OConnellz

Sure enough, it is there! I liked it better on my home page, but oh well.

No calendar for me, and I my dues are up to date....

Hey ya! Check on e-bay, look for GPSgeek. They have great inexpensive cables($10?). I don't know if they make the PCInterface cables, though. Could be worth checking out!

cool_librarian- I agree completely! As someone who sees some benefit and motivation from the (A)SGPS, but also doesn't plan weekends around it, I think that some people are taking this issue quite seriously. Sure, I like the system, but I don't live by it. If we (all of the OConnellz) tried to cache according to the system, I guarantee I would be flying solo, and probably not just when it came to caching. The point I was trying to make earlier was just that this system works for some people, the system I suggested might work for other people, and the total number found might be good enough for others. As you point out, this is an individual enough sport that it seems like a waste of time to criticize other cachers unless they are really going to give the collective group a bad name- by breaking the rules. One system or another just adds to the community. Like you said, if you don't like it, don't use it. If someone thinks they can do something better, then they should go for it. Put their time and effort where their mouth is. That is exactly what Skydiver did, and he did a good job defining exactly what motivates him to go for a cache. I personally don't agree that difficulty alone makes a great cache. I do use the SGPS frequently, but more for other information than points. Occasionally, I will look at the points as motivation, but put it into perspective on what I consider a fun cache. I had the know how to implement my system, I would. Someday soon, I might. For now, I look only at the pages and statistics that I am interested in. May you have the hindsight to know where you've been and the foresight to where you're going and the insight to know when you're going too far.

I like to refer to it as the "Arbitrary" points system, because it is just that. It is based on and geared towards what a click of cachers think makes a cache more interesting- difficulty. Often, this scale hits the mark, and sometimes it doesn't. Here in Missoula, there are definitely a few schools of thought on what makes a cache interesting, and this system hits on one and half of them. I admit that I do generally find that the more challenging a cache is, the higher the points are, and we are doing pretty well on this system. I do occasionally look at the points when deciding whether to go after one cache or another, but it is a 5th or 6th consideration (after weather, time, distance, mood...). I also find that quite often, the higher point caches ARE more interesting than the lower point caches. Sometimes, they are just dadgum hard to get to. -I personally would like to see a scoring system based on scores from geocachers that have actually found it. Average those scores, and call THAT the cache's score. The score(s) could be based on interest, difficulty, overall quality, etc. -It would be especially nice to be able to sort the scored point list based on a) It's average score, or How a particular geocacher scored it. That way, if you place a good cache, it could have a high score because people actually liked it, instead of because they couldn't get to it. If we found that there was another local geocacher who had the same general perspective as we did, we could look up caches that they have rated highly, and go after those. The drawback to this plan is that it could only apply to geocachers that participate. Unless we can talk Groundspeak to implementing it... May you have the hindsight to know where you've been and the foresight to where you're going and the insight to know when you're going too far.

I actually like some of the OTHER stuff (club gear) on this site too- I am trying to get the better half of the OConnellz to get me the "Celtic Cacher" shirt for Father's Day... May you have the hindsight to know where you've been and the foresight to where you're going and the insight to know when you're going too far.

I have been signed up for this for quite a while, and it works better than trying to continually process the gpx files. As an added bonus, I spend much less time checking geocaching.com for new caches, which, I would suspect, could result in less traffic on the servers in the long run- especially as more people use it. May you have the hindsight to know where you've been and the foresight to where you're going and the insight to know when you're going too far.