The_Brownies

Costco and Sams Club sell them in the $45-50 dollar range as well for the 256Meg. Unless you plan on adding street maps, or terrain maps to it, you really don't need the memory. I have a Meridian Gold and I use the standard on board 16M memory. The meridian aready comes preloaded with general city maps so it all depends on what you want.

Looked at his gallery and he did not appear to be of the younger generation, and from the general tone of his message led me to think he was not a young whipper snapper.. Update on printer-- HP4 laserjet $100 on ebay. I found at least 6 of them. Toner cartridge $80-90 bucks and it will print 8000 - 9000 black and white pages. Toner should last a normal family 1 to 2 years before they need to replace the toner. We use the HP4 all the time at work on a NT Network. It works WUNDERBAR for printing out cache pages, and it is fast. I believe 6 to 8 pages per minute. Might be faster.. The only time you might want to use an inkjet is for color printing or when your kids have to have a color report for school. Almost forgot printing out pictures. Definatlely need one there. I guess my point here is if you simply want to print out cache pages pickup an old laserjet.

1) Look at his profile. 2) I deal with individuals on a daily basis who have no idea what it means to OPEN WINDOWS EXPLORER, or what it means to press any key to continue.. "I don't see the ANYKEY.. WHERE'S the ANYKEY?" or better yet they don't even know what the Computer Desktop is when they are looking at it. Yes, not all of them are 50+, but a large majority are. How do I base this? As I said before, I deal with these individuals on a daily basis because I'm a software support technicain and it's my job to help them. You seem to think that I'm flaming the guy. I'm not. It is rather obvious that he has gotten frustrated by something that is really not that difficult to do, and instead of calling for help, he just decided it doesn't work and tossed the technology aside.

Tree Moss -- What is your age? 50 - 60? From your tone, I would say in your early to mid 50's. I applaud you for trying. You probably thought you'll get a PDA and this whole paperless caching business would be a piece of cake. Unfortunately, sometimes things are not as strait forward as we would like them to be. That's why you needed to do a little bit more research before you purchased your palm and tried uploading cache pages. Don't give the excuse "I DID NOT KNOW". If you had done a quick search of this website you would have seen this topic has been discussed many times before. Now you have the palm. What now? You are frustrated with the darn thing because you do not understand how to upload new cache pages, so now you are going back to paper. Let's look at that. Ink Jet Cartridges cost $30 for Black, and $35 for Color. Ream of 500 sheets of paper costs $3. How many pages will you get from the cartridges before refilling the ink jet printer? 250? You do the math. It's not very cost effective is it? Plus the ink runs when the paper gets wet. I personally would buy a used HP4 laserjet off ebay before I would waste my time on an inkjet printer. It would be a lot more cost effective. $75 bucks for a toner cartridge and you get 4-5 thousand pages before having to replace it. Since you are having problems with the PDA it is highly unlikely you will go with the laserjet option so here's what I would suggest that you do. * Take a deep long breath and RELAX!!. Go do something else. Read a book. Take a walk. The only thing you will ever get when you are upset with something is more frustration. * Once you are relaxed, and clear headed, call a friend who is a computer geek and have them help you with this issue. If you do not have a computer geek friend post a thread for help and there are lots of people out there willing to help you. In fact, I bet there is a geocacher in your area that would be glad to help you with this issue. In short -- don't give up on the PDA. It will work, but you need to have a little patience. If you still don't understand how to make this whole thing work, eat a piece of humble pie and ask a question. It's better to ask a question then to sit back and act like you understand when you don't. In fact the dumbest question I ever heard of was the one that was never asked. Good luck.

I use zonealarm with no problems. Suggest that you download the newest version and do not set you security level to high. When ZA asks to grant access to GC.COM tell it yes.

