Gary and Mary Adventurers

Bullcrap. The website doesn't have doors it has big bay windows. Just because you left the curtains drawn wide open doesn't mean we all have to look the other way because we walked passed the side of your house. As someone else said, "apologies" or not, if you put it on a publicly accessable directory, then you made it viewable to the public no matter *how* they ended up at the URL. There are entire web games built on the idea that you need to solve the next URL to go to and none of the pages are actually linked to each other. The idea that changing Mar to Apr or GC0022 to GC0221 (before the usage of uids) is "hacking" is laughable. Development takes place *off* of the web and is finished before it is added to the public pages being served. I guess that lesson is now learned. Usage of that picture, in even an internal sense, is fairly callous. That doesn't require an apology but as the front man for a company it could at least require some tact in handling the relationship with your very limited niche market. To go beyond denying an apology and to actually *request* one from someone who did nothing wrong (and the fact that he gave it shows that he is a bigger man than you) is unsuprisingly little more than I expected from you, but still highly absurd. El Diablo explained what happened., and that should be sufficient. Because someone can walk into my yard and takes something that is not locked up, does not make it right to do so. The TC site is not one of those websites that participates it the quoted "game". THe information was not intended for public use, and should not have been distributed. The picture is being taken out of context anyways. The people down there see these wild cats in the same light as we see rodents. Some people keep rats and mice as pets, but I will always reserve the right to remove them from my house and yard in any manner that is safe.

Accessing a public/published site, and attemting to access an as yet unfinished page are completely different issues. As stated earlier, Just because I leave my front door unlocked does not mean I am granting public acces to my living room. The legality of what was done is not what I question..... I see the action (Starting the thread and publishing the link) as being unethical, and plain wrong

It really is not much different if someone gets into a site through a back door, an unpublished URL, or by defeating a password scheme. If the page is not intended for public use it should not have been brought public by this thread without at least questioning the editors As others have said.....Enough Said

Are you kidding? If I am interested in purchasing a Dell computer and I type in Dell.com instead of googling it and clicking on a link, am I hacking their site? No I am not kidding...........As a IT staff member, I know that often web pages are "hidden" by slightly changing the URL. True the person that put this up should have used a better "hidden" URL , but untill a site makes a page public, it is "hacking" to change URLs to attempt to get into it. Many times things are tried out, and decided not to be in the sites best interest. Hacking is hacking whether meant to be malicious or not. Dell.com is a published and well known site....Dell.secret.com is not (Dell.secret.com is ficticious but an example)

ElDiablo does not have any need to apologize for an action of a sub, that was never intended to be public. I am proud to say that I am a charter subscriber to TC and would not dream of changing that because of this incident. Again I feel the originator of this thread was the problem not TC or its staff Thanks for the answer ED BTW I was creating my first post while ED was responding to this incident

First of all, the unpublished Todays Cacher you saw may have been an internal joke, but even if it was going to be a true cover, we should not get upset untill we see any article that might accompany it. The editors may have been planning an environmental issue, and used that picture to make a point condemning the practice. That being said, what is happening down under, is truely a shame. I am not refering to the "cat tree" I am refering to all the non-native animals being introduced to the country. Another point made was that it was such a good thing to have your animal fixed to prevent the explosion of feral cats. If we had not erradicated the natural predators in the states (wolves, coyotes, bobcats, etc) nature would be taking care of the problem. The person that "hacked" into the webpage (and you did hack into it since you used a link that you guessed would work) should not have published the link, and started this issue without first trying to get an explanation from the editors of TC. In my eyes you are the villian here not TC or the cat tree builder.

When they are ready, I would order 5 right away Thanks for the effort

Unfortunately, it is not only the yellow Jeeps that seem to vanish. TBs have always, and will undoubtedly continue to be items that some people think are too cool to pass on to the next cacher. That is the chance everyone that releases a TB takes. I personally have had several go AWOL. I would have liked to see them travel more, but it does not change my overall attitude toward TBs or the people that pass them on freely, or even the people that think they are too cool to give up. Enjoy the Adventures, and dont sweat the bumps involved Gary and Mary

Even Microsoft Streets and Trips (less than $30 street price) will interface with your GPSr and display your realtime location on the laptop map screen. I have done this, and find a fun and intresting addition. Thanks for the Adventures Gary and Mary

18.4 miles for the first 100, of which 4 are mine and about 5 are not yet in my 518 finds

