ArtieD

Hi, folks. I have been wanting to upgrade my Moto G2 with the Moto G4. The performance specs are much nicer, but it appears that the Moto G4 does not have a magnetic compass. Specs-wise both have an accelerometer and gyro, but the Moto G4 lacks the proximity and compass that the Moto G2 has. Will this affect my caching? Thanks.

Another cacher reminded me of another thing about GW14er that left a lot to be desired: 7) People not receiving the items they paid for in advance. It wasn't just one or two people, either. Here's an excerpt from a couple attended logs: "I wouldn’t change anything about my trip except the end time...and your registration process. Both XXXXXXXXX and I didn't expect our items that we paid for in advance to not be there for us, no matter what time we were to have arrived. I understand the day didn't go as planned for everyone. But as a paid customer we shouldn't have to get attitude from your volunteers when we get angry after we're told we can only get one size shirt or nothing at all." "When we did arrive at 2PM, which is NOT that late, we (XXXXXXX and I) had found out that most of the stuff that we registered for was GONE or SOLD already. What the hell? I registered for this event 10/12/2015, WAYYYY ahead of the event. I spent $80 for the Base Climber package. XXXXXXX registered for both of us in January 201, again WAAYYY ahead of the event. We got ONE coin out of the 3 that were purchased. Yep, only one. We were told that the others had been sold. Who the heck does that? We got our t-shirts and a few other small items, but out of 3 registrations, NONE of them were 100% complete. I am very disappointed. I do realize that things happen and we did hear that people didn't show up to fill the registration bags and some of the vendors didn't show up, but come on...when we cachers pay good money for stuff, we fully expect to get it." I'm sorry, but this is just unacceptable. You take care of people who pre-ordered first and THEN deal with the rest.

Don't forget that one of the Lab Caches as well! I loved the new caches! I know some complained about them not being exactly publicized, but what can you do, I guess...

You bet it did!

I liked the event overall, but I must admit that there were some deficiencies as well. The Bad: 1) Registration could have been a LOT better. Now, I worked registration and I can tell you it was a very stressful time. Instead of having packets already filled just to give to people, they had an assembly line of sorts where people picked up what they bought as a package, one piece at a time. It slowed things down a lot. Another person and I worked the line, passing out name tags and it took us a while to get them because we had to search for each one. At least each letter was banded together on its own. Also on the subject of registration, they did not make it plainly known that free or walk-up registrations did not get a printed name tag, so we had a lot of those attendees wait a long time in line, only to be told that they needed to be in another line. Guess who got yelled at about it? 2) If you didn't read the Facebook page or website, you mostly had no clue about any kind of schedule unless you had a paid registration that included the complimentary program produced by FTF Geocacher magazine. I didn't see any signs detailing activities. 3) On the previous subject, the entire event seemed fairly disorganized. 4) No discussion forum. The organizers said that the Facebook page was the place to communicate, but user posts had to be approved and almost all were not. This meant that people had to ask unrelated questions in topics posted by the event. Either set up a forum or allow people to freely post. 5) LONG lines for the food trucks. Now, this was not the fault of the Geowoodstock organizers. I know some trucks bailed out on them. All of this meant trucks were running out of food to sell. 6) Some of the Geowoodstock-sponsored side events. Some, especially the Microbrew event, had horrendous parking. Given the crowds that come to Geowoodstock, having events in locations that obviously could not handle the crowd parking-wise was an oversight. The Good: 1) The swag was pretty awesome. The event coins were HUGE. Loved the real backpacks we got. 2) People were very friendly overall. They made people feel very welcome. 3) The location was pretty nice. I liked the way they did the VIP area. It was nicely done. 4) I liked how they showcased much of the better things about Colorado. 5) While the parking might have been a headache at times, some of the spots were awesome locations. Overall, I am glad I went. I had a lot of fun. While I have attended better Geowoodstock events and some of the things this time could have been done better, it was still a generally decent event.

I would just delete the log of the person who placed the throwdown. The ones who found it after that person did not know it was the wrong cache, so they should not be punished. That said, we did have a cacher in the area that found a throwdown near their real cache and deleted all the logs in it. Let's just say it created some real angst and led to ill will.

