lowracer

A well-stocked goodie bag, being necessary to the free enjoyment of the sport, the right to keep and trade swag, shall not be infringed.

Say what you will about the other reviewers, but 9Key rocks. He's got to deal with us rebels down here in Austin, and that's no easy chore. Will, next time you're down this way, I think I speak for all of us, we'll be happy to chip in to buy you a cold bottle of Shiner Bock.

I checked on Yahoo and though I found 139 groups concerning geocaching, there wasn't a single forum where geocachers could talk about non-geocaching topics. So I created one. Feel free to drop in and talk to your geocaching buddies about anything but caching. Hey if you want to talk about caching that would be OK too because there will be absolutely no moderation in this yahoo group. It's a free for all. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/offtopicachers/OffTopiCachers Yahoo Group

Pet Peeves: 1) Writing "suppose to" instead of "supposed to." 2) Writing "should of" instead of "Should've" - I've seen published pulitzer prize winning authors do this (and no it wasn't in dialogue). 3) Pardon my French if you type "Wha-la," "walla," "wah-lah" instead of voila 4) Pardon my French again but it's "Creme de la creme" instead of "Crem de la crem" 5) In Texas, "y'all" is the correct singular form for "you." It does not mean "you all," the plural as in other parts of the south. "All y'all" is the correct plural form.

I usually just record cache name, what I took / left, and any other notes into the voice recorder on my Samsung A500 cellphone. I usually just XNSL, so I rarely have use for these notes nowadays.

I have 454 finds as of today, give or take. Posting in the forums ain't geocaching. Using your GPS to find boxes of crap in the woods, signing the logbook, trading a trinkie or two, that's geocaching. Posting ain't nothing but pokin' pixels onto this page. It ain't caching, even if on-topic, and never will be. Post count ain't nothing to celebrate, it's a counter of your lost opportunity. Each post is simply evidence of yet another time when you were doing something other than geocaching. Wish I was out there hunting the elusive tupperware, but I'm not. I'm typing this drivel instead. And now you're reading it instead of caching. Gotcha.

I have a special ringtone set up for my caching buddies and when I answer that ring it's always with "Geocaching Hotline?"

I have to agree, an OT forum would be great. What would it cost? What harm would it do? In the meantime, how about an off-topic geocachers Yahoo! group? Then you could get your silliness in the daily mail, without logging in, without moderation, and without some frog watching over your shoulder, making sure you stay on the topic of off-topic.

I don't think I've ever participated in a hobby where people get so fired up as they do about geocaching. On this site and off, decisions are made, some folks get upset, and harsh words are posted. Plans are made to take the ball elsewhere, people commit geo-cide in the forums (yeah I did that once too, ain't proud), flame wars erupt, players and admins are compared to Hitler. Yikes! Why do we do this? What is it about Geocaching that makes people get so fired up about it? Been thinkin' about my other 'silly' hobbies that I've had at various times, perhaps you can think of some others... Model rocketry: can't ever recall launching into any fiery arguments there. Ham Radio: they only get keyed up over losing radio spectrum. Genealogy: they'll kick up a little dust from time to time but usually their forums are quite dead. Kite flying: they have some wind-bags under tension, but no flames. Photography: someone's always taking a shot, but usually nothing serious develops. Recumbent Cycling: they're always laid-back. So what other hobbies do you know of where people get so fired up as they do for caching? The sillier the hobby, the better. Let's hear your theories on why people get so fired up about geocaching.

I agree. Move it to the bottom of the system somewhere. it's always the first topic and it has absolutely nothing to do with geocaching. I've read some of it and it's just plain silly. Like hunting boxes of tupperware in the woods with a billion dollar satellite navigation system isn't silly, but then I digress...

I only use Astrology to find my caches. It is possible for a skilled Astrologer to determine the exact location of every cache you will ever find based only on knowing the positions of the stars and planets at the exact second of your birth.

Yes I'm not surprised that the icons have changed, considering the outcome of the lawsuit. Groundspeak sued Wal-Mart for infringement of the rights to the smiley-face trademark. Groundspeak lost the suit, and have been ordered by the court to cease and desist the infringing use of Wal-Mart's trademarks. Groundspeak are now rumored to be suing Bally's over the Ms Pac-Man trademark.

