Donald, Daisy and Kids

Except the OP isn't a Premium Member, so wouldn't be able to follow the discussion over there. But if the OP just asks, a moderator will close topic and we can carry on the goat discussions elsewhere. So is the OT forum a PM feature only? We never realised! Is it good? Should we go visit??

I think that blue squirrel sounds better!

What about yellow kissing llamas?

Yes there are all kinds of cache containers "out there". Whilst visiting my Grandparents, we found a very memorable cache "TB motel on the bay" which was unfortunately muggled a week or 2 after my visit with the Grandparents. The cache owner went for a new, high-tech version, involving relocation of the cache, and was in a digital safe. It lasted about 12mths later before it was again muggled. It was thought to be a very high-tech, and secure cache which was on a steel pole and concreted into the ground..... Unfortunately it was no match for the muggles 4x4 which appears to have hit it in the middle of a forrestry area. See the gallery of pics showing damage it is sad that some people have nothing better to do with their time!

We are fine with it, we often cache near houses, shops, in carparks etc etc. We have had a few strange looks at times but we just ignore them and go about our business of caching. We watch for muggles, and we dont show muggles the location of the cache, its all about keeping our little magical world away from the non-magicals (muggles). Sometimes when we have been in a weird spot and had muggles near us, we have just pretended we were looking around for something that we "dropped", it was hard at first to train the tribe of ducklings to "keep stool", and not be shouting out things like "ive found the cache" or "are we close to the cache yet Dad"..... Its something that at times, we find can be a sneaky sport, with plenty of concealment from the surrounding public. Enjoy!

I think that there is plenty of registered charities out there in our wonderful world, I personally dont want to see leisure interact with charity work, otherwise we could argue that we should have employment caches as well, where people "find" the cache and then complete a work trial for a day without pay, and then if they are good enough they get a job....... Or, why not have help an elderly caches, where you stick a cache at the letterbox of a senior citizen and after finding the cache you go and mow their lawn, vacume their carpets, do some washing or dishes etc?? I would personally rather this type of cache because I know of loads of senior citizens who cant do these things too easily for themselves, and dont want to live in a nursing home. *Edit* typo's

I wasnt going to speak my personal views on this one but have decided to now. From my personal life experiences, my own observations of close friends and family, and charity work with people who have fallen into the "poor" or "homeless" categories at some stage, I have often noticed some main points: Often, homeless / poor are that way from their own doing's, Issues such as bankruptcy from bad business decisions are contributors, Often issues such as alcoholism or drug dependency are contributors, often people in these categories have ability's that they cant be bothered to use, Often people in these categories just fall into the "it's easier for someone to "give me hand outs" than it is for me to get off my own butt. Often these people like the attention they receive from people who feel sorry for them. Of course, I am not saying that this is ALWAYS the case, just the majority of what I have seen from personal experiences with the homeless and/or poor. Quite often people in these categories have abilitys that would astound most people, but they get caught in the trap of not having enough $$ funds to get the supplies they need to use their abilities, which could make them money..... Most of the homeless and/or poor that I have known have had artistic or musical abilities, and some have even had formal qualifications or university degrees. Some people actually choose to live that way: I had the chance to meet a millionaire who chooses to live in a cardboard box on the Australian Goldcoast, he made the choice to live in a cardboard box, and live like he was homeless, when in fact, he could easily have bought several homes, cars and a multitude of money making investments which would enable him to live very comfortably. I personally dont want to see charity stuff on Groundspeak, even in a seperate category, because here in Australia almost every second phonecall is from a charity and the same with visitor's to the front door. We joined Groundspeak and GC.com so that we could have a nice leisure activity, not another charity based program. I think that those who would like to do caches for charity should approach their local charities and ask them to set-up a website which is similar to GC.com that DOES allow caches or events to be charity based. Maybe they could even get someone like the red cross to set up a world wide site where any charity could join and list caches or events? Lastly, I am DEFINATELY not knocking those who do charity work, NOR am Im NOT saying that I DONT care about these issues, I just want some seperation from my personal life and charity life.

Ive noticed that we seem to have a problem with daily digest emails. In the user control panel we selected daily digest as our prefered default method, but every time we add a topic it defaults to Delayed Emailed Notification. How can we correct this?? It is only one radio button to select but that becomes tedious when you have to constantly select it.

AFAIK, antivenene (or antivenom) is usually specific to the creature that bites you, Ie: If you are bitten by a king brown snake then you need the antivenine which is manufactured from the venom of other brown snakes, if you are biten by a tiapan then you need a antivenine which is made from the venom from other tiapans. This WIKI link has much more detailed info.

Hi there, Use Hdd.dddd format. I stuck a few co'ords into google earth and they placed me into the antarctic..... As I figured you wouldnt be travelling there for a river cleanup I looked again and reversed the co'ords and place the latitude first and longitude second. Hope this helps.