Sometimes a picture is worth a 1000K words. This website gives you a good visual representation what you need to do. Centoid of a Triangle Personally, I would let my GPS do the work for me. Just find all 3 waypoints and set them in the gps, i.e. A, B, and C. Then find the mid point of A to B, B to C and C To A and create 3 more wpts E,F & G. (E) 1/2 way between A & B (F) 1/2 way between B & C (G) 1/2 way between C & A You now have 6 waypoints. Set a new waypoint * (H) 1/2 way between C & E. * (I) 1/2 way between A & F * (J) 1/2 way between B & G If you do everthing correctly, the treasure should be in the place that H, I and J are plotted in the GPS. This may look like a bit of work, but you do not have to do any formulas, or convert meters to centimeters, etc.

Signature Items are cool, but I think they should only go into really special caches. If the signature item is of really no value then maybe, I.e. a wooden nickel, just leave them without exchanging anything for it. That way a cache does not become depleted with signtaure magnets that are 1/2" X 1/2" and other items that might be considered as swag. Now a geocoin, is a little different. Normally they cost around $4 bucks a piece and if these are left in a cache, then the person who retreives it, should be willing to make an appropriate exchange for it.

I totally despise a theif and I totally lothe a geopirate. Maybe you should start converting these caches to member only caches, at least till the heat is off. That would definately make this scum sucking dog start paying for the cache's he's stealing.

If you have a TJ MAX in the neighborhood you might check them out. I recently saw a pair of FRM radios for around 12 bucks a piece in there. Maybe also hit Wal-Mart -- They normally have inexpensive, cool items to put in caches. hey, what about hitting some yard sales. You always find cool little trinkets for pennies on the dollar. Check the paper for a large two family sale.

Our last name is Brown. If you have seen the movie Willow, there are small little people in there called the Brownies. If you have noticed, they tend to have arguments about who is right and who is wrong throughout the movie. With this in mind, think of the a normal geocaching adventure with the Brownie twist. My son thinks the cache is over here. Mom thinks it's over there. Dad has the GPS and says it's this way, and sister is off in her own world. That's why we adopted the name The Brownies. With that in mind, I have been seeing a lot of cool geocoins going with each cachers own motto on it. We didn't have one, and we wanted to come up with something that would be a unique find for other cachers in my neighborhood. Hence we(I) decided let's create some Brownie Points. We are on a limited budget so coins are out of the question for now, but geonickels are definately in the right price range and for now they will do quite nicely.

Navdog, you certainly have a artistic flare. WOW... The design is almost too good for a geonickel. That would definately have to made into a geocoin.

T hink I came up with a good design for my soon to be Brownie Points. Think I'll even do differnent denominations down the road. Thanks everyone for the input.

Thinking about creating some Brownie Point Geonickels but I'm kind of stuck on the design. Would definately appreciate some input for the caching community.

Why throw the lock away, simply weld a chain to it so it would not fall off. As for the lock. The combo lock I use will not close unless you reset the numbers. 4 numbers, means you have a lot of different numbers to choose from. If you don't want to change the numbers on your micro's simply change the combo and say, add this number to micro1, subtract this number from micro 2, etc. My Cache in the park has been up for almost 1 year with no problems what so ever. If people start making a mess of your land by driving where they shouldn't then remove the combo lock and make them walk from the gate. Actually, walking from the gate is not a bad idea. That eliminates the need for the lock. I guess it all depends on you.

Thought So.. Wondering did you use a masonry drill bit, or a diamond tipped bit? I've got the rocks, drill, and time, but all I need now is the bit.

Clear plastic containers maybe are not a good idea in places where it freezes. The become britle in the cold, and if you are not careful, they can sustain some damage. In the south, or warmer climates, they tend to fair a lot better. I have just seen too many plastic containers, fall apart in the cold weather of the north. On a personal note, I have a few caches still in plastic containers. The tupperware contairs from the dollar store have held up for over 2 years, even with the cold weather. However, I'm in the process of removing them, and replacing them with ammo cans. More room and they are a lot more durable.

It goes back out into new caches. I don't place regular caches very often, but when I do, I like to have quaility items in them. That's why when I come accross a cache with a few unique items, I'll trade them out, and use them as booty for my new regular cache.

