infiniteMPG

President of my company (large manufacturing firm) was in a restaurant where I was seated at the bar playing trivia and in the conversation bosses were brought up. I was asked "Where's your boss?" and answered "He's that dude in the booth with his family". No disrespect at all. In fact we chatted later and he bought me a beer. Cool dude and being able to chat with the 'regular folks' is important to him. Seems a lot of this issue is more about tolerance then belief, more about sensitivity then politcal or religious correctness. Just like the religious cartoons causing riots and turmoil... it's not strong convictions that caused that, it's intolerance. And that intolerance is a cancer to society because with that type of intolerance the only society that can exist is one where all believe the same. Of course there are reasonable 'limits' to tolerance. It's one thing to attack someone attempting to burn an American flag, but it's another if you punch someone out because they just blew their nose in a red, white and blue handkerchief. For the OP if there is something religious in a cache and it's against your beliefs, leave it and move on. Might be right in line with the next cacher's beliefs. Unless you're the owner and you're against it, or unless it's extremely offensive to the general public or if there's like hundreds of them in one cache, then removing it or destroying it would just show intolerance. And yes, there are many different personal inpretations to "offensive" but I think everyone will agree there is a general "social standard" that wouldn't be too hard to define. No one's forcing anyone to read it. I don't mind static religious informational offerrings like that, wouldn't read it but wouldn't bother me. Now if someone were standing beside the cache preaching their beliefs in my face as I was signing the log, that would be a different story. So unless GC determines that's "soliciting" then leave it be. The skin of the people have grown oh so thin.... ever notice how the Groundspeak logo looks a little like a cross? Better watch out for the correctness folks...

I've easily had several dozen denied. Had one denied recently because it was too close to the final of a multi I had not found and had to figure out what it was... stage one was about ten miles away. When a spot gets denied you can discuss it diplomatically with your reviewer but if they come back and stand by the denial, then the correct term is "oh well" and find somewhere else. There enough land area in this country for around 370 million caches 1/10 mile apart so there's gotta be some other place that would work...

Those Listerine breath strip containers are "populous" around here.... I wouldn't say they're "popular"... ::sigh:: Actually we were amazed this was not busted even though it was pretty far into the woods.... we approached it cautiously for sure. Was a really pretty area and the cache camo theme didn't quite fit in. We're south west from Jacksonvilly but they are pretty heavy in the Tampa area, too. Often times they have a magnetic strip on the back and they're clinging to the bottom of an electrical box. Amazed to say I haven't seen any with wet logs so whomever does them must use really heavy duty baggies. There were some caches in the area that were the old style hard plastic CD cases with a baggie and log sheet stuck inside. No camo tape or paint, just the clear CD case off the side of the trail. About as weather proof as an Altoids tin.

This person supposedly did this, then was knowledgable and considerate enough to take the time to create an account on GC, knew how to get to the cache page, figured out how to log a find, and doesn't email the owner with more specific information on where they hid it back to??? I think I'd cry shenanigans with that one, someone's F'in with the owner. And there is no info if the owner has gone out to check and see if it's actually missing, sounds like it was disabled just from the log entry which could of been armchair for all anyone knows. Not sure about this hide, but when we HIDE a new cache we don't HAVE a GC code number until after it's approved so the code number would not be listed in the container ANYWHERE. So when they got onto the GC site, HOW did they know what the cache was???? Searching by name isn't the easiest thing to do as they would have to do an advanced search. Yeah, sounds like shenanigans....

Early on we found a cache that had a fake hand grenade sitting beside the cache container and bloodied up fake fingers and stuff wired up in the brush near the container (we're pretty sure they were fake) and if I remember correctly a disemboweled doll laying nearby. Probably against the rules but we were kinda new and someone put a lot of work into it

Hmmmm, sparks another idea.... weld the lid of an ammo can shut and plop it out somewhere with a normal cache log listing. If anyone finds it and doesn't complain that they couldn't get it open, or says something like "Signed the log and hit the trail" you know it's BS. Could put a few of these "radar traps" out in the wild and after a while the bogus loggers (if there are that many) would start to think twice about their lil' activity

Before you go pluggin your credit card number in, make sure the site address in your browser is showing an HTTPS prefix and not just HTTP. This is a higher security and encription scheme and although not bulletproof it's a BIG step up over a site that doesn't use a secured connection. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Https I've had good luck searching on Ebay, you can get a good selection there and transactions are probably as secure as they come.

