Benchmark Blasterz

The capital Y takes the place of the 2 Roman numeral Is

No - it will be Here's BMB's teXt VVaYMark of ???? M+X+V+V+Y+M = 2022 1000+10+5+5+2+1000 = 2022 . . . . UNLESS y'all think Y is too obscure, in which case I will leave well enough alone and not re-burden the engraver who thinks I'm crazy ha ha

I knew about the VV=W, but not about the Y=II. Back to the engraver for another wierd look - I really tried to write my chronogram in a way that any letters that could be Roman numerals were used in the math - I’ll update the waymark when I get the new plaque, dropping the “ThIs Is” for “Here’s.” Also - no apologies required. My submission set off fireworks that I was NOT expecting and the vote comments reflect those. I do think a clear write-up of your expectations for waymarker-created chronograms on the Category Description page would be helpful to both waymarkers AND officers in the future, should you choose to do that. Greater understanding of what is required of waymarkers and clearer acceptance/decline guides for officers make the Waymarking world a happy place

And with A LOT more Roman Numerals, if you were commemorating your AGE ha ha ha ha

NOT cheating!! ARTISTIC LICENSE

This has been a fun and fascinating journey, requiring a lot of creativity and polishing to create a chronogram that does not sound stilted or odd when read. We have really enjoyed all aspects of this adventure, from finally having that stroke of insight to make a non-stilted chronogram, to the this-lady-is-crazy look on the engraver's face when I explained what I wanted on my plaque. To his credit, my husband was totally on board with the chronogram on the front of the house. He has turned in to a waymarker! But my greatest thanks goes to PISA-caching, who not only conceived of and created this very cool category, he was both gracious helping me, AND flexible in devising a way for everyone worldwide to participate and waymark in this category. For me, Waymarking in the more technical, difficult, or rare categories is the most fun. As a new waymarker, I spent quite a lot of time scouring my home city, looking for rare or hard-to-find categories to waymark in, both to fill my own grid and help others fill theirs. In the course of that, I learned to look at my surroundings a different way, with more attention-to-detail and curiosity. That way-of-looking has enriched our family experiences in our travels to this day. Common question on the road: "How did you see / know about that?" My answer: "Waymarking - its a category." Next step for me is the put Naval Station Blaster (AKA Blaster Base) on blast (ha ha), hoping to pick up a few visits on my Chronogram while helping my fellow waymarkers who find themselves in Dallas with an icon.

well rats - oh well. We saw it and that was fun

Count us IN for College Station ‘- I’m dropping a kid off at A&M after spring break

Agree with Max - sports museums are sports HISTORY museums, so there is no need for a new category.

I agree with PISA-Caching: this sounds like a fun Photo Goal waymark, and challenges of this nature are EXACTLY what that category is about. There is already a waymark for the goal of taking a photo of yourself at a street with your same name, so your idea would fit perfectly there, and would not need its own category. Another issue I see with this category is that you very likely would only have as many waymarks in it as there are waymarkers - it could be a one-and-done gimme-the-icon category, and we already have several of those. I would suggest you post your idea as a waymark in Photo Goals - there is a nearby Texas historical marker erected in my birth year I could add.

IIRC this was one of the earliest if not the earliest category, created by Groundspeak. I have not created a waymark in this category myself, since I’m a shutterbug not a blogger - but I’m going to look around and see what I may see.

If this is still a valid interpretation ofthe category for those of us in N America, I have something for Steve to get working on --

We have A LOT of benchmarks on schools in our finds - the difference over the last several years is that where I used to I limit myself to taking a close shot of the disk and no location shots, now we usually pass by. Before schools turned into locked down secure facilities, if we were out benchmarking when school was in session we would just go into the office to let folks know what we were photographing and why we are there. It was never a problem. Not anymore. We just pass on by school benchmarks, unless they are on former schools.

