logs.
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I set up my son's own account last year when he turned 5 but I do all of the logging for him (obviously
). I know one day he will be logging his own so I figured it was best to start keeping track of them now instead of having to go back through years of my logs to figure which caches he was with me for. Since I write very descriptive logs, including listing all who accompanied me, it was easy to go back and find the caches that he was with me for so I could log them for him. I write all of his logs from a kids perspective and usually relate his log to my log as if we were telling a story together. Here is "his" log for his first cache:This was my first geocache. My dad says I was really excited but I was only 2 so I don't remember it but I do love geocaching now. I see my dad took a picture of me with my bunny ears I made at school for Easter. How embarrassing.
And here was my log:
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LUID=a1ae5581-18e3-40d4-b796-8c285834da13
Now my 3 yr old daughter doesn't have an account yet but has found a bunch with us so it might be time soon to sign her up!
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Funny that I come across this topic seeing that I just deleted a duplicate log a few minutes ago. I usually pick up on the duplicate logs when I check my email notifications and see the two emails from the same cacher on the same cache. Many times the cacher has already deleted the duplicate log by the time I check the cache page. Sometimes people have logged their TB's with a second found it log instead of a note. I ALWAYS follow up after deleting a log to inform the cacher as to why I deleted their log. In the case of the TB logs I usually email them first to inform them that they can change it to a note. I have never had any negative feedback from any cacher and most respond with a thanks. I believe it is smart phone logging that is causing an increase in duplicate logs (I seem to come across them more frequently now since the GC app was released). I also have found that most are from newbie's.
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I have a cache that is in a small rock formation that you have to hop across a small stream which runs along a fence in order to get to it. There is a trail along the fence but you wouldn't see the cache as you walked by. A new friend of mine had gotten me into rock climbing and I had casually mentioned geocaching to him. About a month later he said that he thinks he found one of those "thingys" I had told him about. When he descibed the park and the location I realized he found my cache! He was looking for areas to go bouldering at and it seems my secret hiding spot wasn't as secret as I thought.
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Cycled quite a few trails. Cycling on a power trail is kinda sloppy (caches short distances apart) because as soon as I get clipped in and going I'm stopping, unclipping and off again. Those trails are usually best for walking.
Biking in mountainous parks can be fun though, particularly if you are only focused on a few caches along the way.
It's one of those things -- where two activities I enjoy are sometimes not terribly enjoyable together.
I agree with you. I have't done a power trail but a couple of nice size trails with caches every .1 - .2 miles apart. The first one I stopped at everyone and the clipping in and out and stopping so quickly made it a little less enjoyable. I like to ride at a good pace so stopping and going wasn't my thing. I probably would have been better off hiking it. But the second trail I did I found every other cache and found the others on the way back so that I rode for a bit longer between stops.
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I came across this Groupon for the Oregon 450t for $249 with free shipping. Not too bad considering the 450 is selling for $199.
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It sounds like you found this Groupon. The Oregon 450 was going for $199 this Black Friday so $249 for the 450t isn't a bad deal.
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Dicks Sporting Goods
Oregon 450 - $199.98
Etrex 20 Topo + Case bundle - $199.98
Sportsman's Wharehouse
Oregon 450 - $199.99
Montana 650 - $449.99
I don't have the Adscan for their Black Friday deals but here is a link to the www.bfads.net page showing the deals.
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It's that time of the year again. Post your Black Friday deals on GPSr's
Gander Mountain - Dakota 20 Topo + Case bundle - $179.99 (after $50 mail-in-rebate)
Gander Mountain - Etrex 20 Topo + Case bundle - $179.99 (after $60 mail-in-rebate)
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I used to use a online HTML editor for my cache pages and they looked great on the computer but a few cachers emailed to let me know that their paperless units came up blank or with unreadable HTML when viewed. At first I thought tough luck, I like to make pretty cache pages (and I didn't have a paperless unit so I couldn't feel their pain), but working with one of the cachers I realized what part of the HTML was causing the problem (the HTML editor was designed for ebay listings and always used unecessary "Table" tags which was causing the problem). I removed them and still had my pretty cache pages and kept my local cachers happy. And now that I have an Oregon I can understand where they were coming from.
Here are a couple of mine. Nothing too crazy. I like to use different colors and font sizes and almost always include a pic that is relevent to the hide.