I think what would be inspired is someone purposefully running out to one of these caches and mis-hiding it without signing the log just to sit back and watch the fun <jk> We've had caches knocked out of holes in trees by squirells, carted off by dogs, pushed around by cattle, washed out of hiding spots by gulley washing rains or strong winds during tropical storms, handled and replaced by muggles who stumbled across the hide and didn't know what they were handling, all kinds of factors besides not being re-hidden properly that put them out of place. I do agree 110% that people don't seem to take the time to re-hide properly lately but I don't think threats in the cache would be worth a hill o' beans...

To what extent people act on things is totally dependent upon the importance they put on it. While I agree that society has generally slid a little to the apathetic or self-centered side of things, we are facing pretty difficult times. In the grand scheme of things I think most people migrate to geocaching to escape from the stress and confrontation that they experience at work, at home and on the road just to have some light hearted relaxing fun. Introducing confrontation and worry over benign bogus logs is against what a lot of people get into GC for. So even though people will agree that bogus logs are bad and wrong, I doubt many people will allow that to be a distraction as to why they play.

Catching up on reading this thread (dang home renovations!) and the proverbial dog still seems frustrated in not catching his tail.... I still don't see a single word defending bogus logs by anyone, all I see is a choice to not take aggressive action against anything short of a blatantly obvious bogus log. That condones and defends bogus logs the same as anyone failing to call the authorities when they witness someone tossing a gum wrapper out the car window condones and defends littering. I doubt that by not taking agressive action against that littering motorist it will spread to more and more people tossing things out their car window until the day when the norm to toss all your trash out the car window. Peer pressure won't stop littering, actual laws and penalties don't even stop it yet I doubt anyone defends it. Does littering affect us all? Yeah, in various ways it does. Do we try to teach others that's not the way to act? Yup. Will we stop it? Nope. If you feel strong about it go ahead and grab a trash bag and spend your weekends walking the streets picking it up. Also track down littering folks and call the authorities and report them if you feel that strong about it. But if your neighbor doesn't do it, don't stand there shaking your trash bags at him saying he's defending littering because he doesn't aggressively attack the problem like you do. I think if someone threw their trash in his yard he'd clean it up. I think if he saw them do it he might even call the authorities. But I doubt he'd put much of his limited time on this little chunk of dirt to agressively attack the problem, everyone has their own priorities. A lot of people will chime in about how bad the problem is but very few will actually back that talk up with action. All I have heard anyone state about bogus logs is if something blatently raises a flag they'll look into it, or if they do a normal maintenance run and they notice something out of sorts they'll look into it, and after checking then delete it if necessary. I think just about everyone is in agreement on doing that. So other then that, what does anyone expect anyone to do? Print out all your log entries and make regular log validation runs to all caches? Regardless of it being an all day paddle or hike to get there? Every time you do a maintenance run check all the log entries since your last mainetance run there no matter how many have found it? And nanos? Stickers? Multiple names signed by one cacher? Maybe GC could sign people up to be log validators, non-working or retired people who enjoy hunting down bogus logs and have nothing better to do with their time. I think there's a few people in some local homeowner's associations that would like that job.

Trying to know what myself as a cacher may face with other's interpretations of the rules. I think that an innocent cacher who runs across a hard-liner's hide and doesn't sign the log legibly enough to be validated is risking having their "fun" negatively impacted by potentially having their log deleted. The above post about not signing the nano.... delete or not? She could probably validate the hide location and assure she found it, but she didn't sign the log. I don't deny the hard-liner's the right to their perspective as that's how they choose to play, but since there are many interpretations to the "rules" maybe GC should provide a way to disclose or post an owner's expectations to the general public (or maybe entered in the text by the owner). If I was about to attempt a hide of someone who I knew validates logs, doesn't want one person signing for the group, doesn't want people using stickers or stuff like that and I had the potential of having my log deleted because of it I'd either be more careful when signing or just pass on the hide.

