Zurfco

I haven't got anything to add to the main point of the conversation, but I do have to chime in and give my appreciation for the term "swag fairy." We've played the part of the "swag fairy" a few times. I usually keep an eye out for small booklets on sale. When I can pick up a stack of them at $0.25 or $0.50 each, I do. Then when I come across a cache with an overfull log book, I kick it off as a new log.

There have been times when I've been in DC at night. There are neighborhoods where you would be unsafe. None of them are near the tourist areas. I can recall one time returning from an Orioles game. My ride dropped me near our office at 9th and G and I walked to the subway at about midnight to grab the last train home. People were shying away from me. I'm kind of a big guy but nice (I think) and wouldn't hurt anyone. Yet because I wasn't in a suit, I was the scariest guy on the street walking past the bars towards the train.

Uhhhhhhhh. Never mind. One more try after posting this and obviously I saw what I had been missing right along. It's now changed and I have gotten to display my ignorance for your reading pleasure. Thanks anyway, because I'm sure that if I hadn't found it someone would have helped me. - Zurfco

Sorry for what is a question with what is probably an obvious answer. I use GSAK to sort and download caches to my receiver. The last few times I've done so, it said that to get full information I need to reset my GPX preferences to a new setting. I have been all around my profile trying to figure out how to adjust my settings and I haven't seen where I can change the GPX download settings. Can anyone help me get this straight? I know I must be the only knucklehead having this problem because I searched the forum archives and didn't see anyone asking about it. Thanks in advance for your help. - Zurfco

When I was in college, I had a work assignment in a Business English class stolen and submitted by someone else as their own work. I was able to demonstrate that the original was mine and received credit, but thereafter and for the duration of my bachelor's studies, I used the company name Zurfco to demonstrate that the work was mine. It is an obvious bastardization of my last name. Because for us geocaching is a family activity, i.e., a group activity, I resurrected the ficticious company name.

We saw a small garter snake just a few inches long on our last family trip. It was really cute. One time I was fishing in the spring at an area with new construction. I had been there many times in the fall and winter. But, in the spring I guess the snakes go hunt. They live on one side of the creek I fish and hunt on the other apparently. So, as I waded out into the creek I stepped on a rope or cable that I had never noticed. I looked down and IT WAS NOT A CABLE. The cable swam off rapidly towards the other shore. First time I had seen a subsurface water snake. So I fished for a few minutes and another snake struck at the junction of my line and leader. So I'm getting a little freaked out. When just two casts later a third snake swam across and tried to strike at the popper I was throwing, I decided it was time to leave. Now, these were northern brown water snakes - harmless. But they were snakes and snakes freak me out. So, despite the fact that it was just a short while after sunrise, on my way home from the creek I stopped at the store and bought a six pack of something to help calm my nerves. By the time I got home for coffee, I had calmed down enough that the six pack was un-necessary. But the worst snake story was when I was hiking with my wife and our friend L. I had been leading most of the way. We took a break at a pretty overlook. At the overlook the gals asked whether I thought I was large and in charge just because I was the man. Well, I wasn't, and was content to permit one of them to lead instead. So we set out from the overlook and my wife took TWO STEPS as the leader. TWO! On the third step she jumped back and smacked into me hard. Before I could ask her what was going on, I noticed the snake. It's head was in the berry bushes on one side of the trail and its tail was still in the undergrowth on the other. This snake was fat, happy, and very long. When the tail finally appeared, the large rattle was obvious. We were terribly freaked out, but the snake didn't seem to be bothered by us in the least. I reported the event to a Ranger we saw in the parking lot on our way out. He said, "You weren't in any danger. In twenty years as a Ranger, I've only had to treat two snake bites. Both of those were on hands. Now you tell me what those guys were doing."

This may help you with some of that knowledge. http://edc2.usgs.gov/pubslists/booklets/us...ps/usgsmaps.php If not, there's an enormous amount of free information available on the USGS site. Browse around in there and see if you pick up a few things. - Zurfco

LOL! Yes. Yes I do.

OK, so my Colorado 200 doesn't have real good driving maps. I could get Navigator for it. But instead, I went ahead and ordered a kick-butt Garmin for the car. I'll just do some advance planning to lay out a path and enter it to the truck's unit if I have to. Or maybe take the computer along. Or just use the Oregon for high res topo. I'll figure it out eventually. Maybe I'll order Topo 24k for the Oregon and make it race against Navigator. Or something. Anyway, it's got nothing to do with nothing, but I'm excited about ordering a new toy and figured I'd share here where others may not share in my joy but can at least understand it. It's a Garmin 765T "on the road" GPS I ordered. It has bluetooth and an MP3 and will run all the noise through my truck stereo so I don't have to fidget with but one unit. Between the handheld and the truck unit, I had better not complain about getting lost, eh? - Zurfco

I didn't find a cache the other day, but I did find a raccoon where I thought the cache would be. - Zurfco

Many states require that a police officer positively identify everyone they come into contact with. That means if you upset a police officer by needlessly saying no, they can take you to jail until you provide a valid ID or they can fingerprint you (hopefully you're in their system). Why not just show them your ID if you're not breaking the law? It seems that by not cooperating you are just asking for trouble. I've siad it here before; There are lots of people that get arrested because of a bad attitude. You could keep that attitude and go to jail, or you could lose it and get a ticket or even a warning. M24 There's this thing called the 4th admendment... In fact, in Oregon, an officer can ask for ID from anyone, but you don't have to show him. If he requires it from you, now you have been stopped, and there has to be cause for that. -Mark. There's another thing called "presumption of regularity". The judges have heard of it too. If an officer asks you for your ID, show it to him/her. The fourth amendment will not protect you from an ID request. - Zurfco

i just sent my girl friend some pink roses, and i just ate donut& a bacon cheese biscut I like your girl friend too. But, you know, just like like. Not in that special way.

