Geofellas

Thanks for your confirmations folks. They were very useful in escalating the problem with Rogers Customer Support. It appears that the issue has now been fixed for me at any rate. If you are still having problems please PM me and I can let you know the ticket number for the issue I reported so you can refer to it when/if you call Rogers support.

Since I got home from the Thanksgiving weekend I have been unable to access either Groundspeak.com or geocaching.com from my home network. I am on Rogers cable for my home internet access. I have contacted one other geocacher who is also on Rogers and he reports that he has the same issue. Basically any browser just gives the "Page cannot be found" message, or sometimes just hangs, when going to either of these sites. To give myself ammunition when I call Rogers and after spending hours on hold waiting for a customer service rep I would like to know if others have experienced the same issue. Hopefully some of you will see this if you have Rogers at home but are connected from work or elsewhere. I just hope that TPTB haven't blocked a whole range of IP addresses or something like that Thanks

Just saw the "50" beside his name - that's Grrrrrrreat Well done

Just noticed the "1002" beside his name. Well done

You might want to check out the following Locationless Caches (now archived) Canadian Base Network Canadian Gravity Standardization Net

What can I say? Flora and I are totally stunned having just got the news from Tequila. We only met Tony a couple of times in person at our April Fool Events but we always had a lot of fun getting to know him through the internet - I think one of our most lasting memories will be when he got FTF on our Markville Mall Micro - showing up while Tequila was still hunting and going "have you looked at XXXXXXX" and grabbing FTF honours with Tequila running along behind. We had lots of fun trying to figure out some of Tony's puzzles - some are still defeating us - and he was always thinking up new challenges. He will be sadly missed. Our thoughts go out to his family. Farewell Tony.

I repeatedly get the following error when trying to log a "Found It" - are others seeing the same problem?

Yay - definitely well done.... Seems like only yesterday that the more significant milestone of 1701 caches were found, eh?

Agree with BQ. The thing that really gets me is the "double dipping" (or even "triple dipping") they seem to be doing. They are using a Federal Government grant (and you know who provides the money in the first place for that) plus charging the local tourist bodies $250 per year per cache plus making free use of Groundspeak's listing service to promote it. If gc.com is willing to let them do so that's entirely up to them - they obviously are OK with what is going on. But with all that "dipping" happening I really wonder who is the ultimate beneficiary. The folks that run the CEC don't do so out of the kindness of their hearts. The generally sub-standard cache placement (and I agree with danoshimano that some, just one that I have found so far, are decent) is just adding insult to injury. BTW - if you are wondering about the type of cache placement being talked about - here is a picture: Just read the logs for this cache EOGSL005 - Town of Pefferlaw and you will see I am not the only person to think this way.

I have previously pointed out to a Canadian reviewer that these caches appear to be commercial in numerous respects. In particular the fact that the CEC charge local tourist authorities a fee to set the caches and to list them and get funded by some federal government grant so to do - then they make use of the free services of Groundspeak (they are not even premium members) to promote their caches (which, I happen to agree with previous posters, are generally crappy). Clearly Groundspeak has not felt that they are sufficiently commerical to "pull the plug" and that is their prerogative I suppose. For a bit of background info here is a transcript of an article from the Bancroft Times dated March 10, 2006 - page 24 (it is their copyright but I believe that this constitues "fair use" as it is being used in discussion about the topic being reported on) about this. Note the reference to FedNor government funding which appears to be part of this project: FedNor Invests in Canadian Ecology Centre I have also been informed the following by someone who went to one of the public information meetings: Draw your own conclusions - I know that I will only bother to try one of these caches if I happen to be passing (as I was in Bancroft the other day) - they are mostly pretty boring. I also found that in order to qualify for some of their "fabulous prizes" you have to provide all kinds of personal information which I found excessive and obtrusive and so I declined to participate in that aspect.

Has anyone had any problems receiving their coins? Mine (I ordered 2) were supposedly shipped April 24th but never arrived.

Oh well - best laid plans and everything - sorry folks - that window is closed right now. Still - watch for some new TBs and hopefully geocoins to appear round here on my return

...please feel free to drop them in TB Rehab Halfway House by Wednesday lunchtime.