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=a4571015-3ec6-4a54-a68e-4377d7c8e1a0
This one was meant to be annoying thus the tough to read font. I didn't purposely made the description using .jpeg files in order to piss people off. It was the only way I could get the effect I was going for.
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=8ef0e0e9-11b6-4466-a925-2258272f8a8f
I am sure not everyone appreciates this but I often like to tell a story in my description (and I appreciate reading other's stories as well). Since I usually read the cache pages of the caches I plan to seek before heading out(and I am not a huge numbers run cacher) I don't get frustrated with having to read through a long description to get to the nitty gritty.
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=8717e092-e6fd-4545-b58c-591f2efa68b0
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I would never send a thank you to someone just for favoriting my cache but I have sent a note to cachers who have shared a humorous or interesting story or picture in their log, whether it was on my cache or another cache.
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I have been caching with my 2 1/5 yr old daughter and 5 yr old son and they both enjoy it tremendously. I like to take them out hiking in the local parks/ reservations which have wide open access road trails so that there is lots of room for them to run around without worrying too much about them falling down on a single track trail. When it is just the three of us I usually bring along a jogging stroller and towards the end of the hike they usually trade off riding in the stroller and either walking or being carried by me. I prefer to be back to the car before I have to start carrying them but I push the limits some times. We have also been going out with a family that we are all friends with so the kids get along great and I get to hang out with one of my buddies. The kids usually can last longer when there are other kids with us and they have fun competing to find the cache. Getting the kids out in the great outdoors at an early age is important to me so hopefully they will learn to appreciate being outdoors and enjoy it as much as I do.
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I have been bringing my son geocaching since he was 2 (he was in a stroller and had no clue what was going on but when I opened up the cache he was very excited about the toys). Now that he is 5 I have been taking him and his little 2.5 yr old sister with me and they both can't get enough of geocaching. I have been surprised that they haven't ever gotten really dissappointed when we found a micro cache with nothing in it. It is all part of my plan to get the kids out hiking in the local parks. Start them off young and hopefully they will continue their love of the outdoors. I have also been bringing along some friends of theirs (and their dad who is my friend) which sometimes turns into a competition for who is going to find the cache first. It has been a great experience so far. Most of the caches I have brought them to are ones I have found already so I know there will be no dissappointment in not finding them. My son has 67 finds so far and his first hide is right near his school so we check on it regularly. My wife hasn't signed on and has no interest in geocaching (although she is very happy the kids are enjoying themselves and she will go if I asked her to) so it ends up being the kids and my special time together and "mommy" time for her when we are out.
So suggestions for your situation? Can you talk them into going for a walk in the park without mentioning geocaching? If so, bring them down a trail that will lead past a geocache and then take a detour when you get there. Suggestions to scope out geocaches before hand and then bring them to the larger ones with goodies in them is the best advice. Forget about the rest of the family. Make it special time with your daughter and like others have said, she will go where you will take her, like it or not.
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I recently got an ipad. When I go to view larger map and get the map with nearby caches I cannot click on the cache icons. With windows on my laptop, desktop or even my droid phone I can click on a cache icon and see the cache name and other information. With the IPad I might get the information after I click on the icon 5 or 6 times. Is there a way around this problem or can I just not use that feature with my IPad?
I have this same problem on my laptop. It seems that I have to put my cursor just right over the icon and have the name of the cache show up before I can click on it. Very annoying. I have this issue with my desktop at work as well. Anybody else besides the two of us?
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Two weeks ago I submitted two caches to be reviewed on the same day. One under my account, the other as a first hide for my 5 yr old son. His cache is a 1/ 1.5 that is on a median across the street from his school. The cache is far enough away from the school and there are trees that partially camouflage seekers, so nobody looking out of the school should be suspicious. I posted a reviewer note prior to submission saying this and it got published without question.
My cache, a 2.5/ 3 which is 16ft up in a tree in a public park, received a reviewers note asking me to describe in detail the type of container and how it was hidden. This was the first time I had ever been questioned on a cache after 98 hides. The cache page and hint clearly say that it is up in a tree so I suspect he was looking for how it was attached to the tree. I more than happily answered his questions and the cache was published.
Take a look at both caches and maybe you can see what triggered the reviewer note on one and not the other.
Well said A Team. I have over 10 years in this sport and over 330 hides. If I received that sort of note from my reviewer I'd happily answer his questions, and on all future submissions I'd address them in a note to reviewer so he didn't have to ask again. I don't feel entitled to special treatment because I have a certain number of hides or years in the game.
