lowracer

Sure fire way to waterproof AOL and Altoids tins: Put them in an Ammo can.

Thanks guys, that did the trick. Saved me 902 very boring and tedious mouse-clicks. My carpal tunnels thank you too...

I don't see any LOCK field in the GPX file. I did the export as indicated in the FAQ workaround, then in a text editor I did a search on the exported GPX file for "lock" and it came up with nothing that I could identify as a lock flag, only the word "flock," "lock" etc., that were in the descriptions for the caches. There seem to be no GSAK-specific database fields in the GPX file. So how exactly do I set the LOCK flag for these 451 records using this GPX file I exported? Thanks, -mark.

I have 451 records I'd like to set the LOCK flag on. Please tell me I'm not doomed to click 451 times, once for each record. I don't see any way to select multiple records (shift-select isn't doing what I'd expect it to do), and the help facility doesn't tell me much about the lock feature except that it will do what I want, not how to set it for multiple records. Help.

I used to. Now I don't anymore. Bolt this under the rear bumper of your car. You set the combo, it holds a couple spare keys and a $20 bill. Never worry about locking myself out anymore. Get one for each car. The price is half what you will pay to have a locksmith come out and open your door for you. A side benefit is that you can use these as locking microcache containers.

We got a guy locally who has hundreds of finds, does the same thing. Stocks a 50 cal ammo can with a couple trinkets. His rationale? He doesn't like to trade anymore so he doesn't bother to stock the caches. It's not just the n00bs. Me? I stock 'em till it's hard to shut the lid. I don't trade anymore either, but many like to and I want them to have a good selection to look through.

Head out to Rocksprings, Texas. i have a virtual out there (Devil's Sinkhole) that no one's logged yet.

It's even faster to XNSL (eXchanged Nothing, Signed Log). Try it sometime.

I think that may be exactly why the local organizations don't have the serious flaming problems we have here. After all, if you flame me here on this international forum, what's the chances I'll be at your door the next day? Pretty slim. The distance factor and the relative anonymity emboldens some to say things they'd never say to your face. But if you flame me on our local group, this 6'4" 229lb scary-looking unemployed dude with the skin-head and ray-bans might be paying you a visit in person to "talk things over." So people are nicer on the local groups.

I think it's just these forums for some reason. Find a regional forum (hosted on another site, for example texasgeocaching.com) and you'll find little or none of the flaming that is common here.

Sometimes my wife says I act like I'm 12. I think if geocaching were available when I was 12 I'd have been out there hiding and finding. We didn't have GPS back then, because in that year they had only just gotten the idea for it. It wouldn't be until I turned 16 that the first GPS satellite was launched, and by then I was only interested in borrowing the family car to go on dates.

Amen. I agree. An interesting urban micro is one thing. One hidden in plain sight, where muggles pass by within two feet yet remain unaware because of a creative cammo job. That's great. A 35mm film can hidden in the woods where you could easily stash a 24 gallon rubbermaid action packer? That's a lame cache. I'm *this* close to filtering out all micros from my pocket query results. Lame micros are a pox on this sport. (edit to add: That being said, I'll say that we should protect our right to place caches of all kinds, including lame ones, and we should by all means encourage our hiders to place creative and fun hides of all sizes, but ultimately it's up to us as finders to filter out those we don't want to do. I don't want to see any prohibition on lame micros.)

I see that it will be on again tonight at 5PM. Can't wait to see it.

The count doesn't matter, as a comparison between cachers. So why restrict it? Someone wants to log four smileys or none at all, who cares? Someone enjoys logging four smileys for wearing mylar and a tinfoil hat, man I want to give them all that kind of enjoyment they can get. If I do, does your car turn up missing? Does your arm break? Think about it. If I spend all weekend logging fake finds and rack up 2000 smileys on my count, will you cry about it? Will it mean anything at all? Who will care? There's absolutely no competition here. When this game is all over, you can take your smiley count to the bank, and whether you have one smiley or one thousand, they'll give you the exact same amount for it. Nothing. So to clear up the confusion, ask yourself: Why limit it? What are the reasons for limiting it? Start there. If you find yourself arguing that we need some kind of uniform rules for logging smileys, then you're bringing up the the whole question of enforcement. And who will enforce it? And how are you going to make sure that everyone enforces it equally? And then when the geocaching police force has been established, when everyone's score is comparable to everyone else's, who is going to award the prize for first place?

Personally, when I'm out finding, I play by my own strict rules. If I don't put my hand on the logbook and sign it myself (or if I'm caching with a group, if someone signs for the group). So I know that my find count is an accurate count of how many logbooks I have signed (plus a few virties and locationless). I can only compare my score to myself. It's a personal benchmark. I can in no way compare it to others because they aren't playing by the same rules. I have debated whether to play multicaches by michigan rules. My jury's still out on that one. Now as for hides, I like to be a little creative and offer a bit of an incentive by offering a few extra smilies now and then for those who like to collect smilies. Especially if they have to do something really outrageous like wear mylar and tinfoil hats.

