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Planetary Pursuit?


J Grouchy

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I've been pondering coniciding events as well, and this is what I've found around March 19...

  • NASA's TESS explanet hunter telescope is planned to rest in a P2 orbit at the moon ('Apollo' moon connection?) on the SpaceX Falcon on March 20
  • SpaceX is launching 10 Iridium NEXT "mobile communications" satellites on March 18
  • India's launching Chandrayaan-2 in March (sometime), to be landing on the moon AND roving. (TB visit?)
  • It could of course just be the launch of a new space-themed independent promo like trackables (eg Mary Hyde?), or themed events for souvenirs, and not partnered with another org.
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58 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

 

  • It could of course just be the launch of a new space-themed independent promo like trackables

Well, they might as well just shoot them into space, 'cause they'll all eventually get stolen and/or lost.  If it's a TB or a series of trackables they expect us to buy, no thank you.

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1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

I've been pondering coniciding events as well, and this is what I've found around March 19...

  • NASA's TESS explanet hunter telescope is planned to rest in a P2 orbit at the moon ('Apollo' moon connection?) on the SpaceX Falcon on March 20
  • SpaceX is launching 10 Iridium NEXT "mobile communications" satellites on March 18
  • India's launching Chandrayaan-2 in March (sometime), to be landing on the moon AND roving. (TB visit?)
  • It could of course just be the launch of a new space-themed independent promo like trackables (eg Mary Hyde?), or themed events for souvenirs, and not partnered with another org.

Fact is, the countdown reaches 0 exactly on March 19, 12:00:00 UTC (unless I made a calculation error, of course ;) ). Therefore I don't expect this to be related to a real space launch.

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36 minutes ago, J Grouchy said:

Well, they might as well just shoot them into space, 'cause they'll all eventually get stolen and/or lost.  If it's a TB or a series of trackables they expect us to buy, no thank you.

I'm kinda agreeing on this.  We lost all free promotional trackables we've been lucky to receive.  Don't know why a tin gecko would get swiped in four months.  NCEES only lasted two.  Buying one to send out for a promotion (I don't believe) would be a smart venture.

Haven't received any in promotions for some time, and we sent them out (unlike the many tire guy gauge trackables we saw on ebay...).

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15 minutes ago, baer2006 said:

Fact is, the countdown reaches 0 exactly on March 19, 12:00:00 UTC (unless I made a calculation error, of course ;) ). Therefore I don't expect this to be related to a real space launch.

ah right, I went with the date string and stopped there ignoring the next line that formats it as UTC. :cute:

But yes, clearly not slated to zero at a specific launch time, just the 'launch' of whatever campaign they're running. With the script unifying the UTC time to everyone's local timezone, everyone should hit zero at the same-ish time (assuming proper clocks), so in an ideal world, the website will be timed to switch over simultaneously for the big reveal :) (But there've been plenty of failures by other websites on that front for various reasons, heh)

Basically, set an alarm for just before 12 noon GMT March 19th, but in your local timezone. :cool:

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On 2/15/2018 at 11:19 AM, NYPaddleCacher said:

Whatever it is, we can be sure that their will be a souvenir or more involved.  

Yes, as anticipated, from the GS shop page advertising the Planetary Pursuit geocoin:

"Geocachers around the universe will be blasting off to add smilies and digital souvenirs to their profiles during this exciting adventure.

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I have three comments/questions about the Planetary Pursuit souvenirs:

1. If I have to individually earn 500 points, what's the point of the Friend League, except to see that my friends have more points than me?

2. I'm told to go to my Friends link to activate, but there's no activation option. So as long as I have friends, I'm good to go for the Friend League?

3. Harry Dolphin: I might need a little boost to reach those planets further away. I'd love to be your friend for the duration of the Planetary Souvenirs.

Thanks.

 

How do I participate?

Visit the Friend League to activate your scoring control board and prepare for liftoff. From March 19 to April 8, collect points by logging caches, attending events, or completing other geocaching actions. Earn up to 10 new souvenirs by individually collecting 500 points on the Friend League during the promotion period.

