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Team MnMizzou

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Everything posted by Team MnMizzou

  1. Moscow has some fun caches! I invested 20 bucks in Garmin's City X-plorer maps series for Moscow for my Oregon. It was great, we took the Subway from our hotel down to the Red Square area, down towards Moscow State University, found some great caches everywhere. Even ended up hiding one near the Moscow Hilton for those who end up in that part of town. (The Hilton is one of Moscow's Seven Sisters so it is fun to see if you're trying to find those buildings while sightseeing)
  2. The biggest reason I prefer the DVD is if I am moving maps/data around and something with the microSD card gets screwed up it is no big deal. If you accidentally erase or otherwise corrupt the microSD card that has preloaded maps on it and you are SOL. With the DVD if something goes haywire worst case I go to microcenter and buy a new blank microSD card and reload the data on. Then I'm out a whopping 8 bucks. The only thing I am curious about is how it handles the map updates that I just started subscribing to. It looks like they have a download again feature within the my maps management section, so I don't think it would be a huge issue.
  3. Thanks for sharing those!! What are the square one's in the top with the canoes? and are the pins at the bottom like the trading sets from last year?? I like them. The square ones at the top (with the multi colored canoes) are the Minnesota Geocaching Association's coin design for this year. And yes the pins were trading sets, all in all a great event the group put together!
  4. If you're from a warmer climate I would for sure bring jeans. Also jeans are nice because this is tick country, especially when you venture into the woods, both in the metro and outstate/Wisconsin. I haven't seen many recently, but we haven't had a good hard freeze to kill em off yet, so they're still out there. Also bring your favorite mosquito repellent, unless you want to meet our state bird up close and personal.
  5. Just a tip for those coming in from states afar, especially if you are driving, check this website: http://www.dot.state.mn.us/ That is the link to the official DOT website. In Minnesota we have 2 seasons, winter and road construction. There's no snow (yet) which means the cones and barrels are still kings of the road. I know if you want to go west on I 94 outside of the metro they have a project that is really jacking up I 94 just outside of the metro oddly enough late at night. I saw runs into Wisconsin mentioned, I know I 494/694 and I 94 have some big projects going on in the east metro that would be the "ideal" route between Hudson and Bloomington, where the event hotel is at. Also this state has a very funky habit of just closing entire stretches of highways for the weekend, although I haven't heard of any for this particular weekend. If I hear of any I'll try to post them here. If you're going to use light rail, enjoy, it is very easy to use between MSP, the Mall of America, the event hotel and downtown Minneapolis. The only thing to be aware of is on Sunday the downtown bound trains will be very full with Vikings fans going to the game, and in the afternoon the reverse. As long as you're not allergic to purple you should be fine! For those that don't have a rental car and don't like the idea of asking a stranger for a ride a cab from the event hotel to the Smore's event (which is the only event you really would need a cab for, the MOA events can be accessed via light rail) should be about a 10-15 minute ride TOPS. If the cabbie has no clue where you're talking about (and honestly there is a pretty good chance of that) tell them to take highway 5 past the airport to the Shepard Road exit, -- the exit right after you cross the bridge, bear right to Shepard Road, not to the left onto Edgecumbe, then go straight through the stoplight and follow that paralell road down the hill to the pavilion that will be on your right past the boat marina. For those of you with cars, there are some directions for you, cause sometimes the GPS's will freak out a little right at that Sheppard Road intersection. Cab fare I'm guessing would be under 20 bucks, but that's a guess. Any questions about the area, feel free to ask... Crosby Park where the smore's event is is LOADED with caches and is a great park to explore. Most of all enjoy and have fun!
  6. All of mine are still giving that error message, I haven't been able to successfully download a 1K PQ since they started.
  7. It would just be so nice if the general public would actually stop and think for just a moment. OK it looks odd that 2 guys just put some small film canister sized object under the light pole. But seriously in the corner of the parking lot, is there really a jihaad on incandescent lighting that I'm unaware of?? I saw it somewhere here, I would suspect some odd new way of doing a drug deal than trying to blow up a light pole... cause nothing gets people running for the hills faster than the threat of no more lighting in a parking lot. I work where we monitor scanner traffic on a regular basis and I tell you, there is no end to the stupid stuff people call 911 for. I'm just glad I don't answer some of those calls, because some of them are so dumb I don't think I could get through the entire call without some serious sarcasm. My hats off to those who do day in and day out.
