Cardinal Red

Wow. I have been away from this longer than I realized. I was avoiding clicking that Submit button at all cost. My mind was completely wiped clean of the logical necessity of initiating the PQ instructions by way of the Submit button, but without any day of the week checked. And that "preview the search" link that I knew I needed seemed to have been moved / removed. I really do feel like an idiot right now. Thankfully I will get over it. Thanks everyone for your help.

I do not want to Preview a PQ. I thought I had clearly indicated that I wanted to Preview a POTENTIAL PQ without using up an actual PQ submission. Like all the experiments required to stitch together PQ's by date range because Groundspeak refuses to make that an easy option.

I am not a new Geocacher. I just have a lot less enthusiasm for it than I used to. I do allow my Premium Membership to lapse till I feel inclined to do go find a few more caches. I used to be fairly active on the forums, but a certain aspect of that got quite tiresome. So I have been 99.99% staying away for some time now. Where did this horrible web design come from? Wow. But to my question. I did know everything I needed to know about managing my Pocket Queries. Today with a newly refreshed Premium Membership I went back to the still familiar PQ page. But where the heck is the preview only option so that a test does not count against your daily allotment of submissions? What is the difficulty rating of the hide?

Kayaker29 = no caches placed. Excuse me for letting that bother me. On the bright side, you live far enough away that I can pretend that I never heard of you. But the very best part is that I can continue to write my logs as I see fit, and your opinion means absolutely nothing. But thanks for sharing.

You can't blame this entirely on GS. Yes I can. And I do.

One more opinion. I am not familiar with other Reviewers (those were too long ago). There have been previous Multi / Traditional / Puzzle discussions with our Reviewer (as in your Reviewer is also my Reviewer). I have not agreed with every decision. Such is life. But your statement of "I give the code for the lock" was totally bogus. That makes me question your judgement of the Traditional concept. In my opinion, if you have to read the description, it is a Puzzle. A smart phone is still only an OPTIONAL tool, no matter how hard it is for some to comprehend that. But as an enthusiastic smart phone hater - here is an option to consider that nobody else is likely to suggest. Put the ACTUAL lock combination IN THE CACHE NAME. Who won't have access to that in the field? It still might not be acceptable to the Reviewer, but you won't know unless you ask.

Interesting. I was going to dispute your claim, but then I found this in the Help Center: I don't understand why they would have this rule, and the lack of any explanation is curious. A regular Event can be retroactively upgraded to a Mega, so why not a Mega to a Giga? The refusal to retroactively upgrade seems to be at odds with the first section in that article: Together, these seem to translate to something like, "We cannot officially acknowledge that your Mega event had over 5000 attendees this year. If you're able to repeat that feat next year, we'll then be able to officially acknowledge and appreciate your efforts. Better luck next time." I hate to find myself in the uncomfortable position of defending Groundspeak, but suppose cachers that have the means make it a point to attend as many Giga Events as possible. They take great pride in their very high participation percentage. Now the occasional Mega gets published that turns out to be quite a bit more popular than anticipated. Awarding Giga status retroactively would deny a diehard Giga fan the opportunity to have made it a point to be there.

I am very unhappy with Groundspeak. I never thought it would come to that. But the good thing is that Groundspeak is NOT geocaching. If I leave, it will be on my terms. You have no say, and your "advice" is not appreciated.

I never found one of your dads caches, but I clearly remembered his name from a CITO Event I participated in 10 years ago next month. Good memories. Would you have been there that day?

Assuming you were trying to find a bright spot to point out with the current functionality, that is setting the bar incredibly low.

How fast is your Maserati?

Looking at it again, could the initialized version of your caching name simply be TST ?? You will be surprised just how compact some of the very smallest cache containers and logs can be. Having such a shortened version ready to use as needed will come in very handy. But seriously, don't start out looking for those right away. Gain some confidence with the larger size caches first. And another trick. If you get to a decent size cache, and there are not any interesting trade items in it - be prepared to slip something into it for your kids to "find". If that is a part of the game they find interesting, you don't want to disappoint them too often. And there will be disappointments. There is no such thing as a guaranteed cache find. Also note who was along for the find in your log. If any of them decide to create their own account at some point, they can come back to those logs to determine which caches they had been a part of finding in the past - and then create their own find log for it.