I am not surprised that some would find a religious tract to be personally offensive. However, I am somewhat surprised to discover that there is at least on person who finds them not to be family friendly. I wholeheartedly agree with that poster's position that matters of faith are to be taught at home. However, given that caching is a family activity, it stands to reason we have not got a lot of young children out finding caches on their own and being exposed to tracts without their parent's attendance and ability to guide. In other words, teaching at home. If someone's faith is so weak that a small pamphlet will alter it, is it faith at all? Even if that faith is one held in the negative, i.e. there is NOT a such-and-so, or this-and-such is NOT the truth. Anyway, I am a Christian, and our church has a very large children's program where parents intentionally have their children taught about our religion. It's somewhat difficult to say that a pamphlet recommending that same religion isn't family friendly. It may not be fun. I get that completely. But there is enormous evidence to the contrary about such a tract not being family friendly. It will at worst challenge a faith and give parent's a teaching opportunity and at best, well I don't know what it will do at best. I've never heard of anyone being converted to Christianity as the result of reading a tract. So I guess at best, it'll have pretty pictures to look at. For full disclosure: I like ponies, blue bows AND pink flowers, bacon, beer, and most especially donuts. I'm not real keen on hamsters and hope never to come across one in a cache. - Zurfco

Hey! The snow has finally melted, the kids are finally well, and the calendar is finally not full of miscellany and nonsense. We got out and find a real honest-to-goodness traditional cache. What fun! That's it. No real message. - Zurfco

We had a blast. We didn't see anyone for the "meet and greet" portion, but we all did the whole set-up, including our four year old. It was great and the whole family had a real good time. If anyone who helped set up or design the maze or bringing it to Baltimore reads this, thank you. - Zurfco

We're going to the exhibit at the Maryland Science Museum today. I bought a GPS and Geocaching for Dummies as a family anniversary gift in November. Then I lost the GPS on my first outing paddling with a friend. I replaced it with a better unit, but by the time I got it in and loaded with maps and stuff we were buried in snow. SO after several months of anticipation and building excitement we are going to take our first family adventure TODAY (and get a really, really easy first find for ourselves because the Maryland Science Museum is HUGE and we know right where it is). - Zurfco

So my new Garmin Oregon 200 has all kinds of neat capabilities, but I couldn't figure it all out. With the combination of Garmin 100k Topo maps and some routable street maps from OpenStreetMap.org I finally am able to do what I wanted. My desire was to do paperless geocaching, load geocaches to my unit, select them, then have the unit plot a road map to get me as close as possible, and then switch over to topographic maps to walk in the rest of the way. In the meanwhile, we're covered in several feet of snow and so I'm not going out caching right now. But it's been fun playing with maps and trying to figure out my GPSr. Thanks to all who helped me - and it's been many. I sincerely appreciate the effort you put forth to help a newbie grasp his first few straws of comprehension. I am eager to get the family out in the field. - Zurfco

Thanks seldom_sn and snowfleurys! The "locked" I didn't grasp, but "Locked to a single GPSr" helped. I know exactly what you mean now. Good diagnosis. That is my exact problem. I loaded City Navigator maps to my Oregon 200, but they were downloaded for my wifes Nuvi 265W. The maps show up but aren't routable. I admit to not having read the license agreement (sorry Garmin). So, I am looking for an alternative that is routable because Garmin's technology worked perfectly! It looks like Openstreetmap has completely changed their user interface from when I was on it the other day. They've made it much more informative and flexible, but unfortunately for a newbie like me that means I'm going to have to do a bunch of research and playing around and asking questions from smart folks. I did notice that on OSM at least they give explanations of the different acronyms and file extensions and explain them in a way that describes their use rather than an esoteric engineering principle. In short - excellent doco! I write doco for something completely unrelated and appreciate it when done well.

Rename gmaspsupp.img? What is a non-locked map?

Excellent. Thank you. It has been more than a day.

Thanks. Good discussion. It helped me make a decision.

Quad maps. - Zurfco

I requested a map of my usual roaming areas (VA, WV, MD, PA). I don't know if that's too big or not. They say to only request the maps you need because large maps take a long time. However, they give no indication of what is "large". Given that they provide maps for the whole world, four states didn't seem big in comparison. But it is a lot of tiles, so maybe it is "large." It's hard to say. So, anyway, I was wondering if anyone had an idea of how long it ought to take for the link to the maps to show up in my inbox. Thanks, Zurfco

I'm assuming that if something says it is routable that it is routable. If I don't get routing, I'm assuming that it's because of my ignorance. I'm not actually expecting "turn left/turn right", I'm expecting the routable maps to use roads to get me as close to the geocache or waypoint as possible using roads rather than a straight line if I have the routing option set to "roads". Is that an appropriate expectation from a map that is identified by the map-maker/distributor as being routable? Real question, not rhetorical or smart alecky. I really am that ignorant of how these things work, which is why I'm spending my snow days playing around with my GPSr and an internet connection.

Could you explain this in detail? Sure. When I loaded the maps there weren't any topo lines. I discovered that if I adjusted the detail in the map settings of the GPS that I got the topo lines. Now the problem is that my "routing" software isn't routing. So I'm going to unload what's there and try a different one. - Zurfco