  8. If you're in the Minneapolis area go over to MicroCenter in St Louis Park (Hwy 100 and 36th) they have the cheapest prices I've seen on MicroSD cards, they have them like gum at a grocery store right at the checkout. I got a 2GB for under 10 bucks I think that holds all of my City Nav. maps for the entire US with plenty of space to spare. You can't beat their prices!
  9. I am using a car adapter that came from a Motorola blue tooth charger and it works fine. I hadn't got the auto kit and figured if it blew up I'd take it back to the store and play dumb, but it works great and the other bonus is it is a nice coiled cord vs Garmin's straight cord. I've also heard that Garmin's 90 degree plug makes it difficult to use with the Oregon, but I haven't tried it so I can't say for sure.
  10. From everything I've read, they pay a licensing fee to Navteq for every unlock. So they pretty much do pay per map. And I have no doubt that increased cost would show up in the price of the units. In Garmin's case that's exactly right. They obtain their maps from Navteq. They actually tried to buy a mapping company, I can't remember if it was Navteq or the other major one, one was bought up by Nokia early on, the other one got thrown around in a battle between Garmin and Tom Tom. Tom Tom eventually won the battle, but it cost them a few billion more than what they had originally wanted to spend. Garmin did however lock up their mapping contract long term with Navteq, so it isn't like they'll be shut of the mapping biz anytime soon. I think the next battle ground for these companies will be speed and accuracy of delivering updates. Tom Tom has the online service that you can instantly update your maps, but your update comes from almost any clown who claims this is the new road. If Garmin could develop updates on even a monthly basis that are backed by reliable data (ie their vendor or gov't sources) they could get a major leg up on the mapping wars. I looked at the "preview" maps on Garmin's site to see if I wanted to update my City Nav 07 series with the 09 version. My small test is to see if they have the new 4 lane highway that has been opened in stages over the last 2 years. None of that highway showed up on their preview map, so I can't really say I'll be rushing out to get the 09 version, since as far as I can tell they really haven't done much updating in the metro I'm in. Their loss of a hundred bucks or 125, whatever it costs these days.
  11. Personally I would get a GPS geared for what you are wanting to do. The Legend will stand up to the abuses of hiking, biking, however you plan to get to caches, and is designed with the off road world in mind. The Nuvi's are designed more for vehicle use. I personally have a 60Cx that I added the routable maps to and love that combo. It is designed primarily for off road/trail/caching use, but has the versatility of doing what Nuvi's do (minus the voice, it just beeps instead which I actually like better) I use it quite often to get around unfamiliar cities and I never worry about it when I go caching. Either way the only "accessory" I would recommend is a screen protector. Someone else can name the company that always advertises on the side of the gc.com pages, but those things are worth their weight in gold.
  12. Funny story about Detroit, first year I had to go there to shoot NFL we were working with our local affiliate waiting to do a live shot, so we're all talking and it was a late December game, so I asked him how many homicides they had. He said we're actually down a little this year (05 if I remember right) I think we're about 310 or so. I aked if that was metro wide, he said Oh no, just Detroit, then he started ratteling off suburb after suburb with triple digit rates as well, putting the metro well over a thousand! Sad really. So then another guy I was working with asks "so how far would I have to go to find crime?" (Mind you we're right outside Frod Field next to Comerica ballpark at about 10pm on a Sunday night. He says, oh only about 6-8 blocks in any direction and crime should find you no problem. Comforting thought really. It has to be one of the only cities where walking the streets of downtown I totally feel uneasy, Ford Field is such a great place though, and they always put us up at the Ren Center, so we have a blast... usually over in Windsor at least one of the nights we're in town.
  13. I would say it depends on how much you use GSAK. I don't know much about the Colorado series, but I know with my 60Cx I use GSAK's grab from e-mail feature to grab all my PQ's, then use the macro that will crunch 6000+ caches into POI's to send to my Garmin via Garmin's POI loader. The entire process takes maybe 5 minutes to send an entire state's worth of data. I also use the FindStatGen macro a lot, just to see all the goofy stats they can come up with off the data.
  14. Quick answer if you're manually inputting caches, change the icon in the corner when you are marking the waypoint to the closed treasure chest and it will put it into the "Geocache" subheading in your find menu. You may look at putting them in as POI's as you become more familiar with the unit. I use GSAK and have a 1 gig smicroSD card that I have tons of maps and caches for the entire state of Minnesota loaded onto my GPS. (I travel to unpredictable places around the state so it is great to be able to see what's nearby if I have some down time) You need a premium membership to fully take advantage of it, but if you cache a lot I find it is a more efficient method on the 60Cx.
