Where's_North

I really only play Jedi Academy (Siege), though I play it a lot. I typically find a game and lay only it for a couple of years. The chronology follows: Gauntlet (Arcade), Super Mario Brothers(Nin), Final Fantasy (Nin), Street Fighter 2 (Arcade), Civiliation2 (PC), Rainbow Six (PC), Baldur's Gate(PC), Jedi Knight2/Academy (PC). I started the above to explain that I wasn't a gamer, but after reading it I suppose I am aren't I. Including CD/DVD style games would be great. Cartridges... I think the weather would be rather rough on them. Also what about copied cd/dvd's . You might want to include a disclaimer (or encourge them depending on your point of view) or risk the wrath of the RIAA trying to shut down geocaching I'd open it up to all the game related merchandise that is available now. Check out Hot Topics (clothing chain) they have a lot of Nintendo stuff like patches. A personal favorite is "Know Your Shrooms" and shows all the Mario Bros. mushrooms. Keychains and other knick knacks also abound. Somebody mentioned looting of caches with cool things in them. This would be a big danger. There is one in my area (NW Ohio) that was dedicated to magic cards & roleplaying. They switched it to a virtual for this very reason. I do think your concerns about gamers being uniterested in the outdoors is entirely unfounded though. I ski, run and hike and know plenty of others that do the same. All in all a good idea for a cache. Anything to get rid of the McToys is worth a shot in my book.

I'm from NE Ohio. We have hardly any ticks here, even in the thicker forests. I can't remember the last time I saw a tick. Anyway I recently traveled to Arkansas to visit family. So I have to nail a cache in Arkansas to open up my finds list past my own tristate area. Low and behold there's a cache not 0.7 miles from my grandmother's house. I get there and find it in a very wooded area. Not to far off the trail, but I remember how tick laden the ouside is here from my childhood. Figuring I won't be in long I wander into the woods. Took a little longer than I thought. So I pull of my shirt and perform a reasonably thourough tick check. I check my ankle area etc. Clean. Great I hop in the car and head out. Then I remember something I read long ago in the geocaching forum. Someone recounted how they often deal with ticks and they have taken to wearing those short/long pant zip-off combos as the the zipper area seems to attract them. It dawns on me I am wearing zip-off pants myself. I trepidiously pull back the fabric lip that covers the leg zipper... My god... four turkey ticks scrambling to find a way in. I stop the car, hop out and de-tick. So fist tip, anecdotal as it may be, try the zip offs. It does seem to trap them. Second tip. This is scientifically sound. We used to do this when I lived down south as a child. Baby oil around the ankle, waistline, arm holes and neck aperatures. Really discourages the little buggers from climbing in. I imagine its the pungent petroleum base. Works wonders, good for the skin and has little or nne of the permethrin toxicity. Doesn't protect your hair though, unless your Fonzie.

quote:Originally posted by CYBret:Check out my latest home improvement project. http://b.hammond.home.mchsi.com/lamp.html Kinda fun to put together...and so far I haven't burned the house down..so there's two plusses....plus it works..so that's three...oh..and I didn't get shocked...much. Bret __"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again."_ Mt. 13:44_ How do I convert MT. 13:44 to a WGS84 datum?

Has no one ever heard of a poker run?

Last night I recieved via mailorder my first GPS, a Garmin GPSMAP 76S. So after tearing off the shipping packages and inserting batteries I am walking around my apartment, seeing what kind of reception I can get. I'm monitering the satellite page. So for kicks I go into the restroom and close the door. I constantly get at least two very strong signals with another three to four of varying strengths. In any given five minute time span I will see a momentary though distinct drop in all of them leaving only one or two grey bars (aquiring almanac data). With equal frequency I will see a great increase in the power and number of recieved satelittes. I'm averaging 30 foot accuracy. After going outside and marking some waypoints with proper data: it confimed the accuracy in the closed room. My point is I didn't think this was possible (even with the quad helix). Nothing I've read led me to think I could recieve any real signal at all in a closed room, let alone enough to maintain virtually constant 3D Location. After more testing around the apartment I found being surrounded by walls or proximity to an open window did not matter so much as holding the unit above waist level and holding it veritcally. Drop it below waist level and it loses good reception real fast. If it matters I'm in a 2 story apartment in NW Ohio. I have only used a friends Garmin EMAP (model# unkown, but its bout three years old). So I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I didn't expect that. I can't wait to get it under thick Indiana tree cover. My point is, Is this kind of reception to be expected or am I just getting lucky? One other side note... I was quite wary of the buttons being above the display, but after about three seconds it made perfect sense. I would also like info on a webpage that posts satelitte information. Which ones are up there, which #'s are waas and such. I wadded through numerous searches with no specific information given. Any good links would be much appreciated.

On a side note I've always thought a secondary horn should be installed in cars. A quieter gentler horn that would be used by the one who makes a mistake in traffic. Sort of a "my bad" horn. As an aggresive driver I wouldn't be so upset with someone when they signified that they don't drive that way all the time and it was only a momentary lapse. Not that I go using my horn very often, only when what they are doing is clearly illegal. My road rage towards people traveling the speed limit and not seven miles over is my own problem to deal with. (Unless they cut me off on the highway to pass a row of semi trucks and they are only going 55.5 mph, then I just drive unreasonably close to them, weaving slighty back and forth to express my urgent displeasure.)

