ashnikes

One hour and forty seven minutes and counting. Keystone didn't claim that you said anything negative about the reviewers. He said that was you said was just plain wrong in every respect. And he wasn't attempting to set the record straight with you, from what I could see. He was simply making sure the people that your inaccuracies may have wrongly influenced knew the truth. he didnt really say anything except that he thinks i jump to conclusions, well dont we all? then he went on to defend his "position" and his friends who pay him in t-shirts. I understand forum moderators rarely if ever get paid, but what about the reviewers who have to review caches? thats a laborious job, and in order to do such a job you have to have a very knowledgeable understanding of the rules and regulations, a large full roledex with park rangers number,s real estate agents, insurance, police, fire etc. etc etc. you have had to have been around a while to learn all these things, and that time dedicated could take years of learning. That I think should be paid. especially with a turnaround of 72 hours. I wish keystone would enlighten us a little bit on the attitude of his friends, and why they havent given him a proper job with a real W2 in the company yet? I would love to learn more about how much money they make, and where that money gets distributed, and how much it really costs to keep this site running. Then maybe I would take a different stance on the subject.

lots of very good points here, t4e thanks for arguing your point to the point.

hmmm im not sure how you got me saying anything but positive things about reviewers and the absurdities of how they have enough stuff on their plates to have to play forum cops on top of that, and do not get compensated for what i thought was a job that deserves to be paid for out of the pockets of the company that asks them to do these things on its behalf.

im taking a week to ween off this drug uh game.

I'll agree that that though has occurred to me. You'd be surprised where I have managed to find myself. But it's never stopped me. I've hiked half the AT, mostly by myself. There are some great thousand foot cliffs there! The Palisades in New Jersey have 400' cliffs. Yeah. Someday a bear may attack me, or I may fall off one of those cliffs. But that doesn't stop me. What I do read is that you geocached for your girlfriend. If you don't enjoy it enough to want to geocache on your own, then yes, this is the wrong sport for you. Have fun! thats true... I did enjoy quite a few beneficial things that occur with being in the woods by yourself. The silence for one. not having to bull, with anyone to avoid awkward silence, the much wider variety of animals you encounter because of your silence. and you read that wrong, i started because of her, i went for the numbers because of her, she is art of the many reasons i am ending it, but not the only one. I do enjoy being out and about, but the returns for my other hobbies are a bit more beneficial to my wallet.

How can it be verbal when you aren't talking or giving us an audio file? ha very good point.

And just you think are the platinum members? WHATS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN (sorry caps) premium and platinum? besides a few letters? there is no platinum, unless you believe in the flying spaghetti monster. then anything is possible.

AFAIK, the Cache Listing Requirements / Guidelines were not "made by us" in any meaningful sense. They are Groundspeak's guidelines. Some parts of them may have been written in response to forum discussions, but they are Groundspeak's guidelines. If you want to place a geocache that doesn't conform to their guidelines, then you can try one of the other geocache listing sites. I know more than one person who has listed a cache on another site because it didn't conform to Groundspeak's guidelines. Or you can go old school and just post the coordinates on USENET or some other public forum, like Dave Ulmer did 10 years ago. ahh but were not the groundspeakers who made the rules cachers first? they made the rules based upon what worked and what didnt. the point was, the rules were made by people, people can therefore change the rules. which is oddly enough the same argument i have against bad or phonetic spelling,

They are two different things, I do enjoy leaving treasure boxes in interesting places for strangers to find, but the process i have to go through to get them approved is what drags me down, and that link was fantastic, you guys are some real awesome people, i never had any issues with anyone on this site, just how some people handled themselves when it came to others in the forums.

Well, I do not know that for sure, as most the volunteers who come on this forum are proud sponsors of grounspeak, obviously, and another interesting argument ive heard on here about this topic, someone once mentioned, Groundspeak does not have to offer pay or premium memberships because apparently these volunteers are "begging" Groundspeak to be in this position, therefore why should Groundspeak pay them? after all, they toil endlessly for this sport for free right? its just a weird gray area for me. They do enough work on this site they should be getting paid reguardless, im sure Groundspeak is making a killing off of all of us, and can afford to pay these people, but just doesnt, because they volunteered.

It can also be not terribly safe to do it alone, ive been out looking for caches in the bush on several occasions by myself and found myself in some situations where i felt i could wind up seriously hurt, and nobody would know where i was, or could go for help. So i am sort of stuck to urban hides, (which are not even all that safe to do alone either in some cases) and we all know most bushwhacking hides generally are better than urban ones.

well nothing I put into geocaching i expect to outlast people. Besides, it would be cool to see it travel, even a few times, and if someone collected it, then my job would be done, i saved it from the trash, so if it ends up decoration someplace in the hands of some faithful geocacher, thats a much better place for it.

