The GeoGadgets Team
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Posts posted by The GeoGadgets Team
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Well, as I said in my post in This Forum, I am trying to do just that. I was hoping someone else might have done it before and could give some tips, but no one is forthcoming, so maybe it hasn't been done?
I suppose this would be a good subject for either "Geocaching in Education" or "Organized Geocaching", huh?
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I think Two Tracks was pulling your leg, the GPS could only go as fast as the car was traveling.Another Geocacher, Two Tracks, showed me where his MapVI showed a top MPH of 283. He noticed it right after having to slam on the brakes in his truck on the highway to avoid a collision. He wasn't traveling that fast, but his GPS was, toward the windshield!Then what is that whole mass x velocity-thing? I mean, if you are in an auto accident, the mass of a human body increases exponentially during an abrupt stop, or did I misunderstand that science class completely? I'm not the sharpest pencil in the drawer, but I have read a few articles on why people need to wear their seatbelts. Why would this rule not apply to a GPS sitting on the dashboard?
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Rats... none of them are even close to the Left Coast...
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The Contact Cache has to be my favorite. But then, I'm just tickled that I solved it. And that my family and I made a special trip to find it. Fractal is the MAN! I've done other puzzle caches since (discovered that I have a jones for them), but this is my first and I think it is the best out there.
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I was making a blog with Google's free Blogger software, and put Geocaching as one of my interests. There was a button to see all of the other bloggers with the Geocaching interest, and came up with This List It is interesting to see other cacher's blogs. I will have some neat GeoPics in mine when I am done editing it.
Ha! I started cruising through the list to see if there was anyone there who I might re-cognize... and the second guy below my own blog was someone who listed their interests like this:
"computers, books, horses, pets, swimming, archery, fencing, writing, drawing, polyamory, bdsm, sex, games, hiking, diving, geocaching"
Geocaching was last? And he advertises bdsm & sex? What was really interesting was Googling "polyamory"...
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Try ebay. There are several currently for sale, including this very sad one.
Well, you have to have a specialized fire hydrant backpack to haul one of those into the woods! The fire hydrant backpack is a Geocacher's de-lite! Comes complete with it's own rocket pack for those quick hops over alligator-filled swamps, and an anti-grav unit with fully rechargeable nuclear waste-core batteries! Only $19.99! That's right! Only $19.99... operators are standing by.
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Can't remember where I read it, but I loved the saying, " I'm not saying we actually kill off all the idiots, just remove the warning labels and let the problem take care of itself. "
Here, here...
keep waiting to find out that someone wants reperations because their ancestors were killed while trying to cross the plains in a conestoga wagon. If you aren't bright enough to stay back from the edge of the cliff, don't go hiking. I'm sick of my world being "sanitized" so the next broken nail doesn't result in another wealthy lawyer.OMG! I so agree! Just reading these forum posts makes me wonder how most of you namby-pambies ever started caching in the first place! The entire freaking game is one big ADVENTURE, folks. It is fun. Hell, I've got an idea, why don't you take the fun out of this for all of us, so your dumbed-down version of it can be over-run with Girly-men.
I can understand when you aren't supposed to put caches in the middle of rattlesnake infested rock piles, or in the middle of a lagoon in an alligator preserve. I get fully the reason why no food and no explosives should be used as cache fodder, but those of you who are that worried about your five-year old picking out the pocket knives in caches need to take a little more personal responsibility.
When the cache goes over the line safety-wise, make a polite comment to that effect on that cache's page. I would even go so far as to say go ahead and voice your concerns to the person who approved it. If no one else complains, HELLO! Maybe YOU are the problem, not the cache.
Common sense is something precious, and should be EXERCISED. You can only tell people so many times to look both ways before they cross the street. If they then jump into the middle of freeway traffic, just hope they haven't procreated yet, and repeat after me: "There, but for the grace of My Higher Power, go I", put on your seatbelt and move along.
Sheesh.
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Another Geocacher, Two Tracks, showed me where his MapVI showed a top MPH of 283. He noticed it right after having to slam on the brakes in his truck on the highway to avoid a collision. He wasn't traveling that fast, but his GPS was, toward the windshield!
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You raise an interesting point, and also ironic...since on another hotly-discussed thread here lately we've been told that TNLNSL and the like are preferable to actually providing any commentary if it's not "all good".
There is/was a gentleman Geocacher in the Portland, OR-area who, when logging his finds online, let loose with these totally cool, very interesting, but hardly to the point log posts. One could've put all of his posts together and published them. It couldn't have been any worse than any thing Hunter Thompson wrote...
His forum posts were equally facsinating. I would remember his name if I read it, but for the moment, I'm having a old-timer's attack...
