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ju66l3r

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Everything posted by ju66l3r

  1. I've been back on the site regularly for about a week or so now. The latest forum threads seem to start telling a significant difference from what I saw a year ago when I last haunted the forums relentlessly. There are quite a few "cheater", "new numbers", "omg", "what do i do abou this" kind of threads recently. I know some of them are directly related to the significant influx of what I'll dub the Hungry Hungry Hippo (HHH) effect from GW4. But honestly, even that is an interesting corollary to the other more common themes coming from other geographic areas. It seems that as the number of geocaches continues to expand at a seriously rapid rate, finders (particularly those in less rural areas) are frequently deluged with more than they know what to do with. They start consuming geocache experiences at such an astounding rate that they're quickly able to pass by the kinds of numbers we're used to seeing even a year ago within their first months playing with a GPSr. The result of this quick binge of caching for the user is that it completely depersonalizes the other end of the hunt...the hide and the hider. It seems people start to treat any geocache as just any geocache. The person that hid the geocache isn't given any consideration throughout the entire process from the finder's perspective because there are so many to do that they see it more as offerings from the database and just another cache to find. This is not to say that every new person partakes of the activity in this way. This isn't even a particularly new conclusion. But it is something that's degraded quite a bit from even a "TNLNSL" to "i saw where it probably is located" and "sign the logbook, it's in my backpocket right now" (that's even *further* downhill to the point that the hider isn't respecting their own hide). It would appear that you would only treat the game in this manner if you felt little affection for each geocache as an interesting experience and each hider as a person worth thanking for the adventure or even just thanking for the smilie if that's what you play for. This kind of disconnect from the other half of the game reminds me of the way some people also treat fast-food employees and other off-ramp business employees. The establishments are so ubiquitous that the locations blur together and the people themselves aren't seen as individuals; if you offend one of them, you can always go very nearby to somewhere else (and be offensive). Unfortunately, I'm not offering solutions. I am only offering what I can glean to be the source of this downhill path with which the community seems to be struggling with greater frequency.
  2. It's all personal perspective. I think defacing your own cache log in order to get a few petty smilies rather than maintain the integrity of the online record is about as far from the "table" and as "scrappy" as you can get since it's a definitive "Mine!" statement about those precious smilies/counts. It's not like her logs take those caches off her PQs or anything. When you false "find" your own cache, it truly is *just* about a number. Of course, she's your honored acquaintance so I'm sure she can do no wrong. In my mind, not knowing *any* of the parties, I tend to give eagletrek far more credit than anyone else in the situation. That's not to say that if someone "group-logged" a cache of mine I would necessarily delete it, but he is sticking up to his end of the bargain by reading his cache's logbook and double-checking it off of the online log. The two didn't match to his determination. I've seen both more strict (your *name* was in the book, but you weren't the one who *wrote* it!..eventhoughyou'repicturedtherestandingnexttothecache) and more loose (heyyy maaan, whatever, peace love 'n' geocaching little dude..if you think about it...you prolly signed it in another universe, maaaan) decisions by cache placers in my time.
  3. It's ok, you just have a good reason to go back out and complete your finds now!
  4. ...didn't change mine at all. (this time) Imagine if you would that you walked up a mountain, glorious morning, birds, snakes, lizards...went to add another cache, BUT the cache wasn't there because it was in the owner's car trunk heading for the day's event cache. I guess it's all okay until it actually does affect your ability to go geocaching. There are many ways to go geocaching. Signing the logbook out of someone's back pocket isn't one of them.
  5. Since you claim you're not fixated on placing this bumper sticker material on a stop sign (just want to posit the question) and you've also been given other options that don't include defacing public property by *anyone's* definition (like coords on a rock at the base of the sign)...then you're at a bit of a confusing crossroads in your discussion. The logical answer would be to go write your coordinates on a rock and place it at the base of the sign. You get people to your stop sign while avoiding any possible confusion over stickers, magnets, defacing, vandalism, permission AND your cache will be approved without question. Instead you start contacting KY DoT and asking reviewers to find consensus and charging onward on your path to finding people willing to agree that you're doing nothing of harm so let's just do it. Why (rhetorical)? You said you weren't fixated. If this were really about asking the question to see public opinion, then you wouldn't keep trying to defend your action when people tell you that it would probably be wrong (for a number of reasons) to sticker your coordinates to the sign.