Right now on the listing page for a cache, there's a link to: Make this page print-friendly (no logs) Then if you want five logs, you have to do another click to get that page. How about making a link from the listing page that says: Make this page print-friendly. Show [Zero] [Five] [Ten] logs. Where [Zero] is a link to the friendly page with no logs, [Five] is a link to the friendly page with five logs, etc. OK it's not a big deal, it just saves me a click and a wait for the page to reload. I always want to see five logs, and it would be great if I could just click once to see that rather than loading the page with no logs and then having to click again. The last time I used my HTML skills was in 1994 (the year they invented HTML) and I could code that in about thirty seconds, so it can't be a big deal to whip it up using the newfangled technology you guys have at hand there behind the scenes. What say ye?

Micros in the woods are fine but the 528 foot rule should be reduced to 52.8 feet for micros. Wouldn't want a micro in the woods to block interesting full size cache placements.

This is a particularly disgusting moving cache I have on some other listing place: N00DF4 - It Rolls Downhill It is made of sculpey clay (www.sculpey.com), painted with rust-color and black automotive primer. The texturing was done using a ball of aluminum foil. The design, well my two dogs helped me with some prototype ideas out in the backyard...

Have a question about Texas Geocaching or Texas Geocachers? Planning to visit Texas or just passing through and want recommendations on where the best caches are to be found? Texas Geocachers have their own very active forum online. Texas Geocaching Association (TXGA): http://www.texasgeocaching.com/forum/ Stop by and introduce yourself. We won't bite.

Here's one that's challenging: M13

That is a solicitation. I'm withdrawing the request for people to sign the petition. Solicitations are not permitted in the forums. My mistake. Please strike that from the record. We have a few other caches here similar to (and some perhaps more 'commercial' than) the NFA cache: The "Austin Chicken Fried Steak Tour" series (GCHC28 and GCH13W), each hidden on property owned by restaurants, and "But Where's The Sheriff" (GCH3NW) which is actually hidden IN the outdoor dining area of a restaurant. There's "Let Me Count The Ways" (GCGN7B), which is hidden ON the building of a restaurant. No purchases are required for these caches. Some were placed with permission, some not. There are many other examples; these are just the ones that come readily to mind.

OK so how many of those 200,000 users are actually actively caching? How many are sock puppets, and how many have simply given up caching. Don't forget that most people who geocache do not read these forums. I think your 100,001 number is completely outrageous, and I wonder why you propose such a thing. Do other questionable caches require 100,001 thumbs up from the caching population? No, all they require is one of the approvers to reconsider. The topic title is "Argh / Frustrated By Cache Approval." I'd say my post is squarely on topic. The cache in question is not even my cache, so please, your comments about "my personal cause," are neither accurate nor on topic.

Speaking of commercial caches, here's another that wasn't approved (due to it being a commercial cache) and was instead listed on Nav: http://www.navicache.com/cgi-bin/db/displa...pl?CacheID=4031 It should be noted that it is possible to do the cache without paying for anything, and you do not need to present proof of age to order a soft drink or water in these places. You can order a free serving of tap water in the special Geocaching mug. [EDIT: removed solicitation to sign online petition] -mark.

Four already? That's 28 in Dog Years.

I had a cache similar to the electrical outlet box. It was a moving cache on Navic@che called "The Rolling Blackout." It was an electrical junction box (no plugs, just a metal cover) that had a huge magnet glued on the back, so you could stick it on any metal surface. The whole thing was spray painted grey. You had to use a screwdriver to remove the screws from the junction box cover to get the goodies and logbook inside. Finders could post a picture but they had to black out the actual image of the container (with a smiley face graphic), so that on your first find you really had no idea what you were looking for. It bounced around Austin for about six months before it got muggled. Probably by some bewildered electrician. I'm saving my pennies to buy another junction box to redeploy the Mark II version which will be even more stealthy. http://www.navicache.com/cgi-bin/db/displa...pl?CacheID=2237 Some recent placements:

I have a solution: 1) Keep geocaching.com free for cache listing and finding caches. 2) Charge people a buck per post in these forums. Jeremy would be driving a gold plated Porsche within a week.

What must international cachers make of the 528 foot rule? That can not work out to an even number of meters. Imagine if someone in Europe had invented geocaching, then after some cache collisions they established the 'tenth of a kilometer' rule. We here in the States would be scratching our heads trying to accurately measure 328.0839859501 feet. Any Metric cachers care to comment?

I always shorten TNLNSL to XNSL. eXchanged Nothing, Signed Log. Saves keystrokes and bytes of server storage on geocaching.com. If every cacher who signs the wasteful TNLNSL (or worse) TN/LN/SL, would just sign XNSL instead, we'd save three to six bytes of server storage for each log. Considering the millions of logs that are made each minute, pretty soon this adds up to saving a new hard drive every couple of weeks. You want your $30 subscription fee to go a little bit longer? Don't write so much in your logs. Keep it short. XNSL.