tekkguy

Birthday Mission: Email sent - YES October 1, 2009 Birthday Mission: Name Received - YES Birthday Mission: Sent - YES Birthday Mission: Received - Not yet Package is out. Just watched UPS pick it up!

I PMed you a link for some you can buy fairly cheap (well known site to which I have no affiliation) rather than posting the link in the thread. The bags I linked are nice. For just cheap-o paper tote bags for free, I'd ask a local department store, maybe one with a good sporting goods section?

I said 'piece of wood' ... not trees. And as for the rocks ... people BRING rocks to accomplish a hide, create rocks, etc ... bringing in a rock, or a small block of wood alters the environment arguably less so than sticking firetacks in trees, no? Is that your way of saying "Other people do it so it is OK"? No ... that's my way of saying if leaving an Ammo Can at GZ is an acceptable alteration of the environment, why would leaving a rock with a hole in it at Stage 1 be any different? Just because I'm new here doesn't mean I eat babies and stomp on saplings, you know.

I said 'piece of wood' ... not trees. And as for the rocks ... people BRING rocks to accomplish a hide, create rocks, etc ... bringing in a rock, or a small block of wood alters the environment arguably less so than sticking firetacks in trees, no?

Ooo, I like that. I'll have to make two of these kinds of caches, one BYOL (bring your own laser), and another one with my lasers already out there. I suppose someone could always just look through the hole too, though, hm. Well ... I don't know about seeing through it. You could make the hole pretty tiny for a laser ... if you made it large enough to really see through, you'd lose the accuracy of the laser. The real problem with my idea would be keeping gunk out of the hole. This is a brilliant idea ... and it just might work. With the right setup and a bright enough flashlight, you could possibly even forget about a laser pointer and just use a flashlight.

Also, I don't know if all laser pointers would point exactly in the same place (some might be a little skewed, especially ones from the dollar store) Oh, and what do you mean by "notches"? A depression to rest the pointer in so it points as true as possible. Or better yet ... a piece of wood or rock with a very small hole drilled ... the hole points to the correct location, and you shine your laser through the hole - eliminating any worry that the laser pointer itself might not be pointing straight.

Not really about The Netherlands, per say ... but interesting anyway. There is enough wasted paper in the world to completely cover The Netherlands every 5 minutes, every day.

Those two terms are interchangable, no? Nope, you're absolutely right ... I'm done, just pointing out the fallacy in the barcode itself ... which was probably too far to begin with

Actually, if you look closely you would see that it's not 39 different ways to solve it. It appears, on the surface to be a ITF (Interleaved 2 of 5) barcode. There IS a mathematical way to decipher it but I don't feel like trying. My last job had me dealing with barcodes way too much and part of my job was to figure out what kind of barcode a customer used so we could duplicate it. If it was a viable barcode, you could print it out and just scan it with a barcode scanner that is capable of reading ITF barcodes (if I am correct on the encoding) and get the answer. Again, IF the barcode is viable... I'm not sure that's correct. Based on the hint, I think it probably is an attempt at 39. The start and stop codes are (if we're assuming it's 39) an asterisk (* or star) - then look at the hint - Other than the start and stop character, the barcode doesn't match anything about 39 - the number of bars is completely off, for one. There are 580 bars in the larger barcode, which is divisible by neither 12 or 13 - which would be required for 39. Unless I'm missing something, the hint basically says "Ignore the barcodes"

Thanks ... I sent both owners a message on Saturday letting them know the status of their bugs and asking if they wanted me to remove the extra tags a couple of cachers added to them. Haven't gotten a response from either owner yet, but if I do I'll ask about the dipping. If I don't get a response from them, I'll just drop them in Phoenix. Thanks for the advice!

On the surface, you appear to be correct ... but I'm afraid the lake is much deeper. Or ... the lake is a mirage, really. At least according to the hint ... if you know the 39 ways.

I picked up two TB's at an event this weekend. They are both in a race (not against each other). I'm flying from Dallas to Phoenix on Wednesday, and I'll do a little bit of caching while I'm there. So ... should I drop the TBs off in Phoenix, or take them round-trip and just dip them while I'm there to give them double the mileage? Would I be helping them 'cheat' in their race, or is that considered kosher?