Yes im sure some of you may be ecstatic to hear that news, some of you may say I told you so, and some of you may be upset, but none the less, I am retiring ashnikes from geocaching. For a few reasons..... (warning, verbal tirade ahead, if you would like to just say "i told you so, or leave rude remarks towards me feel free to skip my rant, and just hit the quick reply button now. Thanks for your support) First off, due to my unconventional social nature, I generally wind up hunting caches alone. This was fine when they were all within a very short radius of my home, and I didnt mind hunting micros, but I have found the majority of finds in the area where I live, and the rest are either puzzles I cant solve, or micros i no longer enjoy finding. Hunting in groups might be fun, but like I said, since I tend to "not get along" with most people from what I hear I do not foresee myself hunting caches in a group any time soon. Second, I really enjoy hiding caches. Caches I would like to find, strange there just arnt that many in my area I would like to find, except of course mine, and the few which I have already contacted the owners thanking them for the neato hides. Plus, hiding caches is a royal pain. It's strange caches with no thought get approved almost immediately, and we wonder why there are so many lame hides. But I feel like I have to jump through hoops to hide caches that owuld be awesome, and I just do not have the energy to fight those battles anymore, nore the interest. Yes I am talking about some of the tried and true rules and regulations I just do not agree with, or feel are way too broad, and taken way too seriously. I understand they are established for valid reasons, but some of them just ruin the game for me. Third, this forum is filled with tons of old souls who frequent it way too often, and generally have either nothing of value to say, or nothing nice to say at all. Some new people get the bullwhip for asking questions the search function couldnt help them with, or they just do not have the time to go searching through the forums page after page thread after derailed thread to find the answers to specific questions they have, but are sure told ot do so. this is a free flowing forum, new threads keep things fresh, no matter how stale the topic, new members keep things interesting, no matter the growing number of veterans. Also, when someone comes on here and disagrees with something in the rules (which were made by us, and can be changed by us at any time) they get automatically told this game is not for them. Interesting answer, considering just a few years ago those rules never existed, and in fact there are still tons of grandfathered caches out there that were placed without those rules, and yet they are still allowed, even encouraged to be caught. This forum is the proper place for ranting, there are some frustrating cachers, caches, and hiders in this world, not to include the muggles, crappy swag, elements, etc etc etc that deserve to have a good venting upon once in a while, from people who are legitimately disgusted by them. This forum is the only real place you could vent such frustrations to an audiance which could potentially feel your pain due to knowing what you are even talking about. If you do not agree with the venter, so be it, state why you do not agree with them, but playing them off as someone who should not be playing the game is absolutely ridiculous and very discouraging for people who are already timid as it is about the internet, and voicing their opinions. you are scaring off new players, who will be hiding your new FTF's and enjoyable caches. Way to go, maybe you DONT WANT TO PLAY THE GAME, because you are preventing the future of it. Fourth, I find it absolutely ridiculous that Groundspeak does not pay its volunteer moderators, who dedicate their lives to geocaching. These people are the oil of this game, keeping it running smoothly, in ways some of us will never ever get to see, or understand, and yet groundspeaks only paycheck to them is (not even free premium membership) but the ability to ban people in the forums, and approve caches. sometimes in that order. which brings me to another interesting side note, I find it hilarious that "volunteers" moderate the forums. Not paid Groundspeak workers, we are therefore policing ourselves, we are placing the caches, we are finding the caches, we are holding the events, making the swag, selling the swag, buying the swag, donating money, restricted to Groundspeak approved apps, etc etc. so aside from the cost of the servers, and the few people responsible for maintaining them to keep the website running smoothly, (because I think even some volunteer moderators may be doing some of the web design) which is probably in all honesty paid for completely by the advertising, and official swag purchases (which cost an arm and a leg, and really are not that great imo.) what do the ceos of Groundspeak actually do for the community? do they bail us out of jail when our cache violates some guideline? no, because its then our fault. do they stick up for us, listen to our rants about this and that, do they sponsor our local events? what do they do exactly except collect a lot of our money by creating a monopoly through a namebrand on an international treasure hunt? side note ended. Fifth, I have been spending wayyyy too much money, more than I actually have to find, hide, and maintain caches for a game i no longer enjoy. Enough said. Finally, and most important to me personally, the whole reason i got into geocaching was to have an activity to share with my (now ex, wonder why) girlfriend. We had little in common, and even less we could actually share with one another, but geocaching honestly in my opinion brought us together, it was probably the most unified time we have shared together in our ever shaky relationship. Of course bits of my personality eventually ruined even that activity, at least for a while it was the best thing thats happened to me in a very long time. Now she is caching with a new group of guys or so I think, and its just no longer fun for me to find a cache she has logged with them. Its rather disheartening. I was running my numbers up to catch up with her, but now I just dont care anymore. So.... there you have it. I will be leaving my account open for about a week in case someone wants to contact me for whatever reason, (im very easy to find on a google search under the same screen name, I have no reason to hide) or if they want to adopt one of my 7 caches, or all of them, otherwise, i will be disabling then archiving them all, and donating the containers and contents to anyone who wants them. If you have read this far, congratulate yourself. If you want to comment, I am very interested, good bad, ugly, to what anyone has to say on one of or all of the above topics, if you want to convince me to stay, you want me to join your local group and go caching with you, thinking you can change my mind, or if you just plain want me to stop typing and go play in traffic speak now. Thanks to everyone on this board and all the people who have mailed me, found my caches, or just read my threads and got some entertainment out of them, its been a great time. Ive seen and done some amazing things through geocaching, I love the idea, just not the specifics. Who wouldnt want to find a treasure box in the middle of the woods, a parking lot, or in between two buildings?

