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SSO JOAT

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Posts posted by SSO JOAT

  1. I know there are a few out there who have followed the annual GeocacheAlaska! club geocoins. An oval coin featuring mount Denali was put out for 2016 and there are just a few left in the inventory. A brand new Mosquito geocoin was also released this fall, which is a full-sized coin version of the 2007 Micro Mosquito coin released by us 9 years ago. There are also a couple of the Chris Mackey designed 2015 Eagle coins available. You can find the coin descriptions and images by visiting our club website and following the links to the store.

     

    SSO JOAT on behalf of the GeocacheAlaska! Inc. Board of Directors

     

    www.geocachealaska.org

  2. For those who have followed our long history of creating an annual trackable geocoin specific to geocaching in Alaska, we still have quite a few of our 2015 Eagle geocoins left to sell. The 2015 coin features an Eagle on both sides in full color enamel fill and was created with three different metal finishes; shiny gold, shiny silver, and black nickel. The designs were created by Chris Mackey. Each trackable 2-inch coin is paired with a trackable anodized aluminum proxy coin, so you can retain the original coin safely in your collection and release the proxy coin to travel.

     

    GeocacheAlaska! Inc. is the non-profit geocaching organization in the state of Alaska. We strive to promote geocaching throughout the Last Frontier with education, land manager advocacy, and geocaching event sponsorship. Our staff and membership are volunteers with all proceeds from our coin sales going directly into promotion of geocaching.

     

    You can view the details on our current and all past coin projects on our website at http://www.geocachealaska.org/alaskageocoins.htm. From that page is a link to our online store where the coins are available for purchase.

     

    Thanks for your time. Have a happy new year!

     

    On behalf of GeocacheAlaska! Board of Directors

  3. That is rediculous. MM/DD/YY is the standard for writing dates in the USA. If the field would not accept the date written in standard format, there should have been an indication of such when trying to enter the info by typing in the field or a rejection of the log upon submittal.

  4. Hate the new site design. Just from a visual perspective, the graphics borders on the old site were great. The new site layout looks like the first basic example from a bootstrap CSS how-to wiki. No character at all. Most of us still use real computers at home. This site was clearly designed for phone users and not computer users. But real geo-geeks use real computers, not phones. Let the phone apps handle the phone people and leave the website setup for computer users.

  5. I just helped a new cacher go through a long list of found caches and attended events from last year and enter logs for them. We typed the actual found or attended date in the date box and entered the logs. After entering 2 dozen logs, we checked her quick view page and every single log that was just entered showed today's date on it. Went back to edit the first log entered and again changed the date to the actual find date and saved the edited log. It again reverted back to today's date. So, we edited it again and used the drop down calendar box to cycle back several months and click on the date of the log. Saved it and this time is posted with the right date. Now the joy of going back through every log and using the calendar pop out to pick dates. Why can't the new form just accept a typed in date? And yes, I was typing the dates in the exact same format that is shown when you click on a date (MM/DD/YY).

     

    :angry:

  6. Since there is no official FTF rule related to geocaching, you can do whatever you want in regard to FTF at events. As with most things geocaching, and especially with spin off stuff like FTF, it depends on what the cachers in your region have established as common practice. In our area, many events "award" the FTF in some method (by drawing or whatever), but most events don't employ any aspect of the FTF side-game. Even the FTF drawing has seemed to taper off over the last couple years, so maybe it's going away.

     

    I run an event every summer that has a notable caching game with a couple dozen daycaches and a race by multiple teams to get the most points. The FTF on each daycache gets the most points for that cache plus a prize. At the end of the game, the team with the most points wins. As part of winning that game, I always tell them that they can claim the event on their FTF list if they choose to do so. I don't follow other people's FTF lists, so I have no idea if anyone has actually done that. But that offer was born out of the fact that a lot of event did a random drawing for FTF and I figured people expected that. So, I changed it to making someone earn the FTF rather than having it be a random drawing. At least that made more sense to me.

  7. If GSAK can't do it, then it doesn't need to be done.

     

    If you really can't figure out the publish date, then continue to use the hide date and stop complaining about it.

     

    If you see one of these rare caches that has an old hide date with a recent publish date and you think it is dishonest, then make the conscious decision to not find that cache and thereby not use it to complete your little challenge thingie. TA-DA!!!

     

    How YOU play the game is up to YOU. Remember, you are only "competing" against yourself and nobody else out here really cares about your "stats".

     

    (why u gotta try to make life so complicated?)

     

    :rolleyes:

  8. And another thing about the calendar wall papers that I don't get...

     

    There has always been a plain version and then a version with the current month (or now quarter) calender on it. When the next month rolls around, the new one replaces the old one at the top of the page. Where is the archive of all those great wallpaper images? I can see pulling the one with the calender on it, but why isn't there an ever growing page with the non-calender versions? I've always kept a folder on my computer where I stick the previous wallpapers, so I have a couple years worth tucked away. But many of those old wallpapers are quite worthy of being put in the permanent download list!

  9. So, I keep checking the goodies webpage for the new calendar wallpaper. Initially every day, then ever few days, and now every week or so. The 3rd quarter is nearly over and we haven't seen a new wallpaper published since April. What the hey? I'm getting tired of looking at the April-May-June calenders on my desktop already. I was a little miffed when they were reduced from monthly offerings to quarterly offerings, but the lack of a 3rd quarter 2013 is just ruining my life. ;)

     

    Stuck in Morocco... in the Spring.

