Bob Blaylock
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Posts posted by Bob Blaylock
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I suppose it's not worth any fuss. A day's worth of subscription is about 12¢, and I've already expended much more than 12¢ worth of fussing over it. As a matter of fact, I enjoy this activity enough, and have enough appreciation for Jeremy's role in making it possible, that I wouldn't begrudge him that extra 12¢. But the pedant in me is bothered by an error that seems to be in need of correction. When people pay for a full year, they should get a full year.
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My Premium subscription was to expire on 03 January 2006. I just now renewed it for a year. Now it is to expire on 02 January 2007. I seem to be getting a day less than I ought to.
I think the count is correct. If you had renewed the 3rd of january, doesn't 365 days bring you to the 2nd of january the year after?
Lets say someone renews on the 1st of january, il will end on the 31st of december.Right. And if he renews for another year, then 31 December will be the last day of his old subscription, 01 January will be the first day of his new one. And if he renews for yet another year, then again, 31 December will be the last day of that subscription, and 01 January the day that his next renewed subscription begins. If the subscription is renewed for a year at a time, then each subscription will end on the same day of the year that the previous one did, and each new subscription will begin on the same day of the year that the previous subscription did.
Renewing a subscription for a year should cause the expiration to be exactly a year later. In my case, a subscription that was going to expire 03 January 2006 should, if renewed for a year, expire on 03 January 2007.
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My Premium subscription was to expire on 03 January 2006. I just now renewed it for a year. Now it is to expire on 02 January 2007. I seem to be getting a day less than I ought to.
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the only features you truly need are:
* the ability to enter waypoints (the coordinates of the cache)
* the a screen on the GPS to use as a "go-to" screen that tells you what direction and distance the waypoint (cache) is
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And that's really about it. Now yes -- other features can be quite nice. Things like built-in maps, more memory to store more waypoints, or ability to use external memory cards to hold more, etc. etc.
I've not tried geocaching without the above two related features, but it seems to me that they would not really be necessary. As long as you have a reasonable sense of which direction is which (which could be provided by a stone-aged magnetic compass) all you need is for your GPS to display the current coordinates; leaving you to discern whether the displayed latitude is north or south, and the longitude east or west, of the position you're seeking, and to move accordingly.
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I've used the tip I read about in "Geocaching for Dummies" - I pretend I'm talking into a cell phone, and people quickly turn away.
There's nothing that looks more suspicious than someone who is obviously trying very hard not to look suspicious. Especially when he's talking on a yellow cell phone with a big Garmin logo on it.
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heh the guys just started a great hobby for 20 bucks. can't beat that.
Actually, I started in this hobby about a year and a half ago, having some time before that paid $140 for an original yellow eTrex (just a week or two before they dropped the price to $100). The Eagle is for my wife.
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Anyone out there have any experience with this unit? I note that EasyGPS lists the Eagle Explorer among the units it thinks it can support; though nothing in this unit's own documentation led me to expect that it had any significant ability to transfer data back and forth between a computer. Is it worthwhile for me to try to cobble together a cable to connect this fossil to my wife's computer?
I note that company that made it appears to still be in business, though their web site seems very flaky and does not inspire any significant degree of confidence in them. http://www.eaglegps.com It was only $21.25 after my 15% employee discount at the thrift store where I work. What we've seen so far of its performance leads us to feel that it was easily worth that much at least.
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Clean the old adhesive off with alcohol; glue it back on carefully with standard RTV silicone rubber.
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I've fallen on very hard times myself. I'm still in the process of picking myself up off the ground. Having once held a cushy computer programming/data analysis job at $30/hour, I'm currently working for minimum wage at a facility run by my church's welfare system, where I am being prepared hopefully to find a new career, in a whole different direction, that may well bring me back up to my previous standard of living. Before my current job, I was working as a day laborer through an outfit called (commercial content removed by moderator). Before that, I was unemployed for two years.
Anyone who is willing to do hard, honest work, who lives near (name removed by moderator) branch, and who can pass a very simple test meant to weed out those who are excessively prone to stealing, drug abuse, and violence, can get work there. Most (name removed by moderator) ready assignments actually pay a little bit above minimum wage.
I've toyed with the idea of printing up some flyers to hand out to panhandlers who accost me. These flyers would explain how to get to (name removed by moderator), and how to get signed up there. They would bluntly make the point that I now work very hard for what little money I earn, and that anyone who is willing to work as hard as I do can make as much money as I make. Someone who is thus willing to work doesn't have any need to be begging for handouts from me; and I am not at all inclined to share my meager hard-earned income with those who are not willing to work as hard as I do for it.
