Cardinal Red

It took less than 5 minutes to scan your 5.25 pages of cache hides and see: (4) Disabled Caches (2) Needs Maintenance Caches (1) Disabled AND Needs Maintenance Cache It took a little longer to check a few details. Why do cachers often make optimistic timeline predictions, and then often enough miss them? Being less specific, and then just getting it done as soon as is possible would be a better strategy. How long do you plan to continue letting that Needs Maintenance stand that was only tagged to it because broken glass at GZ makes it a less desirable location? Is that really a Needs Maintenance issue? Unless you do a CITO, does it just stay there forever now? While Pocket Queries are a far superior strategy, that is not an option for Basic Members. Scanning the list of ALL your hides is open to everyone. A few minutes is not bad to scan more than 100 hides.

Hi Rocky You indicated you are only studying the route for now. You obviously acquired those coordinates somewhere. An online source perhaps? And then to an accuracy of a hundredths of a second? Wow, that is tight precision. No problem, but who was the surveyor that marked them to that precision? Who are they trying to kid? And now you have them saved in Excel in the exact same format as the 13 examples that you posted? But NOT in a GPS? And you are talking about MANY more coordinate pairs than just those 13, right? I quickly copied those 13 into Excel. Copied them from Excel into another program that converted them to Decimal Degrees. Those Decimal Degree conversions were then exported back to Excel. And the original GPX file is GPS compatible and can easily be loaded to one. I could do the same with a hundred or a thousands more coordinate pairs from an Excel file. My version of Excel is much older than yours though. I don't see that as a problem. If you are still interested, contact me through my profile. If so, have a copy of the Excel file saved back to the oldest version you can. I am certain I can open it with Open Office. Just as good. I am curious though. Your mapping program is not able to adapt to anything other than Decimal Degrees? Seems very strange. And for those 13 coordinate sets, what is the reference point for the mileage data? The best I could do would be to include distance and direction to all the coordinate points from one common point. They sure do plot all over the place.

If the cacher types coords as text into the text box, without checking the "add a waypoint to the log" box, the system adds coords at 00 00.000 values to those boxes, and then calls them "too far", instead of telling the cacher that the log type requires coords! Hence they email a reviewer to change coords, for an actual change of 15m or less. Or archive the listing and start over. If an owner starts from the "edit listing" link, instead of as log type - they'll be sent to the log type, only this time, the waypoint boxes are already up, and filled with the existing coords from the cache page. They may end up submitting a "no change" update - but then they'll usually get it right the second try. You took the time to explain what I only quickly mentioned. I had taken the time to confirm it was NOT a Reviewer required situation. Of course I had already suspected it. However ... I also mentioned "I thought that the change coordinates function had been made more intuitive since it had given me the same false message". After reading your post, I just tested it again. The UPDATE COORDINATES log type once again works just like the "edit listing" method you mentioned. The only way I can figure out how to mess it up now is to MANUALLY uncheck that box. I had made mention of this improved behavior in the thread I had started about how Gtoundspeak had broken this feature at some point. You don't suppose they actually read any of that and acted on it? In any case, I understood the problem the OP presented. I just can't figure out how they did it now that it is a simple procedure again. Any thoughts?

Are you only open to free solutions? And I don't mean GSAK. I routinely convert PQ data to Excel (via CSV), and from Excel back to GPX. But it wasn't free.

I seriously doubted you were off by more than 161 meters (more than that requires Reviewer assistance). And I do see you do have it sorted out now on your own. I thought that the change coordinates function had been made more intuitive since it had given me the same false message. I just had to figure out what it really needed to see. If you don't have everything right, it thinks you are trying to move the cache thousands of miles, thus that 'to far away' message.

I did not do the actual 'ghost' virtual. It's not available in the wee early hours of the morning. But there is the other 'multi' virtual right there outside, available 24/7. Of course, muli-virtual isn't an accurate description. I just call it false advertising. And as of this morning there are 1,734 logged finds. And my note. I did it. I had all the answers through the group. They all logged it. They all thought I was a little crazy. It was a great evening, night, morning of fun with brand new friends from Delaware I had just met at a CITO Event (also not logged by me). There are two things I would not call that trip. #1. Boring. #2. Geocaching (except for a handful of Traditionals). I always knew I was not the average geocacher, but even I didn't think it was as bad as 1,734 to 1 and getting worse every day. We have all done crap caches and logged the find. Six years ago I had a great time in DC and didn't log even one virtual. Everything that is fun is not deserving of a smiley. I came to that conclusion two seconds after I figured out what the heck that ghost thingy meant on the one that is still half a mile from home. Most of you never will understand, but I am still counting the days till it's gone. That is the value I place on it. Just my opinion.

I still have several (I own) wrong 'last found date' caches, but the oldest nearby wrong date cache (I do not own) just got a Find log today. The 'last found date' is now correct. I fear this Bug will be given a very low priority for three reasons. #1. There is no money in it. #2. Groundspeak doesn't even care enough to provide any follow up comment beyond acknowledging the Bug (see reason #1). #3. We can fix it ourselves, over time, one cache at a time. Looks like I will be creating a cache maintenance sock puppet account. Just need to think of a good name. Give me a minute.