Edited by Max and 99
including quote
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2 hours ago, Max and 99 said:

2. I'm told to go to my Friends link to activate, but there's no activation option. So as long as I have friends, I'm good to go for the Friend League?

 

I don't think you have to "activate" anything.  They're just trying to sound like NASA --  "activate your scoring control board and prepare to lift off".

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1 hour ago, jenny08_1015 said:

I don't think you have to "activate" anything.  They're just trying to sound like NASA --  "activate your scoring control board and prepare to lift off".

Don't you need to "activate" your friends list if you want to participate?   I looked for a way to enter myself, but it seems I need to "activate" that friends league thing to enter.  Isn't that so?

On the setting  "Find Friends" mine reads... "You are not allowing friend requests at this time. You can update this setting by unchecking the 'block friend requests from other geocachers' checkbox on the Account Preferences page".  :)

 
Edited by cerberus1
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1 hour ago, igator210 said:

Um... to get all the souvenirs, an individual needs to get anywhere from 34 to 100 caches? In 14 days? :blink:

I count 21 days on my calendar between March 18 & April 8 (inclusive of those two days, and including 3 weekends) and at 19 points per cache ( Event, Mystery Cache or EarthCache with a TB drop) equates to 27 caches (with 13 extra points left over).

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Being rigorous, Pluto is no longer considered a planet for more than 10 years. For such Planetary Pursuit should not be included since the premise is "visit" the planets of the Solar System, and these are 8, not 9. I find it strange that from Groundspeak have neglected the didactic part of the matter.

Some references:

https://www.universetoday.com/13573/why-pluto-is-no-longer-a-planet/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet#Former_planets

well, there is  a 6-yo girl that begs for Pluto recovering its planetary status: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/02/16/a-6-year-old-tells-nasa-to-make-pluto-a-planet-again-you-need-to-fix-this-problem-for-me/

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After all the confusion and trouble this caused last year, you'd think they could at least put in some minimal degree of effort into writing this is a clearer way rather than using phrases like "individually collecting ... points on the Friends League".  (the "individually" suggests that we each have to earn the points on our own, but if that's the case, how is the "on the Friends League" part in any way relevant whatsoever?)  I swear sometimes I think they're just intentionally going out of their way to be confusing (although if their goal is to get me to be less and less interested in their promotions each year, then job well done).

Edited by ZeppelinDT
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I'd rather see them add 9-10 new country based souvenirs

 

Exactly. We are always told how it takes too much effort and time to issue more than 5 country souvenirs, to justify how so many countries outside America+EU are being ignored - this game sounds much more time and energy consuming. So why not at least put up 5 more country souvenirs this year? Taiwan, for example, got much more caches than quite a few of the countries that got souvenirs in the last 3 years - why not include more people from more continents in the game with this small gesture?

And also - I don't understand the point of the league if it's an individual game, or what's the connection to the planets...

 

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2 hours ago, SheepOnTrip said:

And also - I don't understand the point of the league if it's an individual game, or what's the connection to the planets...

Wild guess:

The "Friends League" is currently the only page in your profile, where you are shown a "score". So instead of creating yet another "special" page for this year's souvenir, they re-used the existing functionality. Even when the funvtionality to sum the scores is not needed this time.

As a side effect you can see where your friends are standing in the race to Pluto (which doesn't interest me at all, but YMMV).

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2 hours ago, Manville Possum said:

There was a man named Henry Harrison Mays that erected signs on highway right of ways in the middle of the night without permission. He reminds me of geocachers, except he was on a mission. His bicycle is on display in a museum in Tennessee. I believe he would have loved this Planetary Pursuit for geocaches. :D

May's Bicycle.jpg

Well, he got the bicycle part right. If there is a god, she surely rides a bicycle:D

Count me as another that would prefer they get back to granting souvenirs for caching in [places (countries or lesser bounded designations)

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7 hours ago, anpefi said:

Being rigorous, Pluto is no longer considered a planet for more than 10 years. For such Planetary Pursuit should not be included since the premise is "visit" the planets of the Solar System, and these are 8, not 9. I find it strange that from Groundspeak have neglected the didactic part of the matter.