It's a nano log, you think anyone could validate your signature even if you did sign it? Not cheating to me but to those in the hard line "no sign-no find", camp you would be. We've had situations trying to sign a log sheet in the rain with mosquitos eating us alive and I doubt I could read what I scribbled between smacking them out of my eyes....

That would be assuming that 250 children make no more mess then 1 would. Don't know what kind of vacuum you have but I can imagine about a foot of dirt and debris on every square inch of the flooring in the house with 250 kids after a week and that's a little (a lot!) more work then a light run with the Hoover. So if I own one paddle cache that takes 4 hours to paddle to, and I also own 1 hiking cache that is a 12 mile hike, then I own too many caches because I cannot take the time to "maintain" my caches on a regular basis to validate logs (which is being implied is a necessary part of maintaining a cache)? Maintaining caches - - If several DNFs seem to imply a cache may be missing, check it and replace it if actually missing - If a log is full or wet, visit the cache and replace it - If the area changes impacting the hide, evaluate the situation and alter hide accordingly - If a trackable is logged wrong, visit the cache to determine status of the item Unlike the dentist I doubt most people make regular cache maintenance runs to caches with no apparent issues just for chuckles unless it happens to be along their route to hike/bike/paddle/drive. With these things done, caches remain valid, well hidden, and fun and challenging for others. These events cause a maintenance run to be done and that happens from what I have experienced, about once every six months per cache. No challenge maintaining hundreds of hides (if they are solid to start with). Throwing regular visits to validate logs into the mix and having more then a couple of PAG's becomes impossible to accomplish. And for what goal? Defending the purity of the game and slapping a cheater on the wrist? Each owner has the right to maintain they caches the way they want as long as they do it within the realm of the guidelines, and the guidelines only state to delete logs that "appear" to be bogus, says nothing about validating signatures so if you choose to do that, go for it. If something looks like a blatant bogus log or someone circulates word of a bogus logging cacher in the area then I'll add it in with a normal maintenance run to check if I think it's worth checking. I'm into GC for the "fun" of it and checking valid looking logs isn't "fun" to me. I guess to some people validating logs is "fun" but then again to some people logging bogus logs is probably "fun", too. Not in either of those camps and come to think of it, I don't care to much for vacuuming, either

the amount of time to clean a house with 250 kids is more then 1 kid regardless of the size of the home. Duh.... Maintaining = replacing or repairing when needed or replacing a new log sheet when needed. I have +250 caches, I never set aside time to visit a cache for the sole purpose of validating logs. Even with that, maintenance take a lot of time. I put a LOT of effort into creativity and unique caches and doubt there's one I'd drop and I can keep up with them. If I were to add validating logs into the mix I'd have to limit myself to maybe 25 caches. Anyone wanting to poll locals and see what 225 caches they want archived so I can validate logs weekly then let me know so I can better allocate my time....

If you have the TB in your possession you can snatch it, log it out of the previous cache, then post a note in the cache it's supposed to be in and drop it off in there, then post another note to grab it and then the TB will have the correct mileage and will show correctly as being in your possession. No need to have anyone else do anything if you want to get it corrected quick. I have also heard you can delete the TB drop note but I'd rather leave them myself so the owner can see what happened. Had to do this on several occasions but have been burned by it, too. Had someone post a note that a TB of mine was in a nearby cache here in Florida. They didn't post that they took if from the cache in Indiana nor that they placed it, just posted a note. So I emailed them, found out what cache they placed it in and did the switch myself. A couple days later I visited the cache and no TB!!!! Also no visits by anyone lately including the cacher who said they placed it. No replies to emails or anything and then FIVE MONTHES LATER it shows up in British Columbia!!! ACK!!!!

Cool sounding stuff.... literally! http://www.bayercare.com/Domeboro_faqs.cfm and we'll be checking it out. Great the things you can learn browsing 'round the forums.... thanks!!!

You actually check on caches just for the sole purpose of validating signatures? To add to this analogy, what if you had over 250 children? To vacuum even once a week you'd be vacuuming for about 168-1/2 hours which would leave you about 30 minutes for eating, working, caching, and other important or necessary parts of your life. "Occasionally" (1.a. Occurring from time to time. b. Not habitual; infrequent. 2. Created for a special occasion. 3. Intended for use as the occasion requires.) I don't think my "occasion" has come up yet... hehehe Cheaters???? I agree. Not really "cheaters". How about we call them "CACHE REGISTRARS"????

