Desert_Trailblazers

Yep! That worked! I guess this action was outside of my memory retention as it stands these days... and that's not very long! Thank you! (not saying this was one of them, but my goodness! things are very different on the site than they were a year ago!)

Hi, sorry if this has been discussed before. I have been away from caching for quite awhile but I did do a search in the Forums for an answer to this, but was not able to find anything. I use a program similar to GSAK to produce a statistics page for our profile page. In order to organize the statistics, one used to be able to go to Saved GPX Files in the right hand column near the Pocket Query options, and create a .gpx file of every cache we have ever logged. We recently have tried to do a little more caching again, so I want to update our profile statistics, but when I go to Saved GPX Files, it used to be very easy... you basically just clicked on that link, clicked on Upload File, and it would populate a .gpx file that was listed along with your current pocket queries. Once you had that file created, you could import that data into a statistics program and all was well. Well, today, I have been really confused because now when I click on Upload File it asks me to Browse to find the file I need. What????? Can someone tell me what file I am looking for, and where it would be stored on my computer? In the search I did for this no one mentioned anything about having a problem about populating the .gpx file in the first place, and the use for this was primarily to transfer the data to a phone app. That is not what I am doing, although this first step would be the same for whatever ultimate use one wanted to do with the data. Help, please?

There are many good tips here, and I, too, like TheRoadWife, found that looking online at cache supply websites helped a lot because you can see the many different types of containers that are out there, and it broadens what you might overlook. I do want to say one thing to you, however, that isn't going to help you now, but to hopefully give you encouragement to not get frustrated early on. I would like to give you some tangible tips, but really... bear in mind that the more of these type of caches you find, the easier it will get. When you read the comments that say, "easy park and grab," check out how many caches that person has found! Probably at least 50 or more, and most likely more than several hundred. Just hang in there, and remember that the best teacher is experience. The tips are important and helpful, but don't get discouraged and shy away from them. For those who suggested that, I think that is a mistake. I think the more you try to find, and eventually DO find, the easier they will be for you too! Hang in there and just have fun!

AMEN! Now I'm really not posting anything more

We're still not very experienced, but we're getting better. But back during the first 50 caches, or so, the most frustrating thing for me was that I was too logical when I got to GZ. For example, I would think, "Well, those bushes are maintained by professional landscapers, so no one would hide a cache in there. It'll be gone in two weeks!" Then my hubbie would walk over and pick it right out. Or things like, "No one would put a cache in there because that would be a perfect place for a rattlesnake to be." Then hubbie would take the risk, and pull out the cache. (Come to think of it, that was my most frustrating thing when I first started caching... my husband found all the caches because he thought outside of logic! ) I think I made too many assumptions that cachers would all be playing "by the book" so to speak, and that just isn't the case! That, and my great disappointment with the degraded swag in the caches. We came out all armed with cool stuff from the dollar stores, and all we found were used theater tickets, marbles, rocks, rubber snakes, etc. Now we have come to expect that, and we usually leave something nice behind for the next person, and just don't take anything. If it truly is garbage (a bubble gum wrapper) we'll clean that out and throw it away. BTW, LOVE your show!! Really helped us when we first got started!! Thank you!

