d+n.s

3 remaining. I think people are too stingy with them. I give them to caches that take me to nice places. I don't worry too much about gimmick containers and stuff... but they can be fun too.

You should contact the cache owner for a hint if you need help. Since the container is missing does that mean I can log it for solving the puzzle? What you quoted shows a lof of him replacing it in november.

When using the internet to communicate, its hard to convey tone. However, when people use the word "jerk" nowadays its almost always playful. I know a lot of geocachers are not of a generation that has grown up with the internet (few people are) but a nice set of guidlines to use on the internet are: 1. Always assume someone means something in the nicest way unless they make it clear otherwise. 2. Add the words, "In my opinion..." to any view expressed by a stranger. If people followed these two guidlines we'd have less flaming, misunderstandings and dumb looking emoticons. What I'm saying is, I read the cachers log as playful because it seems irrational for it be serious. I'm they type of person who would not assume a person is mean or crazy when its just as likely they aren't.

I suspect the Texas one will be sort of predictable and boring, because Texans have been good about pushing their iconography... but I'm holding out for something hilariously awful. Maybe an armadillo wearing an Alex Jones shirt sitting on the back of a longhorn with two pistols and a lone star shining behind him. lol Looks more like a blackberry to me (huckleberry?). I agree, I don't see grapes

My wife and I love hiking and camping and try to get out and hike at least once a week, but I find urban caches very fulfilling. Usually, in a state park or something you just end up arriving at the coordinates and moving some rocks. That's fine if the area is nice and the walk was nice, but I also get a kick out of finding a cache disguised as a peephole or some of the other crazy hides I've seen. If you live in a cool city with a lot of neat spots tucked away around town you can definitely find great locations in urban areas. One cache took me to a mural someone made on the side of a small bridge in a neighborhood. Another took me to a building and gave me the history of the land it was built on. Other ones will take you to awesome resaurantes. My wife and I like to live like tourists in our own town and geocaching helps with that. Also, there is a special thrill you can get finding a cache you know you've walked past hundreds of times. In these cases, even the most boring parking lot hide can hold some value. EDIT: And congrats!

If I were the CO I wouldn't touch issues like this. If I were the CO, nobody will get the FTF. If you cant act like adult, no FTF for you. Why are we assuming the OP is acting like a child again? Seems more curious than childish. I'm curious wht people say too and I don't even hunt FTFs. It's a funny scenario.

If the cache wasn't there then it would be a DNF. You certainly wouldn't log it as found if it wasn't there. Doesn't seem there are too many other options. Cache there and found means a found it log. Cache not found (regardless of why) means a DNF log. Simple. Oh, and DNF's aren't logged enough as it is so I wouldn't vote to add the stat to public profiles. I'm a little confused why this was directed at me? I clearly said DNFs include missing caches in the snippet you quote. My point was just that a DNF represents a lot of different things. Overall, it's not finding the cache, but without more specificity I don't personally find how many/few DNFs someone has interesting. So even if they DID add it to people's profiles for some crazy reason, I still don't think I would personally look at them or be able to say much about it if I did.

When caching in rural or forested areas I find it useful to have some gloves. I opened a cache with a live scorpion in it once and whenever I'm moving stacks of rocks that sit atop a cache I imagine finding a snake.

I logged a cache really late once. It was my first cache and I just sorta' forgot about it because we found it before we had a membership. There are a few caches I never logged online and I probably never will at this point for various reasons. No disrespect meant. I signed the logs and put the caches back as I found them. If someone finds my caches, they shouldn't feel compelled to log it online unless they have something to say. I don't care either way. I love getting new logs, but if its blank or just says "logged from a mobile device" I'd just as soon not get the e-mail. That said, none of the above really offends me or anything. If there is one thing cachers do that I would call "disrespectful" I would say it's treating TBs poorly and failing to log them in a timely manner.

I've used a PB jar as a "small" container. I put the log inside a small pill bottle (with a mechanism to get the log out). I rinsed the caches with bleach beforehand and painted it with Krylon Fusion. I can't say it's the best container in the world, but my wife was more comfortable with it than other options and it fit in the location well. EDIT: I should mention that most of the decon containers I find are wet inside.

ew...