  6. The particular person not signing logbooks because "his handwriting is messy" and "his online log is doing fine anyways" is looking at the situation from a very egocentric point of view. You don't sign logbooks because *you* need to see where you've been. You sign logbooks to tell the hider that you've been there. It wasn't even for "permission" before so much as it was to diary the life and times of the cache. If you don't sign the book, there's no reasonable way to see what goes on at a cache and if *nobody* signed the books then there'd be little point in putting a cache out in the first place. Just mark a waypoint and tell people to go stand there for a few seconds (ala Waymarking). If he didn't write in your logbook, then I'd feel justified in deleting his online log. The online log is secondary and far less important in the whole scheme of things than the written logbook entry (even if it's little more than a big black X on the page).
  7. Ooh. This is very sad. I guess that's one way to get to 15500 finds! Logging your own cache, ten times, because you could not log ten other caches. Very sad. Don't worry, if that's the only questionable logging that you find while perusing her 15,000+ finds, then consider yourself lucky (and crazy for reading through 15,000+ logs looking for abnormalities). But seriously, putting a cache log in your back pocket (or logging your own cache to claim a waypoint that's no longer valid because the logbook is not at that location or any one of the other BS garbage finds that have been pointed out in this thread) is about the lamest trend to hit geocaching in some time. I'm all for variations that create new and interesting ways to go geocaching. I liked the idea of "cache pirates" forcing offset caching (while leaving the original cache intact except for the "booty"). But anything that destroys a cache (removing it from its location to bring to an event, for example) is not good for anything. Imagine if some of these "pocket caches" weren't actually owned by the owners. Hell, why do anything but area events where everyone goes out, finds a cache, and then they all bring them to the table before the end of the event so we can all pass the log books around! It'll be like a big ol' screwed-up quilting circle geocache orgy! Man, but you could bag 50 caches easy at a small event! The ends don't justify the means here. Why not just "hide" a "cache" consisting solely of a sheet of paper on a bulletin board that says "nothing here but this sheet of paper. feel free to get your smilie and then be sure to mass mail all of your caching buddies and tell them they don't even need to see this paper to get a smilie on the website!! I just want to see more people have more smilies! Yippee!!". I mean, really, if we think hard enough (and I'm sure some of the "smilie hunters" have done so already), we can surely find a way to log smilies on new waypoints that don't involve anything but passing around the waypoint IDs for the rest of us to log! Hmm, maybe we could setup a script to log a find on every cache in the system and the ones that aren't deleted mean more smilies for you! Woohoo!
  8. You don't have to worry about those guys.... It's when their head is bigger than their butt that they should give you a scare.
  9. That is definitely either a wolf spider or fishing spider. Both are found in Michigan, both have similar eye patterns, both have mottled grey/brown/black coloration, both catch prey without a web... The most distinctive shape difference I was able to find is in the abdomen...but your friend there looks to be about ready to lay an egg sac...so the abdomen is hugely distended.
  10. I'm hoping that they would ask you if you wanted their code first and would give you the opportunity to let them know you may/may not use that aspect of the site. I expect social pressures and etiquette to dictate that people who run around like a raving loon trying to scoop up as many cacherCodes as they can will quickly find that fewer and fewer people are giving them the time of day when they try. It seems like it will be a self-governing affair. In the meantime, if I do meet someone that I want to stay in contact with, then having a business card with my name, cacherNickname, e-mail, maybe phone number and cacherCode will be a good way to hand out my info.
