Adrenalynn

So I pulled-up the kinda cool image processing package IPTK5 from Reindeer Graphics. I used to use it a lot for machine vision applications. I then set-out to measure that hole vs. the can. Statistically, it's pretty impressive. I used an arbitrary but consistant scale that we'll simply call "units". We find the shape of the hole vs can: Breadth: 1.18384 1.18359 (units) Length: 4.38417 4.38416 (units) I find that to be an amazing statistical anomoly... A higher resolution photo might help to rectify the anomoly ...

Sure - but I tossed it together kinda quick. I planned on making a better one tonight...

Bold was added by me. No pointy thing was used in order to hide the cache. A pointy thing (if you call a flat shovel pointy) was used to dig a hole that had absolutely nothing to do with geocaching in the least bit. I made use of a pre-existing man-dug hole. I'm not trying to cover anything up that is wrong. If using a perfectly good hole is against the rules then I await the say so from a reviewer and will be more than happy to move the cache. No problem, no questions asked. I agree with your post Adrenalynn, end of dicussion (if it were up to me anyway ). So a shovel was not used in order to make the hole? Or are you saying the cache could have been hidden under the dirt independant of the hole being made? Prehaps by some magic-matter-displacement technology? Surely I can plant a few pounds of explosives in order to place a cache. Explosives aren't terribly pointy, generally...

"Caches that are buried. If a shovel, trowel or other “pointy” object is used to dig, whether in order to hide or to find the cache, then it is not appropriate. " Did a shovel make that hole, yes or no? The hider says yes. Boom. End of discussion, thank you for playing.

Wow. Over 13ft long, and had just eaten an impala ewe!

I can relate! Recvd, btw, thanks!

They did WHAT?!? Live hamsters??? Aren't there any rules about placing live animals in caches???? If it's not a joke, I would have been mad as heck if I ran across something like that. I'd have new pets to take care of 'cause they would not have been left there. Yeah, but then you'd have to trade-up and leave your dog... Do you have the linkage on that snake story? I'd love to read it!

You and I don't use the same kind of sampling equipment. My holes can involve a backhoe. Small ones are 4" diameter, normal about 6" but every now and then you just can't get around needing a good backhoe. Somehow I don't think we are even in the same profession. Other than sampling equipment I don't even know what this topic is about. Not enough background info was moved forward into this thread. Sure - and we can go to the 3000ft ice-cores too... They come in different sizes, but unequal and/or contaminated is pretty much a universal, wouldn't you agree? (We submit ours for building permits that require soil sampling, environmental impact studies, etc. We got a stop notice on a fence construction once for inadequate soil samples. Approved by one inspector, shot down by another. On a *fence*.)

Oh yeah, here it is...

Where'd I put that troll repellent? Deet just never seems to be strong enough for ugly, well established Trolls... The hundred percent backwoods stuff does an ok job of keeping baby trolls off, though...

I'm more for the random date. My first few caches had a different username that I've used for years - but I hadn't tried to register it yet, and it was taken... I've taken to going to the Info screen on my GPS and checking the date and time before signing now. How the %^#$ should I know what date it is? That's the problem with not working "standard work weeks" anymore.

Or more appropriately, a decent surveying compass and a few sets of NiMH batteries. . .

Sigh! Picky! Picky! Yoou gotta nit-pick, don't you, over a few million finds? Some people just take the cake! Sheesh! Lookit, Isonzo, it takes time to enter 20,000,000 fake finds and I have other obligations as well. Trust me, it will get done in time! Meanwhile, why dontcha sign up for my August 2035 event? (see, now I would have gone with the classic: "oh, I have them, but a programming bug won't take numbers that big, so the counter rolled-over" line...)

Awesome! Definitely a Markwell Moment there!

Get 'em to pay you to tear it down. See, now we've made it a for-profit endeavor!

Well, it might have been the case back when I started in the 80's and we called "RS232" "Random Standard"... Now-adays, there's DTE (Data Terminal Equipment) and DCE (Data Communication Equipment). The only difference is that TX and RX are reversed. If that were the case, you'd get a null modem and plug that in between and life would be grand. The upshot is that the garmin is intended to plug into a PC (DTE) so it's wired DCE. Which *is* backward from the intended standard, incidentally. The PC was wired to be a terminal to a mainframe - but that's getting off in the weeds... Anywho - it's intended to plug into a PC. So any USB->Serial adapter is going to work since it's also intended to behave as a PC-side port. A note for technical accuracy so I don't get called on it: There is some oddball equipment that wants certain pins high and certain pins low for stupid nothing-reasons. So there are different types of null modems. DSR pulled high, CD pulled high or low, etc. But those aren't consumer devices, such as GPSrs are.

