MacHammer

As we say over on "GlockTalk"...double tap. Sorry. Mac Hammer

My favorite recently was on one of my magnetic flat cache hides where 9 people searched for over an hour and still had fun doing it, even though they didn't find it. I got one more DNF from them before they found it on the third time. They also told me that they were new to the sport and knew they were missing what others could see right away. I loved it when they finally got it and silently cheered for their persistence. When they finally got it, they couldn't believe that they'd been fooled so badly by it, but loved the creativity. Others call it a quick park and grab. The majority of my hides are personal creations that took several trips to Home Depot or Lowes to finally call them "perfect". I love to hear that people thought they were creative and great jobs at camo. But my favorite to date is the fellow cacher I met at someone else's hide who described me as "one of his heros" when describing our meeting. :D Made me beam that he liked my hides that much! Those of us who build our own caches and don't hide magnetic bison tubes would like to start a campaign to delete all logs that simply read: TFTC, especially the ones you can tell were posted by GSAK. Impersonal is bad. Impersonal and robotic is even worse. I have 11 hides out there. Some cachers will find 3 or 4 in a day. All will have identical logs. ICK. To date, I've found 110 caches. I've taken a moment to write something about each experience in every one of them. Because of that, I can drive by anything I've found and remember my time there, good or bad. Fun or not. I can even name most of them by cache name. In short, (I know...too late) I like to be the kind of cacher that I like to have visit my caches. Mac Hammer "The spirit of a misplaced childhood is rising to speak his mind" -Marrillion

A typical recent log for a virtual cache at an artesian well: Fresh water runs from underground And drips upon the mortared stones While flakes of snow fall all around A transient who sits here cold, alone. BlueDamsel Beautiful. Keep it up. I only have 90+ finds right now, but I can remember every one. And I do think it is because I take a moment to write something about each one in the logs. Mac Hammer

OMG this is the funniest, but truthiest, post in this whole thread. I agree with you on all counts. I too consider myself somewhat of a crazy cache inventor, and the one word logs and acronyms drive me nuts. I try and always find something nice to say about every cache I find. I found 32 caches last Saturday, every one of them has a unique log describing something about that cache and my hunt for it. Thank you ZSandmann! 32 is a great day. So far, 9 has been my best afternoon. This statement is completely un-scientific, but I would bet that those of us who spend our time and money trying to create good hides, also spend more time and effort in providing feedback to those we find. I always try to add something to the experience by posting a good log. The hard (and fun) part is discussing the hide with the owner, in the open, in front of others, without sharing a tidbit of useful information that betrays the hide. And to comment on the original posting of the thread, I do get a little bit upset by the cachers who have 8000 finds, but have hidden 10 caches. Yes, they might give back to the sport in other ways, but most of the time, their logs seem to be auto-uploads where they add a stock sentence for today's efforts and post the same bit of drivel to the 42 caches they found today. This is particularly noticeable from those that have a stock statement that they post to EVERY cache, no matter the day, no matter the experience. I figure that someone thought enough of me to take the time to put something here for my pure enjoyment, I ought to at least say thank you in a way that makes it seem personal and true. If you only own one cache, you'd probably never know. But own 3 or 4 in the same region, and you will receive 4 identical postings within a matter of minutes when they run their GSAK Macro (don't get me wrong. I love GSAK) and their posts all land in my in-box. I just go to my in-box (dresser) and retrieve my feedback (money). See you next time, John. Mac Hammer

Thanks undertree. I feel the love. Mac Hammer

As someone who has only been at this for a few months, I have hidden about 10 caches. I've tried to make them interesting magnetics that mimic their surroundings. Old hands seem to find them easily, but others seem to have the same blindness to them that I had when I first encountered them. That is fun. I love the DNF reports as much as the find reports. Sometimes, even more. Because I spend money at Home Depot and Lowes, and then spend my time meticulously glueing and constructing them. Then I spend time studying the area I plan to use for the hide so that I can go to Lowes or Home Depot and find that exact shade of "power transformer powder-coat blue" Rustoleum to match the terrain. Then I spend time planning the position of exactly where it should be placed, usually choosing a location that is both visible and protected from the elements. It is a time-consuming process and I love it... ...until... I drive by my cache and find that some jerkwad cacher has basically thrown it back at the hide location so that it hangs at a 37.5 degree angle in a straight-line hide, making it scream out "Hey, look at me! I don't belong here! I must be a cache!!!" And then my admonishments to "place the cache back exactly as you found it" go out the window, because "exactly as I found it" was messed up. Then, I start getting the logs: "Easy park and grab..." "Fast drive-by. Decent camo". Or, the worst of them... "TFTC". And that brings me to the real reason I'm here... TFTC shows ZERO respect for the efforts I've made. I'd love to delete every damned one of them from the logs. If you don't care about the efforts I've taken to try to make this fun for you, I don't care about your freakin' numbers. I'm literally just another notch on your bedpost. TFTC cheapens both of us, and I know we are better than that. The money's on the nightstand. Mac Hammer

I started making this kind of cache after purchasing a couple of them on eBay. I got the magnet sheets with the adhesive. Then, I removed the adhesive. Then I removed the adhesive from the plastic number labels (purchased in aisle 17 of Lowes) and adhered the two adhesives together. Works out pretty well, but is sort of hard to assemble without a couple of sticky mistakes... Mac Hammer

UPDATE: Following the advice of someone above, I noted a couple of people who had signed the cache within the last couple of months and contacted them. Both were able to give me the name of the now-archived cache. I contacted the owners and received permission to re-publish the cache. I'm turning it into a stage in a new multi-cache in and around the original location, with proper credit given to the former owners for their hide. Thanks for all the advice. Mac Hammer

Away from the electrical theme for a while. I DNF'd a hide last week and asked a friend where it was located. He told me where it was and I was disappointed that the hider had chosen this location. The hide is in a public park, in a hummingbird nature garden. The hide is placed at the bottom of an interpretive sign stake. One must pull the interpretive sign out of the ground to find the attached bison tube. As evidence of why this shouldn't occur, one of the other interpretive signs was laying on the ground near the cactus it was supposed to identify. I spent 5 minutes with my kids trying to re-stake the sign, never once believing that the post to its left was the location of the cache. Intentionally placing a hide where you are required to deface the nature of a park, I feel, is inappropriate. I'm already learning that the best way to locate a hide is to look for the footpath that pounds through the brush to the coordinates of the hide. Twice, I've identified caches by finding broken tree branches bent aside in proximity to the cache. I love the practice of Cache In-Trash Out, but Trashing while Caching is giving my new favorite sport a bad name. Mac Hammer

I don't think it would be a letterbox. It is a small magnetic, typical of many of the caches I've found. And...not very scenic! I wish I'd taken more note of the names on the log, but I just figured it was a regular cache and I'd find it listed. There don't appear to be any nearby multi's. Mac Hammer

Good point! That has happened to me before. I hadn't thought of the fact that it might be stage n of a multi... Since I haven't charted a multi, yet, I still think in terms of traditional caches. Next time I'm grabbing food for the dog, I'll check some of the names. I'm already becoming familiar with many of the active cachers around here. Thanks for the tip! Mac Hammer

Hi, I was in the parking lot of my PetSmart and saw a place that I thought would be great for a hide. On inspection, I found a cache. I opened it, signed it (along with about 100 other people) and thought I'd log it in when I got home. Funny. It doesn't exist. No listing anywhere. What do you do with a cache that is obviously in use, as it was found in November, but no longer exists? Just wondering. Mac Hammer