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I have an 8lbs 12v gelcell in my backpack (if the cahce is not close to the truck). I have my GPS (with it's adapter cord) pluged into it. ALONG with my 2meter radio to talk back to my home base or other people. Also my 12v spotlight (if night tine cahcing). I also carry a minimag so I dont have to run the BIG light for extended periods. I have been out for 5 hours useing my spot quite often in pitch black and have not depleated my 12v gelcell. BUT if it does go down, I have 12AA in my pack as a backup, (also as cache items) for my minimag, gps, and ham radio. Better leave home prepared.... ------------------ "MY gps said it's RIGHT HERE!" http://www.geogadgets.com

I have an 8lbs 12v gelcell in my backpack (if the cahce is not close to the truck). I have my GPS (with it's adapter cord) pluged into it. ALONG with my 2meter radio to talk back to my home base or other people. Also my 12v spotlight (if night tine cahcing). I also carry a minimag so I dont have to run the BIG light for extended periods. I have been out for 5 hours useing my spot quite often in pitch black and have not depleated my 12v gelcell. BUT if it does go down, I have 12AA in my pack as a backup, (also as cache items) for my minimag, gps, and ham radio. Better leave home prepared.... ------------------ "MY gps said it's RIGHT HERE!" http://www.geogadgets.com

ing that time I've had chances to talk to people from all over the country (6 years customer service answering phones). I've discovered that jerks come in all different flavors. I've talked to some particularily obnoxious people with east coast accents, but I'll not make the mistake of labeling all of the people on the east coast on the basis of the actions of a few prime time jerks. Perhaps you should try the same.

quote:Originally posted by yrium: I'm a bit worried that some might find them annoying. What is your opinion? Am I a geocaching Del Griffith? --- yrium --- I go along with the others who enjoy your long logs. I feel neglected because my cache only got a paragraph or two from you. I also think the suggestions about making your own web page are a great idea. If you could compile your logs in one place, it would make a great source of reading. Maybe Jeremy could make a section on the website for people to post short stories about their web adventures. Something along the lines of the page that posts the news articles. Hey, going along with my tendency to over do things, he could compile all the stories into a book form and sell it. All proceeds going to the website; then?the movie deal and the talk show circuit. Ok, ok, just put me down as liking long logs.

quote:Originally posted by yrium: I'm a bit worried that some might find them annoying. What is your opinion? Am I a geocaching Del Griffith? --- yrium --- I go along with the others who enjoy your long logs. I feel neglected because my cache only got a paragraph or two from you. I also think the suggestions about making your own web page are a great idea. If you could compile your logs in one place, it would make a great source of reading. Maybe Jeremy could make a section on the website for people to post short stories about their web adventures. Something along the lines of the page that posts the news articles. Hey, going along with my tendency to over do things, he could compile all the stories into a book form and sell it. All proceeds going to the website; then?the movie deal and the talk show circuit. Ok, ok, just put me down as liking long logs.

In another thread on this forum about "the other" geocaching site there was talk about it having caches that were considered to be commercial caches on geocaching.com. What makes a cache commercial? Corporate sponsorship? Cost to find? Stache of restaurant coupons in the box? Forgive me if this has been covered before. New ranting always keeps the waters stirred. ------------------ VentureForth out to the wild, wet forest...

Okay, since the other one is too long and has digressed to who-knows-where, let's all start talking in a new thread. So, anyone still want to head up to Ferengi Wormhole? I might be able to talk J.'s mom into letting her dad give us a ride in a few weeks if I have friends with me. (Oh, and everybody who can, come chat tomorrow evening at 8:30 our time. ) [This message has been edited by ClayJar (edited 20 January 2002).]

Okay, since the other one is too long and has digressed to who-knows-where, let's all start talking in a new thread. So, anyone still want to head up to Ferengi Wormhole? I might be able to talk J.'s mom into letting her dad give us a ride in a few weeks if I have friends with me. (Oh, and everybody who can, come chat tomorrow evening at 8:30 our time. ) [This message has been edited by ClayJar (edited 20 January 2002).]

