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So I visit this forum (after a long hiatus) to see what everyone here is saying about the Indian Ocean tragedy. Low and behold TPTB have decided that you are not allowed to discuss this or ask that funds be raised for this most tragic event ...... Unless you first pay Groundspeak for the opportunity to go to the Off Topic Forum. Is it all about money Jeremy? Don't you think some things at least ought to transend your need to make money? Here is an example of what I speak although there are others. http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=87245 Les.

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gm100guy asked for my input (although I think in jest) but even if it was, I'll add it. If whoever placed the caches had permission to do so then this issue would not come up. Every cache that is approved is only done after the cacher indicates that he/she had permission. If the cacher actually did what he/she said he/she did then this would not be an issue. Les.

So after all that I now know that : CO Admin is Lapaqlia (I learned this on the Stampede thread) Mtn-man is Mtn-man Moun10bike is Moun10bike (clever by the way) I already knew that : Jeremy is Iryshe and/or Admin (pretty obvious I guess) No one else is fessing up. Another question if someone could help me. I set up my own sock puppet account a while ago just to PM myself since a few PMs I had sent to TPTB were not answered. I just wanted to see if my PM worked. (This is not a complaint, I just wanted to explain why I set up a sock puppet account.) I have never used it or intend to. Is there anyway to delete my sock puppet account? It is not hurting anyone but it seems kind of messy just to leave it there. Thanks, Les.

Halden. So this is twice is just a couple of days that you have gone out of your way to mentioned me in threads. The other being the sock puppet thread. And I guess I'll also mention you gleefully insulting me on the Canada forum thread when I was misquoted by The 2 Navigators. And yet no one seems to want to join in your bashing. I am flattered that you think I am important enough to bring up so often but really it is not necessary. I don't think I am that important to these boards so I don't understand why you should. And for what it's worth. I don't care if anyone letterboxes or geocaches or digs holes the size of football stadiums. I won't object to any of it - provided the land manager agrees that you can do it. Les.

Halden. Here is my entire paragraph dealing with charitable status. Please read it again as I think you missed what I was saying. Thanks. Les. If it has not yet occured to you, it may in the future - If you really worked at it, you could probably apply and get charity status - all you really have to do is demonstrate public goals for your organization that would not be considered lobbying. (Lobbying is one thing that the approvers really frown on.) Personally, while you could probably get charitable status with some good creative writting on the application, I would ask that you not do this. It would be unethical, in my view, to access public funds for your endeavor.

To be clear. I never had a pro-charity post. You can quote only a portion of my previous post if you want but it does not change the meaning of my prior post. It is dishonest of you Two Navigators to so obviously take only a portion of my prior post to make it seem that I was pro-charity then and am not now. My prior post also had this comment: Personally, while you could probably get charitable status with some good creative writting on the application, I would ask that you not do this. It would be unethical, in my view, to access public funds for your endeavor. I understand that you do not like me. Fair enough. But don't misrepresent my opinions when you quote me. Thank you. Les.

A.B. I appologize if I misunderstood Fish's comments. What he said was that if OGA was non-profit then money given to it by members would be a tax write off. In consideration of his comment, his non-profit sounds like a chartiy. A non-profit organization cannot give out tax reciepts. A charity can. If a charity gives out a tax reciept, then whoever gives the money to the charity can reduce his/her taxable income by an amount equal to a % of the charitable donation (17% I think up to some level and then the % goes up.) If I can reduce my taxable income by giving money to OGA then I pay less tax then I would otherwise. And the reason I pay less tax is that OGA is a charity. My payment to OGA is not a tax write off unless it is a charity. A payment to a non-profit organization is not a tax write off. So I believe my comments against OGA becoming a charity are accurate. If I am somehow mistaken then I would be pleased to be corrected. Again, I don't think OGA should become a charity because I don't think it is right that our government should get less $s through donations to OGA. I hope that makes sense. Les.

So I really am naive. I never checked any of the mod profiles so did not realize this. In retrospect, I should have put this on getting started forum. RK - you're right. The sock puppet is on the other foot so to speak. But, since this is common knowledge help me out. Who is who? Thanks! Banshee, I don't agree. Moderators (and all of admin for that matter) have two different roles here and they will conflict. They need sock puppets to keep those roles seperate. Les.

Halden, Just because you disagree with me does not make me a troll. You'll also note that I put "in my view" when mentioning ethics. I never claimed to be the arbiter of what is right and wrong in the universe. Just because other people set up false charities does not mean that OGA should. Les.