There is a very long thread about this on the azcachers.com website. It has a lot of specific information so you might want to check it out. In the meantime, yes, our cache was taken... just completely removed with the "Have a nice day" version of the sticker left behind (more conspicuous and unsightly than our cache was!) Here is our last post on the subject and our thoughts of how we are going to handle this: This is going to be my last post on any forum about this topic, as I believe part of what is fueling this cacher's actions is watching the distress it is causing others. Having given this further thought and some research, I completely agree with the approach as mentioned above, to give him/her no attention whatsoever, and to replace our caches. Here's my two cents, and that's all it is. The following may seem overly analytical to some, but any kind of vandalism stems from some kind of personality disorder. I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist, but after doing a little research this sounds like either Sadistic Personality Disorder, a God complex, or a bit of both. Below are the descriptions of these disorders, and they seem to be right on the money. Sadistic Personality Disorder (I have edited out the references to the sexual variation of this disorder:) "Sadism is the condition of enjoying inflicting suffering on others, or exerting control over them. It can be sexual or non-sexual. Non-sexual sadism is the enjoyment of cruelty or power in a general sense. Sadists are often drawn to positions of influence or authority. As with sexual sadism, some may actually enjoy causing suffering, while other sadists have a fixation with having control over people or situations, manipulating them at will." It seems to me that by causing all of this uproar, this person is definitely manipulating us by allowing him to have the power over us to alter, or even contemplate altering our caching practices. This manipulation extends even further when we give him the power to allow him to cause us distress, anger, and fear (specifically of putting our caches back or putting out new caches.) If this person truly believes that he is doing a good thing by ridding the world of caches he deems inappropriate, unworthy, not in keeping with the guidelines of GS, or whatever, a God complex disorder could apply. God Complex (a slang expression for a variation of Narcissistic Personality Disorder): "A psychosis based in uncontrolled narcissism, inflated arrogance and a perceived need to subjugate and/or ridicule other individuals deemed to be inferior or unworthy." "Those with narcissistic personality disorder believe that they're superior to others and have little regard for other people's feelings." "Narcissistic personality disorder symptoms may include: * Believing that you're better than others * Fantasizing about power, success and attractiveness (my comment: this translates into needing attention) * Believing that you're special and acting accordingly * Failing to recognize other people's emotions and feelings * Expecting others to go along with your ideas and plans * Taking advantage of others * Expressing disdain for those you feel are inferior" At any rate, however small his problem may be in comparison to the other end of the spectrum of this disorder (such as someone like The Zodiac Killer who enjoyed reading about himself in the newspapers after a killing) IMHO, the power and attention we are giving him is only contributing to the continuation of his actions because it is gratifying for him. Both of these assessments are probably oversimplifications of his problem, but regardless, he is a troubled and disturbed person... more than just a jerk. And, again, IMHO, he needs to be treated as such. Sadly, I do think that we will change all of our caches to Premium Members only and audit the logs. This is just a suggestion, but if everyone did this, and a single cacher's name continually appears in each instance of the theft of the cache, perhaps we could gather enough evidence against him/her to go to GS and have him/her banned. Also as mentioned above, this comparison should take place between cachers off of the boards. If you are not a Premium Member, and don't know what this audit feature is, you might want to consider parting with the $30 and joining. Besides the one that would help in this situation, you do get some other nice features, such as being able to build Pocket Queries, which is really handy. Anyway, as a Premium Member, you can set up your cache so that you can see every person who logs on to look at your cache, and it also keeps track of how many times that cacher views it. It might not take too long for one cacher's name to become common to all stolen caches. It might also cause the thief to think twice before stealing your cache if he knows that we have started to monitor the visits, and share information amongst one another. I am going to post this on all the threads about this topic. Signing off and replacing our cache, Desert Trailblazers

We just received a log late last night telling us that a cache of ours has been officially "tagged!" Obviously, we'll go check on it ASAP, but two things... One, has anyone noticed that the dates of all of these incidents seem to all be on exactly September 13 (or maybe a day or two on either side of that date?) It is as if someone just took that weekend before and spent hours on trashing caches! Even ours, although we cannot say exactly when it was tagged because there is a lag in the dates it was logged as found, was last found on Sept 12 (that is until someone found it yesterday.) I did go online to see if this was the latest hot novelty item, and I couldn't find anywhere where someone could order these stickers ready-made. Thankfully, it appears that a few people with too much time on their hands is making these at home with a computer and blank stickers. I guess that's encouraging. Perhaps, soon the cost of the labels and printer ink will, hopefully, make this cost ineffective in relation to the kicks some twisted person is deriving from this childish prank. Also, we are really anxious to go and see what, exactly was done to our cache as far as it being removed. This particular cache (I don't care if I give it away!) was a very elaborate homemade electrical junction box that was made with real parts from an electrical supply company, and it was attached using the same metal strapping that is used by electricians. So, if it is truly gone... BUMMER! We'll add to the thread when we know more. Lastly, another odd thing about this one is that it is located very far north and east in the Valley, in Scottsdale, and not in the city of Phoenix, so for those of you who feel you are being targeted in Phoenix, apparently this is happening all over the Valley. My thoughts to whomever is doing this is simple... GET A LIFE!

All good to know! I feel good thinking I might be contributing to keeping one more trackable from falling off the grid, but I wasn't sure how the owner would feel about it. I know if it was one of my coins I would appreciate someone taking the time to help it out! I found a coin the other day that had been missing for FIVE YEARS! Unbelievable! Just prior to that I found one that had been missing for nine months. I bet in both cases the owners were very happy to see them resurface. Hopefully they will go out into this jungle better prepared for their journeys

Having recently learned how to properly release TB's and Geocoins with notes of explanation as to what to do with them, and what their missions are, I now have the urge to take coins and TB's that I find, and fix them up with a small ziplock (not puncturing the trackable, of course) and adding a note with instructions. Seeing as how these are not my trackables, I feel as though, while my intentions are good, maybe this is not proper etiquette? Any comments?