"Yes but we're talking about a commodity ... data." Information is generally sold as a service, not a commodity, though I'm sure Garmin would throw in some pork belly's... Seriously, you have two rational choices, sell it as a one shot, or sell one CD, but let people buy unlock codes. Selling individual CDs is stupid for items under about $100 at these volumes. (that is why the USGS does it). Then you have tons of distribution, manufacturing and service headaches and costs. Regardless of what approach you take, you'll get malcontents (as this thread shows). On the one hand, you'll have people *****ing about the need to buy all. On the other (and market research shows that most the time this is the much bigger group), you get people screaming that you are nickel and diming them when they *know* all the data is just sitting on the CD they have. "The Mapsource software is a fairly lame interface to the data. It's worth about $0.35. My nephew could write a better interface and he's only 4 years old." ROFLMAO! I love it when people talk about how trivial it is to write, distribute, and service, horizontally targeted software. I take it you have zero experience in software development? Or, a computer science major? (Inside joke, they come to us clueless, and 'Institutional Software' is, as a rule, terrible.) By my standards, MapSource is pretty weak, but it is actually above average for a hardware manufacturer, and less lame than some of the $50-$100 3rd party packages floating around. "No, rather, the cost to Garmin and therefore the price of MapSource is the data. Further, it is modular in nature." Nope, the data is a modest cost (you can price it online yourself). The computers and development tools for the engineers probably cost more. Engineers burden out to about $14K-$20K a month, artsy types generally a bit less. The big factors are labor, marketing/distribution, and support infrastructure (the last two might be swapped). "When was the last time you went to a restaurant and the waiter told you had to order one of everything or nothing at all?" Aside from a salad bar, restaurant's usually control the portion sizes. The last time I checked, Garmin offers several CD's with assorted data on each. If you don't like the portions, go to Taco Bell... -jjf

"Yes but we're talking about a commodity ... data." Information is generally sold as a service, not a commodity, though I'm sure Garmin would throw in some pork belly's... Seriously, you have two rational choices, sell it as a one shot, or sell one CD, but let people buy unlock codes. Selling individual CDs is stupid for items under about $100 at these volumes. (that is why the USGS does it). Then you have tons of distribution, manufacturing and service headaches and costs. Regardless of what approach you take, you'll get malcontents (as this thread shows). On the one hand, you'll have people *****ing about the need to buy all. On the other (and market research shows that most the time this is the much bigger group), you get people screaming that you are nickel and diming them when they *know* all the data is just sitting on the CD they have. "The Mapsource software is a fairly lame interface to the data. It's worth about $0.35. My nephew could write a better interface and he's only 4 years old." ROFLMAO! I love it when people talk about how trivial it is to write, distribute, and service, horizontally targeted software. I take it you have zero experience in software development? Or, a computer science major? (Inside joke, they come to us clueless, and 'Institutional Software' is, as a rule, terrible.) By my standards, MapSource is pretty weak, but it is actually above average for a hardware manufacturer, and less lame than some of the $50-$100 3rd party packages floating around. "No, rather, the cost to Garmin and therefore the price of MapSource is the data. Further, it is modular in nature." Nope, the data is a modest cost (you can price it online yourself). The computers and development tools for the engineers probably cost more. Engineers burden out to about $14K-$20K a month, artsy types generally a bit less. The big factors are labor, marketing/distribution, and support infrastructure (the last two might be swapped). "When was the last time you went to a restaurant and the waiter told you had to order one of everything or nothing at all?" Aside from a salad bar, restaurant's usually control the portion sizes. The last time I checked, Garmin offers several CD's with assorted data on each. If you don't like the portions, go to Taco Bell... -jjf