We have a TB forum????? Wow, took me a while to find that. How come it's under the Groundspeak main page and not under General Geocaching Discussions???? Oops, should know better then to ask that.....

Is it just me or does it seem that the ability to properly log and move TB's and trackables is becoming a lost art? Or is it just too much work? Many of us spend a lot of time and creativity on trackables only to have them vanish off the radar or end up decaying away in a remote cache because they were improperly logged. I have a TB called Game On!!! that was supposedly logged into a cache 11/11/2006 and today I just received a log that it was found and retrieved from a different cache after sitting idle almost 2 years in the wrong cache. Thankfully someone was thoughtful or curious enough to see what all these ticket stubs were. Other caches have been put out in the wild made from parts of melted auto engines from car fires, collectables from big events, and things with sentimental value. Missing in action. Even the latest FGA Geocoin had a picture of me cast in it and the first one I put out in a TB motel vanished before even being picked up the first time. The horror stories of misplaced, missing and incorrectly logged TB's seems endless. Is it too much to ask for people to learn what a TB is and how it works prior to grabbing it from the cache??? It just seems to be getting worse as I get quite a few emails and logs where people went to pick a TB up listed in inventory and it's not there.....

Phoney Music GC1BR3J, published 4/29/2008, after busting my brain and killing a forest of trees and a case of pencils I figured this one out and found it 5/8/2008, now over 3 months after publishing it has as many as 1 finds I think it's a great cache! Don't think other locals would agree with me but I like it. I have a bunch of puzzle caches out there, some raw brain busters, some internet intensive searching, some just trickey, some HTML based, but they average 1 or 2 a month and I am happy with that. As far as TB's and micros, there's usually some regular cache around to make a drop in and it can be one you've already found. There are TB hotels I have visited a dozen times to help TB's along. Regulars tend to collect McTrash toys more then TB's and are good for kid friendly caches but having a ton of plastic dollar store swag in a full sized cache after a ten mile hike doesn't add to the joy of the find to me and doubt any children will visit it. Also in maintenance runs found TB's in my caches that weren't logged in, TB's listed in inventory that were not there, my TB's in the wrong cache and inactive for years because of that (one just logged found today after sitting in the wrong cache since 11/11/2006!!!!), TB's we put time and effort and money into making or sentimental TB's and had them vanish before even making their first hop gets frustrating and starting to be more frustration then fun.

After several bad attacks from urushiol we did our homework. The "immunity" is basically how your skin reacts to the urushiol oil in all parts of the plants (and even in dried leafs so don't burn them in a fire and breath the smoke, you can react in your throat and lungs). The urushiol oil binds with your skin cells and by the time you break out (as long as you've washes any residual urushiol oil off) the oil has done it's deed and is no longer spreadable from the blisters. Reactions can take anywhere from 24 to 72 hours depending on the amount on your skin so places you got a high dose on may break out right away, light contact places could take three days. That's why people think it spreads. Once your skin has reacted all you can do is try to control the itch and help your skin heal. Calamine and skin treatments and other things to control itch and try to prevent infection from scratching. There are also preventative creams you can use before hiking on exposed skin and that has helped for us, but what it appears to do is dry the top layer of skin out which seems to keep the urushiol oil from binding. Also makes me think people with drier skin probably get it less then people with oily skin. Just a theory. Best thing to do is avoid it. The urushiol oil can remain active on clothing or things for up to a year and doesn't wash off easy. Whenever we've been hiking and every remotely think we contacted it, every stitch of clothing goes in a hot water wash, including boots. Hiking sticks get wiped down with strong cleaners... everything. Cortaid (I think) makes some great poison ivy wipes that you can carry with you, if you think you contacted something, wipe everything down with it. So far we've done good with that even after blasting thru a massive field of poison ivy to get to a cache... oops. Long light hiking pants not only help that, but are a big help for those of us who blast thru palmettos and thorns without a thought to what we're doing to our legs. But then again you have to remember to wear them Oh yeah, if it's really bad, Aveno bath!!!! Works great!!!!

