TeamJiffy

Is the stated reason for the disapproval only the fact it is on private land, or are their other concerns given by the approver for not allowing your cache? -Jif

This has turned from a thread about MOC to the value of membership. My views: The hiders own the caches. So if a hider makes a cache MO, then that's their business, not mine or yours. It's your choice as a hider to do what you want. Who are any of us to dare to arrogantly claim otherwise? Regarding the comments of "Geocaching.com is a private site, they make the rules, etc..." YES, but it is the people participating in the sport who make the sport - it's not as if Geocaching.com creates the caches and then we find them. So, the posting and the finding of the caches is, essentially, not in the public domain but in the private domain of each hider, because the hider, in placing the cache, did not transfer ownership of the cache to Geocaching.com or anyone else. By listing the cache on Geocaching.com, they are licensing/allowing anyone to come find it and enjoy it. It's the hider's cache, not Groundspeak's (that's why I said what I said in the first item - the hider gets to set the rules.) However, as a listing service adding value to the public, Groundspeak.com has the right to control/restrict the listing of any cache. That's why I support their right to do this, even though I think some of their decisions are poor (such as not handling virtuals in the way I prefer - I'd do it differently, but I support their right to do it their way.) Members of Geocaching.com certainly deserve (and should expect) that they have access to web site features that others don't. That's what they are paying for with their membership. Any view that everyone should get these features (other than the listing/logging of caches) is whining without justification.

For a number of odd reasons, last March (2003) my wife and I were trying to hide a cache at night. (We wanted to get the task of cache hides for the day finished, it seemed like a fun spontaneous thing to do, etc...) Well, wouldn't you know it, on the walk back to the car, my GPS receiver (GPS V) fell out of my jacket pocket! We discovered this when we got home. The location was filled with tall grass, ground up dirt (i.e., unlevel), etc.. The area wasn't exactly a putting green - you couldn't just shine a flashlight and find the receiver. The walk back to the car from our hiding spot was through about a third of a mile of this stuff. The next morning, we went to the site, and after about 30 minutes of searching, we found the GPS receiver, just sitting there in the tall grass. So we are real careful to check all of our belongings before we leave a cache site, and enter a car. PalmPilot, GPS, pen, goodie/first-aid bag, etc. -Jif

I've used DeLorme products for 9 years without complaint. Unless they fall apart in quality and service BIG TIME some time in the future, in me they have a customer for life. -Jif

Good... some other people are noticing the poor compass of the 60CS. I thought for a while that I was the only one. This problem was compounded by the fact I *did* have a faulty unit whose notion of "level" was off... but it is still a very tight tolerance. I don't know why they just couldn't have used the VISTA compass mechanism. -Jif

Hmm... What do you want to brag about? Finding 50,100, 200,250, 500, 1000, etc. Found beyond that (barely), but find count is nothing to brag about. Different people have different amounts of time to spend Finding 50+ in one day? Yes, we've done that, but you have to plan for it - go to a cache rich area that you generally know (for driving around) but that you haven't cached in before. In our case, Sacramento. Finding 10+ Multis in one day? Never tried doing that. I have no idea if we've achieved it. Getting married to another geocacher? Like many folks on the forums, I did marry another Geocacher - we just didn't know it at the time! [] Skipping work to go caching? I've not skipped work, because I think the concept is not right, but I have taken scheduled vacation days with the intent of going caching during that day. Got a FTF for the first time? We finally did that. It took us a long time... so we are proud of that. In general, our "proud" geocaching moments are typically finding a cache quickly that others have said was hard to find, or finding a cache after a series of other no finds. -Jif Went out on a -35 degree day?

"The Biotic Soil" Wasn't that a 1970's TV show - I think it was a spin off of "The Six Million Dollar Plant". -Jif

We've been LTF on 5 caches out of 1067. We try really hard not to be seen. Feel guilt over LTF's ? Sure...who wouldn't feel guilt? ...but you can't knock yourself out over this. If I put a cache back exactly where it was, and I know that nobody else was around when I found it, chances are, a muggle just stumbled across it and I was the poor sap who just happened to find it last. If a cache has been found 2-3 times a day, and I am the last to find, and two hours later, a string of "Not Founds" started showing up, then I probably was spotted, and I'll try to figure out how to learn from my mistake. ...but in no case, do you really know for sure. -Jif

A couple of times, I got into a short phase where I wanted to be first to find on puzzle caches in the area. I succeeded some fraction of the time. For whatever reason, most of the time I don't have that desire, so I don't try to be first to find. But I don't feel a need to make my simple flip-flops of preference be more than they are. I don't think my preferences are some surface expression of conflicting deeper "healthy" or "unhealthy" behaviors struggling for dominance in my mind like some great confrontation between Ego and Id. Geocaching is a game. Sometimes you want to play to win. Sometimes you just want to play. If you want to play to win, you have to come up with some way of keeping score. FTF counts are one such way. -Jif

Congratulations, bykenut!

