fizzymagic

No one has mentioned what I think is the best plan for it yet... Put it in Black Box.

We'd love to do it, Chuguy. How about helping us get to it? Here's a deal: You get me within 50 miles of it, and I'll take care of the rest. Loved POV. Everybody should do it!

quote:Originally posted by Brute-Force:I knew someone would have a better solution than a whine. Apparently I am unable to make any point here without being called a whiner. Perhaps I am one. Either way, it's not worth it. [This message was edited by fizzymagic on November 07, 2002 at 01:48 AM.]

quote:Originally posted by Fattuhr:By reading this and some of your other posts it would appear that you read the hints before you go on the hunt for caches already.. Almost never. I read the hints in question here because somebody referenced them elsewhere.

quote:Originally posted by LuvOzzy:Maybe I am misinterpreting what you saying lately, Fizzy, but I certainly get the idea that you don't find the central valley caches and cachers to be so wonderful (with the exception of a person or two). You are indeed misinterpreting what I am saying. I have enjoyed almost every cache I've done in the Valley, and you folks are excellent cachers and very nice people. Please don't take what I write as personal criticism. I do think that there is a little of what I like to call the "Caltech syndrome" in the Valley. I'm leaving right now to fly to DC, so I don't have time to expand; I will when I get back on Thursday...

looks like a lot of fun! I like the concept!

Actually, it was nothing intentional. We were on our way to 21st Symphony and were going to stop by to look, but we couldn't figure out how to get close without going on private property. I'm sure that if we had driven around for a while, we would have figured that out. But we were eager to get to the nearby park with 3 caches. We returned down the other side of the river, so we didn't go back by it. Also, it looked a little like it might be a needle-in-a-haystack search through a pile of rocks, which (as you no doubt know) isn't too popular with my compatriots. I did talk them into one later in the day, as you no doubt saw. And no, I'm not very happy with the comments one of them made about that one. FWIW, I thought the hint was excellent and I enjoyed it. But, quite seriously, I had no intention of avoiding it. In fact, if it had still had the coordinates for Mom's Tattoo Parlor in it, they would have had to fight me to keep me away. I probably won't ever try either Revenge or Revenge, Sweet Revenge, as neither looks like a lot of fun to me, but Flashlights is definitely on my list! Oh -- the 5 we didn't find were: Take Care of Your Mouth Michael Jrs Kids Cache Fern Gully Boys Stuff Fish Tales It turns out that Fern Gully and Fish Tales were actually there, and we just couldn't find them, while Michael Jrs was gone. I suspect that Take Care of Your Mouth was also missing; I don't know about Boys Stuff, but since tomaski hasn't been too active recently I don't expect to hear, which is OK.

quote:Originally posted by georgeandmary:I wish I could have watched you do Fear Factor. Did you see the picture I posted? I was the most cautious of our group there. I have a lousy sense of balance. The good side of that is that I never get seasick. But I still made it to the cache on my feet.

quote:Is the Nothing But Flashlights one of the 5 you didn't find that day, but failed to log? Nope. We chose not to attempt it. If I search for a cache and do not find it, I post a DNF log.

quote:Originally posted by LuvOzzy:Wow, seems as if Fizzy is quite passionate about what he wants/doesn't want in a hint, huh Um, no... I think I am just asking for common courtesy here. Consider a person who is on vacation in your area and decides to do a cache. They get to the cache coordinates, spend an hour looking, and then give up and decode the hint, only to find an offer to email them a hint if they can prove they were at the site. Of course, being on vacation, they have no access to email, so they are screwed. If I were that person, I would receive the strong impression that Central Valley caches are only meant for Central Valley people. Do you folks really think that is appropriate? If so, then I guess we just have a different view of what constitutes polite behavior. Or perhaps you believe that himnts should be decoded before the hunt; in that case, why bother to encrypt them?

I try never to make catty comments about other cachers in my cache logs. I know that there are some people with whom I cache that do it sometimes, but I don't. That said, one of my pet peeves is obnoxious, useless hints. If you don't want to give a hint, then don't give a hint. I have no trouble with that, because it's honest. But if you've put something encrypted on your cache page, it ought to be an actual hint. Putting something else there is rude and disrespectful of those who are looking for your cache. Looking over some new caches in the area, I have seen several such "hints." The attitude that they convey is not one I would like to be associated with. Of course, that's just my opinion.

...to Jimswim, who blew through his 200th find today like a freight train! We were on a serious hot streak on our Monday Madness expedition today. We chose Egret is Dead; Long Love Egret as Jimswim's 200th cache, which turned out to be a good choice; it was challenging yet a lot of fun.

Darn, you're good, Kablooey. I completely respect you! Here are a few more from our area: fizzymagic: 32 Supergenius: 26 PaulWhy: 22 Marky: 20 MartyFouts: 19 Ron Streeter: 11 bthomas: 4 chuguy: 4

I'm glad to hear that. Have the pop-up ads disappeared? I usually run Ad-Aware about once a month. Spyware sucks.

