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Adrenalynn

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Posts posted by Adrenalynn

  1. The head gives the snake away as a rattlesnake. He took that picture very close, thats pretty crazy.

     

    The picture was taken with a telephoto lens from about 8-10 feet. There were rocks between me and the snake and I scoped out a rapid egress route before I started taking pics! Again, if it had started moving there would have been no pics and a DNF!

    Here's another snake I found just yesterday. Anyone know what this one is? Note the horn-like protrusions on its head. Freedom Fighters

     

    You always find the good ones!

     

    That, boys and girls, is a classic Crotalus cerastes AKA - Arizona Sidewinder Rattlesnake.

     

    Sorry, I can't get it to the subspecies/specific ID from that photo. Too much variation.

     

    Incidentally, the "horns" fold down over the eyes to protect them as it moves through underground burrows, or when it's underground and taking down a small rabbit or something else with some fight. Pretty cool bit of evolution...

  2. The head gives the snake away as a rattlesnake. He took that picture very close, thats pretty crazy.

    I hid my first cache about a week ago, this is a serious hike through weeds waist high and up a mountain.

    Well on way back down I was on top of a layer of rocks when I heard the distinct sound of a rattlesnake below me. It wasn't one of those bugs that make the fake rattle sound either.

    When I heard the rattle beneath me, I honestly jumped and skipped over the last few rocks and didn't look back.

    My description has plenty of warning and it suggests snake chaps, and boots to help protect you from a bite.

    It adds to the search a level of danger, it's a rush to look for it.

     

    Just an FYI - and I really hesitate to post this:

     

    Many snakes "rattle". They deliberately shake their tail in the leaves or brush to simulate the rattling sound.

     

    That said: Don't mess with the rattle. :anitongue:

  3. Two people are watching the cache..........that says something. I'd say, no, it's not too hard. [but I have no clue how to solve it either]

     

    I don't believe I'm giving anything away - if I am, the author can let me know and I'll happily nuke this...

     

    I'm generally "pretty good" with puzzles. I wrote (and then later did countercrypto) multifactor crypto stuff though, so my brain is kinda trained in patterns from chaos...

     

    The key here was apparent inside of the first reading. I skimmed through, just naturally tossing the confusers, then got to the bottom, read part of the first paragraph before the clue sank in, slapped my forehead, then decoded.

     

    That said, it's cleverly designed, and not where/how you'd expect it to be. You can start and stop reading anywhere in the puzzle... It's somewhat represented by a block-chain style.

     

    Few such puzzles make me slap my forehead, so I'd say you've done a good job. But no, not overly difficult once you put your mind in the right frame of reference. Not a 4star for me. Probably would be for some. Honestly, I haven't done much in the way of puzzle caches, so I don't know what's out there. But that isn't stopping me from designing my first right now... :anitongue:

  4. The apparent reason that Magellans *appear* to be so much better in dense cover is that they do vector averaging. If you're moving at 2.5mph at bearing 110deg and enter tree cover, 3 seconds later, I should be able to give you an idea where you are. Unless you veer off sharply or stop.

     

    That's why it takes time for them to "settle down". You need to "break averaging".

     

    The Garmin algos, on the other hand, tell you "the truth". If it doesn't have accurate position, it tells you that, and gives you its best guess based on how many sats it can see. Including none.

     

    There are advantages and disadvantages.

     

    In the field, I frequently see a friend's Maggy Meridian Gold 60-70ft off at the quick cache location where my old eMap is 4ft off. Then given a few minutes, the Meridian will slowly correct itself to pretty much match the eMap...

     

    For coarse navigation, the Magellan is the better bet. For close-in work, the Garmin probably beats it.

     

    My personal take, and personal choice (for caching) is: "If I'm 3/4mi out, I have plenty of time for course correction. If I'm 50ft away, I want the dadgum thing to tell me where I am!" - hence a big reason I swear by (and sometimes "at") my Garmin. If I were frequently hiking half the day in dense foliage where ending-up a hundred feet off just meant I had to stand on tippietoes to see my parking spot - then the Magellan would be my first choice.