Hey, that looks really cool but doesn't punching a hole in the coin degrade the integrity of the coin? If not, how do you punch the hole in the coin? And just to be completely thorough here, (as I don't fish!) does that little black "connector" piece come as a set with the wire, or is it made separately?

Will do! Getting some good suggestions Thanks one and all!

I know what you are saying. We sent out a particularly nice coin awhile back, and when another cacher found it, he wrote what a beautiful coin it is, and that he will put it someplace "safe" and hope that it doesn't go missing. (Again, this is before we knew about attaching the note.) We now have a couple of really nice coins that we bought, and one of them is especially beautiful, and I'm sure it wouldn't last two months out in "the wild." But, then again, it has a sentiment on it that we would like to share. That's why we bought it... to share it... to release it in honor of something important to us. I guess it's all a roll of the dice. I have been hanging onto it, hanging onto it, hanging on to it.... just scared to death to release it! The thing is, we don't "collect" anything really. So we don't have a strong sense of wanting to keep it just to own it. I guess like you said, you just have to weigh the risk against the possibility that it might be okay... I don't know. Sometimes I wonder what the point of trackables are, with all the risk associated with them. It's such a wonderful idea. I'm convinced that some cachers are just truly clueless about finding coins. But it's the ones who know exactly what they have found, and keep it that is such a shame. (And you mentioned that you put out two unactivated coins. That's nice if you want to share these as trade items, but if they aren't activated, that's just what they are! A gift! There's no real emotional attachment to the coin if it is placed with the intent of just letting some lucky person find it, and get a great piece of swag! )

WOW! That's perfect, and so easy! I only wish I had known about this before we released our other trackables! Thanks so much!

Okay, I'll try that now! I was planning on making it small enough to be laminated, and put on the chain, and then even put all of that in a small ziplock. This may limit how much it travels perhaps, because it will require a larger container, but I'd rather risk that than losing it! Thanks for the help!

We have lost several geocoins. When we first released them, we were new to trackables, and made the leap that everyone knew what to do with one. WRONG! Just recently, we found a TB that had a note attached to it and we meant to photocopy it to use for our next coins and TBs, but we were out one day and found the perfect cache for it, so we dropped it without copying the note. In general it talked about the following: This is NOT a trade item Told what a TB (coin) is Told that if you take this, here is what you MUST do with it If you don't feel that you can or want to do this with it, then DON'T TAKE ME! Leave me here for someone else. In speaking with another cacher who has sent off a lot of coins, she said that she thought that this verbiage was available to be copied from the Groundspeak website somewhere. Does anyone know anything about this, and if so, where we can get a good message to include with our future coins/TBs? We have a friend going to China, and would like to send some coins with him to release, but are reluctant to do so without attaching a message like this. I think so many people don't really know what geocoins are, and they think they are just a cool "prize" they have found, and keep them! Thanks for any help! []

Yes. You can either click on the link to google maps just to the left of the large map, or you can click on the little green box on the map that's there and it'll give you the option to see nearby caches. I just found that out. We don't have either of these items showing on our cache pages! We are using Mozilla Firefox. Are you using a different browser? I wonder if the change they made isn't supported in Firefox? Click on the little icon of the cache in the middle of the map. A pop up balloon will appear that will let you view nearby caches in a larger scalable Google map. This works in Firefox too. Ahhhh.... the old map! Thank you, thank you....

I didn't realize that there was an entire forum discussion site for Web issues and just posted a note about this under General Topics. Was suggested to come over here, and agree with everyone who doesn't like it. I liked opening up the map in a new window, and while I'm ignorant about what you guys are talking about when you mention Waypoints not available, I liked to be able to just click on the map, see the entire area, other caches, change to Terrain and back, but all in a really large format. We usually just manipulated this page as we wanted and printed it out and have never bothered with driving directions. And you have to hide the directions stuff on the new one now if you don't want that. One vote for Old Map.

Thanks J the Goat for pointing me in the right direction (no pun intended!)

Yes. You can either click on the link to google maps just to the left of the large map, or you can click on the little green box on the map that's there and it'll give you the option to see nearby caches. I just found that out. We don't have either of these items showing on our cache pages! We are using Mozilla Firefox. Are you using a different browser? I wonder if the change they made isn't supported in Firefox? Okay, just realized that the "link" is the Google icon, but it still brings it up in the "Directions" page. However, since the left column can be hidden, I guess this isn't a big deal. Still wonder why they made the change, though! It was easier the way it used to be! (IMHO!)