Would you be willing to be interviewed for my article? I am actually going to go out next Tuesday night after work (but before it gets too dark) with one of the people who has a cache around here in Lansing. I'd like to get into this sport and I'm trying to learn more about it. I'm particularly interested in the travelers...the things that travel from one cache to another across the country. Have you ever been a part of that? Thanks for responding to the email. I hope you can spare a few minutes to either email me or talk to me about your experiences. quote:Originally posted by Clay:I just hit most of the caches in Lansing last Sunday. All thats left is 'the big boat'. Finally, I have something to do when there is no snow on the ground for x-c skiing, and too much ice on the lakes for kayaking, but not enough for fishing. Lansing was the closest cluster to my home, next will be Toledo or GR.

Welcome to the forums, XSnoopy! There is an Xterra Xcursion on the 19th but unfortunately, I can't make it because of work obligations! (Can't wait to retire in 3-5 years!) I read about the details of your trip--that it includes some geocaching on the side. Wish I could come! Tsk tsk...Sigh...Oh well... Let's schedule a hide & seek get-together within San Diego or beyond...talk to you later.

Welcome to the forums, XSnoopy! There is an Xterra Xcursion on the 19th but unfortunately, I can't make it because of work obligations! (Can't wait to retire in 3-5 years!) I read about the details of your trip--that it includes some geocaching on the side. Wish I could come! Tsk tsk...Sigh...Oh well... Let's schedule a hide & seek get-together within San Diego or beyond...talk to you later.

I learned today that I'm addicted. I had only two classes--the last one gets out at 12:45, so I formulated a plan in my head while I was showering this morning that I would go geocaching after class. There are two new caches about an hour away that I've been meaning to find. I get out of the shower, and my phone rings. When I answer it, on the other end I hear a female "friend," (ahem) and she wants to know if I would like to "get together" this afternoon. My actual thought at that moment was that it would interfere with my geocaching trip. I even spent a few sentences trying to explain to her that I'd be out for much of the afternoon. Then this particular thread came into my mind and I realized what was happening to me. I really felt like I needed to talk about it. I was able to straighten out my priorities when I convinced myself that I can go search for the caches any time I want. ...but, (gasp) what if they're plundered? Jamie

Hi, My name is Jeff Tyler. I'm a reporter with a national public radio show called The Savvy Traveler. I'm working on a story about geo-caching. If you live in the Los Angeles area and would be willing to talk about your interest in this modern treasure hunt, please email me at jtpepe@aol.com. Or reply here. Thanks, JT

Oh my God, I thought some of the caches around me were bad. After seeing all the talk, I finally looked at 84660. Pitiful!! There has to be some standard for approving these caches. I'm glad to see Jeremy at the helm on this. rdw

We actually had some fun with this type of talk over on Geodashing. Bunkerdave posed the question "What was the closest random point to your home." To which I gave two sets of coordinates and a general bearing, with distances calculated to 0.01 miles. I indicated that given those two pieces of information, one could come pretty close to an approximation of my front door. The two radius would, however, intersect in two places - a third set of coordinates and distances would be helpful to narrow down the location. I gave it and also a fourth for redundancy (is any of this starting to sound familiar yet?) These guys had ariel shots of my home within a matter of hours. These guys are good... quote:posted in Geodashing by geogromitActually I only original two dashpoints that were closest to your house and I was able to triangulate 2 positions in your area. I did this by converting the coordinates of the dashpoints to UTM and the distances to meters. This made it fairly simple to calculate your position. The point that that I chose appeared to be in the middle of your street. The other appeared near a small lake. I guessed on the northside of your street. From the precision of your distances that you had given, I knew your house should have been within 50 feet of that point. Good work Daniel. BTW, the aerial photo is from mapblast. ------------------ Markwell My Geocache Page Non omnes vagi perditi sunt