I gave up on the flyer idea. Most of the panhandlers I meet, I am quite certain would not be ablewilling to pass even (name removed by moderator) low standards; and I would not be doing (name removed by moderator) any favor by sending such as these to them. Some of my (name removed by moderator) colleagues were homeless, but there's a very noticable difference between them and the homeless that one encounters begging in the streets. Nearly the whole of this difference seems to be in the willingness to at least try to make one's living in an honest way.
There are five (name removed by moderator) branches in Memphis. If any of the slightly-living inhabitants of this site were worthy of any of our sympathy, tolerance, or concern, that's where they'd be.
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I'm reminded of an experience I had a few month ago. My wife, a friend of ours, and I were preparing to take a trip out of town, in the friend's car. As we approached a gas station, we noticed a very thin woman standing on the corner, begging. The friend had a fresh loaf of homemade bread in the car, which she asked me to hand to that woman. The woman handed it to a man who was begging at an opposite corner, and, as my friend was buying gas, this man approached me, and chewed me out for being “funny”. We should have given them money — according to him — and not that stupid loaf of bread.
My wife and I are cynical enough not to be terribly surprised by this ingratitude; I guess our friend has managed not to become nearly as cynical, and was rather deeply bothered by the whole thing.
I guess there are some people who just will not be helped. I think I have to agree with Mr. Lost's expressed opinions regarding “bums”.
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what a great story. Certainly need more threads like this one,
I agree, pretty cool.
Thing is, last time I recall this happening, we stopped hearing from the recipient shortly after she recieved her GPS. I still wonder what the heck happened.
Looks like the same thing here, too.
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When the rubber on my yellow eTrex came off, I first tried Shoe Goo. This rubber turns out to be the only thing I've ever found to which Shoe Goo doesn't seem to stick. It even sticks to Teflon, but not to this.
After that, I tried plain old RTV silicone rubber. This worked very well, and more than a year and a half later, the rubber on my eTrex shows no hints of wanting to come off again.
Based on this experience, I recommend plain old silicone rubber for gluing the rubber strip back on any eTrex, series GPS.
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I've got one of those too. Same problem, started the same way.
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There's a very, very, very small possibility that if I had the chance to try one out, I might think differently than I now do about the Segway, but I simply cannot see why any rational person would pay several thousands of dollars for one when any halfway decent bicyle costing less than 1/10 as much will easily take you faster and farther; and will fit in much better with the existing infrastructure. For that matter, a good used car seems like it would be, for most people, a much better use of the $4,500+.
The Segway is a neat gadget, but I just cannot see the place for it. It's far too expensive for what utility it offers, and it really doesn't fit anywhere in our existing infrastructure. It's too fast and too heavy to safely mix with pedestrian traffic on sidewalks, but too slow to safely mix with automobile or bicycle traffic on the roads.
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Is there anyone else in this fading republic that is with me in my way of thinking that a cache that you go to the posted co-ordinates and DO NOT find a log to sign should be considered a multi???
More than a few times have I been caching out of state just on a wing, search for a awhile, only to discover that when I get home, I was actually supposed to do something lame like "Count the lamp posts you find here" Or "how many bricks are on the ground then divide by 2?".
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I would realllllllllly appreciate the reviewers making it mandatory that if someone posts a cache that takes 2 steps, it automatically turns into a multi.
Actually, it seems we need to redefine what exactly constitutes a “multi”. With the advent of Waymarking as the new home for virtuals, locationlesses, Earthcaches, and such; the term Geocache is being more solidly defined as involving physical container placed by the cache owner.
This being the case, it seems to me that the only thing that should really be called a multi cache is something that consists of a series of actual containers to be found, with each container containing information needed to find the next.
The reviewer suggested, of one of my two puzzle caches, that I ought perhaps to call it a multi cache. I pondered this, a bit, and decided to stick with calling it a puzzle cache. Calling it a multi seemed legitimate at the time, if you thought of the first stage as a virtual cache, where, instead of simply emailing me information found there to verify one's find, one used that information to find the second stage. But I decided to stick with calling it a puzzle cache.
But virtual caches are no longer to be caches; they're now (or soon enough will be) Waymarks. So it really no longer makes sense to call a “virtual” containing clues that lead to a physical cache elsewhere a multi, since the “virtual” stage can no longer, of its own accord, be considered a cache.