There's a thread on this topic: Is this an ALR on a challenge cache? No official response there and user opinions vary. Crap...I forgot I asked this already. My bad...carry on.

Is requiring a cacher to "opt in" to complete a challenge cache allowed? As in...you must post a note stating intent to do a cache to be able to do the challenge?

Any clue when the total roll out of the new challenges will come? It was supposed to be a year...

I won't mention which caches, either!

I admit that I have twice signed in blood.

I love caching in the dark. It can add a whole degree of difficulty!

We're going! It'll be our 10th MOGA!

Ammo cans get stolen around here with regularity, so ammo can caches are growing more and more rare.

I guess the reason why I am so ambivalent on ammo cans is that at least around here, even a fully-stocked ammo can keeps its contents for a very short time and then it usually sits fairly empty, save for a log and maybe one or two things. In this case, bigger just means a bigger empty container.

I have no problems with any container in any location. As long as I am having fun, who cares what size the container is? Size doesn't mean better.

See, that right there shows he's in the wrong game. Sure, he may be a FTF hound, but he forgets one of the cardinal rules, namely that you can and occasionally will be beaten if you play the FTF game. When I started in 2006, there were no smartphones logging caches, so if a cache published and you wanted to be FTF, you went for it not knowing if you'd succeed or not. It was fun to feel the pressure and anticipation. People almost always logged from home, and you never knew when the log would come, so that added to the feelings of the unknown. You could almost feel your heart sink if you saw another cacher's vehicle (or any vehicle, really) at the spot. It truly was a race to the cache. Now? With the advent of cell phones, cache logging can be instantaneous and people actually get offended if you don't warn them ahead of time if they are going to fail in getting FTF. My, how times have changed. I wish more understood this.

Wow, that's a pretty crass statement.

That irked me a bit, because there's NO info about the trackable or the cache. I went to the cache page to see what they had logged there. So far, they haven't logged the cache the TB was retrieved from. (Their cache logs from that day were all in a neighboring state, though.) Their other cache logs are all generic, aside from posting about TB drops/retrievals/swaps. At least they do that much. I tend to have disdain for anyone who feels the need to advertise like that.

Same as last year: Have fun.

THANK YOU. I have seen ridiculous challenges where the owner has not even qualified themselves, yet expects others to do it.

I liked the survey in general. I especially liked these parts: 1. Challenges requiring you to "opt in" to do it, and any caches before it do not count. I very much dislike them on principle. People should not have to "opt in" on a challenge to do it. I think it's more of a tool to boost the cache owner's ego. 2. I like the choice to have the changes affect all challenges, even ones already in action, with no grandfathering. I own challenges and I support this.

I have spoken to the OP about it and, he can correct me if I am mistaken, it would work like this: 1. It would be totally optional to participate in general. 2. You could set each bug individually. Say you don't care about the bugs in the wild, but you do care about the ones you take to events, like car bugs, trackable t-shirts, etc. Those you could set up to have logs approved while the others just post up automatically. 3. For the ones that are set up to be approved, the logs could be posted by the discoverer (bogus or legit) and they would show up via email, asking you to approve or deny. You go in, and approve the logs that look legit and deny the ones that don't. If they are legit, they'd post to the trackable page and the discoverer gets another discovery added to their count. The bogus person gets nothing. I think that's what he's talking about...

A way to allow or not allow logs on trackables? That would have to be on a log by log basis, because there is no way to distinguish false logs and true logs. Even check boxes for virtual, and physical logs could be faked. What's stopping me from checking the box that says unreal did see it? So the current method of being able to delete logs works. You could do as I do...if a log seems hinky, check their caching habits. It's pretty easy to see if they could have even seen your bug. For instance...you attend the Block Party and someone logs the bug, but it seems fishy. You check the caching done by this person and they never left Texas that day. Easy to figure they didn't actually see it.

A way to do it similar to an approval process for mailing lists could work. Check the logs out and approve them or deny them if they look hinky.