I don't know exactly what drove the reviewer in question to add that note as a part of the review process, but I have noticed a huge increase in the past couple years of the percentage of cache owners who check that box saying they read and understood the guidelines, but obviously did no such thing. Unfortunately, as with many other things in life, the responsible have to pay for the actions of the irresponsible.
+1 After having received the reviewers note this is exactly what I was thinking. The same way I posted a note on my son's cache about the proximity to the school (knowing it might be seen as an issue), I will make it my goal to provide as much info as possible to the reviewer so that they don't have to question my cache.
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I have this cache which the security guards are well aware of and seem to have fun helping cachers out finding it:
As we approached this one, there were tons of muggles that we had to wait out and avoid. One of them was a security guard who was taking in the view of everybody so we tried really hard to not look like we were searching for something. DCM went in to look in one area and then was warned by LM that The security guard is coming! The security guard is coming! We quickly started to turn away and try to evacuate when the guard yelled out, Hey there, did you find it yet? What a relief that was! When we replied no, he went around to a better angle, made the retrieval and then even offered to replace it as we continued to talk about where we were from and this crazy hobby. He was the friendliest and most helpful guy and wanted us to be sure to put in the logs that if the next seekers cant find it, be sure to look for him and he will love to help! New Yorkers are awesome and we are loving this city. Thanks for another POPS cache!TFTC and to Antony the security guard, after a quick search, I saw the security guard looking at me, then smiling, then asking : "Did you find it ?". We had a short talk, I tried to show him how Geocaching works on an Iphone..Saw not only Anthony, but another security guard, Richard, who were both helpful and enthusiastic about helping. Not really needed, but always good to have security on your side!
Anthony
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I used to release my caches one at a time, even if I had several lined up to be published. There are a group of about 8 FTF hounds in my area and I liked to give everyone a fair shot at the FTF on each cache. Often, if the caches were all in the same park, I would put a note on the cache page saying that I would be releasing others shortly and if you weren't coming for the FTF then you should wait a couple of days for all of them to be released. After having cached for a while and realized what a pain it can be to have to come back to the same area over and over again, I began releasing them at the same time. I would release a cache series at the same time if they were all placed or put in the description that there were going to be x number of caches placed so cachers can decide whether to come out or wait.
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Anyhoo.... Slukster's email to me was not kind, as he suggested. It was rude, condescending and belittling and labeled with ALL CAPS in a couple of places. I see you happily post my notes verbatim, but you conveniently forget to post your own email to me. Why is that?
For the record, I never mentioned the cache or the cacher in my initial post (not that it was hard to track down with a little detective work).
I tried to be nice when I emailed him telling him that a TB should never be left outside of a micro container, especially in an urban environment, but I can't promise it was my nicest email.
Luckily the next cacher found everything and made things right:I did admit that it probably wasn't my nicest email.
Since I sent it through GC.com I do not have a record of the email. I actually wanted to go back and check exactly what I wrote to place in this thread but I soon realized I had no way to recover it. PLEASE post my email here for all to see.I see someone beat me to it by notifying newsboy559 about this thread. I had all intentions of notifying them of this thread to illustrate why what they had done was a bad idea.
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When I read the the OP, I was certain we were reading about someone who does not own a placed cache or a trackable. Guess what? He seems to have a pretty cavalier attitude towards other people's property. What gets me is that he obviously knows that what he was doing was wrong because he suggests that the cache owner come and take responsibility for the trackables that he left buried in the planter.
I can not even think of the proper way to deal with such a person. He knows he's wrong but when you point it out, he gets defensive and insulting. Probably best to just go and fix the problem and hope that it's a long time before he's needs to come and drop trackables in the big city again.
I also noticed that he had hung on to this TB for 9 months and logged it at every cache he visited. The goal of the TB is to put on the most miles in a year which he clearly helped but I would think the TB owner would have liked to see it travel the world with many cachers rather than in the hands of one guy (to his credit, he did travel to Belize within 2 weeks of grabbing it, which added thousands of miles to the TB but then it stayed in Kansas the rest of the time). I have heard of people hanging on to a personal TB and logging them at each cache they visit to keep track of their travel's but never someone else's TB (unless they have permission from the owner, who lives in TX). And we all know that it is not uncommon for people to hang onto TB's for months before finally placing them, often after a nudge from the TB owner.
Does anyone else see this as unusual behavior?