You can already get this "stat" by viewing the DNF logs in your private profile. That's true! 37 results! lol. Okay, then there is no reason I can think of for this info to be shared against user's will. If someone wants to post it, that's interesting to some maybe, but encouraging people to log DNFs is easier when they are considered sort of "throwaway"

If it was similar to the "cache found nearest to home" stat, and it was only visible to me it might be interesting, but even then I think people would log them even less. People are weird and wouldn't want to look at that number in some cases. We need MORE people logging DNFs not less. I'd vote a big NO. Sorry EDIT: It's also not a very interesting number because it includes times that caches weren't even there, there were too many muggles around or thart I forgot a pen. I would be somewhat interested to know how many times I've looked for a cache and didn't find it due to clever hides, but that's not the only thing DNF means to me.

I wonder if being paperless has anything to do with it? I don't know if you are paperless, but before I WAS I went and found caches based on their descriptions and logs. I usually didn't seek a cache unless it WAS cool. Now that it's paperless, we find ourselves just finding whatever and the quality seems to have slipped. YMMV

If you'd really like to use all your points, maybe you could use the term "favorite" a bit less literally. Spend them how you like, but clearly Groundspeak isn't giving out one point for every ten because they only want the "best of the best caches" to have some points. If you want to use them, use them. I'm definitely against the idea of people being able to use them all on a few caches. If that were the case, searches in my area would only highlight the few legendary caches I've already found, lol

I took a look at your finds and I'll agree that going for a regular sized cache might help a bit. Even then though, be prepared to be disappointed. I've often found that "trickier" caches like puzzles or multi-caches often have better swag too. I think this may be due to the people finding them being slightly less frequent and slightly more dedicated, but your mileage may vary. Luckily there are some regulars in the same area as your other finds, but going to a different area might help as well. I've noticed that urban caches degrade quicker than ones in nice parks and such, but again YMMV. EDIT: We very rarely trade, but we usually leave a trinket for the kids in each cache we find without taking anything. I think you'll find this practice is more common than you'd suspect. It's just that others think it won't hurt if they "just do it this once" because they're kid "really likes that Rolex" I suspect:D

got a 60CSX to upgrade from the Nuvi from the wife (A freind got us Topo maps as a gift too!). Used it today in conjunction with an ipod nano she used for cache descriptions and logs. It was amazing. That thing laughs at trees. I had gotten her a camcorder which was put to much use.

From Wikipedia: "In a casual sense, the term "entitlement" refers to a notion or belief that one (or oneself) is deserving of some particular reward or benefit[1]—if given without deeper legal or principled cause, the term is often given with pejorative connotation (e.g. a "sense of entitlement")." In geocaching, I suspect that it means people expect more from a hide than what is recommended in the guidelines. Or perhaps they mean that the person in question expects a prize or special treatment. Hard to say without context and reading people's mind on the interenet is usually just starting a fight.

I don't understand why you would feel you had to do that. As others have pointed out, you don't have to use all of your votes. In fact, you probably shouldn't. I have never cached anywhere where I felt that 1 cache in 10 was worth remembering, much less letting others know about it. When you feel they're special, mark 'em as special. If not, save your votes. I don't know... I think 1 out of 10 caches I've found have been pretty darn cool. I tend to avoid ones that look crummy and seek out areas with cool ones. Maybe mobywv does the same? I'd say let him spend his points how he'd like. I don't think saying the top %10 of caches you've found are among your favorites breaks anything. No one said they'd be getting 20-30 votes. Just one.

