Gill & Tony

Let's be polite and simply say that when I was managing programmers, I would never have tolerated releasing a world-wide program which didn't use the local time and the local date format. I don't blame the programmers. But the system designers and QA team...

I've just received my first review e-mail. The text read: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ulladulla Harbour has a new review: Reviewed by: The Rats Adventure completion date: 8/2/2023 7:25:09 PM Type: Adventure Review: A nice AL along the foreshore ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ First: Apparently they posted the review on the 8th of February, at least according to the date format I use. I'm guessing that the system doesn't allow for different date formats, so let's assume that it was 2nd of August. Second: It arrived at 12:27 pm on the 3rd August, so I'm guessing that the date and time are UTC or Seattle time or something equally useless. Third: "Type: Adventure" What other types would it be? Fourth: Clicking the link doesn't take me to my adventure builder page (which would be nice) but to the QR code for the page (which is useless) So, wrong date, wrong time, pointless type and useless link. At least the text of the message and who posted it are correct.

Please correct me if I am mistaken, but 1. You cannot write a review until you have completed the adventure. 2. You cannot contact the AL creator from within the App. 3. You cannot write an "Owner Attention" log. Therefore If there is a problem with a stage such that the answer is no longer available and you cannot complete the adventure, you cannot tell the owner about the problem. IF you have a geocaching account and IF you can remember when you get home and IF you can be bothered then you can contact the owner. Solution: add a report button on each stage so you can report the problem. One of my stages has been unavailable for nearly 6 months. I've now fixed it. At least 3 people have failed to complete the adventure, stages 1-3 have more completions than stage 5.

Cheap last minute cruises can sometimes be a wee bit more than you expect. We are (or were) regular cruisers with Princess. We were offered a really cheap price for a relocation cruise - Rome to Fort Lauderdale in Dec 2016 Fine, we booked it. Then, we had to fly to Rome. Never having been to Rome, we booked a small hotel for 4 Nights and had a day trip to Florence and Pisa, plus the Vatican. Now we are in Ft. Lauderdale a few nights before Christmas and we had planned to spend Christmas with friends in Navarre (near Pensacola). So, hire car to Navarre and, after Christmas we continued to New Orleans. We had never been to Las Vegas, so we flew there and stayed for 4 nights over New Year. Hotel room costs were interesting 30th Dec $80, 31 Dec $350, 1 Jan $350, 2 Dec $80. Now we hired another car and drove to San Francisco via part of Route 66 and eventually flew back home form Los Angeles. Given that the main reason for taking the cruise was to go back to Bermuda (we lived there 30-odd years previously), a cheap cruise turned into an epic Round-the-World odyssey.

No, that's a promotion. From #9 all the way up to better than #1

I disabled a cache some time ago and got a reviewer note. As instructed, I posted a write note, then fixed the issue and wrote Owner Maintenance and Enable logs on 29 June. My dashboard still says that some of my hides need attention, None are disabled and I can't see which ones are the problem. When I click the "Review your hides" link I get a comment about the reviewer note, but that is all over now. Two points: 1, Could a reviewer please have a look at my hides to check what is wrong 2. Could a Lackey please talk to the programmers and ask then to display better information about which hides are causing problems and why. Something like <<cache name>> is still disabled or <<cache name>> has an outstanding Owner Attention log would be really helpful Thanks Tony.

Yes, cold drizzly day here. Staying home and enjoying the garden going "Ahhhhh!". First rain for a few weeks.

Thanks for that, it will be very helpful. Would it be possible to send a notification whenever someone has completed the adventure, even when no review or photo is given?

I've managed to avoid these so far, except for the FP challenge which I got through FP's. I will easily manage to avoid this one, given that there are no unfound caches which I'm physically capable of doing within a one hour drive from home. I'm not into participation trophies and these souvenirs have actually reduced (to nothing) the caching I've done since they started. My last caching trip was back in March, and that was on holiday.

