arpegio

Where I've been checking caches lately, it's very religious. I am running across cachers with "bible" in their name and crosses in the caches. It has become obvious some use the hobby to promote their particular religious views. I don't have a problem with this as long as these same people are open-minded about contrary views, but the problem is, as evidenced in this thread, they're not, and that's what I have an issue with.

I ask about the multi-stage cache because we did one the other day where there were several micro caches that led to a traditional cache. Each micro had its own log, and the description said you can log this as X finds. But obviously online, there was only one entry. I learned my lesson with the waypoint the vehicle thing, but luckly I had tracks enabled on the GPS ; )

I second Amazon. That's where I got mine. Best price I could find.

Here are some random questions that I haven't yet found answers to... 1. If you find a cache that is a multiple, and it says it counts as x finds, is there a way to have it count as x finds on geocaching.com? 2. I was thinking of doing a cache around a theme and would ask that items left in the cache revolve around a particular theme. How realistic is such a request? 3. Regarding cache placement restrictions, as I understand it, you can't place caches on national park land, but what about national forest? 4. How are caches reviewed? Do reviewers actually visit the cache? Are they supposed to be familiar with the area and know whether the location is appropriate? I see caches that say "permission is granted by owner" -- is this merely a word-of-mouth thing or do the reviewers require some specific details of such permissions? 5. Is there acknowledgement of any group of "bad cachers" in the community? I notice from looking at logs, it seems clear there are people who take things of good value from caches, and leave significantly less-useful items, and others who take things and leave nothing, and then there are situations where you visit a cache, expecting to see certain items that are indicated as being left in the log that are not there. Are there some in the community that expect, that if person X visits a cache, it will be unfairly raided? 6. Is there any way to "recharge" a cache that is an accepted standard practice? Obviously you can go back and refill a cache, but is there any standard approach to this that would call attention to its improved status? (beyond a log entry). 7. What is the standard FTF protocol? I've heard different things, and I know it can vary depending upon the nature of the cache and what the owner is asking, but what's the standard common arrangement? A special FTF prize, or does the FTF'er allowed to take a bunch of items? 8. Are there caches that are not listed on geocaching.com that are part of another network? Or perhaps a more elite array of caches that are only shared by permission? Just some various questions I've had I thought I might lump into one post. Any comments anyone can offer would be most appreciated.

Take heart! The problem is often not with the cache idea but with others' reactions. ... Yes, Virginia, it's a PC world and we all have to get along. Perhaps a variation on your theme would be to locate caches near sites that fit your theme. Near religious sites, memorials, etc. You have to be careful about the "public land" placement rules but you might have a winner there. The cache contents need not be of a religious nature but a tribute to an early Catholic missionary, Johnny Appleseed, an abandoned graveyard of a long-gone church, a particularly striking cathedral ... As a devout atheist, I have no problem appreciating the beliefs of others. I hope he does one in tribute to FSM. It's only fair. ; )

I think it's sad that someone complained about that.

I'm relatively new as well, and on my team, nobody is under 15, so a good bit of the items seem to be more for much younger children. I'm also seeing a lot of broken items. And I agree with the OP.. there are a lot of boxes filled with crap... things that you figure the owners would have thrown away just as soon as they would have stuffed them in the cache. I understand that newer caches = newer items, but this is also depressing if you're thinking of placing a cache and seeing it degenerate into a trash bin for broken plastic things.

Ok, I see what you are saying... one says one year, one says "each" year... However, Paypal also says: "Note: Your subscription will automatically renew at the rates stated above unless you cancel prior to the end of the billing period." There is obviously some kind of contradiction there. I went into Paypal's form builder myself and set up sample forms and tested the whole process... it does appear even when you specify a non-recurring subscription that you still get that same message, so this appears to be a problem with Paypal and not Geocaching.com --- my apologies... I guess Paypal is the one who is engaging in a misleading transaction... even when it isn't auto-renew, it says so on their page... that's pretty annoying.

There would be no problem IF it actually did not renew, BUT IT DOES. Again, what are you not understanding here? They are handing off the transaction to paypal and telling paypal to auto-renew it annually, even though on their web page, it says it is not an auto-renewing subscription.