I think this is a great idea - reduces the number of clicks needed to find out who set them so you can decide if its worth trying them. We've had a rash of newbies setting caches round here where either the container is not yet in place or they didn't even have a GPS when they created the coordinates and we are having to become a lot more selective when new caches are published.

I'm not sure this is a problem. The majority of times, when someone's trying to move a cache too far, it's an established cache, not a brand new one. The message addresses that issue. If a cache is being relocated that far, it probably needs to be resubmitted. If the owner needs to contact the reviewer, there's a link to their profile both on the cache page, and from the the Publish log. I agree that if it is an established cache then moving it too far should indeed trigger a new cache listing as you suggest. However, the use case I was referring to, of which the example I provided was one instance, was the other common situation where IMHO this would be helpful. That is where an error has been made by the cache owner in typing in the initial coordinates when they first create the cache. Digit transpositions, fat finger syndrome etc. etc. I know - I did it myself once on one of my caches and it cost me a few beers with some of my friends who spent hours in the bush getting eaten alive by mosquitoes trying to find a cache that was 1.7km away!!. However at that time I had been around long enough to know that I had to contact the reviewer directly and that the Reviewer Note would not have been seen by him so the coordinates DID get updated as soon as I had recovered from the drubbing my friends gave me on their return. With more and more newer cachers coming online and setting caches the more user friendly and idiot proof the website can be the better I think.

One phenomenon I observe frequently is that many people do not realise that reviewers do not automatically see "Reviewer Note"s that are posted on a cache once it has been published. The fact that the "Post Reviewer Note" option is available in the drop down on the logging page is an invitation to people to hold this misconception. Perhaps it would be sensible to remove this option from the logging page once the cache has been published so as to avoid this. Since it serves no purpose to have it there and so removing it would have only positive consequences. An example of the kind of situation that often arises from this misconception is that a cache which needs to have its coordinates changed by more than 0.1 miles (often due to an error made when the cache is initially set up) ends up not having them changed for some time (if ever) and general frustration all round. For a recent case see this cache. So, as an adjunct to this suggestion I would also suggest that when a user tries to update the coordinates to one of their caches by an amount greater than the limit, the error message should include instructions to contact their reviewer directly (and, since ths info is available from the database, a hyperlink to the reviewer's profile as well would be super user friendly ). Thanks for your consideration.

Our local reviewer just archived a couple of caches and when I went to look at the cache pages they were unviewable with the error message "Invalid column name 'RefName'." being displayed. Is this a bug or are archived caches no longer going to be viewable? The caches in question are: WestDean Park Cache and Cedar Patch Thanks

Try the old fashioned way - Click here

Problem fixed - my error - thanks and apologies to OpinioNate for putting me right

On a TB page of bugs I own there is a dropdown with a "GO" button beside it. Options include "Recalculate Distance" and "Mark bug missing" which are self explanatory but "Move to last location" is unclear (to me anyway) and I can't seem to find a description of how that is supposed to work anywhere. So - how is it supposed to work? When is it intended to be used? What are the side effects of using it (if any)? Thanks

Thanks Nate Just got an e-mail relating to this so it seems like the system is starting to kick in. Having a support system like this is a very positive move. Well done Groundspeak

So have you actually got any action on the support ticket holograph? Other than the same type of confirmation that you appear to have received I have had no response to my support ticket (DDA-912215) either - and have no means of checking it. I have also had no response on the issue I raised in there to the posts on the same topic in this forum from TPTB - I wonder if they are just so busy with other stuff and if this support.Groundspeak.com facility is still in the testing stage or something. It would be nice to hear from TPTB on these points if they wouldn't mind Pretty please

Did the same thing - same successful result - I guess the earlier one is lost in the ether for ever Edit: Also note that I changed it to run weekly per other suggestion in this thread

Sort of invites the next question - where is "The Centre of Canadian Geocaching, in the Southern Hemisphere" ?

mine has still not arrived in my gmail account after about 3 hours now - hopefully it will sort itself out soon