"Brody, get out there in the bow of the boat." "Why" "Quick, just get out on the bow of the boat." "Why" "Just do it." "WHY" "Ugh. I need something in the foreground to give it some scale." "Foreground my $&*" This exchange from the movie Jaws immediately came to mind when I saw the above pics.

See what most of you don't know is the actual signal that you all are scrambling is really a ruse. Those of you that think you've out-foxed the black 'copter crowd have really been duped. That's what they expected you to do. The truth is that your "L.E.D." backlit screen is really a hyplo-gamma ray emitter. Several, if not all of the GPS satelittes have special recievers that can see these plain as day even through heavy tree cover. Of coarse they can track your location and I.D. the serial number (point of purchase/credit card records etc.) easily enough, but if you touch the screen just once it will broadcast an image of your fingerprint as well. I covered mine with a transparent screen of polymolybendium. The alloy is difficult to manufacture, but a search should reveal a number of home manufacturing methods. The trick is to make the filiments of the screen small enough so that you can still see your display well enough. I use .04 micron filiments myslef, spaced 1 micron apart. It scrambles and distorts the waveform so it dissapates long before it leaves the atmosphere so the satelittes can't possibly track you. However, specially equipped "Black Copters" probably can still see a distorted hyplo-gamma signal from close proximity. Though no long term testing had been done on hyplo-gamma rays, initial testing from Nevada indicates that an increase in aggresive behavior may be expected. Additionaly some subjects were afflicted with a odd jaundiced skin colouring though none of the normal symptoms were apparent. Preliminary hypothises from a noted expert in the field suggest that the pigment combinations that make up the colour purple offer some protection from these effects. [This message was edited by Where's_North on May 06, 2003 at 08:27 PM.]

I only leave electric "pop up" car lighters in caches, thus ensuring only those of sixteen years of age or more will be able to use them.

Actually (to the fellow directly above) he actually took time to explain his points. You apparently consider yours to be self-evident, which frankly... are not. His statement, with which I do not entirely agree, is not ingnorant or sophmoric. Rather short-sighted and possibly self absorbed, but hardly ignorant. From the tone he has some knowledge of humanist philosophy. He took more time with answer than many. And if you're going to respond with such a haughty attitude you should probably counter point at least a couple of his points, otherwise this all becomes a big, "nuh uhhh... uh huh... does not... does so," tug of war.

he he heh... In my pre-geocache days I used to run along a local canal bank. It was reletively woodsy there outside of town. On the other side of the water was a rest stop/park area. I once stumbled upon an illicet magazine for... shall we say... a specialized audience. I didn't think a whole lot of it. I figured it was one of those things. Its going to happen once in a while. It was down the trail from a popular parking site. I mean when I was in high school fellow classmates "parked" down there. Using a couple of long sticks I pitched into the water to hasten it's bio-degredation and keep some kid from finding it. I totally passed it off, thinking it was one of those quirky things. Then a couple of weeks later I was taking my normal after work morning run. I turned a bend in the path around a copse of trees and maybe thirty years off was some naked guy turned facing the road like he was showing himself off. Without a mistep I turned midstride and promptly returned to my car. I started running at a more family oriented park. I'm guessing the problem increased because about six months later they quardened off the parking lot and bulldozed the rest stop. Oddly enough I recently went back there for a recently placed geocache. It seems they reopened the park though the rest area portion is still gone.

Normally I'd agree with the poster above and call you a wuss. But there is this thing called lyme disease and it can be serious. It is especially prevalent in one of the New England states though I forget which one at the moment. If I lived there I'd be concerned too. I lived in Arkansas for a couple of years as a kid. Way out in the boonies. Very tick infested woodlands. There you do a tick check any day you were out in the woods. Little tip, rub baby oil around your neck, ankles, wrists, any clothing aperture really. They and most other bugs hate the stuff. I can personally testify that it will keep them from crawling in.

As for my screen name a, couple moments of fate came together. Back in my wasted youth I played the Dungeons and Dragons and once played an impish little elf named Fizzletwst the peculiar (actually a kender for those of you who read the Dragonlance series). years later an old school friend of mine were downing Guiness and playing NTN trivia at the local pub and reminising of times past. Later in the evening I was talking about how the foam was my most favorite part of Guiness which led to fizz which led to fizzzzzzzzz which led to fizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, as it is spelled pheonetically. As for our geocaching team name we were having a brainstorming session in the woods and I thought every one was taking the wrong tack with reletively normal benign team names. I began one of my usual heartful soliloquies, "We should have a dynamic team name... something that denotes a sense of purpose, fortitude, resiliance and is in somehow related to cartography. Something like TRUE NORTH." My friend turned and looked at me with a sarcastic smirk, "Really, it more like Where's_North?" And with that the legend was born.

wuss.