  10. Play the game the way you want and stop worrying about how others do it.

     

    I know of caches that have been hidden out there for over 3 years that still have not been published. When they do get published, the data for placed date and published date will both be readily available on the listing. Most humans should easily be able to tell them apart by the labels. Why would anyone suggest that these two dates need to be the same or even close to each other? If they have to be close, what is the point in even having a placed date?

     

    If you think your little challenge thingie is going to be somehow compromised by someone putting a particular date in the hidden field, then use the dang published date for your side game and remove the tinkering element. Ta-da!

  11. I've done exactly 1 library cache, but I didn't know it was a library cache on my first attempt. The coordinates were actually at the front door of a museum that was adjacent to a library (though their doors were on opposite sides away from each other). I went to the coords and found myself at the door to the museum, but the description text didn't fit very well and there was no mention of paying a fee to access, which the museum required. I started going through old logs to find a lot of rather angry ones complaining about how they paid for access to the museum only to find out the cache is in the adjacent library. The coords were off by a couple hundred feet. I went to the library and found the cache in a back room. I put coordinates to the correct building and door in my log. The adopted CO posted a note about how everyone else had no problem finding the right building with the original coordinates. At any rate, I've had a bad taste for library caches ever since.

     

    I guess the point was, that library cache only had the single waypoint at the entry and was listed as a traditional.

  12. It would not be efficient to have a discussion thread about state park policies in all 50 states, when that information is already collected in the land management policy wiki.

     

    I see that the Alaska wiki page is way out of date, has wrong permit numbers, and is missing a ton of land manager info. Who do we contact about getting that page updated?

  13. Can't speak specifically to Oregon, but in my new 62 series when you load more than one gpx file of geocaches, they all display on the map and are mixed together. You don't know which one is in which file and don't actually "see" the file that it loads from on the GPS. Ought to be similar if not the same in the Oregon as they all use the same Garmin OS.

  14. And then there's that "stick in the eye" when OC did it first by adding nano as an official size (amongst many other features that people wanted which were going no where with GS). You'd think the competition would be incentive to churn out expanded features. Just sayin'

  15. My find count isn't that high and it doesn't really matter. I drive by 100 times more caches than I hunt.

     

    Of the 5,629 caches in my state, only 135 traditional are listed as "other". A search for the term "nano" brings back 122 caches and only 29 of those are listed as "other". So what you're seeing must be a regional thing. There are a lot of regional things in geocaching. For an international audience, I just think its best to speak in international generalities and honor the GS guidelines while doing so.

  16. While it doesn't appear that GS "requires" cross-listing in the guidelines (and that would be a hard thing to do with the multiple LB listing services), if you don't cross list a letterbox, then it's just a geocache. Seems to me, in order to be a "hybrid" between geocaching and letterboxing, you have to have both groups playing the game piece. Without letterboxers looking for it, you really don't have a "letterbox hybrid", and should just call it what it is... a traditional or multi-cache.

  17. A "nano" is not a "nut". The "nut" caches you refer to are "micro" caches. The term "nano" is not an official cache size, nor a term used in GC Guidelines. The official designation is "mirco" for anything that is about the size of a 35mm film can or smaller (any anything that is smaller).

     

    The way I describe it when teaching basic geocaching classes is to describe the micro size as film can and smaller. After showing the examples of various bisons and whatnot, I'll show the "nano" cache (which is the thumbnail sized container stolen from the LED blinker world) and tell them how this one is often referred to as a "nano", but it is still in the "micro" size classification.

     

    Don't confuse people with container style having anything to do with container size. If your "worlds largest nano" has enough room for your fist, then it's just another one of the world's smalls.

     

    I don't consider a nano to be a nut and I've never run into anyone who does. So why give newcomers bad information?

  18. Many of these types of "puzzles" fall into the category of "try to guess what I was thinking". They are generally junk puzzles with an occasional accidental solve. Many times, they are best placed on one's ignore list.

     

    A real, good puzzle will have clues about everything you need to know scattered about on the page. And you will probably have to do some off-site research, which is perfectly fine. What needs to be on the page is enough info to steer you to your research to solve the puzzle.

  19. Triple check your coords with a real GPS before hiding cache.

     

    Provide a bomb-proof hint describing the exact hide on your cache listing.

     

    Post a spoiler photo of the cache in the photo gallery of the cache listing.

     

    Laminate a copy of the spoiler photo with exact hiding instructions on the back and place this inside your cache.

     

    Secure container to a fixed object with a loop of rope or crimped cable.

     

    Perform regular cache maintenance.

  20. Not sure why this issue of letterbox hybrids keeps having people talk about gps coords are required, as that does not seem to be the case. I just did my first letterbox hybrid (they are very rare in AK) a couple weeks ago and the coordinates were for the starting point. Then you used the listing to follow the clues from point to point to point until you got to the cache. It was more like a multi-cache in execution, but was a recently published letterbox hybrid with a cross-listed posting on the letterboxing site (they were listed simultaneously).

     

    Per the guidelines:

     

    This cache type pays homage to an older form of scavenger hunt. A Letterbox Hybrid must include significant GPS usage for at least part of the hunt. Letterbox-style clues may be used to guide seekers to the container, but only if the clues are accompanied by coordinates specific to the hide. The container for a Letterbox Hybrid must include a stamp, which stays with the geocache and may be used by letter-boxers to stamp their personal letter-boxing book. The cache can be logged without using the stamp.

     

    Note... "must include significant gps usage for at least part of the hunt" is not all that limiting on mandating coordinates and gps use.

     

    The key pieces that make it a letterbox hybrid being the inclusion of a stamp and the cross-listing on the letterboxing site.

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