I totally agree that this will happen, but I question whether these caches are really being "penalized" or that its really a bad thing per se. Caches that are "out of the way" required research to learn about and find for most people anyway. I don't think their situation will change. I would predict that they get visited by the same small number of cachers who learned about/bothered with it before. Either way, I don't think this will be seen as a case of "winners and losers" for very long. In their relative area they will still probably have the most "points" and thats probably enough to get the attention of anyone who just happens to be passing through. Overall, I doubt the caches will be "penalized" so much as not receive a boon. Semantics maybe, but I think its an important distinction. Not many people were finding these things in the first place. If that doesn't change, the numbers will reflect the norm. Clearly, the average cacher prefers convenient caches over inconveneint ones, because thats what they seek. People looking for a challenge will have the same work cut out for them as before. Edit: Its not a perfect system but we still have bookmark lists, local awards (at least here we do) and Lost & Found to help highlight special caches. Hopefully the full combo helps.

Except that I think that logging through a smartphone app is the only way the system will let you leave a blank log. I'm no expert on writing bots, but I think it's a lot more difficult to write scripts for auto-logging via the iPhone app than it would be to write a script that will work through standard Internet protocols (like virtually every other auto-script). I think a blank log probably means it's less likely to be a bot, than the other way around. Definitely. I just don't think bots and bogus finds are mutually exclusive. I could definitely see some bored kid sitting at work and just logging as many finds as he can via smart phone. I'm not saying it happens, but it doesn't make a blank logs less likely to be "bogus" than any other. It just means it was definitely done by phone and probably not a bot.

There's this: http://coord.info/GC2BX63 If you go to the map view you can kind of explore the world that way. the new map beta is even better for this. Another alternative is just googling: Everest Geocache and such. cche pages often come up in thiose results.

I like it! I already had a bookmark list, so it was easy to get my favorites selected. I still have a few in my hopper because some of my bookmarked favorites were archived or were chosen for sentimental reasons. Either way, I enjoy it. I agree that the current method seems to favor caches that aren't "out of the way" but I'm looking at the top favorites in my area and quite a few of them are caches that take some extra effort. Necropolis Manor has the most (22 votes!!!) and there are several "bonus" caches that are the end of some pretty tough challenges in the top 10. I'm not sure what this says, but I'm currently reading it like this: Urban caches may be found more often, but they also suffer from being surrounded by other caches. Unless they are a special urban hide they will probably never really rise out of the jungle and will often get lost in the mix memory wise. Meanwhile, great caches in remote areas will stand out and will be easily remembered. I guess we'll have to wait and see, but the initial results give me some faith that cachers who use the feature will use it wisely.

Wrong. A blank log appears to be blank. There is nothing (literally) to indicate that it is bogus. I would let the log stand and check it when I could bother to get out there. ...BUT to be fair, a blank log appearing to be nothing other than blank seems as good of a reason to suspect a log is bogus as any. Its probably open to more interpretation than any other way of logging Its probably not bogus, but if someone takes it that way, it's not really a mark against them IMO

When we found our first coin, we had no real issues in figuring out what to do with it. We thought the process is actually quite intuitive, but clearly we're in the minority. We have put out two bugs, both with info tags, and one was logged incorrectly (meaning: not at all) but a quick polite e-mail to the holder fixed the issue in a timely manner. I think different people understand things in different ways and the instructions are currently geared towards only one or two "types" of person right now. Sadly, I have no good idea on how to improve it. I think shipping tags with some sort of explicit/eye catching instructional laminent would be awesome. I could also see rewarding your first properly moved TB (and perhaps your 15th too to encourage the habit) with some sort of souveneir might encourage a different kind of person than myself (the sort of person who completes every single aspect of a videogame for an acheivement and virtual brownie points for example. An "about the numbers" type) An interactive walkthrough of the process might encourage another type of cacher. Heck, an interactive tutorial game on the site that you play through and learn practice the entire process of finding a cache, logging a cache, logging a bug and other stuff might appeal to some who need to "do it" once as they learn. Signal could even be the star! Perhaps some of us should start embedding links to an instructional video in all of our caches. I don't think there is a silver bullet. You need to cover it from as many angles as possible without making it seems intimidating, because people learn in a variety of ways and moving a TB is an unselfish act so motivation lower to log it properly and/or research it. As other listing site proliferate, the situation will just get worse. That said, I think the current situation can be improved greatly.