NBJPoppa

More on the refresh.... Since my previous post, I have noticed that the refresh function does seem to be triggered by the log selection action. Apparently the web site was so slow that I was able to not only select the log type, but also the date, and sometimes a Tracking Number, and sometimes even part of my log message before the refresh took affect, which is why it was so annoying, because all of the changes I made after selecting the log type, but before the refresh was complete were lost. Now this has been less of an issue of late, because the web site is usually responding more quickly, and because I've learned to "pause" before continuing. However, I sometimes will still see a long delay. On a whim, I decided to hit the "stop" button (in Internet Explorer 7 it shows up as a red "X" next to the "refresh" button), and that aborts the page refresh. I can then complete my log and submit it, and it works just fine. Your mileage may vary.

Regarding the page refresh issue that others have mentioned.... I have noticed this not after I select the log type, but after I change the date. I recently went out of town and did some geocaching in another area, and I was unable to complete all of my logging right then. I saw the screen flash as the page refreshed, and what I first noticed was that the format of the date changed! Initially the date is of the form: June 30, 2009. After the refresh is becomes: 07 05 2009 (At least it did this morning.) On precious days I have noticed the date format change, but I did not realize it was resetting the date to the current day! It occurred to me that someone may have "added" this date format change as a feature to be less "English", but why was it not inserted into the code before the logging page is first displayed? I try to be accurate in recording the dates I visit caches and pick up or drop off Trackables, and now it looks as though I will have to go check all of my logs since June 24th. Of course if I find any date errors, I'll get that annoying "edited by..." note at the bottom of all of the logs. I would really appreciate this "refresh" issue being fixed, as it is quite annoying and occurs on almost every interaction I have with the web site!

I have plans to head to New Orleans on December 10 of this year, and expect to bring several Travel Bugs and Geocoins for trade. I've looked for events in LA, but find only one, which will be over before I arrive. Do cachers down there do Meet & Greet events? I'm not the only one headed there from the Seattle area, as another cacher will be arriving, I think, on the 13th. I was in New Orleans once for a convention many many years ago, and I didn't really see much of the area. Other than View Carre' does anyone care to suggest a few "must find" caches? Thanks!

Team Pez is visiting the Seattle area from Georgia for just a few days. I thought it would be nice if some cachers would show up for dinner, or just to visit, tomorrow (Tuesday, July 8, 2008) evening. Some of you may have seen a Team Pez Geocoin. I found one about two years ago, but didn't realize that it was a Geocoin. That's how I "met" Team Pez. Most places won't take reservations for an unknown number of guests, so it looks as though the Alfy's in Lynnwood might be the best option. I plan to show up at about 6:30 PM, just to try to reserve a few tables close together. Alfy's is open until 9 PM on weekday nights. We might be able to get half-price pizza, but since we don't know how many folks will show up it may be hard to get that concession. Alfy's address is: 4820 196th St SW Lynnwood, WA 98036 The phone number there is: 425-775-5459 Alfy's is pretty easy to reach. Heading North on I-5 from south of Lynnwood you can take Exit 181A to 44th Ave West. Turn left (North) at the light and go about a half mile to 196th Street SW and make another left-hand turn. Alfy's is on the left a couple of blocks West. Heading South on I-5 take the Lynnwood exit headed West on 196th Street SW. I think it is less than a mile alone 196th to get to Alfy's that way. You'll pass the Lynnwood Convention Center shortly after getting off I-5. Hope to see a few people there!

Well, I for one don't use AOL -- at least, no willingly. Years ago I had the choice of using AOL or not, and I decided NOT. I signed up for Netscape mail. I have (note the past tense) been happy with my Netscape mail account. Then a while back I heard that AOL had bought Netscape. I could only hope that this wouldn't turn out the way it seems that most CA purchases go -- which is down. Then I found out that a fellow geocacher, who wasn't responding to my e-mails, said that he wasn't getting any e-mail from me. That's strange. I decided to send it from the geocaching.com web site, but without passing my e-mail address in the mail. *That* mail got through. This user had an AOL.com address, and he found several messages from me in his spam (or whatever it's called) folder. I then realized that mail sent from Netscape.net addresses to folks with AOL.com mail addresses would be automatically put into the spam folder. How odd -- especially since AOL *bought* Netscape. It wasn't until much later that I found that the reverse was true, too! I didn't know that I had a spam folder, but I found mail from AOL.com addresses placed there. It looked to me like an internal war between the AOL employees and the Netscape employees. (Yeah? Well, if you're going to block mail from us, why we'll block mail from you. So there! Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!) Now on Monday, 17 July 2006, I received an e-mail from NetscapeMail@support.netscape.com telling me that they were pleased to inform me that as of August 19, 2006 my Netscape Mail account would be "upgraded to the AIM® Mail service*." Oh, joy. I can hardly wait. They already "upgraded" me to a "new and improved" user interface that is far slower and more cumbersome than the old interface. Shades of wintel! Maybe if I buy a new suprtfast system with mega-gigabytes of ram and a blazingly fast frontside bus I'll be able to see my e-mail messages as fast as I used to be able to with the old non-feature-rich interface. It always amazes me that a single user needs what used to be a super computer in order to read mail! Somehow the marketplace doesn't always work the way one hopes it will. In any case, I noticed a lack of e-mail last Friday. Since then I've received maybe 20 e-mail messages, as opposed to my expected 300+ messages. (I was out of town the week before, and had 700 new messages in those days.) While writing this mail I've received one watchlist mail about someone who found a cache yesterday.

