TheFlatline

Well actually, here in Rhode Island, we have special dispensation due to our small size. Our cache saturation distance is 400'. Just kidding. Even we have 528'. "Everything's smaller in Rhode Island... Everything."

HAH! You think you have it bad, there are 4600 caches within 25 miles of me. Granted, I'm about 50 miles out of where Los Angeles really picks up but still, 25 miles is basically my county (two cities and some outlying areas)... If I up that to 100 miles it balloons up to about 27,000 caches. That gets me down to about where Orange County begins. At 125 miles (a good way into the OC), it hits 32,000 caches. It's actually kind of pleasant, because with few exceptions, I can stop and cache for 20 minutes, find a cache or two, and go back to work.

Actually the "32 piece set" refers to containers AND lids. So it's really only 16 caches. But at closer to $1 each it's still a good deal. I bought two sets. You're right, I misread that. But you're right, at a dollar a piece it's a good deal.

At woot.com today (January 6th, 2012), they have a 32 piece locking/sealing tupperware set of various sizes for 15 dollars a set, plus 5 dollars shipping. So 2 sets are 35 bucks. They've gotten good reviews from other geocachers. The deal is only good until they sell out or midnight Central Time. So sadly this isn't a long-term deal. But if you're looking for cache containers for around 50 cents a pop, it's hard to go wrong here.

I would reword your second sentence to "Cache owners need to exercise common sense." Because of the lack of foresight and negligence a cache owner cost the live of another cacher so who is at fault here? The victim? Cache owners need to be held accountable for the outcome of their caches. It's their private property and if something happens while on their property they are liable. No difference here. This unnecessary death would've not occurred if the cache owner stopped for a second and realized that "you know what? That place can be dangerous and if someone makes a mistake can get seriously hurt!". Simple as that. Geocaching is not an extreme sport nor should it be. If people seek those thrills they should look elsewhere because usually for that theres security and things are planned so nothing goes wrong. No such thing in geocaching. You cant control what people will do and what will happen to people when attempting to get the cache. Yes people should use common sense but accidents do happen. So in this case we have a family that has been destroyed, GS washes their hands behind their no liability disclaimer and the cache owner archived the cache as to say I had nothing to do with it and here in this thread we have people blaming the victim for getting killed. Everythings perfect nothing to see here lets move on... Actually, technically, by your argument, the cache owner is not at fault, since the kid who died wasn't *on* the cache, but on a bridge owned by either a company or a government. Also, I can easily argue that if the victim had looked at the bridge and said "woah, that looks dangerous! I better not go up there" he'd still be alive. I *could* trip over a root and break my neck going for a cache stuck in the hollow of a tree. Does that make it the CO's fault? I'm not blaming the victim here. It's terribly sad what happened. But sometimes bad things happen to good people. It's just the way the universe works. And really, at least he died doing something he loved. Edit: I'm going to play Devil's Advocate for a moment. Flagging certain caches as particularly dangerous may draw people to them, increasing the number of accidents. It certainly opens up Groundspeak to all kinds of liability.

I released one about a year and a half ago almost identical to this. I got "how awesome!" on each of it's 3 or 4 short hops. Then it disappeared. Some people are absolutely bonkers over antique style keys (and mine was actually a cheap chinese bottle opener in the shape of an old fashioned key). In fact, every single travel bug I've ever released has disappeared off the face of the earth. It's kind of discouraging. I know some will get muggled, but I don't get why some cachers decide to just pocket them.

I wondered about that too when I bought 1500 of the tiny little baggies that would be perfect for storing small amounts of illicit substances. At least I hadn't bought sudafed in large quantities at the same time!

I tend to avoid travel bug hotels. Sometimes they work alright, but in my experience they've ended up being black holes for travelbugs. Then again I'm 0/4 when it comes to travelbugs. They always disappear on me, to the point where it just doesn't feel worth it to try any more.

One of my other hobbies is collecting & playing board games, so I bought a couple of 1000 baggie packs in various sizes from Amazon. Cost less than 10 bucks. I have cache log bags *and* chit bags for my games. Woohoo!

Do what I do in that case. When you get 10-15 meters from the cache (or in your case before the compass goes crazy), take a compass bearing. Look along that line of sight. If you see something obvious (a lone bush, a lamp post, whatever), that's probably your cache's location. If nothing jumps out at you, keep that line of sight in mind. Then wander about 10-15 meters perpendicular to your original path, and take another bearing. Compare that line of sight with your original. Where they intersect is where you want to start looking. Triangulation is awesome that way. Once you get within a couple meters, your CacheSense will have to kick in and do the final lifting for you. As a side note, does your phone actually have a compass in it? or is your program creating a bearing based on your movement? If you have a compass in your phone (iPhone for example), then you shouldn't be getting the jumping readings. If it's averaging and giving you a bearing, then what you're seeing is the small margin of error as your GPS calculates your position and you "jump" around within your accuracy zone and that is "movement" that is averaged for a new compass heading. In my first handheld GPS unit I didn't have a compass and as long as I was walking steadily at a certain pace or higher I got bearings just fine. When I stopped it jumped around like crazy too (which made using a real compass kind of screwball). I actually got an iPhone 4 just for the compass & geocaching feature.

If you weren't doing anything wrong, why would you wait for LEOs? Did this couple ask/tell/command you to stop? Why would you think they had called the police? I don't care how bad of a stink eye someone is giving me, I'm on my way when I finish a cache. If the police want to talk to me they can come find me. OK, I'll call it, bull hockey. Suspicion is not a reason for the police to search your backpack, car, etc. If you are asked by the police if they can search (insert item here) the answer should be "NO" or "I don't consent to be searched." My understanding, and I'm not a lawyer and I didn't stay at Holidy Inn Express last night, is that the only way the police can search you is to place you under arrest or to have a search warrant. It is your right (4th Amendment), as a U.S. citizen, to respectfully decline to be searched. Finally, everyone should research their particular state's law regarding "stop and identify". There is not a national law covering this. In most places if the police approach and start a conversation you can refuse to identify yourself. If they are detaining you (maybe called a "Terry Stop") then they can ask for ID. Your state determines what this actually mean. We should never forget Ben Franklin's quote, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" . That scenario is skating extremely close to "reasonable suspicion". Generally I might agree with you, although I'm going to assume the laws vary state by state. In this case the officer could probably have made a reasonable argument that a brief search for weapons was not unusual for someone who was looming around power/gas utilities. There's plenty of time to raise hell after the situation is over. Get the officer's name and/or badge number and register a complaint. On the side of the road in a tree line in the dark (or wherever) is no place to get into a constitutional rights argument. More to the point, I haven't had to deal with the police yet, but I have had to deal with extremely rude and pushy neighborhood watch, who have threatened to call the police for caching on public property. In the end, it's easier to just avoid the confrontation with people who won't listen to/trust you, and walk away.

I googled "macOS in a virtual machine" and the first two links were pertinent to your cause. Sadly, I don't think iATKOS will run in a virtual machine, but there are other solutions. MacOS via VMWare And O'Reilly's MacOS emulation both probably are relevant to your interests! Drop me a line if you need help. Not much of a programmer but I can usually ethnically engineer my way around a problem put in front of me.