abvhiael

a couple weeks ago my etrex vista cx just up and died. the batteries went dead and the unit hasnt fired up since. ive tried every concievable reboot offered by garmin, and nothing. i wrote a letter to the CEO, min gao, about it and my disappointment that a $350 dollar item could be so utterly BULLOXED by a set of twenty dollar rechargables. they sent out a replacement vista hcx last week, although it yet to arrive up here across the border, but i used to get the effect mentioned above when i used rechargable alkaline batteries compared to NiMH rechargables. im gonna try that whacking fix with this dead unit...now whered that meat tenderizer go?

i was doing research on mysterious megalithic stones in nova scotia that are analgous to ones in north western russia and scandanavia and when i typed in the name of one of the stones, the sibley stone, i found a link to a cache hidden beneath it. i was already using a GPS reciever to map out old french settlements in nova scotia from 400 years ago, and found out that i could use my machine for work AND play. ive now been caching over a year, hidden over 30 caches, found a hair over 250 of them and have gotten my mom and dad, my son, my sister, my aunt and countless friends involved in the sport. an they told two friends an they told two friends and so on....

mine is 4081 and change km from my home coordinates. i did a cross canada trip and geocached all the way home from bc to nova scotia. it is cache GCK1CY. i also set out one nearby with my son in tow (who is noew a geocacher himself) which is GC123W1. it is also 4081 plus change km from home. i cant believe i drove that far. my son takes care of that cache for us when we arent down thataway visiting him.

i bought my son a garmin legend cx, loaded it up with maps and geocaches and sent it to him for his birthday last year. he's just nbow getting into the sport, and wants to update his database of geocaches. ive gone backwords and forwards through the manual to my etrex vista to try and find out how he can delete all his waypoints and start with a fresh slate (both the instruction manuals in his box were french..) i can find how to delete one at a time, but is there a way for him to clear out all his waypoints at once? can it be done with the handheld reciever or does he need to use software on the computer to do so. he is using GSAK after i recommended it and i dont know if he installed the garmin software cdrom that came with his unit. he aso lives clear across the continent so i cant get y hands on the unti and do it for him. thanks is advance for any assistance!

i received a warning from Groundspeak about my conduct in my previous posting relating to my issues with the local cache reviewer in my area. i do apologize for my comments that were derogatory to cache agent, my frustration level bubbled over, and it was not my intent to put anyone down or engage in personal attacks. i am truly sorry if i expressed myself in a way that hurt anyone, it was never my intention to do so. i have taken this issue into the appeals path offered, and feel that my caches did abide by the guidelines as set forth on geocaching.com. if the appeals process feels that they dont, so be it, they'll be removed. end of story. its a nice trail out along that way, so hopefully someone else will place a cache here or there one day. to cache agent: i apologize personally to you if any of my coments were defamatory. i am sorry that i found no better avenue to air my grievances, but i hope that this has revealed that there should be a better way of dealing with disagreements with the local geocaching community. i think there are issues within the community that need to be adressed, but im sorry if you feel i was persoanly attacking you. im used to yelling at government bureaucrats for a living and was out of line with my tone. im hoping that one day we can engage in more constructive assosciation. if you took anything as a personal slight, it wasnt my intent. ill leave what caches i have out there for now, one puzzle that was having issues with the game pieces will probably get archived anyhow to open up the area for other geocachers. my intent was to add to the sport, and im sorry if ive left a bad taste in anybodys mouth with my comments. they were some things that needed to be said, but they were never meant to attack anyone PERSONALLY, and i should have engaged in a more civl manner. heck, im a big loud iriahman and sometimes let it get away from me. happy trails all. im done.