ohjoy! (from Olympia, Washington) has informed me that the geocacher MaxB on the River (both the Mr. and the Mrs.) from Michigan will be in town this coming Monday, June 12, 2006. They wuold like to meet geocachers from this area, and would also like to swap Travel Bugs. For those who don't know, according to LaRobley's geocacher statistics page (see http://cachestats.tripod.com/id20.html for the details) MaxB on the River has found more Travel Bugs than anyone in the world. As of this writing they have logged finds of 5,458 trackable items, of which 5,048 are Travel Bugs! ohjoy! said to meet at the Red Robin at Southcenter at 6:30 pm. (In case you don't know, this is in the greater Seattle area.) Also, please let her know via e-mail if you plan on being there. ohjoy's profile is here: http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=79...9f-f87680b15242 I know I want to be there!

OK, it's getting about tmie to get on that plane! Over here in the Greater Seattle area we have had two events when TravelingViking came to town. See USA-Europe TB Swap Meet (GCKWZK) -and- USA-Europe Travel Bug Swap Meet - Redux (GCR4JC) So I was wondering if anyone would be interested in as East-West Coast TB Swap Meet to be held somewhere "close" to Carnagie Hall. I know that the kids are staying in the Hilton, but some people are staying in New Jersey, which is where I expect to stay. Now I'll fess up and tell you that I don't know much about New York City, except that it is big. Where would one hold such an event? Or is there no interest? Thanks.

Hello, all. The school choir that my eldest daughter (Lt. Mustardseed) is in will be performing in Carnagie Hall towards the end of May. She is traveling with the school, and so all of her arrangements have already been made. I am looking for some suggestions for decent, but not expensive, places to stay, caches to find, and geocaching events to attend. Presuming that I can get this all arranged, I have every expectation of bringing several Travel Bugs, and some Geocoins, to swap while there. I have never been to New York City, and don't really have any ideas about where the "good" caching is. I am under the impression that I would NOT want to rent a car in the city, but then I don't know how one would get out caching. Anyone care to help educate me/lend a hand? Thanks, -NBJPoppa

Douglas_Clan, I've been out of the forums for several months, and I'm going through the huge backlog of messages that I've not yet read. I ran across this thread and so did a quick check on the status of things. What I see is that the Albino Rhino picked up your Travel Bug back on 2005/11/20, but last logged on to the website on 2005/12/04. The occupation is listed as being "student", so perhaps school got a bit intense? Or perhaps this person forgot his/her password. Either way, I hope your Travel Bug surfaces soon! -NBJPoppa

E-mail sent....

Is there next to no interest in carpooling for this event? I'm surprised. I've got my van, and several empty seats. I'll check my mail later tonight.

(Finally back in the forums after a prolonged absence.) I would be up for the 28th. Don't think I could make it on the 21st, unless two young-uns wanted to go -- which I very much doubt.

Sorry I missed your note when you first posted it. I've been swamped at work for the past couple of weeks. (Many 12+ hour days. In fact, I put in nearly 11 yesterday -- Mother's Day -- due to a failed server.) If things don't work out with your other contacts, please feel free to mail me directly. I would be happy to help out. -NBJPoppa, the TB "maniac".

Re: RWW's comment that many people were logging finds on the meeting pages... My recollection is that I learned at the first WSGA meeting that I went to that you can't log a "find" of the meeting, because it technically was not an "event". I did post a note or two, and then one day I found that my note was deleted. I wrote to the cache "owner" and asked what was up. The response was that the page was being "cleaned up", and that the old comments simply confused readers who read old comments which conflicted with the new "cache description". I have no problem with that. It makes sense to me. I do have a bit of confusion over the relatively new "attended" log type. I gather that is meant to be used for Event caches, but it seems that they "count" towards your find count. Perhaps the system needs a way to distinguish between "real" events, and "unreal" events.