If I look, and don't find, it's a DNF. Two scenarios where I won't log a DNF: If I don't get there, and it's because of me (not because of a trail being closed, washout of area, etc... something that another person would want to know), I won't log anything. I didn't look, and my experience adds no value to others looking for the cache, so why log? If I get there and say "Why bother!?!?" as I did this week-end at one cache (tons of ivy, didn't want to even try...) I won't log, because again, I didn't look, and I have nothing useful to say to anyone else. -J

I think you are just finding what you like to do, and you are becoming more selective with your time. There's nothing at all unusual or wrong about that. After all geocaching is a pastime, not an oath-given or contracted commitment! There's no reason why you should really even care if your interest wanes. If it does - so what? Usually, I cache with my wife. She likes finding the cache if we go through the effort of getting there. So, we hunt together to find it. Rarely, I go by myself. One time was last Sunday. While I found 5 caches before noon (when I fell and tore open my knee), there were 2 others I visited that I didn't even really try to hunt: One where I zeroed out in ivy, and saw logs that said other people spent 15-20 minutes searching in the ivy before finding. I decided it wasn't worth the bother and didn't even begin to hunt One where there was a person loitering nearby and I had no patience to wait for him to leave I didn't even bother logging not found on these because I have nothing useful to say - I didn't even begin to try finding them, so all I could have left is a not hunted log - which doesn't exist. Am I concerned about this? No. Do I reflect upon it? No. Do I feel awful that I don't seem to have interest in finding these caches? No. I always try to remember my father's advice to me many years ago. I was about eleven years old. We were attending a movie, and after twenty minutes, we both decided we really were bored by the film. When I told him I was bored, he said "So am I - let's go." When I asked him if he was mad about wasting the money on the tickets, and if we should have stayed to the end he said "I wish we hadn't purchased the tickets, but we did, and we were in the movie too long to ask for our money back. We've already wasted our money. Let's not waste our time, too." I've always remembered those words. In this case, take it to mean If you aren't enjoying the pastime, don't waste your time doing it, or especially, don't waste your time worrying about the fact you aren't enjoying it. -J

If you are careful in how you plug and unplug devices from your laptop's serial port, my guess is that the serial port on your laptop should last as long as you use your laptop... It's not like there is a "snap-to" connection that can wear out with repeated use. Consider: let's say you hook things in and out of that port ten times a day - a lot! 365 days a year = 3,650 times. 5 years of laptop life (if it's lucky) means 18,250 connections. My guess is it should survive that use. That really isn't a lot for a set of metal connections... If you are really worried, hook up a low-profile DB-9 Gender converter to the back, and leave it attached. Do the same to the ends of your cables (of the opposite gender). That will allow you to replace the ends of the cables (the gender changers) or the gender converter on the PC and preserve the cables themselves, and the DB-9 Serial port out of the back of your PC as well. Although I think most people (including myself) would view this as complete overkill. See image below...

I have to admit, the Amish Hacker's logo kind of frightens me, in a I'd hate to turn a corner and run into that face kind of way...

For my zip code (95070): 101 Caches per square mile: 202/10 = 2.02 -Jif

I think this promotion is a great idea... thanks to all involved for setting this up. May I suggest that an "Official Jeep Geocaching event" toy be sold in the Groundspeak shop? A yellow Jeep with a tiny "Let's Go Geocaching!" bumper sticker on the back? Also, I assume the allocating of TB's will be based on cache counts in each state... but I'd rather simply trust folks to "get that" vs. debating allocation mechanisms in the forums. -Jif

I think a "Not Found" is better. Here's why... A lot of software (GSAK, Watcher) will summarize the last four or five Finds/Not-Founds in a list of caches. That way, you may think twice about visiting a place with many not founds since the last find. A "Note" doesn't give that same sense of alert. A reason I have heard to use Note instead of "Not Found" is if you have a personal view that a "Not Found" is somehow a blemish on your Geocaching record, and therefore you think in this case that you don't deserve the knock on your reputation since you couldn't even try searching for the cache. I really don't care anymore about what people think of my "record" so I'd log it as "Not Found" and leave it as that. If Geocaching.com let you bring up a list of your "Not Found" caches and then you used that to remind yourself of caches you want to try again, I could see my opinion changing... The only time I don't log "Not Found" is when I don't even make the attempt for whatever reason. For example, when 300 feet from the cache, I get a phone call from work saying "All Heck is breaking loose! You need to come back in!" and then I turn around and head to the car. I don't have anything useful to say about the cache, so why bother logging anything? In your case, you have something useful to say... the cache cannot be reached. Hilight it with the "Not Found". -Jif