  5. You know, I went from writing just the bare minimum (name ((often a hint itself)), waypoint, difficulty, size, maybe hint) on a piece of paper, to the whole paperless caching thing. Then promptly went back to the minimalist thing. I generate pocket queries of all the areas I'm likely to use, and load 'em into my palm. If I'm in an area without anything written down, I'll use it. If I'm on a pre-planned run, I won't, unless I'm really stuck. That much futzing around with the palm really decreases my enjoyment of the hike...

     

    Just imho.

     

    Thanks Adrenalynn. I think what you stated is pretty much what I was gearing towards. Can I assume you use cachemate on your palm? I saw little else for Palm devices... it seems that to be useful I will have to register it... nice that it is so inexpensive.

     

    I started with MobiPocketreader (free) to read the ebooks. It was really cumbersome, but works.

     

    I then went to cachemate. It has its own set of problems, especially on older palm devices. It also won't run on my blackberry, where MobiPocket will.

     

    So now I kinda split the difference.

     

    But I've been caching with people who will get up from a cache, and proceed to write their entire planned log entry, with graffiti, right there on site. It's like "come on, let's go sometime today!" "oh - if I don't write this down, I'll forgot."

     

    On a piece of paper, I scratch "fnd" or "dnf", trade or tb if any, and one or two words to remind me about the hunt/hide. This works out for me. If you read my log entries, you'll see I remember enough, even on a 20 cache day, to often write a couple PAGES. YMMV, of course...

     

    At the end of the day, I still like a little piece of waterproof scratch paper, a waterproof pen, and some tiny print... :anitongue:

  6. All I know is this guy and his family were THANKFUL we were in the area. My wife is an ex-EMT and we didn't think twice about helping. The risk of a law suit is far less than someone dying from complicated injuries in the wilderness.

     

    Out of curiosity, would he have perished had she said "hi my name's ____, I'm firstaid certified, can I help?"

     

    A couple times through with a stopwatch, average 2.2seconds...

  7. It must be "beat up a leprechuan night".

    Well after seeing those Leprechuan movies years ago some people just lose control around Leprechuans. <_<

     

    Adrenalynn, if you start hanging out in the forums you will have a tough time finding more than two caches a day <_<

     

    Not if I hang out in the forums in the wee hours waiting to pounce on the FTFs so you can't... :tired:

  8. I was going to get the eTrex Legend (blue model). Changed my mind after I went to Wal-Mart and found the price to be 40 dollars higher than advertised and they refused to pricematch their website.

     

    Later that day me and a buddy were checking a local electronics store and he talked me into the eXplorist 200. He's joining me with his own GPS later, but he is saving for a higher end model. I however cannot justify 400+ dollars, so I'm happy with the functionality of the unit I got.

     

    My question is which units have a higher accuracy, better battery life, and overall a better GPS?

     

    Hi, Welcome!

     

    This is really answered all over the forum. Did you read around for a bit?

     

    The answer before the flame war starts yet again is "yes." or "no."

     

    Both. Neither. It's a religious argument with no correct answer. Either one will get you within a hundred feet of a geocache. From there: there's a reason geocaching.com's slogan is "where you are the search engine"

     

    Now we'll sit through a thousand posts of flaming.

  9. Question for all of you seasoned puzzlers.

     

    The cache in question:

    GCTTRZ

    http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...3d-f53808d58770

     

    This is my cache, is it too tough? Too obvious? Too many lame puzzlers in this area? About on par?

     

    I don't want it to be 'unapproachable', but I want it to be pretty challenging. Please give me some feedback on this. If I need to add some hints I'm OK with that, but how do you know when to give?

     

    I am sensing that it is harder than I thought, but my esp has been on the fritz lately.