Well, I am still hoping to be able to make this event. I have even had an offer of a loaner bike! (THANKS!) As for transportation, my gas guzzler van gets nearly 12 MPG in the city, which I mention simply for comparison purposes with RWW's truck. (I didn't calculate what it got going to and from Steven's Pass last summer.) However, in the past I've taken the two "middle" seats out and have carried four (or was it five) bikes inside the van -- on their sides (cause otherwise they would fall over). This, of course, made it a bit cramped for the family to fit in the van at the same time, but we did it. To simplify life, I bought an external bike rack that slides into the towing hitch and it is made to carry five bikes. (Never been used, though, as it was acquired just before my world crashed.) In any case, I'm sure I could safely cart 5 bikes plus 6 passengers, or roughly 10 bikes with 1 passenger -- or more with fewer bikes.

Following along hydnsek's train of thought... any guesses as to when Little Blue will pass Moun10Bike? Or, do we all think that is too wacky of an idea to consider?

Unfortunately for me, these are some 20+ miles away. By the time I could get there, I'm sure that they would already be picked up.

Regarding the "intangible" value of Travel Bugs.... (Don't get me wrong, this is just a place to start.) I, on the other hand, do play "the TB game". On the other hand, I don't play the toy-trade game. When I first started geocaching, 18 months ago today (!), my two younger daughers and I found a Travel Bug in the first cache we managed to find. Helping that TB reach its goal seemed like a fun idea to me. Looking at the other stuff in a cache was only mildly interesting to me, though the kids did enjoy trading stuff for a while. I used to bring a bag of goodies to trade for the girls to use, but since they don't go with me as much now I've stopped doikng that. Every now and then, though, I think about bringing McD's toys to leave in caches -- just for some other kids. My own thought is that a Travel Bug and/or Geocoin represents more "value" that a McDonald's toy, and often times more than any of the other items in the cache. I have found just over 30 USA Geocoins, and a few other kinds of coins as well. (A couple of Canadian geocoins, a couple of the GeocacheTreasures coins (they have aliens on the back side), a Pepper coin, an Oregon coin, a California coin... I think that's about it.) I've wondered about the coin collecting, but then I've rarely found non-trackable coins. Now while I've heard it said that a coin without a goal is free for the taking that somehow doesn't seem right to me. I now understand where that idea comes from. On the other hand, it makes more "sense" or those like the geocachetreasures coins, which (as far as I know) aren't trackable at all. If you can't track it, then how is one supposed to know to whom it belongs? It seems to me that it is reasonable to treat such items as trade items. Although I've found some "junky" Travel Bugs even golf balls! I've also found some quite nice items. For example the Hawaiian Treasure TB has a beautifully carved ukelele (sp?) as a rider. I've also found several instances where the rider attached to the TB was changed. This is quite obvious when there is a photograph posted on the web site. (I recall quite clearly the "Giles the Watcher" TB, which had a small "action figure" attached in the photo, but I found a plastic key attached advertising some local business.) Re trading trackable items for untrackable items: I personally don't consider them to be in the same "class" of items. TBs aren't "swag". I normally try to trade trackable-for-trackable, usually on a 1-for-1 basis. So far I've only found one "Traveler Tag" item, but since that isn't tracked the same way, I didn't count it as a TB in the TB swap, but neither did I keep it. I logged my find and drop, and that was that. So, what are these other people thinking? I've noticed that there are lots of folks out there who do not know how to log a TB find and/or drop. Some folks seem to pick up a TB and they just keep it! To these folks, TBs seem to be just more of the "swag". Why do these things happen? I suppose some of it is covetousness, but I'll bet that sometimes it is due to accidents. I've repaired a couple of TBs, one of which broke in my possession. I know that sometimes it is hard to get a kid to "let go" of something, so maybe some parents have swapped TB riders for that reason. I'm sure that there are lots of reasons. From what I've heard, TBs go missing quite frequently. Several that I have found have later been picked up by folks who subsequently dropped out of the game. I know of several TBs that "vanished" when the cache they were in was taken. I suppose we could also complain about the swag that is lost when a cache is muggled. Yeah, I know, it's part of the game, but it still is costly to the cache owner. Oh well. That's more than enough for now.

Well, like LindaLu I have every other weekend free myself. For me the better choices would be: 5/14, 5/28, 6/11, 6/25...

Sure wish that *I* could have made it to this one. Sounds like I've missed two good Cache Machines in a row!

Come on, Moun10Bike! Give yourself a break! Back when your career started there were only what, 150 caches world-wide? Of course it would take a while to get some numbers!

Thanks, y'all.

I just know that I'm going to regret having written that. I don't know why, but I will. (Did anyone else like the movie "Shakespear In Love"? I loved the stage manager.)