I know the term RV is often associated with MotorHomes, but many owners of Travel Trailers consider themselves RVrs too. That being said.......I pull a 30ft Travel Trailer and enjoy caching wherever I happen to be. Usually I arrive at my campsite, set camp and then pull out the laptop and GPS to see what caches are nearby. But I also will find caches along my planned route and pick them up along the way. On 2 occasions I have decided that I need to drive closer than the 30 footer will allow. On one of those occasions I actually dropped the trailer on the roadside, and followed the 2track to within walking distance. The other time I dropped the trailer in a church parking lot, and proceeded up the park road again to within walking distance. Both these caches were worth the experience, but my caching partner (sometimes reffered to as my wife) wondered if I had lost my mind No matter how you RV, combining Geocaching with it adds much to your experience in the outdoors.

I noticed the posting describing a movie theatre owner allowing people to walk in without paying. I would not be happy with the owner if he allowed people to walk in the FRONT door either, but if the owner padlocked the BACKDOOR that was used as the EMERGENCY exit......That would make me even madder. And I'd pay to see a good movie, so that the movie maker can continue making additional GREAT movies. Thanks Jeremy, continue the great work.

I have used both Garmins, and Mags, and prefer the Garmins. The main concern I had with my Sportrak Map (beside the cracking case which was fixed with no charge) was the tendancy for Mags to "lag" I would often overshoot a cache then the unit would catch up with me and tell me to turn around. My wife would walk right to the area and wait for me to come back (she was using our old Garmin 12) I found that if I stopped and waited for a minute or so when I go to within about 100 feet that the unit would "catch up" with me and be fine. But, I am impatient and tended not to wait like I should. My new unit, a Garmin GPS V, does not have this quirk, and has been great to use. Also both times that I had service issues they were resolved quickly and easily with Garmin. But, I also had fairly quick service from Magellan concerning the defective case. All in all both brands are good but the Garmin units are more to my taste. Have a great Adventure

I will find some way to exchange it some place, then proceed to post anywhere and everywhere every detail of my experience with Garmin. It sounds like you are blowing it out of proportion. The employees at Garmin (like every company) are humans, and sometimes a mistake happens. When I had to have my GPS 12 fixed (after dropping it , and taking it on many rough caches) Garmin was great about it, and included a free case. When my Mag SportTrak Map had case cracks Mag fixed it, but barely acknowledged that it was a design flaw Give the folks at Garmin a chance to make it right.

Started with a green Venture loved it, but lost it at a cache on the Northern shore of Lake Superior. Replaced the Venture with a GPS 12 (best I could find in Thunder Bay) Had some minor problems with the 12 (which Garmin fixed) so thought I would try a Mag SportTrak Map hated the Mag Lag Got a GPS V and think it is just great, so passed the 12 on to my Best half (the Mag makes a great paperweight) Just got a GPSMAP 76 to upgrade the 12 it looks to be almost as nice as the V Might give the Mag to my grown son and after he is addicted convince him to go Garmin

The policy seems workable. At least Indiana did not try to attach a fee to the permit like Michigan did. If someone has more than 2 "GOOD" caches in one state park, maybe they can get someone to adopt the others for them. I myself have 2 active caches in Potato Creek SP, and have been holding off updating them.

I recently got an email from Indy Diver informing some of the Indiana geocachers that the DNR is having an open meeting tomorrow 10-19-2004 at 10:00 am . The meeting will be held at Fort Benjamin Harrison State Park, and will deal with the establishment of a statewide policy for caches in state parks. The tentative regs involve a free permit that would be valid for one year. Several other rules involving density of caches in a park, and limiting the nuber of hide per user are also being discussed. It could be that the Prophetstown people are waiting till after this meeting before deciding what to do about caches on their property. The rules at least would give a consistant statewide method of placing caches in state parks.