idden in the correct location. Strange...could someone have found part of the first cache all these months later? January 6th, we get the email address of the person that found the cache. We send them mail, explaining what it was, listing some of the contents it had when it went missing, and asking if we could meet to recover it. January 8th, we get a response. The person who found it, Crystal, would be happy to meet with us and turn over the cache contents. We talk and agree to meet in the evening. We spent about an hour talking with her and getting the story about how she found it. It was along the trail near the river, about 2 miles downstream from where we placed it. It was spread out over the ground near what looked like a homeless camp. One of Crystal's pet peeves is trash along the trails so when she saw this, she was a little pissed at all the trash. So she collected it all up, and realized that it wasn't all trash and stuck it in her garage. A week or so latter she searched the web for Geocaching and found the GeocachingWorldWide site. Thus, taking us back to the beginning of this story. Piecing it all together, we come up with this: Sometime between 9/20/01 and 9/29/01 a homeless person finds the cache and takes it. During the next couple of months they carry it around, adding other treasures to it. Just before Crystal found it, someone (0r thing) empties the container near the trail. Maybe it was laid out to dry, since everything was wet. What did we recover? The cache container, a large amount of the cache contents and some other assorted junk, and --- the cache logbook! What are we going to do? Some of the contents will be placed in the exiting Folsom Prison Breakout Blues cache. The other items will be placed in other caches in the area (maybe with a note attached pointing back to the archived cache). The logbook will be scanned and put on-line. One last note, the logbook had an entry made on November 18th, over a month and a half after it went missing, by someone who had accidentally found the cache! The caches mentioned in this story are: Folsom Prision Blues cache http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?id=5012 Folsom Prison Breakout Blues cache http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=9191 Bob & Genny

I apologize for the long post. Here's what I have posted on a few of my caches and sent to the smelly shoe crew: I have been emailed by a fellow GeoCacher to ask my why I keep posting my three recent caches to the top of the list. I am doing this to help keep this sport going even through the thick of winter. When people post Garbage caches, like ?find my shoes?, or tell me the elevation of a mountain top (and none of the three answers listed as possible answers are correct according to two different nationally acclaimed mapping software packages) or tell me the height of a certain tree?ridiculous?.anyway, you get the picture, it diminishes our sport. It also pushes valid caches (not just mine) down the New Cache page. Let?s see what you think? Would a new GeoCacher like to go to a findable real cache that has some stuff in it and also presents an interest to their family if they?re along, or an old pair of shoes? I don?t mean to offend anyone, but these couple of GeoCachers have put out a HUGE number of what amounts to being Garbage Caches. Understand something else; I am also getting a large amount of email echoing my sentiments. Also, I am not talking about spending large dollar amounts to put out caches. I put out my last cache including the container for under $15. I doubt they can buy a pair of smelly shoes for that little money. Someone needs to figure out that it?s not the huge amount of garbage caches that you put out that make you a great GeoCacher, rather what you do to help develop and continue the sport. I am not even claiming to be a good GeoCacher; much less a great one, but I do put time, thought and effort into my caches. That?s what counts. Differing reasonable views are always welcome at rogerbee@earthlink.net, or you can call me and we can talk about in on the radio on Sunday afternoons from 2-4 pm on KALL 910 AM radio. What have you done to further the GeoCaching sport lately? RogerB Outdoor Utah Today KALL 910 quote:Originally posted by madphatboy2:In the thread that bunkerdave started, I was wondering if there is a tactful way of telling some people that they may be overdoing it on setting the caches. The number of caches they have set vs. the number of found are about even. Alot of them are not done very well at all. On one his mom suggested that he leave his shoes sitting somewhere out there. Alot of them are ridiculous like this. Some have a view when you get there, but that would be the exception to the caching rule in this case. I thought of posting on the cache page that maybe people aren't that interested in this many "lame" caches. Any ideas?

