brad.32

If your camera has high enough resolution/zoom, you could take a picture from "far away" and then crop it. As long as you don't enlarge the picture after that, then it may be okay. Yes, instruction tags are useful for the logging process and the goal if it's simple and fixed. People don't always read them, some people don't need them.

Yesterday I forgot to post some breast cancer examples that I knew of: Dotty Bear, http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=8257 Breast Cancer Awareness, http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=53738 Hope, http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=52104

A TB that has info about a charity in its description seems like a reasonable thing to do, and might get some people interested and go donate, but bons is right: it's likely to go missing before it completes its mission and the money will be lost.

As far as I know there aren't any rules for TB hotels, but some cache owners have generated rules for theirs, including the "leave-one-to-take-one rule". It is hard to enforce most TB "rules" anyway. Most things are guidelines or etiquette. "TBs must be placed within 14 days." Yeah, right. People do what they think is the right thing in their minds. The caches are the most regulated part of caching, because they actually can be controled. As Car37&Shnde pointed out, even if the equal TB trade thing was a rule, the cache owner could modify the TB hotel description after approval. They would have to be constantly policed to control that and that's too much interference from above for people's taste. If TBs are separate "game" from usual items, then there is nothing against grabbing the entire contents from a TB hotel, IF you can help all of them, but unlikely.

I agree with bons. I don't want people messin' with "my" bugs. I put the instruction tag on the bug that I want on it. If I want it changed then I'll contact the current holder and ASK for a change and mail a new, different tag to them. If the bug gets damaged and needs fixing of some sort, then please contact me and we'll work something out (the finder would obviously be in a better position to suggest and implement a fix). Call me paternal, but I want to know beforehand what is planned. If I find a bug without an instruction tag, I'll contact the owner and ask if they would like an instruction tag added. If they agree, THEN I'll add it. That's the procedure I would want for mine. I also don't put them in bags. They don't need them and the bag will turn to trash in a few placements anyway.

... TB owners can mark bugs as missing instead of moving them to the graveyard, blah blah. (Doesn't solve your problem.)

The Cannonball Run web site has had some updates for 2004, but the old logo is still there. Does that mean the old logo won the contest, is the winning design going to be unveiled when the race starts, or something else? ... I didn't enter the contest, nor do I have anything to do with organizing the race or web site, just curious about the result.

Click on "user stats" in the user's profile, then click on "Travel Bug dog tags" This user is messing with things. The bugs are around the world. Maybe the user picked random numbers for the tracking numbers and logged those bug "finds".

Whether TB trading is separate or not is open to debate, most recently: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=65368 ... the funny thing is I had to search for "seperate" instead of separate to find that thread. Scary.

I'm somewhere in the middle. I've created more bugs than I've found because I like making them and would have to go to regular-sized caches to find more bugs. Micros aren't as interesting and have certain limitations for TBs.

Have you contacted the current holder? Assuming you can figure out from the logs who it was. If you don't get an action from them, then do as jbhooker3 said: the should be in "unknown location".

Wait! Don't tell me. Hmmm... How many days until the race is it today?

I usually leave something at a regular-sized cache, sometimes take something, always leave something if I take, and treat a TB like anything else for exchanging. It's very rare that I would have a TB in hand to exchange for another.

<body background="foo.jpg" ...> <body bgcolor="color" ...> "color" can be a color name ("blue") or a specification like "#0000ff" for blue, etc The body spec is normally at the beginning of the html (after the header), but it works imbedded in cache/TB pages too.

Ooh, Ooh (raises arm) That's an easy one: no. All entries have to be ground-based, road-traveling, wheeled, motorized vehicles that could potentially (if life-sized, etc) travel cross country. These are getting easier now that it's been spelled out by CannonBall Run and Dekaner

The tag is <br> because the / is not needed because break is not a paired tag. ... or you could use an ordered list: <ol> <li>place A <li>place B <li>place C </ol> which will place numbers in front with periods, but not ")"s.

Please remove your tracking number from your post. It's a secret and should not be shown. If you want to refer to it, then provide the reference number, TBxxxx. Once you activate the bug, it should be listed in your inventory and available to drop when you go to log a cache. Have you activated it?

... Dekaner started this thread with that near the beginning of January, and I'm pretty sure it means end of Jan.

The owner of the bug, I didn't check if it was you, should move the bug to 'unknown location' on the bug's web so it moves off of the current cache inventory. The way it's supposed to work is, when the bug is placed again, the bug will continue where it left off, as opposed to moving it to the graveyard, which is a physical location and adds many miles if the bug resurfaces.

Snoogans, here is the source...

TBs should have an instruction sheet or tag. If it's laminated, then it doesn't need a plastic bag/ziploc. Plastic bags don't last very long. Anyway, you can still make a tag and send an email to the current holder and ask them to hold it (bah!) until you can mail a tag for them to attach.

The cache sounds like a TB hotel with a trade one to take one policy. Some TB hotels have that policy.

All entries have to be ground-based, wheeled vehicles... Hmmm, nothing comes to mind there.

I added the link to your sheet into my post on Snoogans' Tb Longevity Clinic (http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=64691) that lists a number of instruction tag links.

Speaking of mission / instruction tags. There are a number of old threads about the subject, one more recent one that shows some tags: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=25784 because a number of people have Illustrator, Word, etc files that they use as well as others that are available online, like the ones bons has posted: Edited to add JeeperMTJ's sheet: http://www.martin-sommer.com/geocaching/TBSheetBlank.doc There is also the GC one if you want to use that one, but it's too big if printed directly from a web browser, so do a screen shot of it and print it smaller after pasting it into a Word doc, a graphics editing program (PaintShopPro / Photoshop), etc. ... and old/MIA bugs don't have to go to the graveyard anymore, they can (and should) go to the unknown location which is now an option for the owner, on the bug's page. ... and listen to bthomas.