Sorry 1stimestar. I wasn't intending to offend. Ladybug Kids and I have exchanged some e-mail offline on this topic. Now don't get riled up. I'm going to try to answer your questions, OK? (BTW, I am having some trouble with this el-cheapo brand keyboard, and I don't always catch the errors. The "n"s often show up before the letter that they are supposed to follow. I don't have this trouble with other keyboards.) 1. I wrote: You asked: This was in response to what Ladybug Kids wrote on March 21, 2005: The point is that for both the 2004 and 2005 Washington State Geocoins, the design was a very public affair, as much of the work was posted on the geocaching.com forums. It appeared to me that Ladybug Kids was not aware of this fact. Several people contributed designs for all to see, and many offered comments on what they saw -- or didn't see. In the private e-mail I wrote about what *I* saw regarding the design of the Idaho Geocoin -- which was basically "here's the finished product, and here's where you can order some." I didn't have a problem with that. As I said before, I was confused as to what was going on with the Alaska Geocoin. If someone was taking orders, where was the example of what was being bought? 2. Regarding my critically constructive comments (that was the hope anyway) you wrote: Sorry, I didn't think that I made it wrong. I was voicing my frustration and confusion. The gist of what I wrote earlier was: I'm confused. There was an announcement of an interest poll, but all I see are "orders". No one stood up and said "whoa! We aren't ready to take orders yet, which we saw when the WA state coin was being designed. As a result I interpreted that to infer that someone *was* taking orders. (I don't think that I was being irrational with that interpretation, do you?) Thus my frustration: what, exactly, are people ordering? Had I missed seenig a picture of the proposed coin somewhere? Unlike the proverbial rich and famous, I don't have money to burn. I presume you don't either. There's the old saying "there's no accounting for taste", right? So I wondered if the coin would appeal to me, and I know that at least one other person has wondered something similar. 3. I wrote: You wrote: Sorry. I must take responsibility for a good portion the misunderstanding on this point for at least two reasons. First off the two statements should have been disjoint, but I was trying to not be so wordy. (My boss complains.) So, I'll be a bit more wordy this time. The second reason is that I didn't quote the original text. Here is the sentence that Ladybug Kids wrote that I was commenting upon: I'll try to clarify what I was trying to say. A: I'm going to re-phrase what I wrote before. I don't agree with this statement. Note: this is just a statement. I don't see why face-to-face necessarily enhances the exchange of ideas. In fact I've often seen where face-to-face meetings are used to squash the free-flow of ideas. I'm sure many of us have been invited to meetings where the goal of the meeting was to reach a "consensus". It is my understanding that many managers are trained to use this technique the attendees to "buy into" a preconceived plan. The meeting isn't really to come to a decision -- the decision was already made. The meeting is just a way to give the attendees the impression that they are involved and "count". NOT that I am suggesting that this is happening in this case, mind you. I simply disagree with the premise of the statement. Consider the evidence found in the marketplace: the failed products and crummy advertising campagns. I've experienced the brunt, if you will, of small design teams who work to build something "neat", only to get saddled with something I really didn't want. On the other hand, I've also seen small design teams produce absolutely *wonderful* stuff. So it can go both ways. Thus, I see it as a generally debatable point. B Regarding "comfort". I've heard, and perhaps you have too, that some authors just *love* their word processors, while others can't stand them; some like typewriters, and still others produce everything in longhand. I know I've run across people who would rather not touch a computer. That was the point. It's fine if some people are more comfortable designing with pen and paper. Note that this really is tangential to design review. (Well, OK, I'll cede the point before it's made: yes, some will prefer to see it on paper rather than on a screen.) A+B So, when you combine the two disjoint statements, it should be clear that I deny that the premise of face-to-face being better is generally true, but... perhaps it is true given the people involved. 4. Re: "outside interference" You asked why I should have any say at all. That was precisely my point. It is your design. I understand that. I understand wanting control. You'll note that I wrote that this was an advantage. OK? It's an advantage because you don't have to wade through all the lame-brani ideas that people (like me) might throw at you. 5. Re: Where Alaskan geocacher's live. You wrote: The point, which wasn't well made, and I may still not be able to make it well, is that by "requiring" face-to-face meetings to discuss the designs, you really exclude all those Alaskan Geocachers who are not "near" you. Why do I care? I guess I don't really, but... the issue has come up with both of the Washinton State Geocoins. Are we offending folks in Eastern Washington with what we put on the 2004 coin. Shouldn't we try to include them and encourage their participation and ideas for this year's coin? That's what I was trying to commnuicate. I hope I did better this time. I'm sorry if I've offended you -- or anyone else, for that matter. It was not intentional. Perhaps I should say that I'm a techie with no social skills. While that may not be entirely true, I recognize that I am not the most adept person at times, that that recognition usually comes after the fact. I noticed that you only objected to my second note in this thread. Was the first OK? BTW, Happy Caching y'all!

Oh, boy! I've been wanting to get out there for nearly a year. I didn't know about Lena. I dug around and found my old inflatable boat late last summer, but it has lots of leaks. I don't think I'm in good enough shape to swim out there, but perhaps with a innertube.... On the other hand, the boat would be nicer.