Jamie Z

Downloaded it... looks pretty much the same. I haven't seen any differences. One thing I don't like already... I had my Tab Mix Plus set up how I like, but now that 2.0 has it's own Tab Mix Plus-style features, it doesn't look like I used to have it. I used to have the tabs color-coded to show whether the pages had been refreshed, for example. Also, the width of the tabs are now fixed, rather than altered to fit the length of the tab name, now resulting in a lot of wasted space. There doesn't seem to be a way to customize that. Otherwise, looks fine, and it's obviously 0.5 better than the last version. Jamie [edit] How does the splle chekker werk? Not att al? Hmm. I have "check my spelling as I type" checked... but I don't see it doing anything. [edit] Ok.. now the spell checker is working... but I have a new complaint. Clicking on a Bookmark opens that bookmark in the current tab. I want it to open a new tab. I don't see anywhere to fix that, either.

More update: Found an "Ad Block" setting in Norton Security. Turned it off. Ads appear fine. Yay! Or not.. .heh. But the gallery images appear, that's good. Still no Live Messenger though, although I can get an older version of MSN Messenger to work. Not sure what's causing that, especially since Live Messenger used to work until not too long ago. Jamie

Apparently I lied. I disabled my antivirus and restarted my system. Gallery images and ads appear fine. So I need to find where it is in the antivirus that is blocking the image server. Hrmph. Jeremy, thanks for the help. Don't suppose you're a Norton Internet Security tech guy too... Jamie

Jeremy, I realize it's not necessarily a GC.com issue, so thanks for the help. You may be onto something. Ads appear fine on the main page, but gallery images are blank. The blank areas do not show up as links, either. But as you predicted, ads on other pages don't appear. I hadn't noticed that before: I did find some setting for "Show images from same host only" and it's not checked... I dunno. Even when I disable my anti-virus, the problem still appears. Is there some correlation to the main page gallery images and the ads on pages other than the main? Jamie

Uninstalled Live Messenger (which used to work until a few days ago) and installed MSN Messenger 7.0. Works fine, but I'm still stuck with two grey boxes on the GC.com main page. Cannot find anything in my Norton settings which might be related. Any nudges in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Jamie

Interesting... In fact I do have Norton Internet Security, but I've had it for four or five months now. The gallery photos have worked fine until just a few days ago. I don't recall changing any settings recently. And I've noticed no problem on any other website. Other images on the geocaching site appear fine. That said... the disappearing gallery photos roughly coincides with my Windows Live Messenger not being able to connect, and I haven't been able to fix it. I suspect the two problems are related. Cripes. I spent about an hour today trying to get Live Messenger to work, even disabling my firewall and virus protection to no avail. Anyone have any ideas as to what setting I may have bumped to cause these troubles? Jamie

Using Firefox 1.5 and IE 6.0, when I open the main page of geocaching dot com, the gallery images which used to cycle through no longer appear. Instead, I get a blank grey area. No other images are broken, and I haven't changed any setting recently that I know. Like I said, this happens in both Firefox and IE. Am I the only one? Jamie

I'd opine that mose 5/5 caches are not really 5/5, as defined in the cache rating system. Be careful you don't get all gung ho for a cache that should really be rated 3/3.5. Jamie

I don't own Topo 3D, but I do own DirectRoute. My understanding is that the POI database is different for each. For example, DirectRoute doesn't list campgrounds, or many lakes and rivers. I thought 3D didn't have restaurants and other road-related POIs.. Am I incorrect? Jamie

A little more information would be helpful... like, what is it doing? What did you do? But here's what I suspect happened. Since you traveled a great distance, the GPS didnt know where it was. It needs some time to calculate its new position. Most likely you simply didn't give it enough time to get position. When you move the GPS a large distance, the best thing to do is fine a clear view of the sky and let the GPS sit stationary for a good while, 10-20 minutes. by then it should have figured out where it is. Jamie

