Bunya

Or, if you are a reader of the "Zits" cartoons, it means you are being mooned by an angle bracket.

I am posting here purely because of the topic header - I must admit I've not read all the postings. I have just had my first experience with the message center and as a result I'd like to be able to disable it. Clunky to use and I can't keep an email thread of a discussion with another geocacher while not logged on gc. I get the impression I'm not alone in feeling this way.... But I imagine we are stuck with it.

I'm not sure that this helps with the OP's request to help the "learning process", but as I've posted before, I once got an FTF on a cache where the coords were out by 187km - the placer had put E135 instead of E137. The rest of the digits in the coords were correct and the cache name was a dead giveaway for a location only about 1km from where I lived! Perhaps the lesson from this is "always take notice of the cache name and read the cache page"!

From reading the blog, it seems like a modified version of #3. There's only one souvenir to begin with, and you can find a geocache on either May 2 or May 3 in order to earn it. But the Blog posting says "Celebrate 15 Years of Geocaching on May 2nd and 3rd by finding any geocache or attending any geocaching event." Note the "and" - this would suggest that you have to find a cache on both days. I agree with marshajean that the requirement(s) and outcome(s) are not clear.

I think I can beat that record! I once got an FTF on a cache where the coords were out by 187km - the placer had put E135 instead of E137. The rest of the coords were correct and the cache name was a dead giveaway for a location only about 1km from where I lived!

That doesn't necessarily mean it's better for geocaching! The last two days our maximum temperature has been 44C (111F) - if you stand outside in the sun it HURTS! And if you forget to cover up your steering wheel when the car is left in the sun - see picture for what's needed.

Yet, if you sign on to the forum, your "Last Visit" date is changed on your public geocaching profile even if you haven't signed on there recently. So I assume there is some link between signing on to the forum and your geocaching profile. I'm sure a techie could explain this, but it certainly isn't something to bother anyone about . . . But I agree that it is a nuisance having to sign on to the forum separately.

As has been noted before, complaining is useless. We're stuck with the pointlessly complicated and download wasting changes. Add to that, it's useless for those of us outside the US to complain that these "improved" notification emails still use the mm/dd/yyyy form of the date, regardless of our chosen format.

. . and no matter what date format you choose, MM/DD/YYYY is STILL used in owner/notify/bookmark/watchlist emails. Will this ever be changed? I doubt it.

Thanks for that advice - though I'm surprised your system knows when DST applies in every country - our mob changes it every so often!

I'm not sure if this is what you are referring to, but there is now a little gear wheel thingy in the top right hand corner - it still doesn't help with turning off the "Recently Viewed Caches" though.

Since daylight saving came into effect where I live (South Australia) our time is UTC+10:30 but this is no longer an option in the drop down list in Account Settings/Preferences/Time Zone.

Complaining is useless! But nevertheless, I'll add mine. I had to stop getting the newsletter because the new format froze my email client. But at least I could opt out there. Now I'm getting notification emails which are less useful but use up four times more download space. For some of us download usage is limited and has to be carefully managed. I'd like to go on getting my old number of notifications, but with this new (insert here whatever the opposite of improvement is), I'll have to cut back. Perhaps I'm on to something here . . . Is GC central trying to get us to cut back on how many emails they send us? No other explanation makes sense!

Here is a roadsign from near the start of a multi that was archived before we got around to finishing it. Nearly a warning you might be caught by muggles? And yes, I was tempted to add an "L", but didn't.

Although it looks like it is a complete waste of time to ask, I'd like to add my request for plain text communications to at least be an option. My email client sometimes locks up when displaying the weekly newsletter and when I asked for the option for plain text to be re-instated, I was just told to change my email client. T h a n k s. And now the added pointlessness of email advisories in HTML. I can only add my bewildered "WHY?".

Just as interesting, given the very commonly used abbreviation "gc.com", see where that takes you!

Really? I'm obviously not included in "everyone"! The only "something" I ask from having achieved something is the fact that I've done it. Isn't that enough?

Years ago there was a “loophole” in the geocoin/TB placements map that meant that if a CO placed a geocoin/TB, that you had a watch on, in a yet-to-be-published cache you could use the map of the geocoin/TB to get a pretty good idea of where the cache was. Assuming it was a traditional and the physical container had already been placed, you could try to find it. I got a pre-publication gold in this way once. I think this loophole has been closed now though. Most of my other pre-publication FTFs have been on short series where not all have been published at once and you can guess where one or more of the remaining ones might be. But my most unexpected one was where the CO put a big hint in one of his logs on an existing cache that he had hidden a new cache in a parking lot nearby. I happened to be going past the area so I thought "What the the heck - I'll just go and have a wander around". I parked the car and got out, looked down next to the nearest tree and there it was - a fake dog poo!

As I live in Australia, for most of the day the automatic date comes up as my yesterday. With the increasing use of smartphone apps for geocaching, it has also become very common for our local cachers to log finds "on the go" which have the previous day's date on them here. I think a lot of them don't know (or don't care) that the dates are one day behind the date they actually found the cache. And an annoying "feature" is that for some logs - archive in particular - even if I put the correct local date, the GC date overrides it. This means that if I want to archive a cache, I have to wait until (our) evening to get the right date on the log. BTW as I write this it is just after 9am on 1/1/2014 here - so Happy New Year from Oz!

(Emphasis mine.) I think this is a more important point than many geocache placers realise. The more widely distributed (far apart) the satellites are in the sky the better the accuracy. If you are taking a reading with the only visible satellites in a line or close together it won't be as accurate.

M&M containers: The trouble is, geocachers (new ones in particular) have become so used to the decreasing size of caches that I've often found these to be labelled as "small", not "micro"!

I just had the same problem. I'm using IE11 with Windows 7.

Maybe it's just because I'm in Australia, but it all looks very odd to me. . . There are two people in the front aren't there? Has the policeman at the wheel fallen asleep while his front seat passenger is reading Signal his rights? Why the rope on the street sign? And what about the black Merc in the background . . .

I can't either. Though since the recent "upgrade" to Explorer 11 it's not the only problem I've had! I see the picture on the computer but not the phone. It's a police car, by the way. And now I can see it! And I didn't change anything on my computer... How did you do that? Thanks anyway.

I can't either. Though since the recent "upgrade" to Explorer 11 it's not the only problem I've had!