Crash Gordon

35% of all people have problems with percent calculations. that's more than half the population! 87% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

I believe this is the real reason. But there are ways to do this while still keeping the email option. I don't really like this reason. PQ's are already a paid service. Since I'm being charged for this feature I think I should be able to run them and ignore them if I want.

Just as a point of clarification, I like most of the ideas that have been presented because most of them make it possible to do what I want to do: Regularly download a large area in a hands off manner. The idea that I and CoyoteRed suggested, a download-able large canned query would work, as would the POP, FTP, forced compression, direct URL's with authentication built in, etc. I believe that for most of us we would be happy to work around some minor extraction methods if we could just have an automated delivery method.

Nicely put. That's what I was trying to say in my post. Canned PQ's would probably remove most of the load on their servers. I would have no problem with being limited to the number of regions I could download either. Anything outside of my region I download on an infrequent basis and I almost always do a final check with my iPhone when I know the data in GSAK is a little stale. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please!

My PQ's are set up to periodically update all the caches in an extended area around where I live. I download them all via email and keep them in GSAK. For me, GSAK is the master of the data I use for geocaching. I periodically refresh my car GPS with all the caches I have. I periodically refresh my handheld with custom POI's so I have more than it's 1000 waypoint limit in it's memory. When caching, I do on the spot lookups to verify current status of a cache with my iPhone. That said, what I want is: 1. A periodic regional PQ that I can download in an automated fashion. 2. Freedom to run infrequent non-regional PQ's for when I am out of my local area. In talking to my friends that use GSAK, we have discovered that we all pretty much use the same PQ's to get the same data. What if Groundspeak generated some large, standard queries -- like all caches for a state -- and allowed you to choose one that you could regularly download. They could then generate a query one time and then deliver it many times. I know that among me and my friends we would stop running dozens of queries and only run the infrequent one's. The PQ system on Groundspeak is set up to assume that all queries are ad-hoc, when most likely that is not the case, especially for the GSAK users.

Yes, but.... I agree that when I find a lot of caches my logs tend to get kind of lame, but since I like to read about the experience others have in finding my caches I try to describe my experience well too. Even on my DNF's if they're memorable, like this one. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LU...36-4a980ca48491 Writing better than the normal log has yielded some added benefits of new friends. There were a couple of caches that I missed FTF on to the same geocacher by what seemed like only minutes. So I started tossing some light-hearted banter at him in some my logs when it happens and now we've become regular correspondents. I have a couple of coworkers who cache also and we usually try to comment about our experiences when we take the occasional "doughnut run" to get a cache. By doing so we've started to get some comments from other cachers too joining in the fun. Check these: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...=y&decrypt= http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...=y&decrypt= Having said all that, I should probably point out that some of us in our area are considering driving to Las Vegas to find a bunch of the caches on that huge mega trail. I'm pretty sure those will get short cut and paste logs. What can I say?

One of my first caches was a set of 6 identical bird houses placed in some trees along a bike path. One of the bird houses had a false roof and the hole on the front was plugged. The cache lasted only a few weeks before some kids found them and smashed all but one (the one that was very high in a tree and they couldn't reach). Yes, I was very disappointed, but I tried to not let it bother me too much. Kids are stupid (even mine) and they will eventually learn to not be so. I thought it would be cool to hide a cache in plain site - to make it visible, but not recognizable - but doing that on a lonely trail won't work. I'm learning and my current caches are now much better for it. I now have one that is in plain site, but it matches it's environment so well that it gets more DNF's than finds.

You guys will love this cache: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...85-842fd15e1488 Everyone logs a FTF for it. I've got a log for it too.