ahhh but how do you cache sans Groundspeak? is it possible anymore? how did people cache before them?

it looks almost identical to the one pictured here doesnt it? i guess we should replace it cause i cant remember if i contacted the owner or not, orif they contacted me back yet, ill keep an eye out for a good small container.

So... one geocacher took a very large polar bear from one of my caches, and it got me thinking, I should make the brother of this polar bear, which is a roughly 5ft tall, 2ft wide, 1/16th inch thick hard plastic cut out of the ice polar bear, see picture I want to make this a large TB, are there rules against the size of a tb, i know there are vehicle tb's but I want ot make this ones mission to find either very large, or very secluded caches, so he can travel about in safety. Thoughts? comments? suggestions? do you think it would work?

No way man! He's rightfully yours now, besides, I have another one, and I will find more, enjoy him, take good care of him, and maybe use him on your cache like you were talking about. That would be a cool travel bug! Would have to travel to only the biggest of caches, or the most seculded, hmm, maybe ill make mine a tb, now that im thinking about it, (the ice bear is roughly 5ft tall, 2ft wide, and 1/16th of an inch thick. hmm ill have to start a new topic..."

I think i found this one today, at ucf near the psychology building, you sure you replaced it? I guess you were just kidding by that, 'cause from what I can see, you haven't been caching up in Alberta, Canada, nor have you found any caches by Viajero Perdido. Of course I was kidding, you are really bad at spotting my jokes, or my jokes are really bad at having a punch line which anyone else but I can see. Maybe I need some sweet glasses like you, or just some better jokes. Like.... What starts with F, and ends in uck? Fire Truck! Bwahahahahahaha heard that from a 4 yr old.

I found out the hard way both on the forums and in real life, some coins are terrible as cache items, as any moisture in the cache causes the coins to deteriorate rapidly, which the corrosion can really mess things up in the cache, so be careful with certain coins, like copper ones especially, If you have thrift stores around they usually sell toys by the freezer bag full for about $2 you can fill a lot of happy cache containers with some really neat old school toys that way,

Im pretty sure you can use the official app for iphone on your itouch, you should check in to it, http://www.geocaching.com/iphone/ "Groundspeak's Geocaching Application is best supported by the iPhone 3G or 3GS, but is also compatible with the iPod Touch and 1st generation iPhones. Please note: You will need Wi-Fi access for the application to work on the iPod Touch. Also, without GPS, compass navigation will not work on the 1st generation iPhone."

I didnt do it! You cant prove noting mang!

I should write a book for new geocachers. It will be amazing. And have a big picture of my face on the front, back and inside covers, and a full sized fold out of me in the middle, the rest will mention briefly the history of, present rules, and future of the game, according to me and how I like to play. The title will be ripped straight off the side of the outback steakhouse near by. "No rules, just right."

I just stopped looking for caches period. That solved my hatred for all things micro and smaller.

wow, what a strange day its been....

Hahahaha one of these days ill place some more caches, I have some large containers already lined up, just have to find interesting places for them. I dont want to place a bunch of lame caches just because I can, I want to place caches I would enjoy to find, but ive got quite a bit on my plate now that schools back in session, so who knows when that sgoing to happen, as far as maintaining them, they are all within 20 mins of my house, and I check up on them all the time. so no worries.