Jump to content

flask

+Charter Members
  • Posts

    4692
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by flask

  1. i do not use facebook, not even at gunpoint. i really don't want it authorized to come NEAR my account. is it possible to turn it off? and if gc.com is going to authorize it for me and give me no option to deauthorize it, shouldn't the page read "These are the web and mobile apps WE'VE authorized to access and update your Geocaching profile."?
  2. i know how to set display color for a track using a GPX extension tag. can i set track width the same way? how? does anybody have a sample?
  3. is it my imagination, or are the advertisers in the gc.com sidebar less and less reputable companies? didn't they use to at least make sure they were selling advertising to people who didn't put up anonymous downloads you might accidentally click while trying to write your logs? i guess anybody's money is good enough. careful about dragging that pinkie.
  4. ooh, ooh! and if we're going to use a baseball hall of fame analogy (thank you, "all statistics are holy" folks!), i do not believe the hall of fame keeps track of all the home runs ever scored by all people playing baseball, ever. i think that leaderboard is limited to GUYS WHO WERE EMPLOYED IN PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL. none of those hallowed statistics involves regular joes who happened to have been playing the same game somewhere. in you FACE, losers! you played a game of baseball somewhere and you are included in the world rankings. too bad you suck next to the bigs. yeah, you should have thought about that before you ever tossed a ball.
  5. ok, so you "statistics are holy" people... i ride bicycles. typically my standings in the state championship isn't counted for the stats unless I ENTER THE RACE. so putting me in the competition for most awesomest cacher by number of finds rankings really should be my choice, because your stats are basically unenforceable unmonitored unauthenticated tallymarks anyway and i don't want to play. but because i'm compelled to play, yesterday i went out and scooped up a dozen or so firstfinds that i'm never going to log unless someone else wants to claim them as one of their firstfind stats. you know, because some of the loserboards track firstfinds, too. if anyone claims them, i'll be there with photos to discredit. if i can't be excluded from the leaderboard, i'll do my best to queer as much of the data as i can. not only can i call my own data into question, but i can queer other people's stats with a little effort. any thoughts from the "all data must be accurately represented or else i can't have fun" crowd?
  6. usually the OP will step in and whine something about people hijacking THEIR topic, but i tend to feel that conversations are organic and they go where they go. so by my count, this conversation is still about what it's about, which would be whatever it's about. for the record, i LOVE leaderboards that i actually sign up to be on. if i am in a contest, i will watch those leaderboards night and day. sometimes i race bicycles. i have some trophies and stuff even. if i just go for a ride along the jonesville loop on a tuesday afternoon and my local bike club posts my time in the standings with their time trial on the same loop, i'll be cranky BECAUSE I DIDN'T SIGN UP FOR THAT RACE. the analogue is sort of when you sign up for a big group ride because it's fun to go in a group and some hatwipe thinks it's the TDF and starts posting race results at the barbecue. if i had a cat, i'd get it to pee in that guy's beer.
  7. and what exactly is my present caching rate? and just so you know, i have pet projects i've been working on since 1976. it is not unusual for me to chip away at a thing every day for ten or fifteen years. i actually have some very impressive stats on a leaderboard somewhere regarding simple sticking to things. i hold some records for longevity. since this conversation began, i have found roughly 80 caches. those weren't particularly hard days, nor particularly geared toward number-whoring. i think what i'm saying here is that it's a doable project. it will take less time to spoil the fun of leaderboard hanging-on and turn things mean than it will to catch that number two guy, but everybody else is up for grabs in the next year or two. a few well-placed comments at events about loserbabies who can't keep up will go a long way to acidifying the atmosphere. see, i don't actually want to be at the top of the loserboard. i want to be taken off of it. i want the opportunity to opt out of it. and the way i read the landscape is that while everyone else thinks it's all fun and games, npthing's going to change for me until somebody kicks the leaderboard contest into HIGH gear and it becomes intimidating and unpleasant for people. it really only takes one ultra-competitive hatwipe to poison that well. that hatwipe is me. i like to think that when the opt-out option comes, the world will be better for my sacrifice. that number two guy saved my life once. the number one guy is my father. i think those rankings mean something to them. i want to be able to opt out.