When you click on the non-recurring link, here's what it says: Note: Your subscription will automatically renew at the rates stated above unless you cancel prior to the end of the billing period. This is for the "annual membership (does not renew)" Now what am I missing? What part of renew/does-not-renew am I not understanding? $30 is no big deal. Misleading business transactions are. This appears fraudulent to me. If you advertise a non-recurring option, why does Paypal say it is recurring? Me going in and modifying my personal account to cancel the recurring option is irrelevent. That has nothing to do with the fact that what appears to be offered on the site is not what it seems. It's not ethical as far as I can see and I have an issue with that. I am familiar with Paypal and e-commerce. The same code for the buttons for both options are listed, so both transactions appear to be the same. Either this is a mistake, or it's intentional and is fraudulent. Right now, the web page is misleading and fraudulent. I can give you all the proper code for the page if you want. I can even create a page on my server that will initiate a non-recurring option for people, if your web guy won't fix it. Just let me know, but the way it is right now, exposes your organization to some liability and ethical issues.

The notion that Al Gore claimed he invented the internet is an urban myth. He never said such a thing.

It seems to me the problem is the person who left the TB under the ornament possibly should not have posted that information on the site. Wouldn't it have been better to put a note in the log that there was a TB under the ornament? In lieu of the location of the TB not being logged with the actual cache, couldn't you consider the TB to be a separate location?

Once you place a cache, you should not or cannot go back and modify it?

I used the camera trick yesterday when I came upon a cache site occupied by a couple and a big dog. I said I was doing macro photography of flora in the area for a college class. It worked well... in that scenario it doesn't look all that weird to have your face in the bushes poking around.

I'm curious what you would "trade up" if you took a $50 or $100 bill? ; )

Sorry about that. I'm new and want to sign up for premium, and I'm willing to do the annual thing, but I'd like to take advantage of the non-recurring offer, but both buttons perform the same transaction according to the paypal site.

Am I missing something here? Is that part of the plan? There is no non-recurring subscription?

Ok, I figure I'm the bane of half the regulars here. I have 3 finds. I know I'm a n00b. But I am dying to drop my first cache. I am totally into the idea of making an elaborate, beautifully-camo'd work of art that only YOU can spot, but while I'm here, I want to make a contribution. I'm in a cache-rich area, but I have miles of open space to add another few finds to an area that could benefit from them. So... I can drop something sooner, that may be more predictable (i.e. hard to get to, easy to find), or I can wait and try to come up with something terminally clever (which I'm totally into doing eventually). What do I do? Do I compensate for my lack of experience by making the cache treasure that much more interesting? Or do I wait and try to come out on my first few caches as being something special? Is there a "rep" that I can blow if I don't enter the field with something spectacular? I know I can do whatever I want. I think the consensus is among people that this "sport" should be minimally regulated, but I'm curious what you veterans would admit, that you might do differently if you were in my shoes?

Very tongue in cheek - not a techie then! I wrote this long diatribe about my experience and all that... and then I deleted it... I thought, I don't want to start off on the wrong foot in this community coming off as pretentious. I want to learn from all you guys so I should be able to take whatever you lay on me. It's hard for me to ramble about getting "Editor's Choice" in PC Magazine for software I wrote, while right now, I've got chigger bites from digging around in the bushes that are making me miserable. The sad part is, I'm not sure I wouldn't completely jump in the bushes again and risk another parasitic invasion for the joy of geo-discovery. I am beginning to see what you all see

By the way, I do feel I was out of line in suggesting the tech support was "non-existent" - that could be considered very trollish. I apologize. If I could go back and remove that, I would because it doesn't accurately reflect my experience with them now. At the time though, I wasn't getting any replies to inquiries.