  11. I have to go with Jeremy on this issue of privacy if he wants to put the next event you plan on attending at the end of the buddy list/thing. The only thing he's dereferencing is a "Will Attend" log on an event. I don't need his buddy list feature to see if you've added a "Will Attend" log on any event cache. If people want to get a list of all of your logs for all of your submitted geocaching activity to this site, it's available to them. Simply rearranging the display of that data isn't a privacy concern. You've already opened the door to having that information publicly available. I don't even have to meet a person right now to track their geocaching movements if I were to choose. Having their "will attend" records pop up on a buddy list is hardly cracking open a clam shell of privacy around them.
  12. Just don't call me late to supper.
  13. Glad he did. I wanted to know what all the fuss has been about lately since I've been gone. I'll just throw my 2 pennies in for the hell of it now that I've gotten to the end of the topic... I don't recognize their effort as being anything great or to be celebrated. The team distorted the basic logistics of geocaching (didn't mark every logbook) and did so in such a way as to deface geocaches (writing on geocaches). While noble, compensation for the damage doesn't warrant reconsideration of the validity of the record attempt. It's also somewhat disengenuous for a "team" to search for more than one cache at a time (i.e. be spread further than the accuracy of their GPSr and/or 500 feet with the intent of finding multiple closely-hidden caches) in order to multiplex their time and leverage their numbers advantage. Each one was only found by part of the team because the other parts of the team were in no way making any efforts to find the other cache at the time. In that sense, you could take 8 people to find 8 different caches in the same park...why hold yourself to a 0.5 mile tether? Also in that same sense, you could take 40 people to find the same 8 caches...why hold yourself to only a single van when you could bring a bus and make it even faster to have found everything through sheer brute force? The lack of a signed logbook are enough for me to discount their efforts in my mind. The rest of the problems I have with this record attempt are just extra reasons for me to easily dismiss it as nothing exemplary.
  14. PMs could be able to see if anyone in their social contact list was currently logged into the website PMs could designate a single cache where they plan on heading next. It would appear next to their name in other people's social lists where they have been included. (this is building off of nfa's last idea) People You Have Met *icon* nfa ( Next Cache/Event: Fun Fun Fun Upstate NY GeoMeetup! )
  15. Creating a "fill in the blank" pdf file isn't hard to do and would give anyone who wanted to easily and quickly distribute their secret word a way to do so that the recipient would be able to reference when they finally got back to a computer from having met people. This of course would be a minor (yet probably well-used) perk for premium members. Consider how many people already print out TB laminate tags, "what is geocaching" brochures, cache instruction sheets, and so on...
  16. Are you sure? I'm getting crazy load times...don't know if it's going to error or not yet.
  17. Clicking user names in the forum also leads to "Profile not found" on a correctly formatted profile page....just in case it helps tracking down the problem.
  18. Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Source Error: An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below. Stack Trace: [NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.] Geocaching.UI.my_default.DisplayUserDetails() +93 Geocaching.UI.my_default.Page_UserLoggedIn(Object sender, EventArgs e) +56 Geocaching.UI.WebformBase.IsLoggedIn() +1087 Geocaching.UI.my_default.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) +138 System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +67 System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +35 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain() +772 Getting this for http://www.geocaching.com/my and forums/register.aspx
  19. EDIT: Was already working on it, SQ. Heh. Potential incentives for paid membership (instead of this idea that only PMs can be met in person): * Card templates for printing out official "Hi, nice to meet you! My secret code is XYZ!" Geocaching.com cards. * Only paid membership allows you to browse a webjava "8 Degrees" association map and do "8 Degrees" lookups between two cachers * Only paid membership will allow you to see a map of where you've met people at * Paid members can jot a "note" down for the people they've met such as reminders of what the meeting was like or whether they enjoyed meeting that person Let's face it. Non-premium members being able to be met and alter their passphrase (necessary to prevent passphrases getting passed around ex parte) is a drop in the computing/cost bucket compared to the image storage, log storage, routine geocaching that is allowed for free members. Make the "incentive" above and beyond the basic social-greet system, just like with normal geocaching at the site...as opposed to considering the social-greet system as something above and beyond geocaching. This is how Waymarking now works, right? You could have said "pay me a membership fee to go Waymarking...it's above and beyond normal geocaching!". You didn't and I think Waymarking is better for it. You can just as easily say "pay me a membership fee to geomeet people...it's above and beyond normal geocaching!" as you propose to do...but you shouldn't and I think geomeeting will be better for it.