  8. exactly my point. we're going to be having a lot of discussions at future events about the whiny loserbabies who can't get into the top ten. a long time ago when someone first mentioned to me that there was a state leaderboard, i snorted derisively and asked what kind of a no-life hatwipe numbergrubber you had to be to be on the top of it and there was kind of an awkward pause while somebody politely coughed and said i was at the top of it. i tried to get off the dadgum thing, and at one point quit geocaching altogether for a little while. then there was a lot of whining about who should be allowed to be on the loserboard because boo-hoo, not everybody on it lives in state. if i have to be on it at all, i'll climb to the top just so i can empty my bladder on the whole pile. that number one guy is old, and if i have to steal his cane, i will. i'm going to have to write a lot of logs that say boo-yah! i'm ahead of you in the leaderboards!!! but it's all about friends and community, right? no. it's about your standing on the leeeeeeaderboard! i tried ignoring it for a few years, longer than you've been playing the game, but it turns out it still bugs me to be dragged into a duck measuring contest i didn't sign up for. turns out if that hatwipe at the stoplight wants to rev his engine and try to cut me off because he's winning the driving down the road, i will quietly hold him in contempt and go about my business. but i will think he's a hatwipe and i will wish a pox on him and his house seven generations forward and back. if i'm not in the contest i can go about my happy way and wish everyone well. but if they put me in the contest whether i want to be or not, i start to hate the other players. all of them, both above and below me. the funny thing is that if *i* sign up for a contest, i am both sporting and generous. if i am put into a contest whether i like it or not, my instinct is to turn the whole thing nasty so that nobody wants to play anymore. i realize that means i won't be elected homecoming queen. i'm ok with that. look out, number five. i realize that your spot on the leaderboard means something to you. i am going to take it. i understand we won't be friends anymore. number four, you're next.
  9. For some reason, you seem to think that it is inappropriate to discuss geocaching at geocaching events. I can assure you if I approached you with an innocent question and you countered by asking me the size of me genitalia, I'd grant you your wish to stand as far away from me as you desire. i'm delighted to discuss actual geocaching at events. you know, like, "been to any fun caches lately?" "how'd you like that railtrail?" "loved your logs on that cache", as well as "where's a good place to get lunch in clarendon?" and "how's your mom?" and "how do you like your new GPS?" if you want to discuss the standings on third party leaderboards, i will consider it fully as gauche as comparing salaries and who has bigger wedding tackle and i will do my best to shift the discomfort back on you. see, if i enter a competition, i expect to compete to the best of my ability right up until the point that i am bleeding too hard to carry on. i expect my results to be a part of the record, and i will both know and share my standings. if i do some other activity that's NOT a competition and you wish to compete against me without my consent and place me in a public ranking, i will ask to be excused from that competition, and failing that, i will respond with sufficient aggression that everyone will wish i had been excused. there's no such thing as a friendly competition if everyone who's entered doesn't want to be entered. if you dress me up and take me to the dance against my will, i guarantee there will be a turd in the punchbowl before the evening is out. because i will have started a new game and made everyone a player in it whether they want to play or not. i don't see what the problem is. if you don't want to play my new game, just try to remove yourself from it. just try.
  10. i find that when asked "how many finds do you have?" a handy response is "how much money do you make?" or a similar question relating to the asker's genitalia. if i really, really have to be polite, i might say "some. would you like to tell me about YOUR find count?" it is also a useful question because in most cases it alerts me early on that i have no wish to be talking to the asker and it saves me time. "how many caches have you found?" "some. if you'll excuse me, i have to go stand over there."
  11. where did i say it wasn't ok with me for people to rant about my rantings? Repeat after me : "goosefraba" In case you miss it, many posts back, I'm a defender of your right to rant and be offended. That doesn't mean I agree with what you're ranting against. oh, you. yes, at the top i was responding to you. but then i wandered off and was responding to some other person i couldn't be bothered to scroll up and quote who felt it was disturbing for me to have taken some time to think about it before ranting. YOU, i like. that other person, not so much.
  12. where did i say it wasn't ok with me for people to rant about my rantings? what's the point of entering into a discussion about things i don't like without other people being able to speak? i'm fully capable of wandering about the house ranting to nobody in particular. and whoever was sad that i called it a "loserboard" my intent is clearly to make people uncomfortable with the words themselves. language is a very powerful thing. it can be subverted in all sorts of fun ways. if i can manage to get the word "leaderoard" associated with "loserboard", nobody will know who is being ironic and hip and maybe the whole thing will drop into disuse. if i have to be made uncomfortable by my inclusion against my consent in a list of top ranked anythings, i get to call that list any old name i want. i think next week i will be calling the list the little golden book of no-life point grubbers. here's the deal: if i don't have to be on the list i'll be very respectful. as long as it's a forced frogmarch, i'll call it what i want. if you're make everybody be ranked, expect the unwilling to be rankled.