Some references:

https://www.universetoday.com/13573/why-pluto-is-no-longer-a-planet/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet#Former_planets

well, there is  a 6-yo girl that begs for Pluto recovering its planetary status: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/02/16/a-6-year-old-tells-nasa-to-make-pluto-a-planet-again-you-need-to-fix-this-problem-for-me/

For some of us (I suspect a LOT of us) Pluto was (is)  designated as a planet for the majority of our lives. Even as a scientist, I have no beef with this bit of whimsy in this promotion. That does not mean that I endorse the promotion as a whole.

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36 minutes ago, Michaelcycle said:

For some of us (I suspect a LOT of us) Pluto was (is)  designated as a planet for the majority of our lives. Even as a scientist, I have no beef with this bit of whimsy in this promotion.

Meh. I'm OK with whimsy, but the problem here is that I don't think it was whimsy, I think it was just a mistake. Someone didn't get the memo, and the folks at GS should not miss memo's that significant.

Having said that, I just think it's funny they'd make such a silly mistake, I don't think there's any reason to get upset about it or anything. But, speaking of whimsy, anpefi's post is accurate, detailed, and clear, but I don't think it was intended to be a serious complaint. Just pointing out the mistake.

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I'm confused with the individuality of the promotion and the Friend League tie in. Does the Friend League need to reach the points listed for the souvenirs, or the individual?  It'll be hard for me to get 500 points in three weeks by myself, but if I get 5 points and my Friend League gets 495, do I get all the souvenirs?  The wording for the number of points needed for each souvenir is confusing to me: "Points needed on the Friend League (individual)"

Link to promotion FAQ on the blog: https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2018/02/planetary-pursuit-launch-support-aka-faq/

 

Edited by GeoElmo6000
added link to FAQ on blog
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30 minutes ago, GeoElmo6000 said:

I'm confused with the individuality of the promotion and the Friend League tie in. Does the Friend League need to reach the points listed for the souvenirs, or the individual?  It'll be hard for me to get 500 points in three weeks by myself, but if I get 5 points and my Friend League gets 495, do I get all the souvenirs?  The wording for the number of points needed for each souvenir is confusing to me: "Points needed on the Friend League (individual)"

Link to promotion FAQ on the blog: https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2018/02/planetary-pursuit-launch-support-aka-faq/

 

You need to get all of those points yourself. Despite the usage of the Friend League feature, your friends have no relevance for this promotion.

Unfortunately, the foreseeable side-effect of this promotion is that cachers will greatly curtail their finding over the next few weeks leading up to the promotion, in order to save caches for that time period. That's what I'll be doing.

I see someone who commented on the blog post has the same question as me surrounding the points. The table says "Log a Found it on any geocache (Traditional, Virtual, Webcam, Wherigo)" is worth 5 points. Do they really mean "any" geocache, or any geocache of those four types? If it's "any", then that means Multi and LBH are 15 points in total, and Mystery and EC are 20 points in total. If that isn't what they mean, then that first line should read "Log a Found it on a Traditional, Virtual, Webcam or Wherigo" (with the obvious caveat that you can't actually log a Found it on a Webcam, but rather need to log a Webcam photo taken).

There are also two Mega events occurring in that time period. I assume the usage of the lowercase "event" implies that Mega and CITO events also qualify (rather than "Event", which is a single cache type), but it would be good to explicitly state this because I'm sure there are many that wouldn't understand the significance of the letter case.

Judging by the comments on the blog post and the posts here, there seems to be just as much confusion surrounding this promotion as the Mary Hyde one last year, if not more. Hopefully TPTB can revise and clarify things. It would also be nice if they could document the things that arise as being confusing, so they can learn some lessons and not keep repeating the same issues.

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