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Here is a recent log on one of my caches:
Found the cache in our second try. I left two trackables attached to the magnet of the cache and placed the cache underneath the marble right in the corner. It's covered up with a little bit of dirt in order to hide from muggles. It's actually in the other flower bed farther away from the street corner. Maybe CO can go get the TB's in order to place them in a better cache, but they are pretty well hidden unless someone is actually looking for them. Tftc!Besides the fact that the TB's and my cache will surely disappear the next time the gardener comes around, the cache has not been replaced where I hid it! It is a magentic micro hidden on the bottom of a metal railing around a planter. The cacher is from out of state and has over 100 finds. I guess they do things differently in his state. I tried to be nice when I emailed him telling him that a TB should never be left outside of a micro container, especially in an urban environment, but I can't promise it was my nicest email.
Luckily the next cacher found everything and made things right:Hmm.. because of the 'new' hide by the last cacher the hint wasnt really correct anymore and we saw 2 groups of geocachers who where focussed on that hint (because the reception is really bad) and didnt find it. We tried after them and after we didnt find it the way we expected I looked a little underneath it and saw something in the dirt. That was pretty disgusting, as were the TB's. We took them with us, cleaned it up and replaced it the way it should be!! So people please keep it that way so everybody can find it easily with the given hints.I then checked my other micro caches in the area to see if he left TB's anywhere else and found this log:
Tftc! Still looking for the other cache on 44th street to place a TB in, but not having luck yet.NO!! Don't do it.
The cacher responded to my email:
Whoa there, big guy. I feel quite content with what I did. I noticed the cache is visited virtually every day, so I was comfortable leaving very detailed and specific notes for the next finder to know exactly where to find it. We visited several caches in the city on our only night there. All were nano or micro, so this was my best option. The gardeners can easily find your cache anyway. Carry on...And then after he read the log from the cacher who found the cache after him, he posted this note to the cache page:
Disgusting, really??? You people really need to take a chill pill. I rehid the cache all of about two inches from where I found it. A little bit of potting soil dirt disgusted you? Wow, you must really be a serious germophobe. I felt quite comfortable leaving very specific, detailed notes about what I did so the next finder could retrieve the TBs and hide back where the CO intended, which is exactly what happened. Get over yourselves.The thing is that this isn't the first time this has happened on one of my micro caches. About a month ago I received this log on another of my micro caches in NYC:
Found it!Geocoin dropped off.
TFTC
There is no way this coin could have fit in my bison tube! I had to mark it missing and then the TB owner said that the coin was in the hands of the security guard on the property (he emailed the cacher who left it to find this out. Security is very aware of the cache although I could not find one who knew about the geocoin).
I guess I get frustrated because the poor people who own these TB's are losing their TB's and I can only imagine these cachers are doing this everywhere they go.
Anybody else seeing this on their micro caches?
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Too many times when I check on one of my urban caches, I can't find the stinking thing. I can't find it one day, four people find it the next day. I try again with no luck, another 4 people find it. Very frustrating. I rarely find them in the exact spot I hid them. On one cache, I had replaced it since there were 3 or 4 DNF's and then a week later I get a log stating they found 2 caches at GZ.
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Can't say I have had any unusual cache mugglings recently. I have a couple of caches that seem to go missing every couple of months or so.
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I am seeing an ad at the bottom of all of the sub-pages:
Nice site so far. Keep up the hard work with more info.
). I know one day he will be logging his own so I figured it was best to start keeping track of them now instead of having to go back through years of my logs to figure which caches he was with me for. Since I write very descriptive logs, including listing all who accompanied me, it was easy to go back and find the caches that he was with me for so I could log them for him. I write all of his logs from a kids perspective and usually relate his log to my log as if we were telling a story together. Here is "his" log for his first cache:
Luckily the next cacher found everything and made things right:
Since I sent it through GC.com I do not have a record of the email. I actually wanted to go back and check exactly what I wrote to place in this thread but I soon realized I had no way to recover it. PLEASE post my email here for all to see.
Lame logs
in General geocaching topics
Posted
First off, I am DAD to my 6 yr old son and 3 yr old daughter.
What I usually do if I found a bunch of caches is put the long story in one of the online logs and then more cache specific info only on the rest. Often there are only 1 or 2 CO's in a given park area so I will put the long story in one cache for each cache owner. This way each CO gets to read the full story of my caching experience. And most times I don't copy and past the long story so it varies a bit between logs.