Bruce A. Johnson

Calgary Geocachers! Could you please be on the lookout for my car that was stolen? It has a custom geocaching-themed front license plate: White with color geocaching logo on left side, Travel Bug logo on right side, and Travel Bug code in the middle. Attached is a picture from 2009 of the car with that license plate. Travel Bug page for it: https://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=2158882 Car is old (1994), Honda Civic 4 door, dark blue, with really rusty wheel rims. Foot-long flexible rubber radio antenna extending from front driver's side front post, pointing backwards. Back license plate is Alberta ZSC723. Stolen Thursday night/Friday morning (Dec. 21/22), from parking at Hampton Inn by Hilton, just north of the Calgary airport. If you see it, PLEASE report it to Calgary Police at 403-266-1234. Thank you! I will update this thread if/when the car is found.

I agree that this sounds like an issue with the electronic compass. You have to keep in mind that you have to calibrate the electronic compass. I had to calibrate mine on the Colorado 300 every time I used it.

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Not Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, but Lithium disposable batteries. Those expensive suckers that last a long time.

Correction to the timeline of my Garmin Colorado 300. 2009-Aug: Bought Garmin Colorado 300, Garmin topo & road maps, Garmin power adapter for car, Garmin belt clip. Total: $719.70 CAD 2010-Summer: USB connection tempermental. Not connecting unless I held the cable "just right". 2012-Summer: I could no longer use rechargeable batteries, because even with fully charged NiMH batteries, the device would try to power up, then immediately power down, or not be able to fully power up. Yes, I did set the battery option to "NiMH" batteries. 2013-Summer: Fully charged lithium-ion batteries would last only 2-3 hours. Yes, I did set the battery option to "Lithium-ion" batteries. 2014-Summer: Fully charged lithium-ion batteries would only allow the device to begin to power-up, then die. So I only got 4 years use out of the Garmin Colorado 300, and after the 1st year, it was difficult to use. I found the proper timeline when I found my e-mail to Garmin asking why such an expensive device lasted such a sort time. Their response was that the warranty was 1 year, but they had heard of some of them working for 4-6 years.

which model? As I said, the Garmin Colorado 300. There was only one of the name.

I posted 15 August 2012 that the USB port of my Garmin Colorado 300 was loose and would only connected intermittently to my computer. Update: Autumn 2014 Summer 2013, the batteries would last only for only 2 hours of "on" time, even Lithium batteries. Spring 2015 Summer 2014, I gave up on the Colorado entirely because with brand new Lithium batteries installed, it would die within minutes. It also would not connect via USB anymore. The failure of this expensive piece of equipment has contributed to my not geocaching much anymore. I've tried using my Android phone for geocaching, but the lack of GPS accuracy with it is frustrating. Overall, I wish I had purchased a lower-priced GPS receiver for geocaching. Or basically any other model than the Colorado.

I'm really disappointed with my Garmin Colorado 300 because of the loose USB port. When I got started with geocaching 3 years ago, I didn't have much money to do it, and still don't. Despite that, I spent more than I planned to when buying the Colorado because it was higher end, and I thought it would last me a long time. The loose USB port causes all sorts of problems because the intermittent connection with the computer causes corruption of the operating system & its files. Now my Garmin Colorado 300 barely functions. All that money down the drain for a piece of hardware that only worked for one year without problems. I can't afford to buy another GPSr for geocaching. I guess I'm going to try to superglue the cable into the port, and hope that it will work. I'm afraid that I will just make a mess, and the connection still won't work.

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Right now, the trackable is in the hands of the person who picked it up. They didn't say which cache they picked it up in, but that it was in their city. I will ask the current holder to dip it into the cache they picked it up in.

I'm a relatively new geocacher (89 finds). I love the idea of trackables going from cache to cache. At the moment, I'm "watching" the various trackables that I've found, then moved along. Yesterday, one of these trackables had its first logging after I placed it in a cache. It was not picked up at the cache that I put it in, but in another cache. I've deduced that someone (I can even deduce who: an experienced geocacher), picked it up at the cache I left it in, then they left it in a cache in their home city, without logging either event. There was ample time for them to do such logging (at least 10 days), but they didn't do it. Now, I understand that this is not as bad as people holding onto trackables for months (like another person I know), but still, this goes against the whole purpose of trackables. Like I said, I'm still new at this. Is this common? I can understand a newbie not logging a trackable, but this is an experienced geocacher (over 1000 finds).

This topic went off-topic, but... Being a relatively new geocacher, I figured I would cogitate on how I could get by without a personal off-line geocache database. I figured that it would be even more time-consuming and difficult. My personal off-line geocache database (using GSAK), allows me to experiment quickly and easily with various combinations of search specifics. Plus, GSAK can quickly make me a GPX file of whatever geocaches I want, without a limit of the number of geocaches. The only limit is the number my GPSr can hold. Geocaching.com currently cannot match this same ease. That is why I will continue to use a personal off-line geocache database. Back on topic: For the above reasons, that is why I still think that "Updated in the last x days", would make sense. I wouldn't run as many Pocket Queries as often as I do now, if that option was available.

OK, now I have 15 Pocket Queries running for a total of 20 times a week. Whereas with my idea, I would have just one Pocket Query run 2 or 3 times a week. Based on dates of placement, even though I've split recent years into two queries each, there are more than 500 caches for a 7-day update. This means there is the potential for missing some again. I came up against one of these that didn't get updated on my computer when I was geocaching yesterday. I found out when I got home and logged it, that a geocache I spent almost an hour looking for had been archived two weeks before, but despite all the PQs I had at the time, that status never got updated on my computer. I was not happy. I guess I'll have to give up the idea that I can have the geocaches in my area up-to-date on my computer automatically, and instead create one-use PQs for any areas that I plan to cache in, just before I leave.

For Pocket Queries: Change "Updated in the last 7 days", to be adjustable for any number of days. During busy geocaching weeks, there can be more than 500 geocaches that get updated in an area, so some will be left out of the query. I would like to get the updates more often than once a week. Other options I've considered: 1) Running the "Updated in the last 7 days", query several times a week. This produces a lot of duplication, increases the demand on the query server, and doesn't solve the problem of some updated geocaches being left out. 2) Running the "Updated in the last 7 days" query for limited distances, multiple locations, and several times a week each. This produces a significantly greater demand on the query server. Since the queries are based on circular areas, there will have to be either overlap that produces duplication of results, or there will be missing geocaches. Then there is the standard problem of duplication due to "updated in the last 7 days" being run more often than once every 7 days.