No, my problem is not forgetting to calibrate the compass. Actually, if you fail to calibrate on the Vista, you would get an incorrect pointer, but it still would be steady and consistent in its incorrectness - it would not wander like my 60CS does. The suggestion of the manual to calibrate whenever you get odd readings is somewhat annoying. The Vista only needed recalibration when changing batteries. The only good way for me to resolve this is to find someone (or some store willing to demo outside) a second 60CS and compare them side-by-side after calibration. -Jif

No. An electronic compass is supposed to point "north" correctly in all situations - even when standing still. That's the primary difference between the 60 and the 60CS. I am wondering if my 60CS is defective, as has been suggested. Just walking in a straight line, without pointing at a cache, I see the compass rose move around... it's not just confused about a cache location vs. where I am... it is confused about the direction of "north" at any given moment... Do any others see this? -Jif

I support seeing as a pair of automatically computed pieces of info available at all times: 1) That fantastic list Jeremy just created, showing "If you have found... you are in the top..." 2) The idea of seeing on "My Cache Page" the "seti@home" statistic mentioned above. -Jif

Jeremy - I love the list you just provided. Seriously. For everyone, it lets you know how you stack up compared to the top finders, without making explicit the leaders.... I would love to see this list updated daily on a page... That way, I know my find count of 1020 is roughly 1/5th of the best finder count. The fact that the top finder is AAAAnderson, BBBBaker, CCCCooper or DDDDonaldson really doesn't matter to me. So, please provide the top find counts daily just as you have here. -Jif

Marky has certainly done what you suggest. His cache,Take and MAKE a Cache provided material for many folks to place caches around the San Jose area. It succeeded wonderfully. With his and Joani's clever hides, they have given much to the Bay Area caching community. I like Marky's idea, while recognizing that some folks are better finders than hiders. I would prefer to really encourage people to do this, rather than say they must do this. (how can you force them to do something, after all!!?) But other than that subtlety, I support his idea. Especially in an area like San Jose where "FTF" on a cache is valued, and hotly pursued. In other areas, where the culture has not formed to value FTF's, his idea probably won't make much sense, because people in those locations would not think they "got" something by getting a FTF, so there is nothing to "pay back". -Jif

Hi - Does anyone else with experience with both a Vista and a 60CS compass find that the 60CS compass performs far worse than its Vista cousin? The Vista compass would lock onto a "place to point to" and would very closely tie itself to that point. The 60CS seems "mushy" - it seems to wander as to what it is "pointing to" To clarify: Usually, with my Vista, the compass would "lock into" an idea as to what it was pointing to. And then, it would behave as if the arrow of the compass needle was attached by a rubber band to the target location. You could turn, walk around the "target location" in a circle, and see that arrow just stay "locked in" - pointing to that point, again, as if a rubber band were attached from the arrow tip of the compass needle to the target location. The 60CS needle seems to bounce around, pointing this way and that frequently, so I never get a sense that I am 'locked into a target'. Further, the 60CS seems to demand a levelling of the GPSr that is not required by the Vista. I rarely do *not* get the "Hold Level" warning. In conclusion, the electronic compass in the 60CS is a disappointment compared to the Vista, and, for me, is a black eye to an otherwise fine product. Do others have these problems with the 60CS compass? -Jif

No more rules. Please. I already dislike too many of the ones we already have. (read: my constant complaint about the tightened restrictions on virtuals) -Jif

I too think lame micros are a direct result of the clampdown on virtual caches. I also think the clampdown on virtual caches was required because TPTB choose to enforce the .1 mile restriction in the virtual space as well as the physical space. 1) The two spaces shouldn't intersect. A virtual should be possible to have quite close to a real cache. If someone logs both, why, then, SO WHAT!?!? 2) Loosen the restriction on virtuals. That way we can point people to things that are interesting to each of us vs. those things interesting to another (approver.) My coffee table books aren't the same as yours, so that restriction wastes everyone's time. The lame virtuals really bothered folks who were blocked out from hiding a cache nearby. Remove that restriction, and people will probably tolerate virtuals a lot more. Again - I much prefered the lame virtuals over the lame micros. What a mess we have now! At least with the virtual cache, the experience was FINISHED when I learned the interesting (to some) fact - and that is good enough for me. Speaking of TPTB, have they ever posted any comments re: these topics? -Jif