I agree with Jeremy. The purpose of the activity is to find the cache, and the rules say log it. It makes little difference how you word it, if people want to add to their finds they will do it the way they want. Jeremy, just leave it be Have a great Adventure

You can download waypoints to be used in EasyGPS several ways. The simplest way for a single one is to use the download waypoint from the cache listing page. Of course that only will download 1 at a time. The next way is to do a search by one of the many ways that Geocaching.com will allow, and then at the bottom of the page you can select all of them to be downloaded. But the best way, and the way that allows the most flexibility, and options, is to become a premium member. That will allow you to run a Pocket Query that can have as many as 500 waypoints in each query. These can be e-mailed to you at whatever interval you would like. Before you get too used to EasyGPS, you might consider looking at GSAK which has many features that are missing in EasyGPS. The best feature iis that not only do you get the waypoint information, but you also get almost all the info that is shown on the cache listing page, displayed in a similar look to the webpage Good luck and I hope you have many fun Adventures Gary of Gary and Mary Adventurers

It is amazing that the Magellan lovers attack the GPS V, when everyone knows that Magellans have that terrible LAG. I really like my Magellan SportTrak Map, but the lag really caused me problems. I would be waiting for the Magellan to catch up and my better half would be zeroing in on the cache with our old Garmin GPS 12. I got the opportunity to purchase a GPS V at a reasonable price (the former owner was too confused by all its features) and have only fired up the Magellan a couple of times since. Mags are great devices, and I would still be using it and letting the lag catch up with me, if my partner in crime was not so good with the GPS 12. I reallly cannot understand though why owners of either brand attack owners of the other brand. I guess it is just the equivalent to the Ford/Chevy feud among car owners. Thanks for all the Adventures

That's nice thanks for sharing. BTW:We're not discussing whether or not alternate coordinates should be allowed or used. We're discussing a glitch in viewing them on printouts or GPX viewers. TOPIC please. I dont think of it a glitch. PQs are great, but they DO NOT replace the true on-line listing. Alternate coordinates may be worse than the originals, or somone could purposely put in bad coordinates to create havoc. We already have to deal with mugglers stealing caches, I would not want to be dealing with muggled coordinates. No system is perfect. Jeremy's suggestion of maintenance logs sounds good, but make it possible for the the owner to delete someones "bad" alternate coords please. Thanks for all the Adventures Gary

I dont know the terrain, or area you are walking through, but if there are metal objects, (fenceposts, guardrails, etc.) a good way to hide a micro or stage for a multi is a magnetic keybox. They are usually dark, not easily noticed if on the bottom or back of something. I have also seen very small plastic boxes with velcro attaching them to the bottom of objects. Be creative!!!

It is interesting that the search engine on the USFWS webpage can find no reference to either geocache, or geocaching. You would think that they would want the people (you know the ones they are supposed to work for) to know about such policies. I guess it is easier to have signs printed, haul them out to distant places and have them be left where folks are supposed to be enjoying nature. Signs like these are a much bigger eyesore, and probably have more impact on the animals than a well concealed tupperware container. IMHO

We sent our ST Map to Magellan, and got it back in just under a week. They replaced the case, and it looks great now (There were a couple minor scratches on the display screen). They returned the unit, along with a new manual, fresh batteries, and a dash mount. (Anybody need a dash mount --- I have had one since the summer) The unit has been working fine since I received it back. I am not trying to fan the fire about Garmin vs Magellan, but I will add my 2cents worth. The Sportrak Map is a great unit, easy to use, and seems to hold locks on the sats better than the Etrex Venture we had and lost in Canade. Our Garmin GPS 12 that we bought in Canada to replace the Venture, was also easy to use, but I missed the WAAS accuracy. I purchased a Garmin GPS V while the ST was out for repairs (yes I know I am an adidict) and am now using it . The GPS V is becoming my favorite, but the jury is still out. The main issue I had with the ST Map was the lag as you got close to your destination. I would usually overshoot the cache, and end up coming back to the correct spot. (Meanwhile Mary would have often found the cache). The GPS V does not have that problem. The GPS V is a bit more complicated, but since I admit to being a geek that is not much of an issue for me. I miss the Description coming in from queeries, but I think that the longer waypoint names, and the way the new GSAK can combine waypoint code with description will solve that problem for me. So all in all Magellan and Garmin both have fine units, but no one unit is perfect. I guess that is why we now have 3 for a team of 2 Thanks for clueing me in to th cracks before it got to be too late Thanks for the Adventures Gary of Gary and Mary

I will vote no for this one. My initial thoughts were "thats cool" , but after looking at some of the posts, I see this could turn into another of these no competition issues. With one post saying 5 pounds of trash would be an appropriate minimum, it made me think about some of the sites I have been to. It would take hours to pick up 5 pounds of "peanuts" and only seconds to pick up 5 pounds of old auto parts. It would be nice to show people that 20,000 CITO logs were posted last month, but 1 or 2 good CITO events can have a lot more good PR Lets keep up the good work we do, and use CITO EVENTS to help get out the good word. Thanks for the Adventure Gary and Mary