Thanks for asking. The most important answer is DO NOT DIG - CACHES ARE NOT BURIED. There are many different size caches. The general size is indicated in the cache listing. Hides can be in a woodland setting or in an urban setting. Those can be quite different experiences. Under a pile of sticks or rocks. In a guardrail or lamppost skirt. Possibly magnetic. Actually the possibilities are mostly determined by the imagination of the hider. Try to think like a hider and look where you might have put it. Some nice coins and some items with a bar-coded tag are NOT trade items. They are only meant to be moved from cache to cache (they won't fit is the smallest caches). The usual advice to new cachers it to start by looking for the larger size caches. They will be easier to locate. They are more likely to have trade items in them. So certainly bring some nice little trinkets to leave behind after your girls have picked something to take out. When you do look for the smallest size caches, a tweezers can come in very handy to extract the log. Always have a writing instrument so you can sign the log with caching name. For very small logs it could be best to abbreviate with just first letters, perhaps as TSPT in your case. A mirror to look into certain hiding spaces can come in handy. This should help you get started. Your own experiences will suggest if there is anything else you might want to keep in a small kit that always goes with you on a cache hunt. Find local events. Attend some if you can. You will meet a lot of knowledgeable geocachers who can offer more advice. I would expect some will become new friends after you get to know them. You didn't ask anything about a GPS device or a GPS enabled smart phone. You think you have that figured out? Your first few finds will always be remembered as great fun (after you have managed to find them). Don't just stop at the one spot that might be indicated. Our stuff isn't that accurate. Move around a little bit and search a bit wider area. Good Luck.

Cache owners are not allowed to delete valid logs from any cacher. If you signed the logbook, you can log it online. With cache owners like this, the best course of action is to go straight to Groundspeak to get the log restored. If you do choose to engage with the cache owner, keep all communication to official channels, i.e. through the email system or the message centre. The curse of having been here for more than a decade, is we remember a lot of "stuff". Where is the discussion where Groundspeak allowed log deletions under EXACTLY these circumstances to stand unchallenged, because the cache owner questioned the exact wording Groundspeak used to describe Premium Caches. Are you saying they now have an official policy that addresses that old issue? Or are you pretending it never happened?

You have no idea what the "old days" were like.

How many caches are hidden in their jurisdiction? How are they going to track all those notifications? It would be easier to just track them online with a Geocaching account. They could probably request a free Premium Account. Perhaps someone should inform the Police about that.

This is the second boundry line question in a week. Did you see the other one? Do you know exactly where any of your corner markers should be? That is very important. One is good. Two (or more) is better.

It is a small world. I am in Southeast PA, and have been known to venture West on occasion. Yes, when you are able, send me what you have for the best documented parcel. After seeing what I can do with that data, perhaps you will be interested to see what I can do with the other two. This is something I took an interest in when I had no idea what I was looking at and no clue what I was doing. Since educating myself as much as possible, it is now just another one of my recreational pastimes.

No, now is not the time. The time was 17 years ago. How much of this is tied to the new Geocache Health Score? I refuse to believe Groundspeak suddenly cares one moldy fermented fig what their customers think.

News flash. There are many property parcels that are not square or rectangular. They can be very irregular, with some angles that do not immediately bring the boundary line around to closure. So any reference to "the 4 corners" can not be universally applied. I take special pity on anyone who has to rely on Basecamp to visualize, familiarize themselves with their property lines. I don't have the best professional tools for the job, but thankfully I have never had to use Basecamp. I would still like to see what information this property owner does have in angles and perches, and can personally mark with a GPS. I could figure something out, and might even learn something in the process about old deeds.

Send me ALL the data you have - such as any known gps marked property coordinates you have identified to the best of your ability, and any line call data from the property deeds - and I will process it and see what you have. If any data seems to be missing, we can discuss what else is needed. It is amazing what you can deduce with aerial images, AutoCad representations and overlays, and geograpcic calculators. Obviously NOT to the standard of an actual professional surveyor, but pretty darn good amateur quality. I have processed this type of data many times. It is actually quite easy once you have figured out how to do it. Not so easy to explain to those who are mostly confused by the process.

Those of us who who have been here long enough to remember those days no longer matter to Groundspeak. Heck, we use dedicated GPS units to find caches, and we populate them with data from a PQ. Only a caveman would do that any more. Time to move on.

I am convinced Groundspeak always knows what is best for us. Just ask them. They are convinced we will get used to the latest disaster they just threw at us. Those that don't get used to it will go away. Problem solved. The perfect problem solving solution. Short term damage control is to pretend you actually took real users into account for the latest bad idea, but they will now take another look at it. Perhaps on the 12th of never. I think that is a local holiday in Seattle.

Depending on magnet size, and if your container is a Lock and Lock style, hold the magnets in place with some Duct tape or perhaps decorative stickers. I have personal experience with one hide. American Flag stickers worked great with very strong magnets to secure it underneath a Flag Disposal Drop-off Box (a re-purposed Mail Box).

Only around 11% of traffic to the old Search page gets there the way you do, via direct link. An overwhelming majority of the traffic to the old Search gets there via the link on the new Search page. Currently, around 10x more searches are executed via the new Search than the old one. What percentage of cachers have been hanging around here for, 13 - 14 - 15 years? We already seem like a forgotten minority. What percentage do we have to drop to until we are totally irrelevant?