How to get PQ to run earlier?

[+Brassine Family]

Now that my work life has slowed down, I am able to cache more.

 

When I geocache, I like to start around 7am.

 

I have noticed my PQs don't run until around 12-1pm EST I live in a small town, so I find myself traveling 20-30miles one way just to start my caching day only to find on my way home that there was a new cache placed or a tb dropped in a cache that was in the area that I was caching.

 

I have deleted my PQs twice now and set new ones up at 3am in hopes that 4hrs would be plenty of time for them to run.

 

When I first set the new ones up, they are generated within 30mins. I have them selected to run every day.

 

3 days later (today) I travel 40miles to geocache. when I am almost home (1:25pm) I get my PQs for the day and I missed 3 new caches.

 

When I got home I checked to see when the PQs were generated, and they are back to being generated at 1pm

 

My question is: How, or what do I need to do to be able to get my PQs for the day by 8am EST?

[+briansnat]

Not really a getting started issue. Moving to a more appropriate forum

[+Team Taran]

The thing you need to remember is how the priority for Pqs is determined. The more recently a pq has run, the lower its priority. New pqs run first.

 

The easiest way to do this is not to run the same pq every day. I don't know how many daily ones you are running but you can make copies and run a different one each day. This will keep them near the top of the queue.

 

Alternatively, don't schedule your pqs at all. When you wake up, use the copy function to create a new one and check it to run that day. Nearly always you will have it in 15 minutes or less.

 

To be sure you are not missing caches, just before you leave, edit your pq to look for caches that have been placed in the last 24 or 48 hours. Preview it on line and see if any new ones come up. Alternatively set up instant notification for the area you are planning to cache in.

 

I'm sure there are other possibilities but these will work.

 

Team Taran

[+webscouter.]

The problem is that you run the same PQ every day. This puts it lower in priority than all the PQ's that folks like me run once a week, mine are lower than those that get run once a month, and those are lower than the ones that never get run at all.

 

I have found that when I find out I am going someplace the first thing I do is to submit a brand new query. By the time I get showered and dressed the new query is in my mail box.

 

That will help you get the freshest data. However because new caches are published when the reviewer has time this still means that from time to time you are going to miss a newly published cache

 

This is where outgrowing the "need" to find every cache will make your caching more fun. Once you get to the point where you go caching for the places you see instead of the caches you find, caching becomes much more fun.

 

It has been my observation that cachers that have been caching for a long time have completely different goals than a new cacher. A new cacher will try to keep a radius around their house "clean" as a goal. A seasoned cacher will have a goal to find all the different D/T combinations, or to find a cache in every state/county/country, or maybe to find the 100 oldest caches in their state. The difference in the goals is one of dynamics. In the seasoned cachers goal it is a static goal, once you find a cache in a every county you are done, in the clean radius example you can be completely done and a reviewer can publish 10 new caches and you are back to having to find some caches.

 

Sorry about the slightly OT response, but hopefully this will help out more than the first part of my response.

[+Markwell]

Just a little tangeant to expand:

It has been my observation that cachers that have been caching for a long time have completely different goals than a new cacher....A seasoned cacher will have a goal to find all the different D/T combinations, or to find a cache in every state/county/country, or maybe to find the 100 oldest caches in their state...In the seasoned cachers goal it is a static goal.

I've actually found that "seasoned" caches are in it for fun. Me - I parse my PQs down to something much more manageable. There are over 6300 active caches in GONIL's region (the counties of Boone, Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, Will and Winnebago). Last load, I only put about 130 caches into my GPS because I limit the data by cache size, cache type, difficulty, terrain, recent logs, disable status, etc., etc.

 

Back on topic...

 

The other thing that may help is to expand on the idea that several have said - don't run the PQs every day. What is the worst thing that could happen if you use data that is - say - "7 days old". What would happen if the PQ generator stopped working all together for a week?

 

(1) You would miss new caches

Yep - there might be a fabulous cache out there that you don't know about. It will most likely still be there in the next PQ run, but you may not be FTF. Then again, if you're waiting for PQs for FTF, you're too late. The instant notifiers were probably already standing in line to log the cache before you got your PQ sent.

 

(2) You might be hunting for caches that are disabled or archived

Yep - that's the breaks. That would still happen if you got a PQ right before you went out the door. The second the GPX data leaves the live geocaching.com servers it has the potential of being out-of-date. What you have to remember and keep saying to yourself is "I still went out with my GPS and had a good time in this wonderful world."

 

Once I came to that realization, I set one set of my PQs to run on one day of the week, and a second identical set of PQs to run on a different day of the week (10 saved PQs total). These individual PQs don't run more often than weekly, so they move MUCH closer to the top of the list than one that runs daily. At most, my GPX data has the potential to be only 3 or 4 days old, but there are some times where I don't even update my GSAK database and GPS for two weeks. The data is still good, just stale.

 

But that won't prevent me from caching.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd rather spend more time caching than managing my offline database.

Edited November 6, 2009 by Markwell

[+Brassine Family]

Thank you all for your responses and insight!!!! I will start doing that. Just run them about an hour before I start my caching day.

[+Arrow42]

Just run the one from the day before. No need to get too fancy - Even in an extended area there isn't much change in a day or two. If there happens to be a few caches your going after that arn't part of your PQ (FTF race, etc) then you can add them to your data set via the download link on the cache page.

[+Team Cotati]

Now that my work life has slowed down, I am able to cache more.

 

When I geocache, I like to start around 7am.

 

I have noticed my PQs don't run until around 12-1pm EST I live in a small town, so I find myself traveling 20-30miles one way just to start my caching day only to find on my way home that there was a new cache placed or a tb dropped in a cache that was in the area that I was caching.

 

I have deleted my PQs twice now and set new ones up at 3am in hopes that 4hrs would be plenty of time for them to run.

 

When I first set the new ones up, they are generated within 30mins. I have them selected to run every day.

 

3 days later (today) I travel 40miles to geocache. when I am almost home (1:25pm) I get my PQs for the day and I missed 3 new caches.

 

When I got home I checked to see when the PQs were generated, and they are back to being generated at 1pm

 

My question is: How, or what do I need to do to be able to get my PQs for the day by 8am EST?

 

Run them 48 hours prior to your estimated time of departure.