GodinDraak

Hello Waymarker. Actually, the desire to make power substations more visually pleasing is a recent thing in North America. I have worked as a power engineer and traveled the world for 15 years, but I have only seen such a housing like this in Europe as you have described ( I believe I saw one of the housings pictured in Slovenia on the website). The electrical system was constructed to simply function in the earlier days, with little concern for safety or how it looks. As these systems have aged, they were replaced with better technology and safety in mind, but not how it looks. These days though, when a substation is being constructed so that it does not look so industrial, the outdoor switch yard will still exist, then the transformer system will be placed inside a building. I have seen a few that look like a barn, and some others that looked like a house the same as the other houses around it. Mostly though, when a substation transformer is considered as ugly, it is hidden in a vault underground. The 'transformer housings', as shown on the website are a good way to make them look nice around residential areas, but doing this is a relatively new idea to us in North America, compared to Europe.

After reading Jeremy's musings on a similar subject, it looks like that would be just the thing. Hopefully, Jeremy hasn't let it die by the wayside. At the risk of revealing my fondness for the animated movie, 'Robots'; "See A Need, Fill A Need".

Well, the cause for opening this thread just reached fruition. I was contacted by the last holder of the coin in question. The coin was lost, so the cacher in question had tucked it in his 'stash-cache' to take it out of his inventory. He responded, after I contacted a reviewer local to his area, with an offer to replace the coin and was remorseful about it. I just told him that I wanted to know why it stalled for so long, then simply marked it as missing. I did decline his offer of a replacement coin because I was only interesting in knowing its whereabouts, not in getting something out of it. So, this one is resolved as far as I'm concerned, but unfortunately, this is what I was talking about. Somebody can use their 'stash-cache' as a way to conceal an 'oopsie'. Unless a geocacher knows how to do a bit of legwork like this, he will be left not knowing what happened to his traveler and unsure of what to do about it because the cache page it is residing in is inaccessible to him. So, in conclusion, unpublished caches are being used for a warehouse of sorts for moving travelers in and out of a cacher's inventory and they are also used for other myriad ways. But the downsides are that it creates more work for the local reviewers because the unpublished cache holds a coordinate placemark, and they are a closed box to the general geocaching public which means we have to ask a reviewer (adding more work load) to peek inside or contact the cacher for us. Perhaps this might be an opportunity to look at the merits of creating a 'stash-cache' or such, that can be operated by a cacher, but will not hold a position on the playing field, be so cloak-and-dagger in it's accessibility and can lessen the work load on the reviewer.

Hi there, Pyrate Wench! Gotta meet up sometime... Yeah, I'm not too worried about the coin because it's the odd, crazy things that happen to them that interests me. As for me starting this topic, I was just wondering how an unpublished cache could remain in stasis for so long. So far, the concensus seems to be that an unpublished cache can be used for more than just a stash spot, but for other things too. Seems like there might be a way to fill the need with a tool specifically designed to accomplish the different ways of putting an unpublished cache to use.

Yes, hoarding of the coins & TBs of others would be considered improper, as might be expected. For myself, I use one of my caches for dipping (and launching) near my house. I guess I kind of figure the owner won't mind...

Thanks for the work, BlueDuece but I've put the wheels in motion and I'll see if anything come of it. Besides, I was more interested in the inner-workings of how long-term unpublished caches were existing and how they may affect the playing field. I have thusly been educated, thanks to all whom have responded so far.

Ah, I'm a bit wiser now. By the way, this isn't a "My coin is missing!" thread. As I'm well aware that they will roll off the geocaching map, as it were. It's something of a social barometer to me and I find it interesting to see how people treat them, taking pictures of their exploits, telling neat stories, etc. I've had a few go away, but I've also had two of them mysteriously reincarnate themselves (one of them twice). I understand that people will always covet somebody else's item and off it goes... I drop them because I have faith in (most) people. I was just thinking that I found yet another strange way to work your geocaching experience, and unfortunately, it is causing some collateral issues.

Oops, my bad. I was under the mistaken impression that it held the position based upon the coordinates entered into it. So, since it doesn't place-hold until it is sent to the reviewer, the only real issue is that of making things in accessible to others.

Granted, this is a cacher issue, but this would be a good way to make travelers disappear, leaving the traveler's owner with no recourse. Unless some computer forensics and 'social engineering' is performed, there is no way for the less technically inclined cacher to be able to find out more about what happened. You're locked out and have no way of finding out anything about it. Besides, I would believe the intent of the application process is to place a cache, not to hold the application open indefinitely for personal storage. As mentioned above, using an archived cache would be just as suitable, in order to maintain personal inventories.

Well, I can understand that kind of use for an archived cache, since it isn't locked out from public viewing and the cache no longer acts as a place holder on the playing field. No problem there...