  15. Interesting idea, although I will tell you I have the bean bag and use it in all sorts of different cars and trucks, several with very rounded dashes or angled dashes and it holds great. Small enough to toss in my backpack on flights out of town and super easy to "set up" in a rental moblie! Plus I don't have a cassette slot in my car anymore.
  16. Very cool, thanks all, I'll give that a shot and see what I get!
  17. Hello, First of all let me say I know nothing about computer programming, languages etc. having said that my wife and I are starting a series of TB's that we're going to take on vacation with us next month. She saw a page that had a bunch of TB's where they had a chart or table type thing where they had links to the other TB's in the series. She thought that would be cool to do with this series of TB's. I however have no knowledge of how to create a little chart type thing where it would have all the different TB's names that would be a link to their TB page? Does the question even make sense?? If someone can explain in elementary school english how one would create this type of thing I would be very grateful! Thanks in advance!
  18. What I'd do is use photoshop or something like that to manipulate an exisitng cache page printout... make your own "dummy cache" printout with coords you only know, stash it and come in with the printout, hey this one looks cool etc. To keep your investment in the ring safe put the ring box without the ring in it in the cache for her to find and as she opens it you can produce the ring for her. You'll laugh at the photoshop aspect, but my wife hid my birthday presents before I got up, all I saw was a cache page printout listing (I work nights she works days) She did such a good job with it I was seriously wondering if any presents would be left since there are FTF hounds all over our area. It took me a minute to realize the hints were for places around the house. Then if you put the cache in a location where you can activate it later on you can and have a lasting memory for everyone else.
  19. I have the Garmin 60Cx that I use for caching and auto-routing. It works great. I got the little bean bag style dash mount and it is a big enough screen, the buttons are pretty intuitive if I need to use them, and the little beanbag mount lets me move everything on the fly since I'm in a lot of rental cars and different cities during the NFL season. (I also got the power cord to save the batteries) It is a great combo. The other nice thing I'll say is the 60Cx is still small enough to fit in most of my pockets comfortably, and the bean bag is small enough to fit in most center arm-rest consoles so there is no evidence of the possibility of a GPS when I stash it and the cord away, as it is becoming a more common target of smash and grab theives. About the only other "add on" I got besides City Nav and the dash mount stuff was the shield zone screen protector. Best thing ever... I can put the GPS in my coat pocket, jeans pocket whatever and I don't have to worry about it growing legs since it's with me, and I don't have to worry about the screen getting scratched up.
  20. For what it is worth I e-mailed Garmin with the suggestion of adding the capability to add in the live traffic "antenna" to handheld units like a 60 CSX. I use it with the autorouting all the time, and really for me the only difference between it and one of their high end auto units is I could get the little plug in antenna that would give me live updates on traffic and reroute me. If they could plug that into either the external antenna port or somehow incorporate it into the 4 plug deal that would make the handheld unit killer! For now it's not worth the extra money to get an auto unit just for that feature. Maybe additional e-mails on that would help them along!
  21. Do a search in this area, there was a lot of discussion about folks who were not getting their rebates, I believe they contacted Garmin directly and Garmin helped them out, but the specific info is in a different thread somewhere in this subtopic (Units and Software) Not that you want to know, but I did get my rebate a few weeks ago.
  22. Since it is so new I would call Garmin directly, they have excellent support and can probably give you some ideas pretty quick.
  23. Interesting link, since we're going over for 2 weeks I don't think I'd need the full blown City Navigator for that short of a period, but that link may be a good solution! Thanks all!
  24. So I have a Garmin 60 Cx that I have the City Navigator maps for the US on. My question is I am planning to visit my sister in Switzerland this summer, and while I probably don't need street level mapping which would entail buying the europe version of City Navigator, will I have any basemaps of Europe on my screen since it was set up as a "USA" machine?
  25. I would second the recomendation for the Keyspan, I got some cheapo one off E-Bay, it didn't work, but the Keyspan works great with my Rino. As for the USB 2.0 I can't say to this specifically, but I will say I have a scanner that I had plugged into an old USB 1.1, then realized it was a 2.0 device, so I plugged it into the 2.0 port on my machine, it runs MUCH faster, so I would guess the same would hold true, but maybe serial data hits a ceiling on the transfer??
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