How EXACTLY do you propose to make this work "legally"? I am not saying there isn't a way, but probably NOT the way you are likely to suggest. I am very curious if you understand the physical placement guideline and the question to answer guideline the same way I do. I understand the "1.8 Saturation guideline" that the distance rule only applies to physical containers (if for a stage or a final location). A physical box for cache #1 at the same location where cache #2 has just a question to answer would be conform to the guidelines (which I meant by "legal"). This would make sense, because it's unlikely to confuse a QTA with a box...(and I understand a possible confusion may be the main reason for the distance rule). So for having it listed despite the initial distance conflict, I suggest to make the given coordinate a QTA or a Mystery coordinate and relocate the physical box to somewhere else where the (physical) distance rule doesn't hinder it. Am I wrong in my understanding here? Please don't hesitate to correct me. My assumption was that you intend to PLACE your own weatherproof medium complete with data (engraved text on a durable flat surface just laying on the groung for example). Since you still did not specify your EXACT intention, I have to continue making that assumption. Am I correct, or have I completely misunderstood? My concern would be that you interpret the absence of an actual CONTAINER to hold the data, qualifies it as a Question To Answer stage. My Reviewer says that does NOT qualify. If you introduce ANYTHING into that environment, it is a physical placement subject to the saturation guideline. Finding a suitable existing question to answer source is not hard to find in a typical urban setting. Making it work in "remote BLM land" will require a LOT more creativity. And how would you convey the details in non written form to someone who shows up at book GZ only knowing the coordinates they read in the book? You could place a legal cache that uses ONLY coordinates that pass Groundspeak Review. A Geocacher that only read the cache page (or downloaded the cache page coordinates) would NEVER go the the published book coordinates. They would never even know about them. But there would be NOTHING stop ANYONE from placing ANYTHING at book GZ, as a redirect to the legally published Groundspeak cache. And if the legal Groundspeak cache ever got archived, it would be a simple matter to alter the redirect information. That would be my advice if it was my friend. So, I ask again, EXACTLY what was YOUR plan? Is there a chance it really is the same as mine?

Is it a reasonable assumption that because this question did not receive an answer in 47 minutes you asked the same question again in a brand new thread? You really do need to have a little more patience than that. And if you do have something more to say on the same subject, it's better to keep the discussion all in one place. This duplicate thread should be locked down in favor of the later one since it already has a response.

And much more interesting than most of our new discussions. Well worth the time for a thorough read. Thanks sarboss.

How EXACTLY do you propose to make this work "legally"? I am not saying there isn't a way, but probably NOT the way you are likely to suggest. I am very curious if you understand the physical placement guideline and the question to answer guideline the same way I do. I am not inclined to lay it out for an uninformed book publisher, but would gladly discuss it with you.

I have been inspired now to think of more tie ins for this new Lab Rat concept. And I think I am on to an untapped resource. Under performing Golf courses. Now don't scoff, just hear me out. There has been a growing trend to turn Golf Courses back into the Corn Fields they originally came from. Something to do with the rising price of Corn and Soybeans. A profit focused entrepreneur looks for available resources to take advantage of. Groundspeak can get in now, and start buying up Golf Courses, and then have a Lab Rat event there every weekend. Of course multiple repeat visits come with full cache re-logging privileges. Understand that to make the game more fun and exciting, we need to modify a few time honored standards of play. Lets move all the holes closer together. About 200 ft max ought to do it. Then the holes need to be bigger. Big enough to hold an Ammo Can, so that when you putt out (or just take a gimmie from the rough), you can log your find. And you will use a baseball bat to tee off instead of an expensive driver. And of course because we have shortened all fairways, and 18 easy smilies is never enough, we can triple the hole count to 54. Certainly there is more than enough room at every tee to place a temporary cache right there in plain site. Actually hiding them just seems so old fashioned. And don't forget to log the snack bar after the front 27, and again at the end. The possibilities are endless, but you get the idea. For good measure, top off the day with the nostalgic lamp post nano power trail in the parking lot. I might never do a 5 hour Multi cache ever again. That is such a waste of time for only one find. Nothing like that will ever come out of the Lab. Our new slogan can be "To infinity and beyond". Pretend I made that up just now, and you never heard it before.