This is great news - thanks for sharing Time to dig through my UK pix and see if I have anything that would qualify 🧐

I am very uncomfortable Waymarking active schools. weekdays or weekends. In this toxic political environment, where some politically-directional folks are looking for anything to attack folks of the other political direction -- and ANYTHING affiliated with the UN is problematic - it's just not a good idea IMO.

I saw that - and wondered, will this be the first WM category to come to an end for new waymarks, OR was that already Yellow Arrows?* Toynbee tiles disappearing from Earth too - hmm Note to community- Blasterz are generally available for a partnership. We are in Dallas TX ETA: *Yellow Arrows accepting waymarks from former locations. Last new waymarks were posted in 2021! I have some visits to make -- I actually went to Tulsa OK to see my first, then discovered geojeepsters found one on the back of a sign at the Tarrant county TX Courthouse, 30 miles from my home! HA WRT Toynbee tiles: new waymarks being accepted as of 2020! Newest posts are in Tulsa - looks like I'm going back! I literally tripped over one crossing the street in Philadelphia, but I have never posted a WM of my own for either of these categories.

I choose HOPE every time

I'm going to share my interactions with Alfouine both as a waymarker submitting to categories he reviews in and as a fellow officer in categories we manage. I bolded the statements in your post that in my opinion and from my experience working with him, are off the mark. What you see as an "ultimatum statement" I see as a European being direct, as they can be, says the American from the South. If you make the fix, you'll get the approval - This is all he was saying to you. What I see from his declines of MY waymarks is that they are because I missed something - a naming convention mistake, or a wrong default photo are the most common reasons. I fix my WM name and the order of photos and - my waymark is approved quickly with a thank you. I see THE EXACT SAME PATTERN in his declines of OTHER people's waymarks - they missed a requirement, they defaulted the wrong photo, they messed up the name, etc - he declines and tells then how to fix it. To my mind this shows that he is consistent across the community, not personally targeting you or reviewing you any differently than anybody else. my 2 cents - worth every penny