I, being the chronicler of our Geocaching team, like to leave details of our exploits in the posted cache logs. Some people tell me how much they enjoy reading them. I have heard, and probably won't hear, from those who dislike my posts. Not that I care, either way. If I do write "TNLNSL, TFTH!" it is just before my signature/user name in the log. And when folks post to my caches, I appreciate knowing how they feel about them, the area they were hidden in, and what condition the cache is in.
Thanks for your support...
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Go Paperless!
Older palm pilots that are capable of storing info for hundreds of caches are selling for $30 and up on ebay. Add $8 for a copy of
I know this is going to sound stupid...
I have lots of experience with computers...
but I've had a PDA - an iPAQ Pocket PC running WinCE'02 - and I can't get a grasp on how to download cache pages to it.
I want to go paperless, but I'm PDA-challenged.
Can anyone help?
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Sure. I've got no problem with that - more power to them - but "competition" is almost a dirty word around here, or it seems that way to me. Sometimes I'll even decide it's fun and go for FTF myself.
Competition bad? Um, I don't know where YOU live, but around here it's all about the numbers, baby. Not that I'm that way... my family and I have been caching since 10/01 and we still have just over 250 caches. Of course, if we lived in the Medford/Klamath Falls area, where Geocaches outnumber the entire state's Education budget numbers, we would have over a thousand caches just by leaving the house every day.
Personally, I'm all for a well-thought out cache, where it is obvious that the person hiding it took their time and put some thought into the location, the container, the contents or what it takes to find it. I'm a huge fan of puzzle caches.
I suppose my point is this: If you start giving some kind of extra points for cache placement, then there would be battles over whether a micro had the same point count that a ten-part puzzle multi-cache would.
We already get points for hiding. Just be kind and keep your hide/find ratio reasonable.
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We were thinking of having some 4agers hiking stick medallions made as "Special" cache swag.
Just curious, but what would you have put on them?
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The supposed reason for the nononess of the multitools and knives comes from the requests of land managers who are still using chain gang laborerers to clear the swamps of the gators and natural habitats all in the name of progress so another subvision, strip mall, shopping center, freeway exit can be built there.
Some day soon all of the wally world employees will actually be cons on work release because there won't be any more swamps to clear.
Then the lame caches will rule the world!
I know that this is off-topic, but think about this next time you are worried about cons finding your $0.88 Wal-Mart pocket knife in a Geocache:
Most imprisoned felons can make a deadly weapon from a chiselled toothbrush, or sharpened pencils, the contents of a ballpoint pen, etc. Can you imagine what they could do with some of the McToys they might find in a cache?
Give me a break. I guess reality is in short supply when it comes to "land managers". Instead of no knives, they would be better off to say, "NO CACHES". Not that I approve of that, either.
And we have had one of our Geocaches found by a land-clearing chain gang. It was obvious that they rifled through the ammo can, but if they took anything, it was anything valuable.
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I love to find old movies on DVD!!
Now, I know that this topic has reared it's ugly head before, but what about bootlegged copies of DVD's?
Offended? Unoffended?
Do you care?
I'm just making an extra copy of the one I bought... would you hold it for me?
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A few folks here are in denial. We feed our cache addition as much money as it needs. If the price of gas jumps up 20% tomorrow you might hesitate a bit as you plan your cache run, but you'll be doing it just as planned. Granted you'll be mumbling stuff about shortcuts, routing efficinecy, skipping lunch, etc, but you will feed the cachemobile whatever it needs.
Yeah, what _he_ said!
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That's a little better than we did this past weekend. I was out with ellehciM and CJB4589 and we found a cache full of urine and feces. Talk about trading down.
Sheesh! Remind me where you live again, so I can avoid caching there...
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Considering that I drive a land-yacht, gas is a priority. Prices might be restrictive, but I'll still cache. I will just insure that the other half works longer hours and buys less Gatorade, all in the name of making sure the family still gets to go out and find Tupperware.
I agree, we have to get our priorities straight, even if it means using our money to lube the PTB's tight grip on the fuel economy.
^ doesn't that suck?
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[*hand over heart*]
"I'd like to thank my Mother, the Academy... Oh, you mean I haven't won, yet?"
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Or some weird/bizarre voodoo ritual?
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I have been asked to talk to our local Ham radio club about geocaching. Anyone do something like this? Any tips?
BRM;
Steak N Eggs (KF6VFH) and I (KF6VFI) did a presentation for our local club, the Del Norte ARC a few years ago. I printed up the information that I used:
Since that presentation, we were asked to do something similar for the Humboldt ARC. In that one, I made up a Power Point pres and burned it to a CD and used a laptop and projector to make the presentation. We also took along many complete caches, of many sizes, travel bugs and passed out a brochure. The coolest part was that I had asked the club President to inform the members before the meeting to bring their GPS's.
Well, we had a great turn out (40+ people - great for us), and it was a big hit. It didn't hurt that we'd recently put out a few caches in that area, too.