Bingo. You got it. The count is meaningless to anyone but the cacher who owns his/her own count. So why not have fun with it? If you don't want to post four smileys, no one's forcing you to. I had a guy come out this morning who only wanted one smiley. He put "the rock that rolls" on his head and took the picture. It's his choice. BTW, he could log another find on the "rock" (a wildly popular local moving/travelling cache), because that is the convention here, or he may only post a note, again, his choice (edit/update: just got notification that he only posted a note). We have another cacher here in austin who only "posts a note" even though he found it. He's found over 500 caches but his smiley count always shows zero. My little brother caches a lot but has also a zero score because he never posts finds online, ever. I don't think he even has an account on this site. At the other end of the scale I know a cacher here in Austin who logs a smiley if he can see the container, or if anyone in his search party finds it, even though he himself never got within a quarter mile of it, never laid a hand on it or signed the log. So what are you going to do, call the geocaching police? Getting back on topic, I just think there are too many reasons not to limit the number of smileys posted to any one cache page. It's part of the game for some caches to log more than once.

Degrade the integrity? Please. Give me a break. What is the prize for having the biggest smiley count? It's all about fun. People are having a lot of fun doing this one, and logging four smileys for it is only part of that fun.

I think a feature to prevent an owner from logging his own cache as a find is good, but: -I know of several caches where you get another smiley for finding the nearby (unlisted) Bonus cache. This is very common here in Austin. -Some event caches have temporarily hidden caches just for the event and those typically get logged on the cache page as additional smileys. -Those who play by "Michigan Rules" will claim one smiley for each leg of a multicache. -My webcam cache In The Future, We'll All Wear Mylar Jumpsuits (GCKE4G) allows up to four smileys depending on how many of the outrageous criteria for this cache are met. I think rather than just forcing us into "everyone gets one smiley," leave it up to the cache owner. Give us a drop-down menu on the cache edit page that allows the cache owner to set the maximum number of smileys permitted for that cache. It can default to one.

Zack, this sounds exactly like my case. Mind if I ask how long did it take to clear up? I've gone the Medrol dosepak (methylprednisolone) route before. That and prednisone both weird me out to the point where I feel like I'm going insane. Intense anxiety, panic attacks, hallucinations, extreme confusion. Not a pleasant experience. I'll take the ooze and itch any day over going insane.

I have heard this too. I will try it. Unfortunately it will have to wait until nighttime. If I went out there today I would cause a mass panic when they saw this oozing red patchy monster heading for the water. Of course I would have the pool all to myself then...

Oh, I have some of that on hand already. Thanks for reminding me. I'll give that a go. I think the brand name is Kenalog.

I made the mistake of delaying the post-caching wash-up last week, and now I'm paying the price. I'll spare you and not post any photos. Who else is suffering with caching-related poison ivy? Have you got any good techniques or medicines for coping with it? I found this stuff at the drugstore called Benadryl Itch Stopping Gel. Not going to cure the poison ivy or anything, but it does make it not itch at all, which is great. It has alcohol in it which I am hoping will help keep these nasty areas from getting infected. I'm also hoping this mess will just clear up in a week or two and I won't have to go get a steroid shot and a dose of methylprednisolone. I can remember as a kid when I'd get poison ivy they'd slather me up in with some kind of pinkish lotion which dried on contact and if anything seemed to make the itching worse. Glad we have better options today.

There was a cache submitted here in Austin that was very similar. It was turned down as being a commercial cache. It exists on the big N site as "Bottoms Up." You had to go into the bar and order a drink (could be water) in the Special Geocaching Mug. On the bottom of the mug (inside) were the coordinates to the next redirector. Caused quite a controversy when first proposed. N00FBF - Bottoms Up by essiar

I like the smell of Ammo cans in the morning. Smells like... victory.

I know this is a technical discussion, but all this talk of uploading arc files is scary, from a user perspective. Try to keep the user interface simple. Mapquest is a great model here, I've embellished a screenshot from their site as an example of how this should look to the end user: Just input where you're starting from, where you're going to (and optionally any intermediate destinations), how many miles off-route you're willing to go for a cache (and probably should allow it to filter for cache type, diff/terrain, other criteria), and hit enter. Return a GPX and let's travel. Use arc files if you wish but that's an implementation detail and should be invisible to the end user. I'll leave the details of how to implement this to you, and yes I know it's not trivial. You might want to check with the guy who wrote MacGPSPro. (www.macgpspro.com) He has coded an algorithm to turn a www.mapsonus.com turn-by-turn driving route into a route that can be downloaded right into a GPS.