There are several ways to look through the PQ caches from your PC (or a portable netbook - NOT from the GPS). Before and after copying them to your unit. This one is EASY and FREE. Can't hurt to check it out at that price. The others will still be waiting if you ever get the urge to move on. Download here: EasyGPS

Well, I see nobody else has anything to contribute. You should be aware that this Forum only tolerates limited discussion of 3rd party programs. Even FREE ones. There is easy access to the EasyGPS forum from the HELP menu from within the EasyGPS program. Of course the Geocaching questions there don't get a lot of attention. A Catch 22. I am very interested in your problem. What you were seeing in the program didn't make any sense. That is the way the pay version ONLY looked. With a brand new download, I now also see exactly what you described. So there has been some recent FREE version coding going on there. The only 6 character display GPS I have laying around is a GPS 60. Should be close enough to do an evaluation. Scratch that. This thing is so ancient, I was sure it was only 6 Digits. A quick test showed it to be 10 Digits. This ancient thing is still light years ahead of your eTrex. Not sure what comparison a test will yield. Really, could you even consider moving from the Stone age to at least the Iron age? Of course, now I can't find my external USB CD drive to put the driver on my offline netbook to even test the new download (so another one immediately went on order). This really should work properly every time. If you still can not get this sorted, send me a message through the profile. Or post something on the EasyGPS forum. There is a good chance I will be the one to reply there as well.

This is not a bug. It is a fairly well known site feature. And there is certainly more than one way to accomplish it. It's not necessary to log from both accounts back to back, or even be on the same computer. But your way works.

I have done everything suggested and I can't get it to work. It shows up on my profile, but doesn't appear on my posts. I've logged out and in again, still nothing. Logged out and in of What/Where? Your user name and password are the same for Geocaching.com and the Forum, but they are NOT the same log in. Did you log out and back in to the FORUM?

If we could get accurate data, what do you suppose Groundspeaks customer satisfaction number would be? I'll go lower than 66% Jim. I'm an optimist. I can't risk logging a find to one of my own bogus find date caches right now (I'm currently on day 16 of a 31 day NO CACHES FOR ME streak) to check if that will correct the date. Could someone log a 06/11/2013 find to The POINT Of No Return for me? And then delete it of course. I suspect that should work. I also suspect I might have to fix any of my infrequently found ones, on my own, the same way. Is this part of Groundspeaks plan to make the game more fun and exciting?

From what I have read my Oregon 450 (t actually) is mostly the touch screen version of the 62. I would like to try a 62 some time and find out why it gets so many more recommendations than the 450. I like the touch screen. I think it would be hard to convince me to abandon it. Certainly opinions won't. It would take an unbelievable hands on demo. I came to Garmin paperless from the 60x family of units. The 62 will be more than just an 'update' of the 60. I had been using and upgrading through various Garmin units for 10 years (I had one before I was a Geocacher). All those transitions combined did not equal the jump to paperless. For the first month, if I left the house with the 450, I made sure to take the 60 along as a known quantity. And it got used. I asked a lot of questions about the quirks of that new paperless contraption. It's so easy to use now that I can laugh about it. I certainly would not trade back, but don't let anybody brush off the learning curve as inconsequential. It's real.

Any Premium Member has access to the perfect tool to give themselves plenty of advance notice for any Event within 100 miles. And it doesn't take much effort to selectively expand your sphere of knowledge beyond that. Groundspeak has made the newsletter practically worthless to me. Meh. But there was one little bit of wisdom hidden in there recently, that could be adopted as the stock answer to any communication directed to Groundspeak in the form of a suggestion. Not humanly possible, but don’t let that stop you from trying.

I am not your target audience. I am not a lab rat. I opt out. I guess that after nearly ten years, Geocaching will no longer be fun or exciting for me. Darn.

EDIT PREFERENCES GEOCACHING WAYPOINT = GEOCACHE NAME (dropdown) OK OK That 6 character display and Serial interface make this a tough unit to stay loyal to, except as a bottom of the pack emergency spare. I have been known to take one of my very old Garmin's out for the nostalgia value only. If you are still not ready for a newer paperless unit, there are other, better, dirt cheap, also discontinued USB units available with a more robust data display. Hope that the refresher / reminder helps though.

Upon further review: Make that triple logging for Jeremy AND Nate. Sounds like an interesting cache.

There is a computer based program available named GSAK. It is supposedly a great program when you have figured out how to use it. It is quite involved with a bit of a steep learning curve. I hear it is FREE to try, and not all that expensive to buy if you want to eliminate the acompnying free user 'nag screens'. There is another totally free program (EasyGPS) with fewer features, and less complexity. There is still a bit of a learning curve, and there is a pay version upgrade available (ExpertGPS). Try the free one first to get your feet wet, and keep an open mind on the other options. You can use EasyGPS to load the PQ to your GPS, and you can view quite a lot of PQ information on a Laptop (Windows) via EasyGPS. With the Garmin and EasyGPS/Laptop combo on your road trip, you will have a wealth of information available. Fairly close to having all the information a paperless GPS will hold.

If the cache was Disabled AND marked Needs Maintenance, please address that as well with an additional Owner Maintenance log. That gets missed a lot, and many newly Enabled cache still indicates the need for Maintenance. I don't see how that gets missed so often.

Did anybody notice that Groundspeak has programmed some sanity back into the Update Coordinates log? At least for a little while. Site functionality is a moving target. Now selecting the Update Coordinates log type automatically checks off the Add a coordinate to this log box. It also brings up the data box pre-filled with the current coords. Just like the You can modify your cache coordinates via a log entry method that had previously been pointed out to me. I wonder what finally brought it to their attention?