The_Brownies

Ok, looks like I mistook what you were saying. My appologies. Sure read like a discussion about an old horse that has already been beat to death. I have to agree with you. The premium service is nice if you want Members only caches, or want to go with pocket queries. But before you upgrade make sure you buy a pocket pc or pda. It will make things a heck of a lot easier. Right now I have my pocket pc loaded with about 100+ cache pages and it sure comes in handy when your on the hunt. No more soggy papers. Plus now I can finally go after a few member only caches in the neighborhood that honestly were ok. Not going to get into that since that is another topic.

High Expectations? False Confidence?

Ok I'm going to kick the hornets nest and run!! Have been caching for over 3 years. Yes, I signed up for premium to help support the sport I enjoy. However, I don't quite agree with putting a price on the basic membership. It's been discussed before and the answer has always been the same. If it ain't broke don't fix it. If you start charging to play the game you could potentionally loose people from the game. They won't stop caching. They will simply band together and start a different website to play the game, which btw is already happening. Long story short, Geocaching.com was founded on the principal that anyone could play which btw, Jeremy once wrote something to the effect. "This will never be a pay for service". If you want to be a premium member, go ahead a be one. But not everyone out there wants to be a premium member. They are perfectly fine with paper caching and are happy be a lowly geocacher. Plus it's not like gc.com is going bankrupt. If you were to ask me, I would say these ingenious, innovative young men came up with a hot idea and are making alot of money off of it. Another thing to remember is this is a world wide game and $30 for a US customer could mean good news for European users, because the Euro is of a higher value than the dollar. It could also mean bad news for a Canadian, or eastern european user where the dollar value is high comparred to their currency. You also need to ask just how many premium members do you think are on gc.com? In addition to the money they make of the premium members, they are also getting revenue from their online store, advertisements from Chrysler, Magellan, Lawrence, Etrek, etc. If you were to ask me how their profit and loss statment looks, I would say they are doing pretty good, which means there is no need to even consider charging for the basic fee membership.

A trap door eah!! -- Nah!! log a DNF and email the cache owner for a better hint or email someone who has found the cache. Another option is to bring a friend with you. 4 eyes are better than 2.

Ok I want to know if any Kittitas County cachers want to get together to put a face on the pen names? Here is the idea. Meet on a Saturday or Sunday at a local restuarant, say the Palace, or El Corporal for a little lunch and sharing of stories. This will be an informal meeting. So please - if you want to do this let me know. I'll reserve a room. But if there are not enough people at this point in time, we can always do a summer bar-b-que in the park. Anyway, no definate time or date yet on this event, but it will be in either February or March. Just trying to get a feel if this will be worth the effort or not. So if you are a Valley of the Winds cacher and you want to meet the other Valley of the Wind cachers, please let me know.

Most likely the person who is doing this is a teenager. Not one but a group of them, and they are having a fun time getting people ticked off. I know because I have had 3 - 5 of my caches plundered. I came up with some ways to thart this but that is a different story. Anyway here are a few ideas. 1. Place a cache close to your house. I.e. one you can see out your window. Why? One Word WEBCAM.. Hook up a webcam to start taking snap shots of cache every few minutes so when he takes the bate, you'll at least have a picture of him and his car/bike. 2. Video --again, place a cache close enough to your house that the cache may be watched with a video camera. Then simply plug the video into a vcr and when he comes calling, you'll have them on tape. 3. Offer a reward in the paper for information about recent thefts. Who knows, this geopirate might be stupid enough to actually try and collect the reward. 4. Talk to your fellow cachers, and start making them member only caches.

Fair Weather cachers.. Nah we just don't like it when our fingers stick to the metal cache container when we are trying to open it with our bare hands..

ScanDisk memory (SD) is scandisk memory regardless of who makes it. No-- you do not have to buy from Magellan. Walmart? Maybe if the price is right. Ebay has some pretty cheap deals.

Ahh what's that nasty four letter word I'm thinking of ? SNOW!! but that is melting away for the time being. What's that other four letter word.. COLD -- 10F doesn't get me too excited about finding a cache.. It's on the to do list.. BTW -- I know there are these cachers in the neighborhood besides myself... 1. eclecticlibrarian (Eburg) 2. eaglescoutandlittleeagle (Cle Elum) 3. Four Wheelin' HillBillies (Eburg) 4. Team Wallace (Cle Elum) 5. Wildhorse folks (Eburg/Thorp) 6. danny14mms (Eburg) 7. Two Shoes and Dancing Feet (Eburg) 8. young granny (Eburg) 9. Big DA (Eburg) 10. newly_weds (Eburg) 11. Team KGRU (Eburg) 12. TRACS (Eburg) 13. Red Dog Two (Eburg) 14. Wildcat John (Eburg) 15. Bruiserr (Eburg) 16. kittitasfieldandstream Wondering just how many more are there... This of course make me think I'll have to put the first foot forward and organize the first Kittitas County Cachers meeting.. Probably have to do this after the first of the year.

Ok, advice from a fellow IPAQ user who just went paperless. GSAK.. .Can't knock it. Cool little program. But it costs $8. Granted thats a drop in the bucket. However I'm cheap. hee hee.. if you are looking for a very easy to use piece of software, that works flawlessly on an IPAQ, and gets the job done try downloading GPXview. Why? It's easy to use & Free.

Hmm -- I know there are KC cachers but looks like none of them read the forums. Oh well..

Click Here to see how to do it.. It's pretty easy once you understand how to do it.

I actually found one with Hydee by a campfire but this is the only two I have seen. Wow, you would think there are more.