     

    Thanks,

     

    A pattern that would be very hard to stumble upon accidentally becomes immediately apparent. It's impossible to make that pattern go away... It's 4am, I read it once - more a skim - and that pattern jumped out.

     

    If that's not it, or not enough to show the way, let me know and I'll continue looking for the green guy's key...

  10. Personally, I like being up for any challenge. Any time, any where, any gravity.

     

    I've been seen running into the woods at 3am with a harness and ropes going after an FTF.

     

    That said, you're probably lucky Wy is outside of my general caching range. I'd consider an accurate estimation to be part of the challenge. So I'd head back to the truck, recover an "extraction tool" (commonly known as a "Sawzall"), return, and proceed to extract and accurately "estimate" the number of each marble... <_<

     

    Let me pose this question:

     

    If I posted a cache that read like this:

     

    "I hid a cache on my way to work. It's somewhere within a 2mi radius of my house. There are only two dozen possible routes to my office that I'm aware of. You need to guess where I live, which route I took, and where within that 2mi. it is along said route."

     

    "Hint: It's somewhere in the vicinity of a tree."

     

    What kind of incentive would you need to go hunting it?

  11. I'd like them to be shorter (shrink the URLs) and more compact - right now Cingular sends my phone 5 messages for each cache.

     

    About once a week I am awoken at 2am by mtn-man's approvals (x5) terrified that it might be a server down at work...

     

    I'm with you there!

     

    I don't need to know what state or country. I think I can figure out safely that it's in my preset radius.

     

    How far? Super.

     

    Reviewer? I'll check the webpage for that, thanks.

     

    Date/Time? That's cool.

     

    The reviewer's "published" entry? Ummm... No.

     

    New Caches edit page? Naw, thanks.

     

    Reviewer's Profile? Oh, you've gotta be kidding me!

     

    How about:

     

    Automated message from geocaching.com

    SomeNewCache (Trad. 1.5/2 Small)

    3.9mi N

    12 32.456

    -121 32.456

    http://www.geocaching.com/pseudorandomjunkurl

    [Published 22:30 4/5/06]

     

    Now THAT'S useful, and doesn't require me to parse it out, fetch the stuff I actually need with a php script (putting additional load on gc), format a new message, then send THAT to my cell!

  12. Personally, I'm thinking about killing all the people in my neighborhood. I'm kinda pissed they're encrouching on my space...

     

    That said: yeah, the bear killed 'em. But the bear didn't put 'em there.

     

    Life is full of risks. I'm personally all for banning forks. I cut myself under my fingernail taking one out of the dishwasher yesterday...

     

    I'd hide-out under my bed, but I'm afraid a plane might fall from the sky and crash into my house.

     

    It isn't "the bear's fault". The people were in bearland.

     

    It isn't the people's fault. They were in a campground.

     

    Sh** happens. People die. Every day, every minute, every second. Doing stupid stuff can greatly impact the likelyhood. Still, when we're talking about a few billion samples, freak uncommon events are going to happen at an astonishing rate...

     

    Now the real question here is how many people you know personally and well have been mauled to death by bears this week?

     

    That's what I thought. . .

     

    So let's not go off on the kneejerk "nuke the bears" campaign, eh?

     

    As the OP pointed-out: be aware. Hey. Great advice.

     

    I really don't think it needs to go anywhere else outside of observing that this isn't common behavior for bears, esp. black bears.

  13. THanks!! inputting now!!

     

    My gpsr is an old garmin emap.. I only have the option of putting them in xx.xxxxx format.. no other choice.

     

    Still works great though!

     

    Thanks again! I am outta here to do http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...c5-a9f3dd895af2

     

    I had to email the cache owner to get the coordinates just in case he had them in the woods in the incorrect format for me

     

    sweet.. this should be a fun one

     

    Nope, the eMap (atleast with the last four versions of the firmware) can be set to take coords in multiple formats. I have two of them, and worked on firmware for them, so I'm pretty confident.

