Steve&GeoCarolyn
-
Posts
361 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by Steve&GeoCarolyn
-
-
Geocaching is not a "high-tech treasure hunt" or "scavenger hunt" or "game of hide-and-seek". I would LOVE to see an article just once that avoided those tired and incorrect cliches. It is closer to orienteering than any of those other descriptions, if a comparison MUST be made.
Good luck!
Just out of curiosity...Could you explain why those are bad ways to explain geocaching? I am trying to explain this to friends and i can't think of a good way to sum up geocaching...Any advice? Thanks!
Well, these are just my opinions, but...
First of all, the "high-tech" part has more to do with the people that launch the satellites and develop the GPS receivers that we use. What we do really isn't much more "high-tech" than using our TV remote.
It also isn't a treasure hunt, really. At the very least, that gives the wrong idea, conveying notions of buried loot. If a used matchbox car is your idea of "treasure", then maybe its at least partially true, but I don't think that's what the average person thinks of when they hear that description.
Scavenger hunt: A Scavenger Hunt is an entirely different animal. Teams (or maybe individuals) are given a list of odd things to collect. The one that collects the most from their list wins. Has nothing to do with geocaching.
Hide-and-seek: You played that when you were a kid. What did you hide, and what did you seek. You hid a person, and you sought that person. Did you have coordinates? No. Did you trade swag? No.
These "tastes like chicken" analogies just confuse the issue. Geocaching is like geocaching.
So, you don't go for my analogy (always delivered with breathless enthusiasm): "It's exactly like being Sydney Bristow in Alias! Well, except without the bad guys. Or the wardrobe. Or guns. But otherwise, it is exactly like that!"
Carolyn
-
While I love the beautiful natural places, there is also a type of cache that I love but cannot be shown here. There are caches that are so well integrated into standing works of outdoor art that they become an artistic statement themselves. I've found a few like that. Obviously I cannot show a photo of any of these because that would be a spoiler. But I am registering my vote for perfectly integrated urban hides in places of outstanding beauty.
Carolyn
-
-
We were lost for about 5 hours despite having the parking lot marked on the GPS. It was supposed to be an under 2 hour hike but ended up lasting 6. We didn't know how the tracking function worked on the GPS at that point. We learned a lot of valuable lessons that day, of which the most important was to take plenty of water.
It really doesn't matter where the GPS points if the direct route is through an impassable swamp (without much better gear) and nearly impassable cliffs elsewhere. It is also unhelpful if the GPS is going crazy because of heavy vegetation. The important thing is to be able to find the trail. In this case, if there was a trail we never found it. We followed a deer trail for a while, but it petered out.
Here are the logs from that day. (It's really one long story told in three separate logs):
Carolyn
-
Hi Angie,
I apologize for the part I've played in making you feel that your relationship is being judged. It truly wasn't my intent. I believe that people should arrange their lives in ways that work for the individuals involved. You've clearly done that and I'm glad you're happy. I think that there is nothing more important than happiness within our intimate relationships.
I thought that flask's question was unfair. What person who is in love cares less for their true love's well-being than their own? It is not a gendered issue. I worry more about my beloved than about myself. I'm willing to risk myself far more than him. I think the same is true in reverse for him, though he controls his feelings of worry better than I do. I assume this is true of everyone who loves someone else. It is part of the essence of love.
There are several things that work in your life that I think should not be regarded as mandatory in other people's lives. First, I think that people should be free to be alone at times. For me it is necessary for my mental health. I think that it should be ok for someone to choose not to carry a gun. It should be ok to take some risks in life.
I've heard from more than one person that my beloved doesn't care about me or is not truly manly because he allows me to travel or hike alone and doesn't demand that I carry a gun. This is unfair. I want to be the other voice when that sort of thing comes up in a conversation. That is why I took the stand I did. (I didn't think that Stephen was saying precisely that, but he does extend his views on solo hiking to others, as when he mentioned being uncomfortable when seeing a young woman hiking alone.)
In addition, I think that people overestimate the risk of being alone in the woods and underestimate the everyday risks we all deal with. The familiar always seems safer. As Mrbort pointed out, it is quite common to overestimate the dangers of flying and underestimate the dangers of driving.
Those are my views. Again, I'm sorry that you feel besieged. It was not my intent.
Carolyn
-
If the situation was as the OP said, I wouldn't let her go. She wouldn't go in that situation anyway.
But... it isn't as the situation of the OP. My wife is trained and carries a personal firearm. Although it is a pain I can't tell you how many times she has come home saying she was so happy that she had it with her in a somewhat nervous situation. I still would not want her to go as it still seems like it would be taking a chance that I wouldn't want us to take. After being scared and alone geocaching before she wouldn't do it anyway.