  13. some puzzles just aren't worth solving. if you put out a puzzle you took from some cheap puzzle book and i can google the answer, i'm not bothering to solve it. heck, you didn't bother to actually make a puzzle. additionally, just because a method CAN be used to convert something into coordinates doesn't mean it SHOULD be used. some areas are just filthy with poorly defined noisome ill-begotten puzzles, and wherever this happens, i heartily recommend driving around and sticking your arm into every guardrail you find.
  14. hey, hi. i took some days off to visit my grandmother. she's fine, thanks. with regard to ignoring the loserboards, i was doing very nicely doing just that until i went to that event where suddenly i was thrown into that conversation with people i otherwise like. what i said was "oh. is that thing still up?' should i have punched them in the teeth? because talking about it and that i feel it's a problem and why i feel it's a problem seemed to me to be a better idea. but if y'all think i should start punching, i can practice up. as for a cooling down period, who are YOU to judge it? i have a knack for saying a lot of pointy little things and i thought maybe instead of flying off into an ill-considered rant i might sleep on it for a fortnight or so. you know, to kind of temper the response and figure out if my initial reaction was an accurate reflection of my thoughts about it. you know, so that while it may still be a rant, it is at least a properly considered rant. and whoever googled "the gender of flask", good job. i am not sure whether to laugh derisively or just to laugh.
  15. to get back to the original point: i don't WANT to block my stats from view because some stats are pleasing to me. what is not pleasing to me is that there is a ranking of players that i can't opt out of. one site has lamely told me i can be anonymized, but since it was announced to me by leaderboard watchers that everyone knows who those two blank spots are, i wanted something done about it. to repeat: i just want my data removed from the leaderboards. for those with poor reading comprehension, i don't want to become invisible, just off the leaderbords which DO rank players by caches found. and if you think it's not a competition, you've never been in that top slot and heard what people will say to you. so i wrote to Groundspeak about it, and i opened a discussion about it here. the newsletters they send out have stressed that it's all about community. well, i've seen it be very much about those dadgum cache counts and who's ahead of whom. i'd like to be able to pull out of the contest and let the people below me all move up a slot. alternately, i'm just going to have to take that number one spot for myself and step on however many heads i have to to do it. if i'm being forced into the game, i'm going to wipe up the field, just because. and then from up there i will loudly announce that the leaderboard doesn't really matter and and nobody's using it for competition anyway. i will tell the people who WANTED to be #1 that i asked to be removed from the board entirely, but wasn't allowed. you know, because it's about community. apparently i can block all of my stats from view EXCEPT that all important total finds for the rankings, because if we judge by which statistics we can control display of, it is in fact the rankings that are most important. so get out of my way. starting today, i've got heads to step on. i am about to create a very harsh adversarial environment.
  16. i am more moderate than you are. i am number one on the leaderboard.
  17. plus, this: http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC1P2GC_vermont-geocaches-are-the-best
  18. and by the way, my nose is ranked number one at cacherstats for both charm and cleanliness. also, i have north america's sweetest smelling kneecap.
  19. wooo-hooo! in your FACE, posting people! i'm number one! i'm number ONE! i'm num- from my exalted position now i will use the front page of the leaderboard to clean my nose.
  20. you will also need other cachers to hit with rock s so you can see who gets hit the most/least. yes, exactly! you first.
  21. ah, there is is then. and yet nobody has my potato eating time on some loserboard, nor the time it takes to hit you with a rock, because i am very, very good with a rock. i demand that you allow us all to come over there and hit you with rocks so we can post a list of the best times and most damage per shot. and we need enough shots at you to have good stats, categorized by state.
  22. i've always considered it to be a game, sort of like whifflehockey, or snowsketball. my hobbies are eating potato chips and banging rocks on things.
  23. well, for what it's worth, i now live in nunavut.
  24. oh, boy. i better post me some more so i can get to the top o' that list. because i am a awesomer typer than you. but seriously. i'm just going to step out of this discussion while i go race a mountain bike, which is a competitive activity for which i expect rankings to be recorded and posted.
×
×
  • Create New...