i should point out that i havent archived MY listing, sor have i quit. i DID mention in my original post that i had sent the case to the appeals option and have recieved a letter from Groundspeak that it is being looked at. my wife, who is most certainly her own person, has archived her cache hides becuase of this and that was her decision. she is going to re-list them at another server so the cacehs will still be avaliable, but not through Groundspeak. i brought this to the forums at the same time i appealed the reviewers decision because i felt this problem shoudlbe discussed. i love this sport and although it is in its growing pains STILL, rule changes to something which is as CLOSE to an unorganized sport as there is should be treated properly. i was not an actively contribulting member to the local maritime geocaching assosciations webforum and placed my caches in accordance to what Groundspeak STILL shows as its guidelines. i should explain that i suffer from aspergers syndrome and that part of the etiology of my condition is that i seem hard wired to take things LITERALLY, as written. when i read a ruling or a law or a policy, i EXPECT it to be IMPLEMENTED as written and not to be played with fast and loose, and to not have an anonymous reviewer threaten the entire group with a HEAVIER HANDED STICK if we didnt just COMPLY. i got into this sport because i dont PLAY WELL with others, and have a devil of a time fitting in in NORMAL society, and i can go for a great long walk in the woods (especially around here in cape breton) and not have to deal with people except through logbooks and online logging. i dont like bullies. and i dont like having arbitrary rules shoved down my throat without a REASONABLE explanation. the reply that i recieved from the cache agent that the " trail that could easily become over saturated with caches every 0.1 mile, either by one or more cachers placing caches over a period of time" basically states that NO ONE can place a cache on ANY TRAIL EVER AGAIN because someone ELSE might come along and put another one nearby EVENTUALLY. if thats acceptable behaviour and reasoning from a VOLUNTEER CACHE REVIEWER then this sport is doomed to die a slow painful death within a decade because overbearing despots with a taste for the little bit of power that they have will ruin it. im NOT archiving my hides, in my opinion thats letting them WIN. i may not hide anything further through Groundspeak, there ARE other options to list a cache at, until such time as the cache reviewer locally is made more ACCOUNTABLE to the community they review FOR. like i said, WE make the sport, we FUEL it, and if we dont continue to each and every one of us contribute to the sport, it will die. and when the heavy handed GEOCRACY starts pushing away PROMINENT contributors with their unbending ways, then the reviewer needs to be re-examined if they are there for their love of the sp[ort or their love of the power. i make no apologies for my opnions, i dont think the decision the cache reviewer made was appropriate, and im not the only one locally who has had these problems with this entity. i dont know who they oare normally, i dont mix with the other geocachers on a regular basis and this in no means is a PERSONAL ATTACK against them. this is an attack against stultifying policies that are not reflected on teh official mother site. this is an attack on restrictive reviewers with a heavy stick using thier leverage on the sport AGAINST the user. i want to see this sport THRIVE. what im seeing is ONE persons actions in THIS REGION, their intransigance, is driving the local geocachers from active participation. i dont think thats right. maybe we need a more local reviewer in this area, maybe we need A COUPLE of them. but you cant fix a problem unless its picked apart and examined and discussed. blind compliance isnt my style.