Newbie, yes. Troll, no. Basically, yea I have been slightly disgruntled. I did hear back from customer service, but about half the time they don't answer my questions directly. The web site does appear to have some serious problems with access at certain times of the day. I find this frustrating. A few weeks back, it took me half the day to download a software update because their system was slow-to-unresponsive. I run an Internet business - I also designed the database system that largest internet hotel booking site bought for handling online reservations.... if my servers were as unreliable as Garmin's, many of my customers would go out of business. Garmin's servers, software and/or hosting company seems to have some issues. There are glitches in the online unlocking process that are avoidable. I ended up having to pay a premium on eBay to get maps for my newly-purchased GPS because they pulled all their current City Nav software off the market. I needed the maps for a trip I was taking so I couldn't afford to wait for the nebulous, ambiguous new-software-is-coming-out period. I think this is annoying. If V8 is coming out, and you have a policy for free upgrades (which I've heard several different versions from various Garmin and non-Garmin sources on the timing/eligibility of this) why is there this period of a month or two where it's virtually impossible to get street mapping software for their GPSes? That's just ridiculous. We're talking SOFTWARE here... not some commodity like oil. There's no good reason why people should be paying more than retail for a software package. Pardon me if I find it ODD that you have Garmin reps, who produce the software, telling you that you're on your own as to where you can find it. That's just crazy. Now that V8 is out, it may be moot, but if you were like me, and got your GPS during this software blackout period, it was very frustrating. Anyway, I was more annoyed when I originally posted than I am now. I finally got my software unlocked and the Garmin people have been helpful. I really like the 60CSX I purchased. I do think there are some weird things that don't seem to make sense with many of their products (for example, some packages like USTOPO seem to require CDs in the drive, but other products like US24K NP can be installed on the hard drive... it's annoying to have to carry around a bunch of CDs when you've got a 200G hard drive in your laptop.) One reason why I was so acerbic about this is because YES, I AM NEW. You can interpret this in any number of ways. You can claim I'm naive and ignorant of the way Garmin products and support work. Or perhaps I'm more idealistic, and because of my limited experience in this field, I foolishly thought that if I purchased a GPS plotter that promised auto-routing and those types of neat features, THAT I'D ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO USE THEM (without having to be extorted premium money from eBay opportunists looking to profit from Garmin's negligent ability to deliver software products to the marketplace). The fact that Garmin nickles-and-dimes you for umpteen different maps and different named map products, maybe to you seems like "standard operating procedure" but as someone new in this field, it's frustrating that after you buy the unit, you need to buy 2-3 additional products to get maps for your area... IF you can even find them, and each product works and installs differently from the other, and I still am trying to figure out how to get them all to peacefully coexist... At this point, I seem to have to do some kind of upload/download musical chairs with my GPS to consolidate data between the PC and the handheld. Being a software developer, I know there could be a lot of improvements here, and since Garmin appears to be a market leader and has a brilliant scheme for maximizing the money they can squeeze out of their customers for every little thing, I am not inclined to cut them as much slack as some open-source software company who has limited resources. I'd expect more from Garmin. Want to talk about map data and accuracy? I'm under the impression that the majority of this data, especially stuff like the topo maps, comes from USGS (taxpayer-funded) data. So we pay a big chunk of change to use data that we already paid for. Which in most cases, is way, way out-of-date in the first place. I'm paying a premium for TOPO data that will upload into my GPS which is far inferior to existing public topo maps from places like Topozone. Why is that? From my examination of the US Topo 24K NP data, this appears to be a subset of existing USGS maps. Why did Garmin strip a lot of the useful information off the topos? As for the City Select/City Navigator... the data is grossly inaccurate in many areas where I've physically been. My house is actually a P.O.I. in City Nav 7, listed as a company with a non-existant address; two blocks away is a [nonexistent] Indian restaurant (that never was) in the location of another person's home. The POI's look to be randomly injected from 10+ year old phone book or business records... grossley out of date for a 2005 version. The point I'm making is... this data appears to be, for the most part, garbage-collected from other sources. What are we paying for? To take public data with outdated POIs and be able to use them on Garmin GPSes? At the prices they're asking, it might be nice to see some effort to generate cartography products that are at least as good or better than public/government sources don't you think? Anyway, I needed to vent. Maybe Garmin isn't as bad as I was originally implying, but I'd like to see them avoid some of these really obvious problems. Make their software a little more user-friendly and their online systems more robust and reliable, and do something about this bizarre software supply problem so it doesn't happen again.

It seems to me that this spot is for the enjoyment of everyone. The "partyers" are part of the environment. Maybe the cache has just gone a notch higher in the difficulty scale as a result?

I wanted to sign up for an annual non-recurring premium membership, but both links on the web site purchase the same auto-recurring membership. Can someone please fix this?

I've really had it with Garmin. Can someone explain to me what's going on with this company? Are they getting ready to declare bankruptcy or go out of business or something? They don't seem to care much about their products working or customer service. I can't get straight answers about when products are to be released, when the upgrade periods start; their web site is constantly up and down; the unlock-code process for their software does not seem to work now and my newly-purchased maps are useless and the web-based unlock system says they've already been unlocked when they aren't. Seriously, WTF is going on with this company? Are they actually trying to run off business? This is getting ridiculous. Are there any Garmin people who can explain what the hell is going on with their systems and their company? I'm really beginning to regret purchasing all this Garmin hardware and software.

So, do you have a military background? I find language interesting, like my cousin with the medical profession who distends her bike tires. It's a musical reference. Though the family also has a military background.