I have always thought that the moderators should have sock puppets so that each could fully contribute to the site by expressing a personal opinion without the burden of representing GC.com with every post. There is a downside to moderator sock puppet accounts but they would seem to be of minimal worry compared to the advantages. Now I thought that this was just an idea that had no basis in reality. The recent "stampede" thread though implies that CO Admin has a sock puppet account. Again, good for him. He should. Now I guess I am naive as it appears that this is common knowledge. So my question is : What other mods have sock puppet accounts and what are they? In fact "sock puppet" is really the wrong term to use for this as it has negative connotations so I use that term with some reservations. A different term for this specific type of sock puppet should be used - maybe there is one. Les.

I had argued against the OGA trying to get charity status in another thread. Do you really think that the Canadian taxpayer would agree to subsidize the proposed group? By becoming a charity, you ensure that anyone who contributes to the group reduces the amount of tax he/she has to pay. Thus increasing the amount of tax paid by everyone else. Can you in good conscience pursue charitable status? Come on, the costs won't be so high that they cannot be funded by the members. Anyway, given the very minor costs involved, the organization could probably make money just by advertizing etc. Not only is it ethically wrong (in my view) to seek charitable status, it is not needed. The organization could easily make money which can then be used to fund your lobby efforts. I have been involved in a similar venture in the past. Instead of getting charitable status, a few original members contributed minor $s. We then got funding from two private companies (in business related to our efforts) in exchange for clear thanks on our website. We also solicited donations from a wider group of interested parties via a yearly membership and easily raised the money we needed. It is not a lot of money but the start up costs were just a few thousand and the ongoing costs will be covered by the membership. If the members of this board can't kick in $20-$30/year for a membership then don't expect the Canadian public at large to fund your efforts. Please rethink this. Les.

http://www.backpacking.net/bbs.html is great. Les.

I think it is great that they have simply not banned caches as has happened elsewhere. $30 seems kind of steep but I guess that is what they figure it costs them to monitor caches. 90 days seems way to short. Maybe once they have lots of positive experiences this can be extended. A note on a dashboard is a good idea. I do a lot of multi-night wilderness travelling and one of the key safety considerations is letting someone know where you are going and when you'll be back - so they can look for my body if I don't show up when I am supposed to. Now if you are off in the woods hunting a cache and fall down wouldn't it be nice if the parks staff noticed your car and your note. Then they would know where to look for you. I think this rule is for your own safety. Les.

Thanks Sparky. The fact that the cacher had not been there before does not change the fact that the trade was unfair in the extreeme. Those gift certificates cost me $20 and for that the cache has another dollar store tinket in it. I clearly put on my post what I put in the cache. I had hoped that people would read that and provide some better swag. Lesson learned. Les.

Correction to the above and with appologies to the cacher referenced (although not named). He had never been to the cache before. After posting the above, I went into my e-mail and there was a message from him. Les.

So I am new to this and have found only one cache. And, for reasons of my own, I don't expect to find many traditional caches. With all the talk about unfair trades, I went to the trouble of putting 2 $10 LCBO gift certificates in a cache. (For anyone outside of Ontario, LCBO is our government run liquor store. So really, if you are in the habit of buying liquor or wine, it is as good as cash.) I also took nothing. The cache owner has never placed another cache and has no finds and someone else had to replace the container a while ago so I took it on myself to upgrade the contents. So what happens? Three days after I put in the gift certificates someone comes and takes both (they could have taken just one and left the other $10 for someone else) and leaves a pretty marginal item. To top it off, the person who got the $20 had visited the cache before. (Draw your own conclusions.) Now to me this looks like "dirty caching" and I am a little disappointed. I guess there is no point in putting any good swag in any future finds just so some guy can take advantage of my good will. Les.

Thanks. I appreciate the advice. It was not embarassment that I was trying to avoid - I am new so I don't expect to be good and I have no problem with that. What I was wondering is if, by posting a DNF, I was providing misinformation - like implying at least that the cache was not there. My reason for not posting the DNFs was that I did not want to give the impression that there was a problem with the cache when there wasn't. So my next question then. Can I back date a log when I post the DNFs? If not then I'll just make a note of the date in my post. Thanks all. Les.

