jollybgood

Glad to hear you caught the fever as a result of reading KODT. I had a lot of fun doing the comic strip on geocaching. ANd yes, I do hope to revisit the subject in the comic someday. (That way I can right off my geocaching expenditures as a business expense for...ahem...research. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

<> Been there. The keyspan adapter had me crawling the walls. Sometimes it worked (after lots of fiddling) but more often than not it simply cut out in the middle of a transfer as you described. Which is why I recommend the igogear adapter. I don't think it's keyspan's fault -- for some reason it just doesn't get along with OSX when it comes to GPS units. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

I think part of the fun of TBs is not knowing where they will end up. Will they get lost? Stolen? Get off course? You hope they will reach thier goal but the numerous setbacks only serve to build the suspense and make a TB's journey that much more interesting -- at least for me. After all they are basically 'hitchhiking' and that comes with a certain degree of risk. I only have one TB so far (Outlaw Willy) and it's been fun to see him drop from sight only to pop up again thousands of miles away. His original goal was to escape to Mexico. So far he's been to Main, Florida, MAss and now the South Pacific. Sure he's not achieving his goal but I'm having a lot of fun tracking is journey. Personally, I've never found a TB with printed instructions/goals in the field. It's only after I've returned home and checked the TB's page that I've learned of it's goals or travel plans. By that time it's really too late if I've brought the TB home in the wrong direction. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

I think part of the fun of TBs is not knowing where they will end up. Will they get lost? Stolen? Get off course? You hope they will reach thier goal but the numerous setbacks only serve to build the suspense and make a TB's journey that much more interesting -- at least for me. After all they are basically 'hitchhiking' and that comes with a certain degree of risk. I only have one TB so far (Outlaw Willy) and it's been fun to see him drop from sight only to pop up again thousands of miles away. His original goal was to escape to Mexico. So far he's been to Main, Florida, MAss and now the South Pacific. Sure he's not achieving his goal but I'm having a lot of fun tracking is journey. Personally, I've never found a TB with printed instructions/goals in the field. It's only after I've returned home and checked the TB's page that I've learned of it's goals or travel plans. By that time it's really too late if I've brought the TB home in the wrong direction. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

Since many Travel Bugs have goals (like seeing certain parks or travelling to certain states) I think many hunters hold on to TBs until they are able to make a trip in the right direction. Otherwise Travel Bugs might be doomed to remain in the immediate local area and simply bounce back and forth among the same caches. So it's understandable (in my opinion) if someone holds on to a TB for 4 to 6 weeks in order to help it along toward it's goal. Afterall, until you get home and log the TB you're not really going to know where it wants to go. A few months ago I found a TB in Indiana that wanted to go to Oklahoma. Since I had a trip planned for that area a month or so later, I held onto to hoping to place help get it to its goal. Later the trip fell through and I ended up putting the TB in a cache barely 60 miles from where I'd found it. THe point is my intentions were good. It just didn't twork out as planned. On the flip side, I looked at the cache reports on the cache from which I originally took the TB and during that month NO ONE else had visited it. The end result being, my holding on to it for four weeks didn't really delay it's journey. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

Well I had a travel bug (Outlaw Willy) who turned up missing for months. No one seemed to know what had happened to him nor would they admit to having taken him. I did a bit of detective work and by reading the logs of the cache he was last seen, I concluded someone had taken him not really knowing how TB's worked and didn't know how to log/pick them up. Eventually I wrote it off as a loss. Then suddenly, a few weeks ago I got a TB report saying Outlaw Willy had turned up and was sailing in the South Pacific on a yacht. The report said he would find a new home (cache) soon when he made land fall. So don't give up hope. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

On one of my early caches I was deep in a forest searching for a cache (this was last fall after the leaves had fallen) when I notice a deer is walking parrallel with me among he trees about forty feet away. He seemed intensely curious about what I was doing. I took out my digital camera and began taking pictures when suddenly I notice that it is now heading toward me with its head lowered in what I considered a very menancing manner. (It was a young buck). I'm originally from backwoods Indiana and I'd NEVER seen a deer in the wild behave like this. It really unnerved me. Flashbacks of that famous Video footage from TV where the Deer is attacking the poor guy who doused himself with doe-urine ran through my mind. I was considering climbing a tree when it stopped, stared at me for a few moments and then moved off slowly as if it didn't have a care in the world. Later I realized it had probably been handfed (or used to getting handouts) and was simply checking to see if I was packin' snacks. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

I found a radar detector in a cache last winter. I figured it was broken but when I got back to my car a plugged it in, it worked. I'm still using it. Not too shabby. Most unusal thing I've found was a bra. (Which I declined to take by the way). Wait, I take that back. The most unusual thing I found in a cache was swamp water. A cache I visited in Vermont a few months ago had a 2 quart glass pickle jar as a cache container. WHen I found it someone had filled it to the brim with muddy swamp water and screwed the lid back on. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

Finding the best place to park is part of the fun for me. It's often the 'not knowing' if you're approaching from the right direction that makes it exciting. In fact I tend not to suggest the best places to park unless there are concerns about illegal parking or concerns about not crossing private property. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

< otherwise find your starting spot one the "view the state" maps and zoom in to you can see your route, then pan across each state following your route. this kinda works, but if you leave your route while traveling you'll have no idea what caches may be nearby. if your gps can handle it i suppose you could download all the caches in a state! but ive never done it and have no idea how you would do it, im sure someone elase can fill you about that if you want to know.>> I download ALL the waypoints in a state using Pocket Queryby maxing the values on the query list. Then I load those waypoints into Mapsource and create my route. This makes it immediately apparent what caches lie along your route. I then give those caches a unique waypoint symbol and delete everything else and save the list and transfer it back to my GPS. What I like about this method when going on long trips is that as I'm driving I'll see caches appear on my unit and I can hit or skip them as I wish. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