I just recently discovered something interesting while tracking the whereabouts of some of my geocoins. Apparently, there are geocachers that maintain an unpublished cache in order to 'hide' geocoins and TBs in order to separate these treasures away from their profiles. When I had a coin picked up by somebody visiting from another state and he posted that he was taking the coin to his home-state, I sent him an email, pointing out that the coin's mission (on its traveler card and web page) was to stay in our state. I received no reply from the cacher and a couple of months later, I received an email from Groundspeak that the coin had been placed in a cache. When I clicked on the link in the email, the cache is not available for viewing and this message pops up: "Sorry, you cannot view this cache listing until it has been published". So, I figured that I would wait until it is published to see who would pick up the coin when the cache is published. I then checked the rest of my travelers and found a coin that was placed in a cache in January, but hadn't moved since then. I clicked on the link for the cache that is on the geocoin's webpage, and 'Bingo!', I get the same, "Sorry, you cannot view this cache listing until it has been published". I thought it was strange that this coin was placed in the cache back in January, but it hasn't been published yet. I decided to get in touch with a reviewer, local to the area where this unpublished cache is and it turns out, this unpublished cache is used by the cacher who opened it to store coins in, that others can't get to. That's when I checked futher on the first unpublished cache I mentioned above and I discovered that I can't see who owns the unpublished cache, but when I checked the profile of the cacher who dropped my coin in this unpublished cache, it looks like he is using it as a geocoin 'dump', as quite a few coins from others have been cycled through this unpublished cache over a span of a couple of months... Maybe I'm talking out of turn, but whenever I've opened an application for a new cache placement, I was of the opinion that I should craft it and send it in for publishing as soon as reasonably possible. But using an unpublished cache as a holding pen of sorts doesn't seem to hold up to the spirit of creating caches. Perhaps there should be a time limit of say, a month to complete the process and if it isn't submited for publishing by then, the GC number is cancelled, the application is voided and the GC number is recycled back into the pool. This way, coin hoarding wouldn't be cataloged by an unpublished Groundspeak geocache page and the position won't be locked-in by a cache that isn't intended to be published... Any thoughts?

Thanks for the info, I was wondering why I couldn't find out very much about this coin...

I moved a 2007 Montana geocoin that says "Montana" & "Visitmt.com" on one side (that doesn't have the tracking number) and "Treasure From" then "Montana's Custer's Country" on the other side (that has the tracking number on it). It was made of antique bronze and was struck in 3-D format. I'm thinking of picking up one or two for a co-worker cacher who spent some time up there last year and just loves the countryside up there. Anybody know who would have been making these, or where they might still be available? Thanks, GodinDraak.

Got ours in today - Tampa, Florida. (Ex Jeep mechanic in the 80s).

And this was my confusion. I was wondering why everybody was writing down the numbers off of the tags and coins, then when I went to the page for the travel bug I dropped at the gathering, it was loaded with the discoveries. I would hate to be the owner of the TB, because now you have all of these 'discovered it' posts like email spam, and they don't do anything to advance the object or give usable information to the TB owner. The worst part of my story is that the TB we dropped at the get-together seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth. It was passed around and so far, it hasn't been placed yet. We did pick up a freshly-minted TB while we were at the gathering and we purposely looked for a cache to put it in one the next day to move it on its way. As one of the posts above has stated, it looks like different people play the game for different reasons. As for us, we will continue to work hard for our "Found-Its", we will only post a found-it if we actually sign the log in the cache and if the cache needs a little repair or additional goodies added to it to make it more desirable for the next guy, we will do that, in the hopes others will want to visit the places we have been to, even if it's for the things we have left behind. We feel this is an opportunity to enjoy a recreational hobby that can be a fun, yet honorable, experience. This will most likely be my last post on this thread, as you-all have helped me to understand how the 'discovered-it' function works and how it can be used for other means too. Thanks, I appreciate it.

As a newbie I too found this very confusing. I swore I wouldn't touch a TB until I knew exactly what to do about it. I thought I did but luckily someone locally caught me up and walked me through the correct steps. I don't think it's just me that was/is confused! Thanks for the replies, I appreciate the time you took to respond. I have been very careful in my handling of Travel Bugs and such, because I regard them as a huge responsibility. I have moved several of them, to include 2 diabetes tags, and even placed one of my own so far. What doesn't make sense is the amount of discover-its that I run across from placing some type of traveler in a cache. For example when I placed my own TB, within a couple of hours, I had one guy tell me he 'discovered' my TB on the web page because I mistakenly had the serial number of the dogtag in the picture on the page. He then went on to say he would understand if I deleted his claim, but he did "discover" it, as if he was begrudging the loss of his 'discovered it' listing on my TB page, or something. Also, I am finding people are 'discovering' TBs and coins after I moved them to another cache, which I initially took as if they were confirming that I (the newbie) did indeed place it in the container as I said I did. Which, I now know, isn't the situation at all. When I decided to check the profile of one of these mass discoverers, I saw that he has built up a large inventory of icons for TBs and coins in his 'Trackables' tab, even though he hasn't moved practically any of them. I checked the profiles of other mass discovered-it cachers and found a similar trend, that's why I ask if it's a numbers thing. You can build up a huge list of some pretty neat-looking icons in your trackables tab and not bear the responsibility of actually doing something with the trackable item, just write down the serial number, post that you discovered it, and Voila! You have another medal to pin on the washboards of your cacher's 'uniform', or rather, your profile. It looks to me that the intent for the 'discovered it' function is suffering from severe abuse. I can understand 'dunking' a trackable to help position it in a location before moving it some distance to another location in order to show the mileage on the TB page, but 'discovering it' a whole bunch of times in the same cache doesn't seem to do anything beneficial to anyone but the discoverer. It's like spamming the owner of the trackable on his TB page. As you can see, I did a little research on this topic before deciding to ask this question. I don't know, it just doesn't make sense to me as to how mass-discovering benefits the sport...

After having good success in our first month of caching, we decided to go to our first geo-meeting to meet others in the area and drop off a Travel bug we had picked up in our recent travels. When we went to log the fact that we dropped it off at the geo-meeting, the travel bug page was loaded with "I Discovered It" posts. What is up with that? It was my impression that the 'discovered it' function was so you could notify the TB owner about their bug that has been lingering for a while in a cache, that it is still there and hasn't been muggled. Looks like this would be the best way to use this button... Is this another one of those "Numbers-Ho" things?