  20. With the clarification that only premium members can be logged (because only they can generate a code to be logged in the first place), I think you know where I'll stand on this. In contrast to Pocket Queries and the other passive benefits that are given to Premium Users (passive because they don't largely impact others' ability to geocache)...you're going to create a star-bellied sneetch system where I can only claim to have met the people who pay you for the star on their chest? Is there a better way to offend those that won't be able to social-cache all of their friends AND have to be seen as some how more elite in-person because you *can* social-cache them but they can't social-cache you back? -- CacheMeisterX: It's been great getting to know you! Want to add me to your social-cache list? SirCacheRunnerY: Sure! What's your secret word? CMX: "babyspit"..hahaha. What's your's? SCRY: I don't have one, I'm not a premium member. CMX: Oh. Well then. Um, cya. -- It's one thing to not be able to do a MO cache. Hey, you can't get them all and it's just a geocache. It's a different thing to not be able to list all your friends because some of them don't pay for a membership...and to socially tier everyone at a gathering as to whether they can provide you with a secret word for the social-cache system. I think you should generate incentive for paid membership through some other perk of this system if you have serious ideas about implementing it. Allow everyone to, at the minimum, be "met" and "meet" people.
  21. "You're not a geocacher unless...". This phrase implicitly requests the proof that: Given some action/event has occurred, you now consider yourself a geocacher. The definition of that action/event results in the completion of the original phrase. Too simplistic of an action/event, particularly one unrelated to the activity of geocaching one could easily presume, would not accurately complete the statement. For example, "You're not a geocacher unless you've been outdoors" encompasses a number of people who have not even heard of geocaching and so it is difficult to acceed to them being known as a "geocacher" as a result. Instead, one should presume the action/event of "geocaching" would be therefore necessary to give rightful claim to the term "geocacher". The actions and events that compose geocaching are far too variable to select any one or even few components and call them as valid as the whole. The result is that "You're not a geocacher unless...you geocache". Put into a more familiar phrasing: I geocache, therefore I am a geocacher. In that way, each time we geocache we define what it is to be a geocacher. Our existence as a geocacher is only as good as the self-evidence that our consciousness provides us upon introspection as to whether we've geocached, no more and no less.
  22. Christ was hung on a plus?? So *that's* the secret behind the Da Vinci Code!
  23. Probably so, I hear Dr. J is taken.
  24. My prolonged absence? Actually, yes. You know, undergrad made this whole "college" thing seem easy. It's all a sham to get you into graduate school so that you can slave away for someone else's benefit/fame (indentured servitude is a better term). I'm still a few months shy of that ever-lovin' PhD...but at least it's on the horizon now (mid-August...I just have to strive for mid-August). But you and your mods didn't kick me out (this time). I was off hibernating with my research (two first-author peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts resulted, so it's not like that was a bad thing). It's time to break out and unshackle myself from my desk on occassion over the next 2 months or this thesis/PhD defense is going to drive me insane (it's a short trip according to my GPSr).
  25. Wow. I go away for a few months (only a few minor posts since mid-February...last geocache find was August...geez, was it that long ago??) and when I come back I see the same old, same old. Numbers, no numbers, broad heavy-handed moves by Jeremy et al, bickering over how to handle "cheaters"... Man, I love you guys! * Just remember if I ignite or get behind a controversy that it woulda happened even when I wasn't around. Hehe. Now, about cleaning up my home radius again... (wanders off to go get my cache page print-outs)
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