We'd like to see those kind of options but most of the local multis, puzzle and paddle caches are mine. In our local unfound radius we have several caches that I placed for people so won't claim finds on and dozens upon dozens of bus stop caches that don't really grab our attention but cover the radar screen.... ::sigh:: Some new preserves have popped up recently and caches have popped up in them but we haven't gotten them yet (tried yesterday but our typical Florida thunderstorms won that round, too).

As many ways as they are to stop cheaters, there are that many ways (plus one) for cheaters to cheat. Set up a validation code and someone who actually found it will circulate the validation code, check log sheets and someone will have someone else plop their sticker or signature in the log book (and for the people who validate log books, how do you do that on a log book in disarray with signatures everywhere or a nano log that has a blob of ink for 99% of the signatures?). Basic psychology should tell us that unless you're studied in psychology or a cheater yourself, we won't wrap our minds around what they gain from it. They're in their own little world and somehow they see their lives better by doing it... or they may be just seeking the attention in getting caught or confronted. But yes, to themselves they do somehow profit from it regardless of how the rest of the world looks down upon them. GC contains people from all slices of life from those who have a passion for cheating, to those who have a passion for catching cheaters... to those of us who just want an outlet for our devious creativity and want to explore, discover new places, meet cool people and create a lot of fun for ourselves and for others. Each owner will (or will not) deal with false logs as they see fit, your hide, your property, your log. If it's obvious then deal with it as I would and I am sure most would, but we need to understand we'll be treating the symptom and not the problem

Very true and in the real world of geocaching, it's a personal experience so anything that happens outside our find on someone's cache is outside the realm of our personal experience. Sometimes some of us wish for a level playing field but I think our wishes would be better spent on things such as peace on earth or the winning power ball numbers There was another tough puzzle cache that I solved one rainy day nursing my sick GF but when I put it in their solution code, the numbers didn't work. Emailed the cache owner who replied back that the way I was reading the code (which was pretty cut-and-dry logical and literal as us mechanical engineers tend to be) wasn't what they intended so I went back and looked at a couple other twists in the code until I found it. But the wording was really REALLY misleading. Not tricky, just not clear. Reading back thru the logs it seemed I wasn't the only one thinking so. But the puzzle was supposed to be the hard part, not how to translate your solution into coords. The owner decided to leave it as worded, can't say something... their cache, their choice... my smilie. Always try to put a story in my logs (except for totally lame caches IMHO) and don't care what others think except some other locals who we have a bit of a personal challenge with each other to figure out puzzles first. Fun between friends. Just strikes me strange when someone solves a massively difficult puzzle cache and then just puts TFTH! in the log. Not worried about it from a find and cachers point of view, more from an owner point of view. Kind of wishing to keep a level playing field on my caches, but then there I go wishing again I'd allow it to stand. Probably would if it was discovered, not sure how much time I'd put into investigating it. Would also let that stand as I have multi-'s that have been found by someone "guessing" some part they couldn't find or figure out and worked the final coords out anyway. Kind of pops the balloon of information people sometimes get from previous logs. Then again, whatever tools get you to the find.... just if you trust someone else's tools then that's a risk we all take. It's also a risk to trust what the owner posts, too. Then again, GC without risk would be like.... well, like boring. Sometimes it's like fishing, the act of trying can be almost as much fun.... that's why they call it "fishing" and not "catching"

Not so much the others cheating themselves out of a puzzle and a challenge, but yourself out of being basically cheated out of seeking the couple dozen other fun local caches that you could of been doing instead of straining your brain on a seemingly easy puzzle. Some people (like me for example) like to be challenged with a good puzzle cache. One really tough local puzzle I am the only person who figured it out in four months or so it's been out Phoney Music GC1BR3J and it hurt my brain getting thru that one. If a few dozen people found it while I was struggling with it I'd of worked even harger at it thinking somehow I am missing something. If that "something" I was missing was someone played with the owner's GPSr and read the coords and shared it with their friends I'd feel a little less of an accomplishment when I did figure it out because from the outside, the finds both "look" the same. Hate to bring the shoe onto my foot, but kind of like the example of armchair logging of a missing cache (that I really hate), someone cheating making a find can also make someone seek a cache that's impossible to find by the posted listing. I didn't just say that, did I? Guess it's a tad off topic, but seemed to follow the flow of the conversation. Hehehe.... I like the devious way some people think.... hehehehe. Good one!