     

    Here's some shots of how to do it:

     

    Ok, first, we're going to assume that you have the latest software (2.90) - if you don't, you can download it for free from Garmin: http://www.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=73

     

    We're going to power-on, press "ENT" to get past the silly warning, and now we're at the map screen.

    mapmode.jpg

     

    Press "MENU" twice to get to the Main Menu

    mainmenusetup.jpg

     

    Scroll down to System Info and hit "ENT" to check your software version.

    softwareversion.jpg

     

    Press "ENT" to get back to the Main Menu

     

    Scroll down once more to get to "Setup"

    Press "ENT"

    setupsubmenu.jpg

     

    Press RightArrow twice to get to "Advanced" tab.

    advancedtab.jpg

     

    Press DownArrow once to get to "Location Format"

     

    It sounds like yours is displaying hddd.ddddd

     

    Press "ENT" and then DownArrow on the dropdown menu to get to hddd mm.mmm'

    locationformat.jpg

     

    Press "ENT"

     

    Confirm that hddd mm.mmm' is now displaying in the "Location Format" box.

     

    Press "ESC" twice to get back to Map mode.

     

    Press and hold "ENT" until "Mark Waypoint" appears. VOILA! You should now see the appropriate formatting!

     

    If you ever need to, you can even use this method to convert waypoints from one to another format. Save them in one, then change your Location Format, go back to the waypoint, and you'll see it in the new format...

     

    Hope that helps!

     

    - Adrenalynn

  14. Im sorry if this has been asked before but my search did not come up with anything. Do any of you have a link on a bar code reading program? The only thing I am finding is for readers.

    Thanks,

    Rick

     

    What you're looking for, to print your own barcodes, is a "barcode font".

     

    Barcode is in no way standard. There's a TON of different formats.

     

    A Code39 (or "3 of 9" code) is fairly common, and there are a bunch of free fonts that you would then generate from your wordprocessor of choice.

     

    Here's one I've used in the past:

     

    http://www.barcodesinc.com/free-barcode-font/

     

    To read barcode, you're going to either need to learn the code, or find a scanner.

     

    If you post a picture of it, I can read a few dozen of the fairly common ones on-sight. I also have a 2D scanner that will read the complicated styles (like you see on a fed-ex package for example) and decode many of them...

  15. Sorry for your loss!

     

    Now get you and your family, and any other domesticated pets to your doctor and vet as well...

     

    The number of tick-bourne diseases is very high, and none of them are terribly pretty.

     

    Tularemia is very common tick transmitted disease in rabbits here. The symptoms don't match up, however.

     

    To give you an idea - the mortality rate in humans for untreated Tularemia runs about 15%. These really aren't things you want to mess with...

     

    Did you take any good photos of your ticks prior to freezing them? I can ID to species just about anywhere in the US, and to sub in the west and midwest at least...

     

    Not to be insensitive, but consider leaving wild animals in the wild. There are too many domesticated animals homeless as it is. Consider one of them, prehaps, if you're wanting to bring another pet into the fold...

  16. Well I apologize for troubling everyone on this matter. I thought it woud be a good idea to try and get a few brains together to see if we could help each other see the light on some of the puzzle caches. Apparently I am not allowed to do such a thing. I was hoping to meet some friends that we could enjoy the sport together from time to time. Sorry to have upset the little green guy so much. I won't post to the forum again and just try to muck my way through them. Once again sorry to have troubled everyone, just looking for folks who enjoy getting together and figuring out a difficult one together and going for the fun from there. I thought this was the place to do that. Sorry.

     

    [edit] I'd be more than happy to help - All things considered, as soon as I get home today, I'll put up a phpbb or smf forum for the express purpose of facilitating what you suggest, Monkeygirl!

     

    adrenalynn [atsign] sonotthedrama.net

     

    I'd be of most help in math-based puzzles, since that was my major (MS Math/MS CompSci), and my thesis (and first few jobs) was on Crypto.

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