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PandyBat

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Posts posted by PandyBat

  1. Seems like once the owner told you exactly where the cache is, there would be no need for you to go searching for it. Keep at it with hints until you find it. The satisfaction will be much greater and it could be a learning experience for the next one you get stumped on, especially since you are so new to the sport.

  2. Dave Ulmer is at the tippy top of the pyramid in this game. The man would be an Amway god by now.

     

    My pyramid would be very small at this point. Everyone I talk to about geocaching either shows no interest or look at me sideways like I'm crazy or something. I must suck at explaining geocaching. Even the brochures don't seem to help.

  3. A main road is fronted by numerous shopping centers. with the parking lots all connected. Think of a large grocery store parking lot..this man's land, which has a stand alone building about the size of an 8 screen movie theater on it, is adjacent to the grocery store parking lot. I drove through the grocery store parking lot and continued through the parking lot on his property to get closer to the cache. As a matter of fact, I even saw the owner arrive in the parking lot that morning (a good 250 feet away from the cache) because I passed him in his car as I headed toward the cache. I have no doubt the guy was the landowner because I used to live about 1/2 mile from this location and patronized the business that was located there years ago before it closed.

    Just out of curiosity, what was the WOW factor for this cache as described by the cache owner? Doesn't sound very interesting to me.

  4. Or, do what I do.. Put the cords in your GPS, head out, REMEMBER what the cache page said, walk in circles while the gps is being stupid, spin around a lot like Monk when he's trying to solve a case, glance around oddly, try to rememeber which clue goes to which cache, start to backtrack and then see the cache container, shout triumphantly at whoever you're caching with who's still at the first spot you told them to check. Mom hates that.

    Bad Boy Scout!

    I tried that once and got NO WHERE. I realized then that I must start going out more prepared.

  5. We have a few "by boat" caches here in Missouri. I have done one and hope to do more before the summer is gone.

    Fair warning though, if you are going to hide a cache that needs special equipment to get to, be prepared for it not to be found much. But sounds like a great idea to me......go for it!

  6. I've been looking for a fun outdoor activity lately and when I came across geocaching it seemed like fun. After reading some of the posts about ticks I'm a little turned off. I've been recovering from some complications related to Diabetes and I keep thinking the last thing I need right now is ticks, lyme disease and rashes. What are your thoughts?

    Don't limit yourself because of the "what ifs". Protect yourself with the proper clothing, the proper repellent and go have some fun. If you didn't do things that you think you'd enjoy because of the risks, you'd never leave your house.

     

    Happy Geocaching!

  7. In my whole 36 years of existence on this planet, I have pulled off numerous ticks that I picked up here and there. I've never pulled a tick off with a pair of tweezers or used any other method of pulling them off other than my index finger and thumb. I've never had a ticks head stay in after doing this and I've never heard of it happening to any of my friends or family. Has anyone else ever had a ticks head stay in after pulling out the body?

     

    Thanks for the additional information!

  8. I didn't know what it was either so I looked it up. Sounds like something similar to those little lines that run across the bottom of CNN showing the latest news. Only this is for changes on websites....not sure.

     

    A short explanation:

    http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html

    RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way.

     

    RSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the weblogging community. Many weblogs make content available in RSS. A news aggregator can help you keep up with all your favorite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them.

     

    This page also tells you how to make your own:

    http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2175271

    RSS is a method of distributing links to content in your web site that you'd like others to use. In other words, it's a mechanism to "syndicate" your content.

     

    To understand syndication, consider the "real world" situation where artist Scott Adams draws a daily Dilbert cartoon. The cartoon is made available to any newspaper that cares to run it, in exchange for a fee -- and 2,000 papers in 65 countries do so.

     

    Unlike Scott Adams, syndication of web content via RSS is unlikely to make you rich. However, it can be an easy way to draw attention to your material, bringing you some traffic and perhaps a little net fame, depending on how good your information is.

     

    What Is RSS?

    How does RSS syndication work? Say you publish a new web page about a particular topic. You want others interested in that topic to know about it. By listing the page as an "item" in your RSS file, you can have the page appear in front of those who read information using RSS readers or "news aggregators" (explained more in my sidebar article, RSS: Your Gateway To News & Blog Content). RSS also allows people to easily add links to your content within their own web pages. Bloggers are a huge core audience that especially does this.

     

    What does RSS stand for? There's a can of worms. RSS as introduced by Netscape in 1999 then later abandoned in 2001 stood for "Rich Site Summary." Another version of RSS pioneered by UserLand Software stands for "Really Simple Syndication." In yet another version, RSS stands for "RDF Site Summary."

     

    History buffs might be interested that there's been some rivalry over who invented RSS. This is why we have both different names and indeed different "flavors" or versions of RSS. Mark Pilgrim's written an excellent article, What Is RSS, that charts the different versions with recommendations on which to use. I'll also revisit the version choice you'll need to make. But first, let's look more closely at some basics of what goes into any RSS file.

  9. Only one thing to be careful about, though. Don't let THIS happen!

     

    Bret

    Holy Cow! I read the cache page on that cache and nearly fell out of my chair! I thought it was a joke at first but had goosebumps by the time I got to the end of it. I don't think I will ever forget that cache owners name as long as I live! LOL

     

    Suggest all newbies (and oldies) read it. Good advice!

  10. I hope that I'm the only one who really cares what my geocaching history is, and a complete log record helps me remember my experiences. The only other person to care will be the owner and they really just want (and deserve) to know that someone came out to look (aside from needing to know about multiple successive DNFs indicative of a problem - which a DNF of this sort shouldn't trigger as the log would show that it was a try without GPSr)

    Ditto! I don't look for caches in order to report their condition. I log my experiences for myself and for the cache owner. I don't log DNFs or anything else for the people that don't read the logs or that use software programs that don't give them the full story on why a log was posted as it was. No sense in posting several DNFs on a cache for each trip I made to search for it if nobody is going to read WHY I couldn't find it. I log DNFs solely when I've given up on a cache and don't intend to go back.

    Most people around here don't even post notes, DNFs or anything about the cache until they've found it, no matter how many times they attempted to search for it. We all do it differently.

     

    If you're so worried about getting help on deciding whether you will go after a cache or not based on the little icon before a log, I say, go after it anyway and post your own DNF if you don't find it. You don't need me telling you whether its there or not. That's part of the fun.

    The cache owner is the only one that really needs to know whether its there for maintenance purposes. So whether I post a note or a DNF, the cache owner still gets notification of it as well as anyone else with the cache on their watchlist.

     

     

    I'm also surprised at the number of people that have posted here that have the same opinions about DNFs as I do. Where were you all when I felt so all alone in previous heated discussions about DNFs? lol

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