i live in the nova scotia canada. ive been geocaching for just over a year and fell in love with the sport from day one. my wife and i each build our seperate caches and manage our hides seperately. we have tried to place caches throughout the county we live in because it was fairly bereft of caches and we knew a lot of nice spots to take people to. we like to 'cluster' some caches, put four or five within a few km radius, its a fair distance from ANYWHERE to county richmond, and with gas being up so high, we wanted to offer local geocachers a couple caches for their pleasure. *WE* feel nice and satisfied if we can do a couple kilometer walk and do a three or four caches. ive been across the country geocaching, have gotten my parents, siblings, friends all hooked on teh sport. so far, until today, this sport has been very satisfying. in the past year, i have hidden 34 caches. some of them are puzzle caches that i worked hours on creating. ive tried to be creative in creating different cache containers and spent a good deal of time this winter crafting concealments that would have had peoples heads spinning and tongues wagging. my wife had 17 hides to her name. we went out to a nice coastal hike and placed five caches between the two of us. all the caches were beyond the 0.1 mile Groundspeak limit from eachother. we went out and placed five caches within the first couple km of a much longer coastal hiking trail that is featured in one of the regions more well recieved hiking guides, "hiking trails of cape breton" by michael haynes. i placed three caches, a set of small plastic-ish lifesized forest animals with micro containers containing a logsheet and pencil in a small little ziplock thingy and a coupell lapel pins and polished semi-precious stones. (i hate an empty cache, even micros) they were hidden in appropriate places for these forest critters to be. my wife placed two caches interlaced with my three. hers were duct tape and camo tape wrapped tobacco cans that were stuffed to the gills. the immediate response by the local volunteer cache reviewer is that we were creating a POWER TRAIL and that the new ruling was that "We are now asking for any caches in/on parks/trails that the distance between caches is to be 0.15 - 0.2 miles...." i looked this new ruling up on Groundspeak, and couldnt find hide nor hair of it. seems it was al decided on a local geocaching assosciations webforum INSTEAD. this new rule came out last month, and neither of the cache revieweres in the area made any attempt to get this new ruling from "the Geocracy" (cache agent and cache-tech) to geocachers who arent users of the local webforum. im a member of the local assosciation but rarely use the service. i had no idea there had been rule changes, nor that these capricious changes were made only in relation to this geographical area between these two, and that i was unknowingly breaking an INVISIBLE RULE. i wrote back to cache agent, pleaded my case with relation to these caches. they are a cluster ina remote area that doesnt see many hikers. for most geocachers in the community (cape breton island in this case) the drive to the trailhead from sydney (the most populous place of note nearby) is well over an hour. i even pointed the cache agent to my facebook album that has pictures of my little caches to show her that i wsant trying to make a power trail, i was just trying to put out a couple geocaches. i requested that the series be allowed as was as they were further than 0.1m apart. the reviewers email back to confirmed this. quoting from which...... "Y our cache GC1B9H5 is 0.12 from GC1B9GW Your cache GC1B9HX is 0.16 from GC1B9GJ ( this one might be ok in distance) Your cache GC1B9GJ is 0.13 from GC1B9HP" for reference, since its unlikely these caches will ever see the light of day now that the martinet has spoken her Divine Writ, heres the public link to my facebook album that has these caches shown both after creatoion and after "release into the wild". jsut ignore the funny lookin guy in the other pictures.... <http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=31620&l=373ce&id=636054103> i requested that this series be allowed and that further caches in the region would comply with the new ruling that i had been heretofore unaware of. a ruling that isnt exactly posted anywhere on Groundspeak either. this was denied. the volunteer cache reviewer is at their discretion to this guideline to prevent saturation and after a conversation with me, i cant see why she would remain so stubbornly set, except that she dislikes being disagreed with perhaps. this situation has had repurcussions that i was unaware of from other cachers as well, in reading the exchange on the local geocaching association's website, i noticed that a prominent local geocacher from the neighbouring province who has over 160 hides and for all accounts is a well respected member of the community has archived a few SCORE caches with comments like "death by reviewer" and "death by autocracy". another prominent geocacher stated publicly that he had placed his last cache out, stating: "We hide caches so there will be caches for other cacher to find ( use our expense & time to help the sport ) but when power tripping reviewers change the rules it's time for me to stop hiding." <http://www.maritimegeocaching.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5009&hl= > the cache agents totalitarian attitude sneaks in around page three of this exchange with the reviewers comments like: "Ok how about 0.4 mile? We do have permission to go whatever limit to prevent or reduce power trails.." the other reviewers response to criticism over this idea reads: "So what were all saying here is, if we can shoehorn another cache in a location, lets do it, because that is what everyone wants. Lets line up every trail and every parking lot with a cache every 0.1 mile that we can. Then lets pressure (and don't say it won't happen because it does all the time) to squeeze one more in at 500 feet/475/450 since there is a ditch/road/wall/bush in between." this is HARDLY CONSTRUCTIVE. nor is it likely to attract new people to this burgeoning sport. My wife, lady debenedictis, has now archived ALL of her caches, not liking, as she put it, the tone and tyrannical attitude postured by the cache reviewers. im willing to have the appeals look at this and decide. i think it would be a shame for me to have to delist all of my other caches as well because of a reviewer that refuses to discuss things and hands down decisions arbitrarily. i feel that she could have allowed these caches to go through, especially now that there are only THREE of them, two of them being 0.12 miles apart. this is HARDLY a power trail. i have no issue with any further caches that i personallyput down this trail will b e well beyond the reviewers new limit, just in case they change their mind again without letting anyone else know. i was unaware of any ruling about power trails, and i feel that she could have taken this into consideration instead of getting everyones backs up against the walls like this. i think its perhaps time for Groundspeak to step in and figure out how to get this reviewer to be more INTERACTIVE rather than DESPOTIC with the local geocachers. people are delisting and archiving caches and there is beginning to brew a lot of bad blood in the area. others, as mentioned, are stopping in posting cache hides. im not sure if this is the sort of person that should be representing Groundspeak as a reviewer if they take the job and requirements too personally and take it out on people that they are supposed to be assisting. maybe its time for a couple MORE reviewers in the area and a more quorum decision making or peer reviewed decision making to prevent one persons bad attitude from DRIVING AWAY potential geocachers. the reviewers reasoning that the "trail that could easily become over saturated with caches every 0.1 mile, either by one or more cachers placing caches over a period of time" is irrelevant. what exists is not a power trail by ANY reasonable definition and i feel the cache agent is now taking things on a personal level rather than ensuring that my caches meet Groundspeak guidelines. i think this oversteps her bounds with imagined authority. the FACT is that, especially now that my wife has archived all of her caches in protest, there are only three caches along an approximate 1.5 kilometer run. the caches in question are: GC1B9GJ:Cap Auget Trail: Whale Watching at Cape Hogan N 45° 28.095 W 061° 00.782 <http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=85d84fa6-fc4b-468a-a487-73afe37be38f> GC1B9GW:Cap Auget Trail: Too Far Gone N 45° 28.137 W 061° 00.268 <http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=d4fec90b-bc3b-4085-9b86-205ffec0c7de> GC1B9H5:Cap Auget Trail:Green Island View N 45° 28.132 W 061° 00.116 <http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=586e2abc-7c67-4cd1-b296-4e104801a5b2> i have formally appealed the decision by "cache agent" to not allow these, i have stated that i will further on abide by this new ruling even though i dont think it is appropriate for the reviewers to have made such a decision without better input from the community they supposedly serve, or to have implemented a FUNDAMENTAL change to the rules without informing the local geocachers beforehand. they have accepted teh responisbility to review caches to ensure that they meet Groundspeak guidelines and have taken on a weighty task, but with that sort of authority comes the responsibility to be accountable for your decisions and to make sure those you are supposedly in charge of are aware of those decisions. making a new rule and hoping everybody just KNOWS that its in effect, especially one so BASAL to the way we operate as cache hiders, shouldnt be left to "well...ill tell 'em about it the next time they try to hide a cache." im also a premium subscriber to Groundspeak because i want to support the site and the sport. its also due for renewal at the end of this month. im having HUGE DOUBTS whether to renew this membership. its my money that buys the swag and the cache containers and the REAMS of camoflage duct tape to make the caches and my gas to drive to where im hiding the cache. all ID like is a HINT of consideration by the reviewer and a whole lot LESS autocracy. thats my rant. ive sent out the appeal so that i can place these caches, but the whole affair has left a real sour taste in my mouth, and i think that some big changes need to be made to geocaching and that WE as geocachers need to take control of this sport back from the reviewers a little bit and make them more responsive to discussion rather than offering down gospel writ from on high. we the geocachers MAKE the sport, we ARE the sport and without our support there IS no sport. feh. my fingers are tired and i have a chess game to lose to my dad over on facebook. thanks for reading this far if you did.