Since then, we've been invited to do the same thing for a Ham club in Santa Rosa, and the Humboldt group asked us to set up a table at this year's San Francisco ARRL Convention in Ferndale, California. Not only will we give demonstrations, pass out pamphlets and run the PP on a computer, but we are working with the folks who do the Fox Hunt to add a Geocaching twist to it.
If you will be in the area of Northern California on June 3 - 5, stop in and say hello. Bring your GPS. There will be prizes!
I would also like to know what others would like to see at such an event/presentation? Either to keep it Amateur-related, or to make it extra cool. Both work!
Lori
Lori Bennett-Tetrick - KF6VFI
President - Del Norte Amateur Radio Club
www.w6hy.com
aka: RedwoodRed of The GeoGadgets Team
www.geogadgets.com
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In all honesty, no matter how polite one is when they tell the owner of a cache that the placement/whatever is bad/lame/stinky, that cache owner may not take it as constructive criticism, but just criticism, and for them maybe all criticism is bad. Have I used to word "criticism" enough? Am I even spelling it correctly?
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Everyone else who's logged it says something like, "Wow, this is a very busy place!" I don't think that that kind of polite information is going to change anything here.
RedwoodRed
Is this an arguement FOR rudeness?
No, I would never promote rude behavior, in word or deed. My point is that a simple "Thanks for the find" give absolutely no information to the cachers that follow. A cache that requires the finder to take his/her life in hand, dodge on-coming traffic and dive over a guardrail to avoid becoming a statistic should not be logged as above "TFTF!"
In the same vein, there are people who would like to know when they will be hunting a cache in a high-muggle quotient area, to get their stealth on, and to be wary of folks who might think the cacher is casing the parking lot for a car-jacking, break in or mugging. Having your name in the local police blotter may be exciting, and fun to relate in cache logs for some, but for obvious reasons, it doesn't really place a healthy light on a past-time that is being ridiculed. This runs along the same lines as the terrain difficulty ratings: what is a 1.5 to you might be a 3.0 to someone else, but those people won't know without a decent description of the terrain and potential obstacles.
My strongest point needs to be this: there are many people on this planet that don't see any criticism as constructive, even if it is worded politely and concisely. In an effort to stay on topic, I am still a proponent of the anonymous grading system for caching. I will hunt every cache, even the ones others claim are stinky, because "they all count the same", but maybe we should push for better cache descriptions, huh?
RedwoodRed
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It is my opinion that the people responsible for the glut of lame finds aren't only the people hiding them, but some of the people who approve them.
Before you all start screaming for my lynching, please keep in mind how simple it is for the folks that approve these things to put their stamp of approval on a brainless magnetic micro lampost cache in the Wal-Mart parking lot. When someone puts a great deal of effort and/or thought into their cache placements, they are sometimes denied the stamp of approval due to some technicality that the approver doesn't understand. I have seen many caches "DENIED" because the approver just failed to grasp what was being done. There should be some kind of "higher power" or group to submit "questionable" caches to, not just one person in your immediate area who approves or denies with a broad stroke of their Sharpie.
I could use many examples, but don't wish to bore anyone.
RedwoodRed
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In all honesty, no matter how polite one is when they tell the owner of a cache that the placement/whatever is bad/lame/stinky, that cache owner may not take it as constructive criticism, but just criticism, and for them maybe all criticism is bad. Have I used to word "criticism" enough? Am I even spelling it correctly?
We recently logged a cache (typical magnetic micro lampost style) that turned out to be in the parking lot of an extremely busy business that is open 24/7/365. That isn't usually a problem, we've done tons of them. The problem came when the lampost turned out to be within a few feet of the front entrance!
It is one thing when one is standing in a grocery store parking lot, way back in the "Geez, couldn't find anything closer during the Christmas shopping rush"-parking area, and trying to look inconspicuous... but to have to be stealthy during a constant, un-wavering onslaught of foot traffic, that's just plain stupid if the person who hid it wants it to last more than a few days.
It took us 15 minutes to grab it, and almost 30 minutes to put it back, the level of traffic was so bad. The whole thing was foolish and not very well thought out, and I expressed that in my logs. I suppose this came from being treated like a car thief by passers-by, but that isn't the only reason. Everyone else who's logged it says something like, "Wow, this is a very busy place!" I don't think that that kind of polite information is going to change anything here.
RedwoodRed
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This author is obviously a paid schill for the global health care/pharmaceutical complex.
Yeah! "Don't go outside and play! Sit around, get depressed and have your doctor prescribe Zantax/Prozac/your drug of choice here!"
My Max Speed Reading
in General geocaching topics
Posted
Thank you so much, Ibycus. That is what I meant (about weight). I never got good enough math or science grades to get into physics. I knew my limitations then, so didn't try. Now it interests me, but all I know of it is via ossmosis (sp?). Maybe I wasn't so good in spelling, either?