Are you a cacher who lives in the Kittitas County. I'd like to know just how many there are of us. If the number is right, we could possibly form our own cachers club, and or meet on a quarterly basis to talk about caching and trade cache secrets. I'm just trying to get to know fellow cachers in the area.

Just got an Ipaq 3600 series Pocket PC and have been playing with Pocket PC themes. This made me wonder. Is there a cache of Geocaching Themes out there for the Pocket PC? I have only seen a few. I know you can build them with some software from Microsoft. Just curious... Hmmm.. maybe this will be a good place for those unknown artists to show their stuff..

very accurate....

Ok, I see where you are going with this. First Load the Image onto Groundspeak's server 1. Login to your Geocaching Account 2. Click on MY Account 3. On the MY ACCOUNT PAGE - right hand column under Account Options - Click Edit My Profile 4. Now Browse down to MY Photo - Click on Change/Edit 5. Click on Upload Image 6. Follow the steps and upload an image. Now let's link to the photo.. 1. Repeat step 2 - 4 2. You should now be looking at a bunch of images. 3. Locate your team banner and right click on it. 4. Left Click on Properties 5. Now you should see a popup window. 6. LOCATE the Address of the image. I.e. http://img.Groundspeak.com/user/thumb/43e0...7ad2bcb9f07.jpg (BTW-this is just an example - it does not point to anything) 7. Highlight the address and then right click on highlighted address. 8. Left Click on Copy. 9. Open up something like Notepad or Wordpad and paste the address into it. Last Step.. Adding the image to your cache page.. 1. Go back to My Account 2. Locate the cache page you wish to add the image to. 3. Open the cache page and click EDIT. 4. Locate where you wish to put the image. 5. Paste in the following code replacing my fake image address with your actual image address. <img src= " http://img.Groundspeak.com/user/thumb/43e0...7.jpg"> 6. Save the changes to your cache page. 7. If you did everything correct your banner should now appear. BTW - Another way is to upload the image directly on your caches page, but then you see this image on your webpage. The method I described will not do this. How you upload the file is up to you. Good Luck.. Trust me..The steps may appear to be quite a few, but the process only takes approx 1 - 2 minutes to do.

Ipaq 3635 Pocket PC with GPXview. Haven't tried mapopolis yet but it sounds interresting.

What does it matter? Magentic North or True North. Ok, if I use Magnetic North, depending on my location on the globe I have to take into account a thing called DECLINATION if I want to look at a map and follow my GPS like a compass? But if I do that, then what are all the cool topo maps for that have all the terrain detail, and forrest trails? Leave it to Garmin to confuse a guy!! Guess that's why I bought a Megellan. Man this is like the old commercial for beer... Less Filling Taste's great!!..

HTML is helpful, but you need to point to something before the ole <IMG SRC=xxxxxxxx.gif> </img> tag will work..Again.. are we talking about the geocaching stats banner or a home made team logo?

You will need a program to read the GPX file on your handheld. If you user a PALM then you will need to use CacheMate. If you have a Pocket PC like me, I found a great FREE program for PPC 2002 called GPXView. I'm going to explain how to do this on a Pocket PC because there is an excellant thread that already tells you how to do this on the palm but very few that tell you how to do it on the pocket pc. At least I could not find them. BTW my computer Operating System is Windows XP and for this explaination, the steps I take to copy the files are intended for XP users. First locate and download the ActiveSync software from somewhere on the web. You will want to download at least version 3.7. Install it on your regular computer. Reboot your computer. Active Sync should come up. Next, if you have not already done so, you will need hook up your PDS cradle to your computer. When you do this windows XP should automatically detect the device. The next thing you do is put you Pocket PC Into the cradle. Active Sync should come up with a connection setup wizard. Just follow the prompts and create a link between the PC and the Pocket PC. Make sure the Pocket PC and your regular PC connect and synchronize. Before you go on, verify the your Pocket PC is running PPC 2002. If not, purchase it off ebay for $3.00 and upgrade your Pocket PC to this version of PPC. Once your Pocket PC and computer are playing nice together, you will need to install GPXviewer on your Pocket PC. This is pretty easy. You simply download the program from the website and unzip the setup.exe. Once the setup.exe is extracted, double click on it to install GPXviewer on your Pocket PC. After the GPXviewer is installed, you bring up your Active Aync program. It should already be in the middle of your computer screen. Locate your GPX file from Geocaching.com. Right Click on the file and left click on COPY. Next, in the Active Sync Program is a thing called EXPLORE. click on this button and it will bring up windows explorer but it will display the folders from your pocket PC. Just right click in the windows explorer and paste. Remove the Pocket PC from it's cradle and launch GPXviewer. Select the GPX file you just uploaded and Bam!! you are in like Flint. BTW - Here is another great site for paperless caching and may help answer your question if I did not.The Art of Paperless Caching

Are you talking about the stats logo that says the team, hidden and found? Or are you talking about your own team logo?

Hmm.. makes me wonder what GS means by this then? Cache Guidlines Exisitng virtuals are ok. Just the new ones are not being approved.

There is a moritorium in effect on ALL Virtuals and it's been this way for almost a year. Groundspeak is going to create a special section dedicated to virtual caches, and when that happens contact the approver and have them unarchive the cache. BTW I did read your post, and you could very easily make this into an actual cache. Simply use the information from the pictures around the lighthouse to create coordinates to the actual cache container.

Middle of December and oh so very cold. Had to roll up the pants legs and take off the socks to get a rahter difficult cache. Luckily I didn't get sick.