I feel kind of silly asking this, since there has been so much talk about this seemingly great feature. I've read a number of threads about people having trouble with the feature, but nobody seems to have the same simple problem that I have. When I have uploaded a GPX or KML file to the Caches Along a Route page, the upload seems to go fine, then I get a screen that looks like it's supposed to display a list of routes for me to select, but invariably that list is completely empty. I've tried a number of times, using different methods. The most recent attempt, I downloaded a GPX file online with a list of trail markers. I opened the GPX in Google Earth, and it shows all the markers in the right places. Then I uploaded the GPX file to the Caches Along a Route feature in order to check for caches along that trail. As I said before, I perform the upload, and then am presented with a screen to select a route, but the box is empty. According to the website where I got the GPX file, it was created using ExpertGPX. Knowing there might be some incompatibilities, I then went back to Google Earth and saved the file as a KML file. Then I tried to upload the KML file to the Caches Along a Route screen. Again, blank box where my route should be listed. Where am I going wrong? Despite all my forum reading and Geocaching dot com experience, this one has me stumped. Jamie [edit] Good grief. I can't even post in the right forum. Can this be moved to the geocaching website forum where it probably belongs? Thanks, sorry.

What?! That's crazy. Clyde has probably the best product service on the planet. What were the responses to your question on the GSAK forum? I can't believe you didn't get help. Jamie

I told this story before, but it's been a while, and I think it's pretty good. Back when I first started geocaching. You know, when there were like 2500 caches in the whole world, I'd recently found one about 75 miles from my house. Well, even then folks didn't maintain their caches, and this one was a rusted up coffee can that was soaked inside. The owner had moved to another state. I brought a ready-to-go ammo can complete with logbook and trade items to replace the coffee can. I brought the coffee can and old logbook home to dry out. A few weeks later I was at a bicycle group ride. I got to talking to a fellow I'd never met before and our conversation turned to hiking and state parks. He mentioned a state park I'd just recently visited and I nodded in recognition. Then he told me about hiking on a trail and finding something really weird. I stopped him and said, "I know what you found. Was it a rusted coffee can?" He about fell over. "How the heck did you know that?" I told him that I now had the coffee can at my house. He said they found it and opened it up and signed their names to the log. When I got home, I checked the logbook and found his name. Jamie

Tom Tom is probably a fine autonav unit, but since this is a geocaching forum, not many people here actually have one. If the original question was asked on a site such as GPSPassion, the answers might have been more oriented toward the Tom Tom. Jamie

ok

To add a bit to this, I own the Quest 2. Easily my biggest complaint about this GPS is that it is horribly slow. Miss a turn? Better pull over and stop because it might be a minute or two before the GPS recalculates your new route. Screen refreshes sometimes fall behind so that my position stays locked on the same spot for ten or fifteen seconds. My understanding is that the Quest does not suffer from these problems mainly because the map database for the Quest is a fraction of that of the Quest 2. For me, having the entire country pre-loaded into the GPS is the most important feature, so I tolerate the otherwise-unacceptably slow performance of the GPS. You might take this into consideration if you're looking at the Quest series. They're good GPSs. Jamie

That would do it. As a workaround, I attached my lanyard to the battery cover screw. Then I didn't have a problem putting it in the cradle. Jamie

Do you have the most recent firmware? (I have 5.2.03) If I recall, there was a bug in the Explorist software. If you selected a geocache from the map screen, that is, you ran the cursor over the icon and hit goto, the goto would be made not for the coordinates of the saved cache, but for the coordinates where your map pointer was located. If my memory is correct (and it's admittedly fuzzy about this), the bug was fixed. Could that be the trouble? Jamie

I'm not understanding what the problem is. Are you having trouble with the suction mount? The GPS Cradle? The power cable? The power cable and cradle are actually a pretty slick design. Clip the power cable into the cradle and plug it into a lighter socket. Now whenever you put the GPS in the cradle, it's automatically powered. You don't have to fuss with attaching the cable to the GPS over and over, which admittedly is a pain. Jamie

Just for the record, I don't think I "strongly" endorsed the battery pack charger. I offered it as a solution to those who said the GPS couldn't be charged in the field. I readily admit that it's a bit clunky, but it's about as clunky as having to lug around batteries for your AA-powered GPS. Anyway, I've been curious about the AAA battery packs, too. It's just that I don't think I've ever needed one. If I bought one, it'd mostly be for curiousity. Jamie

No kidding! Who'd want to decrypt all this in the field? You want to sit down on a log being bitten by mosquitos while you work through all this? No thanks. I'll take the DNF. If you have that much to say, put it in the cache description, not the hint. Jamie

It's been a while, but I've found a handful of 5-gallon buckets that were basically sitting right out in the open. If you go back in the woods far enough, nobody is going to bother it. Jamie

What I find interesting is that quite a few people log the plaque as a find without ever signing the logbook inside the cache. Jamie