I'm not sure which firmware update added the feature but I noticed you can now delete waypoints by type on the GPSV now. Very kewl. I find it useful to delete ALL the waypoints NOT FOUND each week when I do my Pocket Query and get an updated list of current caches. Makes it easy to elimnate those caches which have been archived and so forth. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

<> Yeah, I immediately downloaded Desktop Palm for OSX when I got home and it immediately worked without a hitch using the USB cradle. Kinda funny that I finally took the plunge and got a PDA just so I could use it to take pocket querys to the field with me. But I convinced my wife I really bought it for her for her to-do lists and contact info. Sort of backfired on me. She immediately grabbed it and has been inputting her information into it the last few hours. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

Thanks for the advice. I went down to Best Buy today to pick up a Palm M125. As it turned out they were sold out except for a display model. I told them I'd take the display model. Kewl Beans. When she rang it up instead of charging me the 145 bucks or so it was going for the girl at the counter discounted it to 95 bucks as an "open product". Played around with it this afternoon it seems to do everything I need it to. The USB cradle is a nice feature. One question. I have an IR port on my Tibook and I notice the M125 has an IR port. Can I hot sync between my laptop and pda via the IR port? Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

Got everything working. Importing still didn't seem to fix the waypoint problem for me, however. But I found out how to do a find/replace globally using notepad so I'm happy. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

Check to see if the basemap says "mapsource" or 'overzoom'or whatever it says. I thought my GPSV was whacked several months ago because it showed me driving off the road even with 'lock on road' enabled. Turns out it only works consistently if you aren't zoomed in too close. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

Anyone been concerned about this given our hobby often takes us into skeeter-territory? I hadn't given it much thought til I was just watching CNN and a local woman was diagnosed with it. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

When I complained to Keyspan that their USB-Serial adapter was too expensive one of their techs responded that there is a stiff licensing fee associated with USB -- hence the hefty price. I'm not sure if this is true but it might explain why Garmin hasn't provided USB support with their units. (and why it took so long for PDA's to offer it). Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

Until the Pocket Inquiries came along I've never really saw the need for a PDA. My laptop is glued to my side most of the time. However, I've been a bit leary of hauling my $2500 Ti-book out with me when Geocaching and leaving it in my vehicle. So I'm thinking of getting a PDA so I can take the cache reports with me in ed0c form for reference in the bush. So I'm looking for a basic model I guess. Hopefully with USB rather than serial connection. Any advice? Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

Become a chartered member and use the Pocket Querie feature to create files for the area(s) you are visiting. A very kewl feature. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

Thinks guys. This is exactly what I was looking for. I do have two questions about Geobuddy however... I tried saving my edited waypoint file as a mapsource waypoint file but Mapsource won't open it. Am I doig something wrong? Also, is there a way to globally replaced the waypoit icon. I'd like to turh ALL of them into the Geocache icon. I figured out to make the waypoint TYPE all the same but when I open the file in EasyGPS it still shows the simple waypoint icon. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

I always download a long list of caches using EasyGPS and then spend a great deal of time going down the list and renaming the caches from the GHXXXX format or whatever to names which mean something (i.e. the actual name of the cache). I would LOVE to be able to simply swap out the comments field which has the cache name with the field the contains the GHXXXX type names. IN other words I wish EasyGPS (or some other program/utility) would automate this tedious process. I've heard GeoBuddy does this but for the life of me I can't figure out how it's done. Any ideas? Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

You commented you ordered the iogear adapter. You should note that unlike the Keyspan adapter you should NOT install the Mac driver. Install the PC driver thru VPC5. (You can download the most recent version from iogear's website) Under this set up you don't have to worry about telling OSX to ignore the port. I've had really good luck with this set up. If you run into problems feel free to drop me an email. I'd be glad to walk you through it. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

When updating firmware adn waypoints to/from Mapsource I've found it's often neccessary to deselect the high speed box when the prompter comes up. (The one which with the note which tells you to turn off high speed transfers if you experience errors). Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

I'll try to help you from my own experience. First of all you should know the keyspan adapter is troublesome as far as VPC5 and MacOsx. It's possible to get it to work with EasyGPS and even update your firmware but I've NEVER been successful using the keyspan to upload maps from Mapsource. You can save yourself a lot of grief by getting the iogear adapter. Having said that, here are a few things you can do to get the keyspan adapter to work as well as can be expected. 1. You shouldn't use the PC drivers. Only the Mac driver. This is according to connectix's FAQ. 2. VPC5 and MACOSX tend to fight over control of the USB ports so you have to trick OSX into ignoring the adapter. This is done through the Networks conrol panel. Plug in your keyspan adapter, open the control panel. You'll seen the Adapter listed as a port. Click on the box which instructs OSX to 'ignore' the adapter. Now launch VPC5. Open the LIST for the virtual pc image you are using and select the adapter under the COM! or COM2 preferences. Make sure you click 'non modem device' When I had my keyspan this set up would allow me to upload/download waypoints, routes to/from my GPS unit and Mapsource. Unfortuantely trying to download more than 3 or 4 meg of maps will only result in a loss of connection. Hope this helps. If I left something out, I'm sure someone else will point it out. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com

I'll give it a try. Wonder what happened to 2.06? I was disappointed to see no mention of the fix for the page up/page down feature documented in the manual but which never worked. With 450 waypoints in my unit it would be nice to have that feature. Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com