My wife is small and good looking. It would be so easy to grab her and throw her in a van, firearm or not. I just want to know she is safe.
I hope you understand that I'm not criticizing your relationship or your decisions. Good, lasting relationships are so precious that if you have a set-up that works for both of you, that brings you comfort and joy, you should continue to do exactly what you are doing. My only point is that while forbidding your wife to hike alone works for you, it isn't a broadly applicable standard, nor is it a generalizable test of love. It doesn't work for everyone.
My wife is small and good looking. It would be so easy to grab her and throw her in a van, firearm or not. I just want to know she is safe.
I was once grabbed and dragged into a car (a small car, not a van) and it was a terrifying experience. I fought my way out of it and ended up ok in the end. But it made me feel vulnerable and unsafe. I had nightmares for a long time after that. It shattered my beloved's confidence since he hadn't been there to protect me. Where did this happen? A block from my home at the local 7-11 in the middle of the city. No one helped me.
Predators go where the prey is. Predators who prey on women don't head to the mountains or the woods or the swamp. They go to the 7-11 or the shopping center or the daycare center or the hair salon or the library. Are you as concerned about your wife going to these places alone?
Carolyn
-
I have been contacted by the local paper about interviewing for an article about geocaching. I'm really nervous about it, this would be the first exposure this area would get about geocaching. Any points I should include or avoid?
I used to write these kinds of fluffy articles/interviews for local publications (another life ago). What I always wanted to capture was the person's enthusiasm. I spent a lot of time warming the person up, asking easy questions, following up with other questions, doing a bit more to get the person to relax, until the person's natural enthusiasm broke out. I was after the money-quote. That is, I wanted something pithy and exciting or heartwarming that I could include in my article. Chances are you'll talk to the reporter for 45 minutes and she'll use two sentences.
My advice to you is to think about what you love most about geocaching and how you would describe it using short sentences. You might try coming up with things to finish these sentences "Geocaching is like...." "My favorite part of finding a cache is..."
If you have an exciting or funny or heartwarming story about geocaching, tell that. If there's a romantic angle, bring that in. So if you cache with your girlfriend or met your wife caching or found a romantic spot caching, tell the reporter about it.
She'll probably want you to describe the process of finding or hiding a cache, so you might want to think about that. I suspect the geocaching community will want you to emphasize that caches are never buried.
One thing to remember is that reporters doing stories like this are not doing gotcha journalism. This is fluffy kitten journalism. Just relax and I think you'll do fine.
Carolyn
-
I wouldn't let my wife go. I like her too much.
We are very close and do nearly everything together, but I think that if my beloved had refused to allow me to occasionally hike alone or travel alone it is likely that our relationship would have ended long ago. There is something about hiking alone that allows me to relax and think through things with clarity that I don't get from anything else. It has been those times when things were hardest for us that I hiked alone. I always emerged with a new understanding and calm. My calm understanding removed barriers between us. Solo hiking has been a safety valve that reduced the volatility in my relationship and helped me separate the inconsequential from the important.
I am not telling you that your relationship should work as mine does. I think we are all best when we choose our own paths. But I do think that the idea of forbidding people to be alone is something that should not be widely promoted.
Thinking back to this I see where we addressed one aspect of safe solo caching – that of attack by a predator (human or animal). I would like to add that to be safe one should look deeper.
1. Identify what all could go wrong, break it down into categories. i.e. Vehicle breakdown, weather, poisonous plants, dangerous animals, terrain, personal fitness and physical limitations.
2. Determine what you can do to minimize the dangers of each category. i.e. vehicle – check the antifreeze, oil (level and last change), tires (tread and proper inflation); breaks, warning lights, etc.
3. Minimize the effects that, if despite your preventions, the danger does occur. i.e. vehicle inoperability – check fuel level, 2nd set of car keys, cell phone to call for help, jack to change a tire, jumper cables, blanket, food, water – if stranded in the car,
If you look at each possible risk and create a plan to prevent it from happening and a plan of what to do if it does happen you will avoid most troubles and be prepared to deal with the rest. Much of this is especially important when traveling to places you are unfamiliar with. Different plants, animals, terrain, and weather; plus your support system is not as readily available when close to home.
And yes all you Army guys and gals I am talking about doing a Risk Assessment prior to geocaching.
This is such excellent advice! I was trying to figure out how to say be prepared but couldn't make the words come out. You've done far better than I could have. The only thing I would add is to plan trips well-within one's capacity. Solo trips are not the time to challenge one's physical abilities.