quote:Originally posted by madphatboy2:I was wondering if there is a tactful way of telling some people that they may be overdoing it on setting the caches...Any ideas? 1. It's probably not entirely fair to criticize a cache you haven't visited. Either visit the cache, or at least talk with someone who has. 2. Email the cache setter and express your concerns. Be polite and tactful, but honest. Make positive suggestions. 3. If this doesn't produce some positive results, post your concerns on the cache page. Be polite and tactful, but honest. 4. If people still want to hunt the cache after reading your post, that's their problem. 5. If the post is deleted by the cache owner, repost. 6. If the cache owner deletes the post again, contact Jeremy. My 2 cents (or in the case of tennis shoes, 2 scents) Web-ling

My wife got me a GPS unit the Garmin etrex Venture. I have been trying to figure out how to be able to look at the reading it has and find it on the map. Am use to military way of doing it and have talk to some shops but they were no help. I just want that when my GPS says N38d 47.093 w 104d 53.656 that I can look at my map and say oh there it is. When we go four wheeling I can tell where we are just by the trails and such but this thing is making me more confused the more I try to figure it out. HELP PLEASE. Robert

Reading about the soda can stove and how light and minimalist it is got me to thinking about the heaviest stove I've ever had the pleasure of seeing used. A friend and I were on a canoe trip and had a propane stove that we used. My friend decided on one particular night that he wanted to cook without using the stove. We were in the vicinity of a large number of rocks, so he goes searching and returns with a flat stone roughly two feet long, one foot wide, and about two inches thick. He planned to use it as a skillet. As he was going to cook *my* dinner as well as his own, I didn't want him messing around with some crazy untried technique. I wanted to eat. I tried to talk him out of his idea, but he insisted. First, we built a large fire, letting a generous gathering of embers pile up, then we moved all the large wood away from the fire (very exciting disassembling a burning fire) and set the rock down on the embers. I tried to tell him that the rock was too thick. The heat would not penetrate it. I was right. After ten minutes, we could still place our hands on the top of the rock. He had a better idea... support the rock on three sides, and build a fire under it. This way, fuel could be added at will. We did this. I gathered a small pile of medium sized wood, and he supported his rock about six inches about the ground, then we got a fire going underneath the thing. I was getting impatient watching this whole ordeal. I was about to break out the propane stove on my own and cook dinner. He poured a small amount of oil on the rock, and then took a slice of SPAM and slapped it on the grill. I rolled my eyes at the spectacle. Then, to my great surprise, it sizzled. We ate fried SPAM sandwiches that night. For an after-dinner snack, he whipped up some cornbread mix and made cornbread pancakes on the rock. The next day as we were packing up camp, he wanted to bring this 40 pound grill with us! I thought he was nuts. Fortunately, I was able to convince him not to stow this rock in our canoe, but I'll never forget the sight of him frying up our dinner on the rock. I have pictures to look at and laugh. On the other hand, I think we really overpacked for that particular trip. I like the idea of the soda can stove. Any way to transport that thing without damaging it? Jamie

Check this one out... http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=12627 Talk about let your fingers do the walking

Sheesh, talk about missing out on a thread. ObCatchUp: I too have a four year old I'd like to include at cache meets. Not all cell phones get coverage in all locations. I'm pro-mingle and think that anything competitive should enhance this aspect of the gathering. I'm still waiting for UTM roamer to be explained, don't *make* me break out google Those tolerant teenage girls should be compensated for their time (at least a few bucks per kid) I'm also wondering about just how close to parking these things all need to be. This might exclude the younger cachers, but since we can quite literally pick any spot on the planet, it might be amusing to have a mile or more hike to the cachemeet site.

DisQuoi, your coordinate goes about 50 miles south of me. Granted, Oklahoma's not a foreign country althought we talk awful funny. I need to go that direction in one week. If you don't get a better offer, I'll send you a photo. The coordinate is along Lake Lawtonka at N34.77864 W98.50360. -E ------------------ N35°32.981 W98°34.631