KC0GRN

Thanks, nice to know some people out there see things as I do. If I ever do end up in FL, I'll be sure to let ya know.

Man this is a long topic. I read about halfway through before I looked at the clock to see how long I'd been reading. Do you know how many park'n'grab caches I coulda found while reading through this? Heh, just a little humor. Life is too short to worry about silly things like stats, numbers, lame caches, and so fourth. Like some put it, I don't see anyone handing out money to the person that finds the most caches. Leave that up to other organizations and companies or cities that wish to hold caching competitions not linked to your gc.com "stats". Personally, if I want to win something, I go and participate in a locally run "Medallion Hunt", quite possibly the ultimate in FTFs. Since that season is gearing up here with a bunch of summer festivals, I'll spend my time hunting down little round pieces of metal or plastic that could offer me a nice cash (not cache) prize, and my "numbers" won't go up during this period. Shoot, if I wanted to tout "numbers" I would tout how many medallions I've found. Currently I'm at Zero then, so I suck. I like geocaching, in all it's different aspects. If you force me to change my habits so that you can feel better about your experience, I can just step out of your way. For the record, I've never "cheated" because I'm not "competing" against you. Anything I've logged is something I felt was worth my while to log, not because it was an easy way to make a number on a profile page go up. Just like I don't post a silly log like "TNLNSL TFTC" because it helps me log my super 200+ finds per day faster... Lately, I've enjoyed trying to keep the county I live in cached out. This inclues all park'n'grabs, silly little "lame caches" all the way through trying to wade through a nasty swamp and toasting a digital camera in the process only to DNF that cache. Weigh the finds as you wish, what counts more? Who cares. Oh.. the numbers people care, in which case, I humbly bow to your prowess and criticizing abilities, call me a lousy worthless cacher that's only interested in taking you down a peg. Claim all my finds are illegitimate, yank my access to the site, delete my profile, confenscate my GPS while you're at it because I'm not worthy of the title "geocacher". Even if you do all that, I'll still go out and find caches (and medallions, and letterboxes, and really cool spots that people don't know about), because I enjoy it.

I've been reading through this thread and personally I like the idea this feature offers. I know in my local geocaching organization, they have a forum thread for 6 degrees of seperation. And I know on my profile page I've put links up to geocachers I've met. The only thing I'd like to be able to do that might not work with a code system is link to cachers I have met in the past, but they're no longer active on the website. Yeah I know, if they're not active, why would I want to? Still, I think it would be nice to be able to list cachers that I know, have met in person or whatnot, even if it wouldn't count the same as an official meeting with code exchange. Edit: Maybe the solution for my comment could be something like what the bookmark lists are? Basically just a bookmark list for cachers, have it link to their profile.

Interesting topic, I've gone through and read most of the posts about it, and see there's good arguements on both sides. Personally, yes, I have logged temp event caches, and one or two caches where the cache owner explicitly stated that you could log the cache more than once for completing some extra task or something they deemed worthy of a find. Perhaps that makes me the enemy, I don't know. All I know is the finds I've logged meant something to me, every one of em. I didn't go log an event multiple times to make my find count go up. At the time, I didn't realize how much of an issue temp caches have been, but I know I did just as much work to find those temps (sometimes more, granted they might've been placed at the event and the placer didn't take time to get a good set of coordinates), hence why I logged them. Since then, I've come to a conclusion that I didn't want to log event temp caches anymore. Seems to me the event is more of a social gathering, why go out and find a bunch more caches that day than be able to chat with some local cachers? And I would like my stats to look a little more formal. However, at this point it would be a nightmare for me to go back and change those logs, which would mess up what I consider to be my milestone finds. The best solution I've come up with is to just move forward, log events once, etc. If people care to judge me for past actions, let them, I'm not competing numberswise anyways, and I never was. Like some people have put it, my numbers only mean something to me. That is proven by the fact that I don't get some big congrats or awards or certificates or othersuch incentives for reaching a milestone find (I realize that local caching organizations have different ways of recognizing personal achievments, but we don't have that here in my state). I would olny ask if such a plan to allow only one log per cache is implemented, please let the old stuff get grandfathered in, if only to save what sanity I have left from having to go back and fix the mess I managed to make. When I got started caching, my roommate let me in on a good point. What really counts as a find? Why should a horrendous multi, a super devious micro, and an ammo can in a stump all count as 1 find? 1 cache took you a minute to do, another cache took you 3 months, why are they equal? Same rule applies, it's not about numbers, and it never should be. I have never looked down on another cacher because they don't have as many "finds" as I do, nor for the same reason do I look up to someone because they have more "finds" than myself. (P.S. If numbers truely mattered, I wouldn't think events should really count as a find the same as a traditional geocache is).

No food in caches. And what would posses someone to try eating a 44 year old cracker anyway? And there goes another place to survive a nuclear holocaust...

St. Paul here (East Side). Just checking out the national forums again, hope to be more active on these.

Perhaps not so much for a collection, or collecting, but I did have a benchmark made, cost me 30 or 40 bucks to have it done (an extra 10 on top of that cause I wanted brass not aluminum). When I own my own place I intend on monumenting it somewhere in my yard, but for now it sits in my room. I thought it would be pretty cool to have my own mark, if only for a conversation piece.