Carolyn
-
It's not appropriate to leave clues for other people's caches in the forums. I recommend that you email the cache owner for a hint. Solving it that way will help you learn to recognize patterns in the future!
For the record, it is considered inappropriate to ask for help with specific puzzle caches in public forums like this.
I don't think she asked for help with a specific puzzle cache. She asked for generalized help with websites that have puzzle help. My assumption is that generalized help is acceptable to provide like links to puzzle solving sites or the cache that helps people learn about puzzles. That is correct, isn't it?
I asked her for an example of what she meant by number puzzles and she provided the cache as an example. (I'm still mystified by what she meant since that was not what I expected.) I have compiled a list of websites I go to for puzzle solving tips and help which I thought would be acceptable to post but, as I said, I wasn't sure what she meant by number puzzles and whether she was looking at Sudoku.
Again, my assumption gleaned from watching here for a while was that general help and websites that offer puzzle help would be acceptable as long as they were not directed at a particular cache's puzzle. Did I err in this?
Carolyn
-
I have been caching for a few months and have cleared out my city pretty well.
I am down to the unknown and stuff like that. When ever they are numbers only I am totally stuck. I have 2 in my town that I have been looking at for a while and so stuck. I was wondering if a person could guide me to where I find the tools to solve this stuff. I really am not looking for someone to solve them. I want to know what type of decoders you use or number games you play to figur these out. I have no experience with anything like this and really want to learn. Mabey there is a web-site for clue less number people, like myself?? thanks
We love the puzzle caches. I am not certain what you mean by the number games. Do you have an example?
I don't know if you've seen this bookmark list. We found it useful. It is meant to teach you how to solve puzzle caches.
We use this site to help us solve cryptograms.
My beloved uses a sudoku solver to help him with sudoku puzzles. If that's what you're talking about I'll ask him for the link tomorrow.
None of this will solve it for you. It just makes it easier to solve and requires less paper.
Carolyn
-
I primarily cache with my beloved because we do almost everything together. However, when I drive him to an academic conference and am left alone as he goes to his academic events, I hike by myself. Also, I sometimes hike by myself when I need to get my head wrapped around a difficult issue.
For the most part I feel far more threatened in the city alone than I do in the woods or mountains. My sense is that most danger comes from other people and the number of people I've eliminated by being in wild places means that statistically I've reduced my danger.
Like Luckless said, if my danger sense is tingling, I find my way out of there. There is no reward at the end of the line for turning off my danger sense and since I'm hiking for pleasure, I go where I don't have to fight with my paranoia every step of the way.
Carolyn
-
Thanks, Carolyn. I figured TPTB would have covered something like this, but I wasn't sure what to look for.
It's often hard to do searches here. (My system is to check briansnat's posts to see if he's answered the question. He often does.)
Here's one of the threads that gives the answer. The instructions are in the first reply.
http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...=223141&hl=
Carolyn
-
Really? We have to go over this again?
Everytime someone posts here I am changing one of my caches over to PMO! And when I run out I will get my friends to change them over. STOP POSTING! I mean it!
I think you may have missed the original poster's question. She was asking about a specific cache that she feared was being ignored by premium members specifically because it was a PMOC.
I don't know that she got enough real feedback about her specific situation to come to a comfortable decision. Certainly if I were her and everyone used my question to beat their favorite dead horse, I'd feel discouraged.
Carolyn
-
The one thing about them that bothers me about them (and "bother" is actually too strong a word) is this--what does a non-premium member do if he or she does find one? I know the chances of stumbling across one is rare, unless they are looking for a place to hide one of their own, but what if they are with a premium member? I've got a family member that is a PM and we cache together. If he has a PMO cache pop up as next closest and we go searching for it, is there any way that I can get credit for a find or am I better off to sit in the truck and wait for the next non-member cache?
I guess this is more of a curiosity question than anything.
You can log them through a "backdoor" created by geocaching.com specifically for that purpose. I believe that the premium member gives you the URL to log it and you can use that. If you do a search on the forum, you'll find the instructions easily since this issue comes up fairly often.
Also, from what we've noticed if you are using one of the GPSrs that allow you to upload your field notes, you can get around it that way. When you post a found to the GPS and upload it via field notes it seems to ignore the Premium Owner restrictions.
Carolyn
-
I don't think there is one answer to this. We modify our behavior based on the circumstances we find ourselves in. In some places we're as stealthy as it is possible for us to be (not very). In other places we give short explanations of what we're doing. In other areas we explain that we're taking pictures (I always carry a camera) but don't explain the geocaching. In some places that have a lot of people that we don't want to explain things to or think they might take the cache, we decide not to go for that cache at that time. We act the same with caches hidden in playgrounds when there are a lot of children around. We just put it on our list to go back to when there are few children.