I think that any cache which is not at the posted coordinates, where you must solve any kind of puzzle, mathematical problem, or other quiz in order to find the actual location of the cache container — regardless of whether there is actually anything at the posted coordinates that figured into that puzzle — should be called a puzzle cache, and not a multi. And I think that offset caches should be considered a subset of puzzle caches.
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I was just thinking (yes, I know how dangerous that can be).
It seems that one of the points of the new Waymarking "game" is to purify Geocaching, to reserve the term "Geocache" to refer to an actual, physical container, hidden somewhere and containing a logbook to sign; by giving us another place to put "virtual caches", "locationless caches", Earthcaches, benchmarks, and other things previously treated as Geocaches that really aren't.
It occurs to me that an Event Cache doesn't really seem to meet the strict definition of a Geocache, inasmuch as it is not a hidden container with a logbook therein.
Will event caches eventually be moved to Waymarking? I can see various arguments that could be made in favour of doing so, as well as for keeping them under Geocaching.
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A degree of latitude is sixty nautical miles. (A nautical mile is defined as being the distance subtended by a minute of angle (1/60 of a degree) across the Earth's radius.) A degree of longitude is sixty nautical miles at the equator, but is less and less as you change latitude toward the poles.
So .00001 of a degree of latitude is .006 of a nautical mile, or 3 feet, 7+3/4 inches.
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New York City may have a similar law. I have not seen it posted, but I was asked to leave a playground that had a benchmark in it. For a different benchmark, I see, in benchmarking, a post by someone who says: The park closes at dusk and the playground says No adults except in the company of children.
I would certainly hope that such a bizarre law would be required to be posted at the entrance to whichever playground to which it applies. How would I, an east-coaster, know that I could not search for a benchmark in that park in Sacramento?
Most playgrounds in Sacramento are surrounded by fences, separating them from the rest of whatever park or neighborhood they may be in. On the gate that one must go through to get into the playground is a sign, citing the relevant law, and stating that the only adults allowed therein are those accompanying children.
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Just below the 2.14 is an update if you have 3.0 installed, but there is no link for the 3.0 if you have 2.14....proverbially screwed??
As I understand it, Garmin quietly introduced a new version of the original yellow eTrex, with a few new features that the original yellow eTrex does not have, including WAAS. In spite of having the same name, appearance, and packaging, this is really a different unit, that ought to have been called by a different model name.
Version 3.x and up of the yellow eTrex firmware is for the new model, while version 2.x and below is for the old model. I do not believe there is any way to upgrade a genuine original yellow eTrex to the new model.
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My wife and I were wandering, when I spotted a brass disk, on the ground. “That looks like a benchmark!”, I exclaimed. I noted down what information was engraved thereupon, and the location, figuring that when we got home, I'd look it up on the Geocaching site, and log my find. I've never logged a benchmark before, nor have I actively sought after one.
Anyway, this one appears not to be in the database used by Geocaching.com. Since benchmarks are — I am given to understand — destined to be moved over to Waymarking anyway, I figured I'd look for an appropriate category under Waymarking, and enter a Waymark for this one if it wasn't already entered, or else log a find to it if it was. No appropriate category is there yet. There's a Benchmark category, but it doesn't accept entries, and neither of the two subcategories appear appropriate.
So here I am, with this benchmark find, and no apparent way to log it. Any ideas?
The benchmark is located at approximately N38° 39.854' W121° 15.7475', and is a brass disk engraved as follows:
SACRAMENTO CO. DEPT OF PUBLIC WORKS
C.O. B.M. 14-201
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My avatar is a picture of myself. I've been told I'd look better if I were to put on a bit more weight, but I think I look quite handsome just as I am.. Here's a larger, more detailed version, along with a different view:
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7729 caches within a hundred miles of my home, in the “Midtown” area of Sacramento, California.
16 listed within a hundred miles of my brother's home, in Laredo, Texas. Of those, the two closest are virtuals, the next two are within 5 miles, and the next one after that is 30 miles away.
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If these arrowheads are sharp enough to cut things, then it seems obvious to me that they ought to be considered the same as knives with regard to the appropriateness of leaving them in caches. I understand that properly-chipped obsidian can yield a sharper edge than Mankind has ever figured out how to put on a steel blade.
Lets say someone renews on the 1st of january, il will end on the 31st of december.
Google Earth .kml Files
in Website
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Why should we cater to some piece of software that is broken by breaking something else?