Well, I keep a record of the number of days between my find and the most recent previous find. Your inaccurate find date could affect my statistics.

Somehow I got both souvenirs for the favourites, without leaving home. I don't have any new favourites on my caches. Someone must have added favourites and then deleted them.

I don't know whether this is an achievement or not, but I've managed to avoid participation trophies for the first two months and I can guarantee I won't get one in June. There is no way I can cache for 20 days, so I'll sit this one out as well.

And that only works if the finder wrote a review. Some don't bother and there's no record in the reviews page.

And the real reasons were... ?

This often comes down to a personal definition of DNF. I log all "Did Not Find", but don't log "Did Not Search" unless the reason for my failure to search might be of interest to others. If I'm driving along picking up caches in a series, I may skip some this run, because I found them on an earlier run, or because I didn't like the look of the climb up the embankment in my dress shoes, or I'm fed up with bison tubes in signs or mint tins in armco or whatever reason occurs at the time.

"I assume" and "Probably" are fine, but not definitive. It would be good to get an official, definitive answer.

What does "featured" mean? Who decides whether an adventure reaches featured status and what criteria are involved? At this time this looks like a solution in search of a problem. Maybe, with time, things may become clearer but, at present, I'm bemused by the whole thing. P.S. missed jokergil's post above.

Apparently challenge caches were about 1% of all caches but accounted for a majority of the disputes being raised to HQ. That was the official reason for the moratorium. However, that could have been fixed requiring the CO to retroactively add a challenge checker to their listing. Allow a reasonable time frame for a challenge checker to be developed and added. Bingo! No more disputes. The checker says "yes" or "no". I don't think that difficulty was a major factor in the decision. As you say, difficulty is a factor in puzzles, challenges, trads and terrain. Some caches are harder than others. If you look back at the threads on this, people were complaining that challenges based on cache names were bad because a few people were creating caches with gibberish names so others could qualify for challenges. My favourite challenge of the 79 I found was an alphabetical order challenge. Find a cache beginning with "A". At least one day later fins a cache beginning with "B". Repeat until the alphabet is complete. Lonely cache challenges, which actively encouraged people to go and look for caches which had not been found for a long time, are now banned. Anyway, this is off topic for an AL thread, so I'll stop ranting now.

Thanks for that info and to the engineers for fixing it. Yes, all seems in order now. No chance of getting the completions without reviews listed?

Why? Just because you don't like them (and I don't like them either) why should we stop people who do like them from doing them. I don't like power trails of thousands of pill bottles along a road in the desert, some folk do, so let them have them. I don't like high terrain caches involving huge hikes or long paddles, but other folk do, so let them have them. That's why we have ended up with totally emasculated challenge caches. Folk didn't like them, bitched and moaned and persuaded TPTB to prevent any interesting ones from being created. \rant

Given that the Lab cache experiment started 10 years or more ago, can we please confirm that the experiment has been a success and make Lab caches mainstream. Let us add D/T ratings. Let us add attributes. Give us notifications of finds. Let us delete bogus logs. \ Make Lab caches behave like any other cache type. Please.

I set my in-car GPS to my destination and include arrival time as part of the display. Then I cache as I go along and stop caching when the arrival time approaches the deadline (with a safety factor). If I then make up some time I can cache close to the end. I have a built-in GPS for the destination and a drivesmart for navigating to caches,

If you use GSAK try my Duplex Print macro. It lets you control exactly what gets printed and starts each cacheon a new sheet.

Sounds like you will be at Victoria Falls. If so - take the plane ride. Expensive, but worth every penny. In Botswana, you will probably visit Chobe NP. If so, there are a few areas designated for tour vehicles to stop for refreshments. I think there is a cache at each one of these. My find was not without problems https://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LUID=502f3cbc-ebf2-4b2f-8493-b3932024053d

I print out the earthcache and virtual cache pages for ones I plan to tackle and will complete those answers I can before I go. The completed pages mean I don't have to remember the answers when I get to a place I can log them.