To get a webpage, you first have to register a name. Go to your favourite search engine and type "domain registration" and you'll get a whole list of places that will register your domain name. If you want a .ca webpage, there are lots sites for those as well but most non-Canadian registration sites do not have the .ca option. The first thing you do is register the site. This will cost about $30/year. Worry about hosting later which may cost $100 or more (although some are cetainly cheaper. I did check and oga.ca is taken. Both ontariogeocaching.ca and canadageocaching.ca are available. (those are the only two I checked). If I may suggest go for something Canadian rather than just Ontario and then you can provide links to other provincial sites as they come up. For the ontario site the address can simply be (as an example): canadageocaching.ca/ontario Once you have the website name you can just sit on it until the website is up. A website is created on a home computer and then, when ready, uploaded up to the server/host. Once it is up, any number of people can update it but you'd likely want just one person to do it the actual uploading. I could help you with the website but I am pretty busy. There are any number of website creation tools on the net that would walk you through the creation of a basic site. I think sympatico may have such a tool but do a search if they don't. There are programs out there for this specific purpose. Some are free. Others can get pretty expensive. I have used Adobe Golive in the past and it is amazing - but expensive. Good luck. Les.

So I just started this geocaching thing. I have searched for 3 caches and found my first one today. I did not log the others as DNFs because I think the reason I did not find them was my inexperience and not because they were not there. Is there any value in logging them as DNFs under these circumstances? Thanks, Les.

Blue Quasar. Sorry. I am not clear on your point. If it is that I should not have tried to talk about geocaching to the HCA Land Manager because I did not know what I was talking about then I sort of agree with you. Of course geocaching is not "brain surgury". The thing is. I was the first person to contact her about geocaching and she asked me the questions. I never claimed to be any sort of expert with her and clearly told her that I had not geocached to that point. You know, if any of the what 15 people(?) who had placed a cache on HCA property had actually done what each had claimed to have done (ie get permission) then she would not have needed to get any information from me at all. Just a thought. Les.

Thanks for the helpfull advice. I guess I'll just limit myself to virtuals and the remaining caches in the Hamiton Conservation Area as well as any others I can find that are clearly placed with approval as described in the cache description. Since I left my gps at work, it'll be next weekend before I can even go out looking though. There were a number of less than legitimate suggestions so I'll just ignore those although drugs seems like a good idea sometimes. The alternatives are to contact land managers to see if the caches are placed with permission which, I am sure, would make me really popular here. Not that I care about being popular (obviously) but I also don't want the headaches. It is not worth it. The last thing suggested was to contact the cache owner and I can see how that would go. Les: "I want to search for your cache. Can you tell me if you had permission to place it before I do?" Cache Owner: ....Well, there are a variety of potential responses but none are likely to do create any co-operation. And to put my own spin on The Two Navigator's post. I did not get any cache banned. Here is the sequence of events: I e-mailed HCA quite a while ago and asked about their policy on caches. As a result of my e-mail, the land manager looked into the issue and decided that some of the caches (although apparently not all since some are still active) should be removed/archived pending a policy on the issue. The land manager also committted to creating a policy and committed to working with cache-tec (and now I guess Blue Quasar via OGA) in setting up that policy. I don't know at what stage that is at. So, I guess one perspective on this that I got some caches banned. Another is that I sought information and as a result of my enquiry the local land manager found that some caches were in environmentally sensitive areas or in areas that are too dangerous to cache in. Did I do something wrong? I can see that some will think so. I certainly sent my initial question knowing that it would be possible that the land manager would want some caches removed (on the assumption that they knew nothing of them in the first place which turned out to be true.) I have also exchanged quite a number of messages with the land manager and also spoken to that person on the phone. Most of what I communicated was in support of geocaching but none of that made it to the forum as it was all private communication. If you want to see some more info on the HCA caches check out this thread: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=59887 Of note, The Two Navigators, pasted a link to this thread on that thread. I wonder if he would consider deleting that post as all it really will do is direct the land manager to this thread which may not be helpfull in putting geocaching in a positive light. Also, I was pretty roundly insulted on that thread and decided not to defend myself there as, again, it seemed counter productive to argue under the watchfull eyes of the land manager. If anyone wants to insult me, challenge my intentions or integrity maybe you could do it on this thread instead of the HCA thread. Les.

That was a Sony camcorder. It had a nighttime filming feature but people found out that, if used during the day, it made some thin clothing invisible - so the photographer could film what was under the clothes. Quite a story at the time. Les.

My situation: 1) I have GPS. 2) I think caches are great if placed with the permission of the land manager. Contrary to the view of most, a lack of a policy is not permission in my view. 3) I do not want to search for a cache that is placed without permission (by my definition). 4) I have tried to identify caches in my area that have been placed with permission (by my definition) . It would seem that none have been placed with permission - or at least this is not mentioned anywhere. My question: How do I identify caches that I can go out and search for according to the limits I have set for myself? Again, I my use of the word permission to mean, "placed with the agreement of the land manager and a lack of a policy is not permission." Again, I am not asking you to agree with me or tell me I am wrong. My question is not about what permission means. It is about how I can identify caches that meet my definition of permission. Thanks, Les.