If you like an idea use it but put your own personal spin on it. Also, maybe the person who's idea you are thinking of using copied someone else? Don't sweat it. Use the idea, but change it to suit your needs, and maybe put your own personal touch on it. If you are going to use the idea word for word, and you feel guilty about it, simply include a blurb saying this cache was inspired by such and such. There is nothing wrong with that. I have seen a cache page recently that mentions the fact that one of my caches inspired him to create his new cache. He did not ask me for permission, and I guess I could care less. In my neck of the woods, it is awesome to see new caches pop up, and I welcome new caches, regardless of the fact that someone used one of my ideas.

Wondering if anyone has tried drilling actual rocks using masonry bits? Wondering how hard it would be to hollow out a small micro container sized hole in a rock from the surrounding area. Then simply glue a 35M film canister in the hole. The Hypertufa looks quite interresting. Gives me a devious idea..

If you are using XP, simply open the TIF in PAINT, and save the image off as a JPEG. Easy as Pie..

You don't even need photoshop to resize your photos. If you are using WinXP, you can now take your image and save it off as a GIF or JPG using PAINT!!. That's too funny. Anyway just take your image and save it as a JPEG. Here's why. BMP's are memory hogs. You can take a picture 500X500 save it off as a BMP. It will probably take up 1.2Meg or some huge number. If you take that same image, save it as a JPEG, your 1.2M picture now is a whopping 82 kB. Also try and crop out the unnecessary stuff. The more uncluttered the image, the better it will look. There was a trhead on this topic a while back discussing this very thing. Can't seem to think of when, but I know there are a few out there.

My Mom took a tour of Washington DC and she was in the old theater. My Brother in Law took a photo of her, and the same thing occured. Some pictures were just of the theater but other pictures showed phantasmic whisps of light as shown in the picture above. Very eerie. Can you believe that there are actual ghost hunters out there that do this very same thing, but they use very low light film. Some photos are just of the surroundings but then in some, you will see faces, and fiqures. Here is a true ghost story. When my brother was young, my parents bought a house from an elderly couple who's son had been killed in Korea or Vietnam? Mom never did give the specifics as to which war. Anyway, not long after they moved into the house, funny things started to happen to my mother and brother. The ghost would pull the sheets of mom's bed, and he would purposely scare my brother. One night my mother heard my brother crying. She went in to comfort him, when she saw the ghost (Clayton) sitting in the rocking chair next to my brothers crib, reading a book. Mom said he looked at her and then disappeared. After a while, the ghost did go away never to return. My guess was he was lonely and when his paents died he went to be with them. But Ghosts are real and they walk among us. Another odd occurance happend to neighbors of our's in Tennessee. While stationed at Ft Campbell, KY in 1992 we lived in an apartment complex, Paddock Place Apartments, just above a young couple who had a small boy. His name was Cody. From time to time Cody would tell April, his mom, that there was a man in his room. Of course when they would go into the room no one was there. April, who was part native american if I'm not mistaken, had a medium come in, and sure enough, there was an Indian spirit living in Cody's room but the spirit was a good spirit. From what the medium had said, there had once been an Indian grave yard long ago in the place where the apartment complex now stood. Cody's room happened to be the closest to an old Oak tree that seemed to be the hot spot for the spirits. Anyway, April did not have the Spirit banashed, and he probably is still there till this very day.

I don't think so.. I'm a cache aholic. The forum is just a place for me to come and chat with fellow cachers. Also gives me a place to develop new cache ideas.

I hate GEOPIRATES.. but that is part of stashing caches. Some jerk / kids are bound to eventually steal it. That's why I switched to more micro's and less regulars. But if I do hide a regular, I'm going to make the GEOPIRATES work for their booty..

The Only thing you have to purchase is the certificate and possibly lamination. Depending on how fancy you wish to make them, you could even add a bronze emblem to the certificates corner. Then all you need is MS Publisher,Paintshop, or some graphic program to print them. If you did not own the programs, probably print them out at Kinko's. For Micro's you could even make a MINI first time finders certificate. Very interresting thought but would it worth the effort?