thanks for the help. i gave it a full two hours sitting on the back porch, and we went out geocaching with it earlier and the lowrance had excellent accuracy, just so long as you ignored the fact that half the time the basemap had us driving across the water. garmin is replacing the vista with a new model that they're sending out right away, an HCx (as the Cx was discontinued) so ill see how the two compare. thanks again for the advice. it worked like a charm. we're on the lookout for the topo maps for eastern canada now to load into her.

ive been using a garmin vista cx this past year geocaching and liked the interface. unfortunately, i let the batteries go completely dead and it fried my unit. i spent all day on the phone with garmin trying every trick in the book to no avail. looks like ill have to ship it off to quebec and wait for them to figure out what went wrong. the unit will not turn on no matter what i do. new batteries, exchanged micro-sd card, tried two different versions of a hard reset...nothin'. someone on the yahoo etrex group also experienced this problem so its probably a hardware bug. ive had a lowrance ifinder h2o sitting in the closet for the past year. i started reading up on the unit, and took it out to see how it performed. it placed my home on the OTHER side of the lake, but this is canada and im using the basemaps, so im wondering if they might be off in the first place? does a purchase of mapcreate help with the problem?? i also noticed a big discrepency between a HOME reading. i have a small stone circle built down by the lakeshore and my garmin marked the center of the firepit at 45 N 46.043 060 W 35.197. the lowrance read the same location at 45 N 46.083 060 W 35.122. thats a fairly wide discrepancy. the garmin used to read +/- 4m most of the time whereas the lowrance read an EPE of 14m at its lowest (and after twenty minutes shivering in the cold.) are these results typical of the lowrance, because ive always found the garmin to be fairly accurate while geocaching, but those wildly different readings from the lowrance have me concerned.