Yes. You can either click on the link to google maps just to the left of the large map, or you can click on the little green box on the map that's there and it'll give you the option to see nearby caches. I just found that out. We don't have either of these items showing on our cache pages! We are using Mozilla Firefox. Are you using a different browser? I wonder if the change they made isn't supported in Firefox?

Has anyone else noticed that since GS went down yesterday for awhile that the large cache "location map" on the cache page is no longer "clickable" to expand to full screen and manipulate like a regular Google Maps page? Personally, I loved this feature! We usually don't even print out driving directions, but manipulate this map so that we can see where we need to go. The new one allows for some zooming in and out, but nothing like a real Google Map, and besides, it can't be separated from the rest of the page to be printed alone. Any thoughts as to why this happened? Is there still a way to get the large map that I am missing?

So, is the general consensus that the Kroger cache should have been a Multi and not a Puzzle? If so, is there any compelling reason why it shouldn't stay a Puzzle? (Just in theory, of course.) It obviously got published as a Puzzle, but then I understand that these issues are up to the individual reviewers. Is it hit and miss with the review process if we would rather do it as a Puzzle just for the sake of perhaps drawing a little more traffic to it? But now we do understand how to work it as an offset multi. Thanks!

Thanks Pork King for the link to this cache. This is exactly what we had in mind! Interesting, though, that it is a Puzzle Cache, which is what we originally thought we would have to do. I don't know about everyone else's area, but around here, both Multi's and Puzzle caches get very few visits. We really want these caches to be visited, because they are very interesting places, so we want to make this very easy. I think, here, a Puzzle cache, that is easy, might have a slight edge over a Multi in terms of the initial look-see from people to decide if they want to go for it. You're confusing Muti caches with offset caches. An offset is allowed to have only one actual physical container, whereas a multi has to have more than one. The only reason an offset is listed as a multi is because Groundspeak didn't want to make a new symbol for it. If you listed it as a mystery you'd be listing it wrong. You should have the coords at the front door and tell them to visit exhibit X and/or X. They'd use that to figure out the coords, once they get the coords they use that to find the secede "stage". You are allowed to only have one physical container with offset caches. Also, they would use the GPS as an integral part of the cache because they have to use it to find the actual physical container. A great example would be, GC1WFGZ. Although, the reviewer MAY require it to be listed puzzle cache because the coords aren't leading you to the exact exhibit. I doubt that would actually happen as this still is technically a offset. So do you think that the Krogering cache is mis-labeled as a puzzle cache? Should it be a Multi? I do understand the offset Multi... read the guidelines very thoroughly. The conundrum is that it seems as though this type of cache could almost fall into either category (as least it does have components of both.) I do see a minuscule difference, though, in differentiating the two. With the offset multi, the coords are given to you by saying "find the coords on "x" " whereas the puzzle, even with the same layout, might require the cacher to do some "solving" to get the coords with help from item "x" ? Does that make sense? Even with a Puzzle/Mystery cache you have to use a GPS to find the location of the cache once you have found the coords from the "offset" object/display/whatever. This is tough because there is such a small distinction between these two types in a situation such as the one that we are proposing! Again, the Krogering is exactly what we want to do, so it's confusing that it got published as a Puzzle cache! GC1WFGZ is quite a bit more complicated in terms of obtaining the coords to the find the actual physical cache. And, again, we would be telling the cacher exactly which exhibit to go to on the cache page, once inside, to find the coords... we don't plan on making it a puzzle.

Thanks Pork King for the link to this cache. This is exactly what we had in mind! Interesting, though, that it is a Puzzle Cache, which is what we originally thought we would have to do. I don't know about everyone else's area, but around here, both Multi's and Puzzle caches get very few visits. We really want these caches to be visited, because they are very interesting places, so we want to make this very easy. I think, here, a Puzzle cache, that is easy, might have a slight edge over a Multi in terms of the initial look-see from people to decide if they want to go for it.

Okay, I can understand this. If we did this, what would we use for our initial coordinates on the cache page? The GPSr cannot be used indoors, so how would we handle this? Maybe make initial coords be the front door of the museum and say on the cache page to "go inside and find "x" for coords to Stage 2 (Final Stage?) I don't suppose you remember the name of that mall cache? That sounds like a really cool idea! If not, don't worry about it. Just thought I would ask.