Actually, in the previous thread about this cache (linked to in Post #17), there were many attempts to read the barcodes, by machine, by websites, and by brain power. Hmmm... I don't know. Since this thread was started I began working on this puzzle. It took me less that 5 minutes to determine the type of code and method needed to decipher it (hello Google!). If I had Photoshop I'm guessing I could break it. What's interesting is that the start and stop symbols on the barcode are correct, and the format is correct for a specific type of barcode ... but after doing the needed Photoshop work on it (well, on the first bar), the barcode doesn't seem to be readable by machine in the format that the start and stop symbols indicate.

I ordered from them last month, and got my stuff fast. I ordered from them last week and my stuff came in today ... so I haven't had any problems. I got a really fast response from support@geoswag.com when I emailed about my order last month. The response they sent me was from support@oakcoins.com and it only took a little while to get a response back from them.

Birthday Mission: Email sent - October 1, 2009 Birthday Mission: Name Received - YES! October 13, 2009 Birthday Mission: Sent - Not yet Birthday Mission: Received - Not yet

GC1ZG7K Considering that it has the word "Bridge" right in the cache name, and the reviewer has access to the same arial photos that we have, and it is a recent hide, I think its safe to assume that the reviewer was aware of the location. All the same, a note to the reviewer would not be out of place, I suppose. The coordinates show the cache to be slightly away from the bridge on what looks like a pedestrian sidewalk ... if it's under the bridge now, maybe it migrated, or maybe the coords are slightly fudged? If there's a sidewalk there, you aren't likely to look suspicious. What do I know, I'm just a noob.

Inevitably if this were implemented, you'd find someone that entered in a typo-d code from an activated coin, but the typo would be valid for an unactivated coin. They'd see the message that they might have typed it in wrong, or that it's valid but unactivated and swag. Then they'd ignore the 'you might have typed it in wrong' part and pocket the swag. There should never be anything official that says "Hey, I can't find that one! Congrats, it's yours!" IM(newbie)O

Go to First Monday in Canton each month, I buy mine there for about 3 bucks a pop. Thanks for the heads up ... might try to make it out there for November.

IANAL ... so ... dunno.

So does that mean you can't sell T-shirts with the word "Geocaching" on them? Which search did you use? I tried http://www.uspto.gov/ and it comes up with no matches. There is an active trademark. It belongs to Groundspeak.

Only if you are requiring them to do the stages in order to log a find. Unless that requirement is built into the challenge of the cache, as in my example above ... if you find the final without getting to all stages, cool. But the only help you'll get from me is within the stages themselves.

I'm planning a multi for my third hide. (First hide is going out today, second around early November - yeah, I'm ahead of myself) I thought about this exact scenario and decided to combat it by not giving any hints to the final. In stage 1, you'll get part of the coordinates to the final. Stage 2 will have part, Stage 3 will have part - there won't be any short-cutting, because even if you stumble on a later stage accidentally, you'll have to find the others to get the final coordinates - just gotta make sure no one stumbles accidentally onto the final!

I finally found some in the Dallas area for $10 for .50 cals ... I'm going to go pick up a few today. Everywhere except this one location that I called or went to has them for $15 - $20 a pop.

The right thing to do here is this. Say flat out that you blew up some canned foods for exactly the reasons laid out. When an officer insists on calling what turned out to be food "drug related items" then they just look stupid even with the Jedi Mind Trick training they get on how to speak to elicit a certain responce from who they are talkign too (press and juries for example). If they figured out it was a cache and for whatever reason it actually did have drug related items in it say as much. "Caching is a family acvitity we don't know why this particualr cache had these items in it". Of course officers have as much trouble understanding the larger world as the press. I didn't see anywhere, not even in the sparse little article, where the police ever said it was meth related - the PRESS said it, the caller reported it, but the cops cited "fire hazard" ... according to the sparse little article that the PRESS wrote. Don't forget ... we're not reading the police report here.

Heroin addicts use spoons ... be careful you don't get caught with heroin-related items!