I find that the issue seems to be heat related. When I stopped leaving the unit in my hot car in the summer, I never had the problem again. Before that I had sent 3 eTrex units back for warranty repair for the issue with the rubber gasket. I have to say Garmin was lightning quick each time and I had the unit (or another one) back in my hands within a week with all waypoints and maps intact. Hi Briansnat, Im in Australia and when I contacted garmin I was diverted to their tech dept in Taiwan (the Australasia head office apparently), the techo stated to me that the problem was related to the humidity we experience in Australia and Asia. My GPS has never been left in the car unless the aircon was running and was always removed whenever I exited the car. He also stated that they are currently looking into an alternative bonding method which would better suit the climate. First time my repair took 27 days, second time took 22 days and 3rd time took 4 days. I have even asked them about trading it up to a 60CSX, with me paying the $$ difference, but they wont do that. My main concern is that I paid almost AU$700 for the unit, garmin delux protective cover, bike mounts, memory card etc etc and cant help but to wonder what will happen once it is out of warranty. What is worse is that it is Garmin representatives have stated a known problem and they havent improved it over the years the Etrex range has been sold (and still is a current range with the same seal and adhesive), yet they choose to do nothing, nor offer a tradeup to a unit that doesnt have a problem that is known to them.

Having experienced problems (several times now) with the seal around the sides of my Vista CX I would NOT go for either unit because they both have the same rubber. I would spend a few extra $$ and get the much more robust 60CSX as it doesnt have this horrible rubber which has caused me so many problems. OOh yeah, and Garmin's tech support (at their Tiawan office) told me that the rubber issues have been known for quite a while.

Yes it will automatically drop to a basic membership and the caches will remain active. You can apply to Groundspeak to "ADOPT" (click here) the caches from one account to the other if you like, that way you would be able to use the one account. It might be easier that way?

Oh, lying about, not being lied about... Yeah, looks as though if I want to be notified by a friendly muggle, I'll have to include an email address. Can't find a work-around on the GC site. Oh well. I assume that you mean, if a muggle found your cache and it was damaged.... they could contact you. Ok, if this was the case, you would really need to include your details within your cache. We have started putting our yahoo email address in our cache containers for exactly this reason. We found that writing them in either a paint pen or waterproof texta was best. hope this helps.

You cant adopt an archived cache. We recently attempted to do so and our request (with owners permission) was rejected. You can do what we did and just replace the cache, and re-list it. see our cache replacement here ----> Rest a While (Version #2)

because its in someone elses car, they just stole it from you whilst you were posting this message! lol

If its on public property then I think its in the game. I have seen a few caches that were only around 20 mtrs from houses on the other side of the street, ive seen caches that are in the parking lot of shopping centres (with permission). I dont think it is a problem if you get permission/s and mark the cache according to the situation for the area. Some caches Ive looked at have said that they are only available in the hours of X to X, some have said to stay clear of a certain property.

Ive seen it on the forums thousands of times, posters say to contact a local cacher. Just how do you find a local cacher? Is there some feature that allows us to search for local cachers or do we just find someone who has placed a cache in that area and ask them, hoping of course that they are a local.

Have you got the unit set to the correct map datum? The best and easiest position format to use is located under SETUP, UNITS setup, at the top select hddd mm.mmm' and use WGS84 as the map datum setting.

This is the dream of alot of GSAK users. You can get 500 caches in a single GPX file by doing a pocket query in geocaching.com. When I posted in the GSAK forums, asking why GSAK doesnt update automatically, the reply was something along the lines that Groundspeak doesnt allow external connections or something like that.

Thanks everyone for the ideas and suggestions, Thankyou Markwell for the really great ideas, and especially the link to GCT9RQ. That sounds like a very good idea, and also a great way to keep the previous cache logs alive so to speak.

Once the cache is gone, anything you would to is a new cache that you can list yourself. That's why they don't adopt out archived caches. If the cache isn't gone...it's still archived and still has to go through the review process according to current standards. Then it's about as easy to borrow the old container and list it fresh. The original cache is a multi and was only archived because the final leg was vanishing, and the cache owner is a very busy business person who doesnt really have the time to maintain the cache, especially when the final leg kept vanishing. We did contact them and suggest another location about 100Mtrs away for the final leg, however the owner indicated the lack of time to do so. We even offered to just replace the final leg and let the owner know the new co'ords and he said that he would be happier if we adopted it since we seemed to have more time to look after it. The first and second parts are still there and are intact. Would it be possible to just replace the final leg, then re-activate the cache with the new co'ords, and then adopt it?? Like I said, we just felt it would be nice to keep the old logs. the cache is: Rest a while and we know that it isnt as if there is loads of logs.

The adoption process is for existing caches. Say a hider has to move across the country - they can adopt over thier caches to locals. Once archived, there is no need to adopt anything. Simply go out and place a cache of your own at the same spot and get a new GC number to go with it. Just remember that it may have been archived because the spot is not a good one. Hi there Starbrand, we wanted the cache stats to remain, as even after placing a new cache, many have already visited it..... The cache was placed in a very good spot, just an easily found location where it may have either blown out of hte hiding spot (it was a film canister) or may have been found by fisho's in the immediate area. We have actually relocated the final leg to another area which should be alot less muggled but it still would have been nice to keep the original details and logs.

We tried this with a local cache that was archived because it had been muggled 3 times, so the owner archived it because they felt the amount of maintenance that it required was too much. My local reviewer said that because it was archived they wouldnt transfer the ownership, even though the owner was OK with doing so. Why is there even the adoption process if you cant use it? Just because the cache was archived to stop others from seeking it, and we wanted to keep the existing cache going, we cant, so we now either have to replace a new cache in the same area or just not bother??

Has anyone contacted the cache placer to discuss this? It might be something simple like wrong positining format. I remember back to when I got my first GPS I didnt know that there was various position formats, my waypoints were accurate but if I inputted manual waypoint co'ords then they were off by several hundred metres.