root1657

A strong point, to be sure, but it does loose something when printed in black and white, or in dense areas, where the disabled caches add to the 'clutter'. also, the cache name list to the side is made much longer by them, turning it into a scroll fest. You mean that is suppossed to make a PQ set with map data as displayed? Awesome! however, when I click on that, it takes me to a blank pq form, so I had no idea it should work like that.... As long as we are at it though, why not just have an 'instant pq' button for the premium members, have it count against my weekly pq count, and save me a few steps, and save the servers a few page hits with me bungling around. Yep, I do that in my PQs, but again, we are back to discussing work arounds for something we put up as a site enhancement. Maybe there is a disconnect here somewhere with my point about having a site suggestion explained away with a work around. Here is the ultimate work around that takes us back to geocaching day 1... get coords from usenet, write em on a piece of paper, and go have some fun finding a can of beans! I jest of course, but still, in so many thread, I see GSAK and PQs being put up as the ultimate answers to everything, and yet in others we see reminders that we arent suppossed to be building offline databases. How many line items does it take to be an offline database? a debate for another day... So after I jump through those hoops and am again viewing it in google maps, I've essentially done a whole lot of work to accomplish exactly what we want the one additional check box filter for?

Forget California, how big would it be for San Diego County? I do a pq for 500 caches and I'm lucky to get a spot a couple of miles wide! I'm all for the idea of having bigger PQs, exactly because of that density here in San Diego area. If I am at the other end of the town, I'd need a dozen PQs to cover my daily commute triangles. I know everyone keeps throwing out that whole 'pq should get you everything within 100 miles of home' number, so how about instead of everyone trying to argue over how many cahces a persone really needs, let some of us have the option to have everything within 50 miles of home with no cap on the number of caches. Also, how about if I get a once a week pq of the county. May not work as well for some who live near the edges of counties, but again, I dont think there will be a one size fits all solution, and I think we need to have different options for people instead of always trying to make other people cache the way we do. Different areas, different lifestyles and scheduals REQUIRE different methods of caching. I started out caching in rural Ohio, and now I'm in urban San Diego, and I can tell you for sure, it's a whole different sport in the two different places. How ever you cache, keep on cachin! root1657

I see what you are saying, but the point of this thread is not to improve PQ's, but the advanced search options on the site itself. This site uses a 2-tier business model. Tier 1 (basic) is available for free to everyone. Everything you need for geocaching is there. Tier 2 (premium) adds some convenience items that makes geocaching easier. Good business sense says you don't add Tier 2 capabilities to Tier 1 applications. Unless you also add more cool features to the upper level, so that it is still signifanctly cooler than the lower level...

I absolutley agree and asked for the same in the enhancement request section a few days ago. Interestingly enough, even though I was suggesting a new feature in the area where you suggest new features, I got the same response about doinig it in pocket queries. I understand that they are trying to be helpful in telling us how to do it with what we have now, but if that were the case for everything, then we wouldnt have half the cool features of the site, since you could still just write the coords on your arm with a pen and go out hunting. It seems to me that with the way disabled caches are shown differently, that the map already 'knows' that they are different, and I too would like the filter button for them, same as for my finds and other categories.

I just want to say that I think the desicion to pull the ads from the premium members pages is the correct one. You still get to make your fair advertising money from the free members, and maybe it will encourage the free members to become premium members in the interests of not seeing the ads. And until I got to the post where you announced the decision to pull the ads, I was beginging to formulate a plan for a geo-demonstration event... It was an odd, and weak plan, so thank you for saving me from myself.

I am using pocket queries for gsak and GPXviewer for the ppc, however, I was specifically hoping for this filter on the google map search page because of the visual element it adds to my mental planning. I've decided that the best approach for me is NOT to go for caches that are 'near' each other, because sometimes linear distance is meaningless in San Diego. I've got to contrend with a uniquely shaped set of bays, major highways, geographical impasses, and things of that sort. There are places where telling my reciever to go to the next cache would point me a hundred yards across a river that I would have to go many miles to get to, and things of that sort, so seeing the google map search is awesome. It does mussle up the picture though to have those disabled caches (thanks for the proper term) in the mix, and when I print it black and white, and loose the inteligence of those icons, it's less than handy. I think the best method for me isnt going to be distance, it's going to be arbitrary geographical grouping that I pick, for example, do all the ones on the peninsula, then everything west of Nimitz, then everything west of 5, south of 8 and north of downtown, take the downtown next, etc.... to work out my 'cleared' area. When I look at the google search page, I should see empty areas of map, and if a new one pops up there, it goes to the top of my to do list to maintain my cleared area. Having these disabled caches there sucks because I most likely cant complete them, yet I dont want to ignore them on an ignore list, in hopes that they may become active again. Anyway, so many of my plans and hopes hinge on a silly longing for a simple filter button that just isnt there.... how sad is that? root1657

I've recently come back to the sport after some time away and I'm loving some of the new features! I'm pretty quickly addicted to using the google map search and then using the link to load the items straight to my GPSr (Isnt technology wonderful!). I like that I can filter out and find only certain types of caches, but the glaring ommision I see is an aditional filter to omit the lined out caches from that map. The list to the right shows them lined out, and the icons on the map are a different color (at least for singles) so I'm guessing that it has some awareness of them. Days are getting longer, so I'm looking forward to the greater chances for going out searching (and only now am I finding out about night caching anyway) Thanks to everyone, from the programmers all the way out to the guy who doesnt have a single find yet. root1657