I'll gladly go 100% off-topic with you Anyone looking for an on-thread discussion, skip to the next post! Texas is one big state because beginning in 1836, we were one BIGGER Republic - The Republic of Texas claimed land stretching all the way into (what would later become) the US States of Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming. See this image: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FTexas_annexation&psig=AOvVaw0bWYeuMRzm_9X-x0PzX0VL&ust=1643982342359000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCNiVgc7V4_UCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD This idea of breaking Texas up into smaller independent units has a long history, but it's always about the same thing: out-voting the Yankees. The division idea goes back to the annexation of Texas into the US in 1846. Dividing Texas into 5 states at that time would have added 10 pro-slavery Senators to the Senate and with that vote advantage, slavery would have spread across America, instead of being confined to the American South. Funny how none of those "let's divide Texas" supporters wanted to do it once Texas seceded with the rest of the most ardent slave states in 1861. No one in the Confederate States of America wanted 5 Texases voting together! The idea to split Texas into 5 states was last floated in the 1930s by US Congressman John Nance Garner, who proposed dividing Texas into 5 states after losing a vote on a tariff that would help industrial states at the expense of agricultural states. Garner pointed out on the US House floor that "Texas would make 220 states the size of Rhode Island, 54 the size of Connecticut, and 6 the size of New York." If you want to REALLY go down the rabbit hole with me, you can keep reading. Warning: History incoming! In the Texas Revolution of 1836, General Sam Houston defeated Mexican General Santa Anna at San Jacinto. Santa Anna surrendered, but really nothing changed because the Republic of Texas and Mexico could never agree on a treaty, and not only did Mexico not recognize the Republic of Texas, Mexico also disagreed with the Republic's claim that the Rio Grande was its border with Mexico. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Revolution#/media/File:Mexico_1835-1846_administrative_map-en-2.svg Mexico insisted the southern border of Texas was the Nueces River, a much smaller area. Mexico adopted a kind of hands-off policy, believing that eventually the Republic would fail and come back under Mexican control. Meanwhile, the Republic of Texas started diplomacy with the US and European powers, wrote and enacted a Constitution (allowing slavery), and formed a government. Skirmishes often flared up between Texas and Mexico in the disputed territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande, but without a treaty nothing could be resolved. Mexico would not recognize Texas independence, and underestimated the effect of decades of immigration from southern US states into Spanish/Mexican Texas. The majority Anglo Republic of Texas was more aligned with the American South than the Mexican Republic. Mexico abolished slavery in its 1827 Constitution, banning imports of slaves into Mexico and declaring that all children of slaves born in Mexico were free. But the Texas climate was perfect for cotton, and the cotton economy depended on the free labor of slaves, and the increase of slave numbers through births, sales, and imports, mostly from the Southern US. Mexico and Texas were not aligned and growing further apart by the day. With no settled borders and uncertain status, the Republic of Texas was soon deeply in debt and struggling to function. When the British got involved (as the primary market for Texas cotton) offering cash to the Republic to pay its debts, free its slaves, and provide both a diplomatic and military alliance, the US decided in 1846 to annex Texas first, knowing that this would quickly lead to war with Mexico. Southern states wanted to keep Texas slave-holding. Without expansion westward to the Pacific, slavery would eventually end. Both Southern and Northern states knew that only an exact balance of slave states and free states in the US Senate was keeping the country from Civil War. Under the Missouri Compromise of 1820, only land south of 32*30' could have slaves, and as the American West was being settled, there was much more land available for new states north of that line than south of it. SO: Texas came into the Union with an unresolved border with Mexico, a MASSIVE amount of debt, and all the slaves being held in Texas. The US refused to accept responsibility for the Republic's debts, but agreed to defend the Rio Grande border. This deal, while crippling economically, was popular in Texas and clearly better than continuing as a Republic. Three weeks after Texas was annexed, the US declared war on Mexico to (1) settle the Texas border issue (2) force Mexico to recognize Texas' prior independence and (3) therefore accept that the Republic of Texas had been lawfully annexed into the US. The war was short and devastating for Mexico. The US Army overran outnumbered Mexican troops in nearly every encounter, and captured their capital, Mexico City in under a year. To end the war, Mexico signed a treaty accepting the Rio Grande as the boundary of the Republic of Texas, and agreed to the Republic's vast claims to land north and east of the Rio Grande -- this was the Mexican Cession (green part in the image). Mexico also gave up all territory conquered by US forces north of the Rio Grande to the 110th Meridian, and then west to the Pacific Ocean. This was about about half of Mexico's territory in all, from which the US States of New Mexico, Arizona. Utah, Colorado, California, and New Mexico were created. With the end of the Mexican War and the now-settled border of Texas, an old problem surfaced: Maintaining the balance between slave states and free states under the Missouri Compromise. Mexico's agreement that 1/3 of Texas was north of that 32*30' line, acceptance of the Republic, and its pro-slavery Constitution, could have erased the Missouri Compromise line and spread slavery all the way into Kansas. Northern states feared the end of the Missouri Compromise, which had kept the peace for 25 years between the Abolitionist North and Slave-holding South. Southerners cheered the prospect of spreading slavery into the center of the US and beyond. All those slave states that could be carved out of that land would tip the balance of slave and free states to the point that the South could take control of the US Senate, and force the US Congress to protect slavery forever in the US Constitution -- meaning slavery would not only be legal in the South (Missouri Compromise), but in the North as well. But Texas had a bigger problem at home: all that debt was crushing the state's ability to have a stable sustainable functioning government. Another compromise was in order: The Compromise of 1850. Texas agreed to set its northernmost border at the 32*30' latitude line and cede all the Republic lands north of 32*30' that Mexico recognized in the Mexican Cession to the United States. In exchange, the US would accept responsibility for the Republic's old debt. All of Texas was now south of the Missouri Compromise line. Texas would keep their slaves and be a slave state in the US Senate. The Territory of Iowa, north of the Missouri Compromise line, was admitted as a state a year later to preserve the exact balance of slave and free states in the US Senate. That didn't mean that the Southern states were giving up on the idea of creating a slave-state super-majority that would enshrine slavery in the US forever. After the Mexican War, Southern Senators were busy carving California up, as well as continuing to press for organizing new slave-holding Territories in the former Mexican lands. Once the Americans surveyed their new lands won from Mexico, reality hit: slavery was not going to be economically viable west of Texas. That turned the focus back to Texas, which was so big it could be carved into 5-6 stand-alone states that would all be slave-holding and could sustain themselves. Despite repeated proposals by Southern Senators, all the efforts went nowhere, and were abandoned in 1861 when Texas seceded from the Union to join the Confederate States of America. The idea of breaking up Texas did not die with the onset of war, it was just put on the back burner for a while until it would become expedient for one side to want to carve up Texas again. After the Civil War ended in 1865, Reconstruction began in the US South. Each former Confederate state held a Convention to ratify a new state Constitution abolishing slavery, granting former slaves civil rights, and re-organizing the state governments. In the Texas Constitutional Convention, most delegates wanted to break Texas into 5 states, but couldn't find a majority to support any one of the different division maps. Texas remained whole. Dividing Texas was not seriously considered again until 1930, when John Nance "Cactus Jack" Garner, US Congressman from Uvalde, Texas (then serving as Speaker of the US House), again suggested carving Texas up into 5 states. Even Cactus Jack knew that was not gonna happen - he was just ticked about being outvoted BY the Yankees. Didn't keep him from serving as FDR's Vice President from 1933-1941, though - even running for President twice during that time. Garner is famous for saying that being Vice President was "not worth a bucket of warm piss." I suppose he would know! Here's a link to the Handbook of Texas: a great source for everything Texas (except Tex-Mex): https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook?gclid=CjwKCAiAl-6PBhBCEiwAc2GOVB1rb6zAvnTM6H0jZ4HeuvXNVvohepu55YAy1QrzhAevfZf55npcWRoCHloQAvD_BwE Tex-Mex, go here: https://www.mattstexmex.com/store/product/mextex-traditional-tex-mex-taste-hardcover/ I vote chips & Bob Armstrong dip for lunch!