I've actually used USAPhotomaps before. Thanks for the suggestion on it. I guess my thought was to have a blank background, and I'm not sure if USAPhotomaps could do that or not. I'll give it a try and see though. In the meanwhile, does anyone know of any mapping software that might accomplish this? I may have other projects in the future that could require the same functionality, and it would be nice to have a program that would facilitate it (I.E. making maps of parks, trails, etc, that would be to scale and visually look good, with no backgrounds such as a topo or aerial image).

Hi All, I have an odd request. I've been working on a project here in town that I have recorded a set of waypoints for (it's historical information on prior locations of our local area Medallion Hunt, dating back to 1952). What I want to do is plot those waypoints out on a blank page with dots or icons to mark where the waypoints exist. Then I need to mark out the local County border (the medallion has almost always been hidden inside the county) either by using a track or some other way of precisely marking where the border lies. So what I end up with is a drawing of the county shape, with all the locations of the past medallion locations marked inside it. So, there lies the question, what software would be able to do this? I'd prefer freeware or something for it, but basically I'm looking for whatever will get me the functions that I specified. Thanks for any help!

I completely agree Pepper. I haven't barely been on the natioanl threads lately, it's been tough to keep up with all the new coins being minted, and I think that's due in part to having new icon coins popping up left and right. I used to think it'd be cool to get a complete set of icons, but the more coins that come out, the less my pocketbook will have in it to keep purchasing them. Still, that only gets me an icon on the items owned side, good luck finding a geocoin actually in a cache to get an icon on the found side (hence probably why trading numbers is popular). I'll have to rethink my collecting habits after I get my personal coin minted and make trades for it.

I'm starting to think I might actually have too many coins..... Once I get my Personal Coin finished, I think I might cut back and stick to state coins, personal coin trades, and getting gc.com trackable coins (I'd like to keep up with the icons anyway, that might get tough by itself in time). I've just been inventorying mine tonight, and find it's been very time consuming to do, that must mean I have too many....

I'd agree with the fct it's kind of side stepped from geocaching, sort of a spinoff. Still, doesn't dissuade me from getting my personal coin minted. I liked the idea of a personal coin because it'll be something that lasts, maybe long after I'm gone, not sure if it'll be thought of as much in 100 plus years, but maybe if someone ran across one them, at least maybe they'd scratch their heads for a minute and wonder who I might've been Given the cost of coins though, I can understand why they don't end up in caches too often. Seems more fitting to have a cheaper sig item for day to day caching, perhaps a wooden nickle? I'm considering getting a batch of those made too.

well looks like my deal fell through to get a peach coin, least I think I got in with nursedave's group order for the regular edition. That was fast! And the peach one now goes into my list of coins I doubt I'll ever see, heh! Okay if someone that ordered 2 wants to make an interesting trade, say for one of my yet to be minted personal coins (only minting 100, and expect only about 50 will ever make it out of my state, and I don't plan to mint any more ever) let me know.

Thanks for the offer (if it was one, heh). I'd say if someone truely was willing to order one on my behalf (I have no need for a second), I would put them on my very short list of people for my personal geocoin (it's not designed/minted yet, but my intentions are to have it completed around the end of the year, it's a one shot deal, 100 coins, probably only half of which will end up out of state) I'd pay for the peach coin and we could work out a simple trade for the personal later.

hmm.. another limited edition that will sell out instantaneously... I'd love to be here between 11:00-11:15 am, but I have church to go to. Sadly the more LE coins that come out, the less enthused I get about them. I really don't mean to sound negative on them, but the more collectors that get involved means all the less coins available to get. I'll just look forward to getting one of the regular ones, maybe survey the carnage on Sunday evening

heh, I learned a long time ago not to covet another person's collection (actually that goes for anything). Rather I focus on my own, does what I have in mine hold any meaning to me? If I were to see a person with a complete set of geocoins, my first reaction would be "Hey, there's someone who has a lot of money and free time on their hands"

Screw this. I'll take 1 regular (Wasn't interested in the limited edition anyway, screw that)

personally the only coin I'm interested in minting is my personal coin. I wouldn't care to do it to make money, i'ts hard enough to come up with the funds for my own coin (no, I'm not selling them, I'm also not entertaining trade offers until I'm set up with the mint, it'll only be 100 coins, NEVER minted again, and I won't be doing another coin in the future, so I want to get it right the first time, it's not that I want to make another limited edition coin, I just want my coin to be an extension of myself, rare, and have meaning to the people that end up with one).

I'll take 2.

One thought might be to pay to have 2 rubber stamps made, one for each side of the coin. Then just stamp the coins with ink, like the pros do it. If someone was very handy, they could probably make an automated press to make the production easier. I can imagine the cost of having a stamp made is significantly less than the price of the production....

Paid for my 1 Silver coin (8.50) Thanks! KC0GRN

just paid for my 6. Wheew, tough to keep up with all this stuff lately.

the offers for these migo coins are insane.. now a moun10bike coin I could see... I've long since given up on the MIGO seasonals, and I'm sad to say they've soured me on wanting to collect any limited edition coins (seriously, I spend enough money on coins as it is). It will be interesting to see what the winning trade is for. Wheew, I'm at least glad Groundspeak isn't selling short number runs for coins, otherwise getting a full set of icons would be much harder.

I'll take 1 silver

emailed my order. Nice idea, will make a cool christmas gift (sorry, I don't know most of you well enough to buy ya presents)