Here's our most recent encounter with someone in which I gave her a short explanation. With her, the secret turned out to be not what I said, but how I listened to her.
Each person and situation is different. I needed to cultivate some awareness of people and situations before I felt semi-comfortable. I still feel most comfortable in the woods where there is no one but us.
Carolyn
-
Jeremy, bless you - your tweets were invaluable to so many. I often sit in Clayjar's IRC channel, #geocache. Cacher-after-cacher passed through the channel, yesterday, hoping for information, answers and reassurance. Thanks to your frequent updates, we were able to pass your information along (and, I hope, reassure!). I know you had several sleepless nights.
And thank you as well for being there on the IRC channel to pass along the news. That was the only place I could think of to go to find out what was going on.
Carolyn
-
So.... What did you do with your enforced mini vacation from geocaching.com?
Took it as a sign from the Great Frog that I'm spending too much time in the forums and not enough time exploring cache-less areas for a place to put my own cache.
Carolyn
-
My heartfelt thanks as well!
Carolyn
-
-
test again
-
testing avatar
-
I get the following error trying to download cartridges on Windows (running on the Mac):
Server Error in '/' Application.
Index was outside the bounds of the array.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.
Source Error:
An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.
Stack Trace:
[indexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.]
Groundspeak.Web.Utils.BaseX.Int2Base(Int32 InInt) +121
cartridge_download.btnDownload_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) +265
System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e) +105
System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) +107
System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.System.Web.UI.IPostBackEventHandler.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) +7
System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(IPostBackEventHandler sourceControl, String eventArgument) +11
System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(NameValueCollection postData) +33
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +1746
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.1433; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.1433
-
Then that strikes up a whole new problem. What if I publish it as open just until FTF then shut it down to MO? Will that really bother a standard member that they at one time had access to the page and then all the sudden they don't because they didn't make it there on time?
I am wondering whether you are over-analyzing this. I also tend to analyze myself into smaller and smaller circles, so I wonder if this is what you are doing. (My beloved says watching my thoughts fly when I'm analyzing something is like watching two geegy birds circle round each other in tighter and tighter circles until they fly up each other's butts.)
The sad, sad truth of the matter is that some people will be offended by any course you take and you can't prevent that by acting differently. You will just get a new crew of offended people.
Despite the big deal being made in this thread by the semi-professional debaters here, who are clearly exploring old arguments rather than focusing on your particular cache, I strongly suspect that if your cache is not being visited by premium members it has nothing to do with the premium member cache restriction. It is more likely to be other restrictions you've placed on it or the scary dog or something else particular to that cache.
There is a way to examine your hypothesis and either dismiss it or prove it. Look at the profiles of the premium members you are thinking of. Check the caches they've found. See if any of those caches are premium member only. If the answer is yes, then your hypothesis is disproven. If the answer is no, then you have not yet disproven it.
Carolyn
-
I am having a problem using Wherigo.com with Safari. I do not have a problem using Firefox.
Operating system: Mac OS 10.4.11
Safari version 3.2.1
Here is the error:
Server Error in '/' Application.
There is no row at position 0.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.IndexOutOfRangeException: There is no row at position 0.
Source Error:
An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.
Stack Trace:
[indexOutOfRangeException: There is no row at position 0.]
System.Data.RBTree`1.GetNodeByIndex(Int32 userIndex) +1943315
System.Data.RBTree`1.get_Item(Int32 index) +17
System.Data.DataRowCollection.get_Item(Int32 index) +11
Groundspeak.Web.User.fillValues(DataSet& myData, Boolean blnReadOnly) +39
Groundspeak.Web.User..ctor(Int64 id, Boolean blnReadOnly) +194
Groundspeak.Web.User..ctor(Int64 id) +18
WebFormBase.OnPreInit(EventArgs e) +308
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +663
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.1433; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.1433
I am down to the unknown and stuff like that. When ever they are numbers only I am totally stuck. I have 2 in my town that I have been looking at for a while and so stuck. I was wondering if a person could guide me to where I find the tools to solve this stuff. I really am not looking for someone to solve them. I want to know what type of decoders you use or number games you play to figur these out. I have no experience with anything like this and really want to learn. Mabey there is a web-site for clue less number people, like myself?? 
Do you read the FAQ?
in General geocaching topics
Posted
You could just have the link as part of your signature. There's someone here who has put the link to GeoLex in his/her signature and after seeing it over and over I finally clicked over to read it. I think over-saturation (as long as it's not rudely done) is a good thing.
Carolyn