How have the category officers decided to address the Former Capitol Building waymarks that have already been approved? I’m not a fan of grandfathering because it muddles categories that should be clear and defined. Have the officers discussed THAT? From what you have written, it seems like there is disagreement between the officers about what the category should accept. That needs to be resolved one way or another - then the need or not for a new category should be clear.

I think they should appropriately go into State Capitol Buildings because - they're State Capitol Buildings. I don't think we need another category for Former State Capitol Buildings. Have you discussed this issue with the members of the group before you came here and proposed a new category? I'd be interested in hearing their input, since by excluding FORMER Capitol Buildings, the number of waymarks available to be waymarked in the category is dramatically reduced -- from hundreds of possibilities to 50 in the US alone. ETA: There are 6 (by my count) Former Capitol Buildings approved in that category. What changed?

I think it would be possible to change visit logging requirements of uploading a personally-taken photo to prove this visit. In countries where taking such photos would be illegal, I think no photo visits should be allowed, but I’m not an officer in the category. I’ve posted distanced or entry sign shots for visits to sensitive locations before - would this be an option, or is even a photo of the entry sign a violation of law? Here in the US it is getting nearly impossible to take anything but a distance shot of dams, especially hydropower dams. You can take a shot from a road as you pass by, but the old days of being able to walk up close to a dam and enjoy its power and awesomeness are over. I was refused permission to take a photo of international border monuments I could see from my car by US Border Patrol - and I have a constitutional right in this country to take a photo of anything I can see from any place I am lawfully allowed to be. In a waymarker not a law breaker! 🤣

Changed my mind - and got the coin Very happy with it, and so glad to know thar Bruce is on it.

Joined Hey Beav!

I wear my Waymarking sticker to GC events and except for the big NTX event in Denton, (where my sticker got a small handful of visits) few others were interested in Waymarking. This is why I have not purchased the coin yet - one more thing to haul around for little interest IMO. Sorry