Maybe you should read the original thread, Drgnsrealm. No where was it stated that it was dug by "high school kids". It's people trying to make up excuses for burying a cache. Reviewers rarely if ever know a cache is buried until someone brings it to their attention. Yes, it was stated that it was a "perfect tight fit". The excuse was made after the heat was turned on for burying a cache, not before. I couldn't give a sh** less that maybe someone somewhere DNF'd it. Morons digging holes is the kinda thing landmanagers get all testy about. Hence the purpose and reason for the prohibition. Groundspeak trying to make cachers look responsible to land managers. And cachers going out of their way to try to take a dump on the money Groundspeak invests in that pursuit. If a land manager even suspects that maybe that hole came from burying a cache, there is a better than even chance that whole freakin' state ends-up off the cache maps for anything outside of lamp post hides . . . They get *really* testy about that...

Good thought! See, now that's creative problem solving! There's another option: Just commission the artist to knock it off somewhere else. Maybe build it like 3x the size and have the GIANT tide-e-bowl. Heck, it could be a major tourist attraction.

Sounds like if one has children in the public school system there, then they should be charged with child abuse for not leaving... [edited to make the statement more generic and conceptual. Think "self moderation".]

Speaking of "tink...tink..." and LNT: I had the opportunity some decade or so ago to hike across central and South America. You're slashing along clearing a trail when suddenly: "tink!" - your machete hits stone. A little more work, and you realize that there's a 200ft stone building in your way. In just a few hundred years, the jungle reclaims an entire civilization worth of "damage". Can't see it from the air, can't see it from the ground. "That's great in a jungle!" one might cry... In the deserts they spend years excavating hundreds of feet deep to get to a new site that someone happened to find some microscopic hint of in some ancient texts. Everything in between is just that - in between. My take? Simply this: I don't care for ATV's 4 wide ripping up the woods - 'cause it's butt-ugly for years. Hikers "Destroying the land" for all eternity? Puhlease. Not buying it. Here's fifty cents. If you can find a payphone, call someone more gullible.

Well, I guess that would bring us to the topic of teachers that should be thrown in the dumpster... "Today we're going to learn to take soil samples. We just won't learn how to take a soil sample. We'll go out of our way to corrupt the sample and to make it as worthless as humanly possible, but hey, it burns one more day in my year".

You know, the primary reason that I can see for the 1/10mi prohibition is to lesson the impact on the land and to satisfy land managers. Moving it to another site in order to get around that is really just destructive to the hobby in-and-of itself. Have you considered renting a crane and flatbed and just moving the "artwork" someplace less "cache-dense"?

Hey, I'm all ready to believe. Regardless of who and or why - it's going to have a slice of soil missing. Go show me half a dozen holes with slices missing, and I'm all ready to believe it.

Let me start by saying, I'm not really trying to start anything with this I just have a few questions of my own. Ok, scavok said a School team took the soil samples... How do you know they are not in standards that a lab would use?? I remember doing stuff like this in my Earth Science and we went out and just dug holes (many times not placing the dirt back) with regular shovels we found in the Ag building. MANY of these holes we in fact square, due to the Ag guys liking those square headed shovels and due to the fact we wasn't sending them off to a lab we was testing them in class. If you would read more carefully you would understand that a School team did it, and then common sense would tell ya that it could be a smart teacher doing a hands on experiment. As for me say a troll, as I’m sure many people here already know, a troll can be someone rooting around in a thread/forum looking for a way to start trouble. Now, sad as it might be, I am one that like trolls and take the "bait" almost all the time. Not to really start trouble myself, but to put my 2bits worth in and to make clear what I would otherwise leave up to the reader to decide what it means. So, as I said before, I don't see an issue to keep going on and on about. The reviewer didn't care, which it's THEIR "Jobs" to care, so what is the point to all this????? Edited to add:: what does the Post amount matter, and I doubt you spend as much time "researching" on this site as I do.. and as i have decided myself the amount of finds don't much matter to how well you understand this hobby Soil samples need equal amounts of soil at each layer. But I wouldn't really know, I only sign-off on a few hundred a day during certain months... When I go out to the university Ag sites here, I see 30 or so for every few acres, every single one of them cored with a coring tool. I would like to see ONE legitimate example of a hole dug with a shovel by a university (not a backyard Gardener)that was a soil sample and that would _exactly_ fit a 30cal ammo can. 'Cause I call BS. Until then, I stand by "gullible" [edited to add: If he shows a photo of them coring with a shovel, and a dozen or so identical holes with slices missing from them (remember, the slice would have to go in for analysis), then I'll also accept that. Otherwise, he's just BSing to keep from having a buried cache archived...]

14hrs isn't, with the backlight on. I get about 12hrs on my Garmin eMap normally. About 4hrs with the backlight. And that's not continuous use by any stretch.