Hey Marty, I think you should log the traditional at its coordinates from today, then disable it immediately so other people don't go looking for it. The main reason for this is that there were several travel bugs that went through it today, and we need to log those to not screw up their log pages. I know it's a pain, but I think it is necessary.

quote:Originally posted by Dr. Isotope: You might also be concerned with items such as P-239 and U-235. I know I am. Of course, there is no such isotope as P-239. Another bit of misdirection?

Well, I learned something new at the Levin Lovin picnic today. Marty Fouts is an Evil Genius. A very twisted individual. In other words, my kind of guy.

Stop Grousing was removed September 14. Halfway There was removed September 22. Aloha Baby was removed October 20. There is no possible way to characterize these actions as "mistakes."

Uh oh. If you've got windows popping up all over the place, then you have what is commonly known as "spyware." Because geocaching.com isn't putting up those windows! Spyware is nasty little software that installs itself along with another program, usually some freeware thingie. Since the software is supposedly installed on purpose, it isn't removed by antivirus programs. But luckily there is a way to get rid of it! Go to www.lavasoft.de and download Ad-aware. It works like a virus scanner, but removes spyware instead. I've used it for a couple of years and swear by it. Good luck! Let us know how it goes!

quote:Originally posted by C&MMorris:I hope you 3 go back when it green and pretty. We will, I promise. Even if there is no cache there, I want to see it in its green state. I could kind of imagine it while we were there, but it was hard... That brings up an interesting question: what about seasonal caches? Should some caches get disabled during the summer because they are too hot or whatever, and then re-enabled in the winter? Caches in the Sierra do this automatically, when the roads get closed for the winter. I'm looking forward to doing a bunch of hiking caches I have been putting off until the green season. Has anyone else been deliberately postponing some caches until winter?

It's mostly nice to know that we weren't just completely blind, especially on Michael Jr's. I might go back and do Fern Gully once the ferns come back, as I would guess it's a pretty nice spot when it is green...

I agree with you about giving cachers clues when you're with them; that is part of why I like caching in a group sometimes. In fact, the very fact that somebody knows the cache is still there is a big piece of information. If I am hunting a cache that nobody has seen for a couple of months, I am more likely to give up earlier than I would be if I were certain that the cache was actually present. I could go on and give a long exposition on Bayes theorem and how it relates, but I'll spare everyone. As to stinky hints: I've really only done that once to you. Well, OK, twice, but the first one doesn't count since I was an immature young cacher. I've also had people tell me that some of my hints stink. I generally don't take it too seriously, and I often email the person offering to help more if I can. It's fun to make caches hard, but I try not to make them so frustrating that the cacher doesn't have a good time. The point for me is to challenge the cacher to think about the cache and maybe learn something, not for me to prove that I'm smarter than they are. (Not that I think anybody around here does that, BTW). But I do disagree in one way; I think that negative feedback on caches is just as important as positive feedback. When I hear people characterize any less-than-glowing log for a cache as "whining," I am uncomfortable. As a cache placer, I think it is my responsibility to make the search a fun experience; if somebody didn't have fun, I need to know that just as much as I enjoy hearing when people did have fun. A criticism of one of my caches is not a criticism of me; I try to look at it as an opportunity to improve the cache. I know you do, too, since I've seen you make excellent improvements to your caches based on user feedback. A couple of other things related to this discussion: I will sometimes leave criticism at caches I find as well as those that I don't. Such was the case for a multicache at Disney World I did last week. One of the stages required getting information that kept getting changed about once a month. The hider kept updating the description after a few people couldn't find the cache because of the changed information. I pointed out that since most people are at Disney World on vacation, they can't check the Internet every day to see the updated description. So I suggested using something more permanent as the intermediate step. There was a cache at Epcot that I'd been wanting to do for a long time. It's a physical cache, extremely well-hidden. Since I was at the park with a guy who had already found it, I raced ahead so that I could find it before he had a chance to give me any additional hints. It was more fun that way. Finally, I did a few caches in the DC area. Since my meetings ran all day, I ended up doing them all at night in the rain. It certainly adds to the challenge! I enjoyed making them harder for myself by doing them that way.

Yes, that was my question. You got it right!

quote:Originally posted by Mr. Snazz:ski3pin contended that she was told to remove caches if she "happened to be in the area", which is quite a bit different than seeking out and removing caches. And then she proudly admitted to seeking out and removing the caches! Go read the logs!

Your points are all quite good, Ron. When we cache in a group, we do what you described; everyone has to find it on their own. I usually spot the cache, go look someplace else for a few minutes, and then casually mention that I found it. But there is one big difference between that and searching on your own: in a group, if it's there and anyone finds it, then eventually everyone will find it, even if it takes a while. Thus my question: Ron, have you ever been present at one of your caches when somebody searched, could not find it, gave up, and went home? If so, then I am impressed, and I'd love to see the log that generated! But I don't recall ever reading such a log. By the way, I am not taking (or meaning) anything personally here. I've been doing online discussion for a long, long time and I know that often things come out looking a lot harsher than intended. So unless you really try, you are unlikely to offend me. If you really want to see nasty, you ought to see magicians' discussion boards! Yow.