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SF Bay Area geocachers


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quote:
Originally posted by boulter:

 

So, I decided to fix those problems and put up my own page. You can just slap in a string of coordinates and click right on over to a map.

 


 

Based on feedback any my own selfish desires, I've revamped the GPS converter tool considerably. It now has links to 10 other websites with maps and other info. There's a cool bookmarklet that allows you to select coordinates on any webpage and dump them right into the tool. It allows you to open links a new window it looks a lot better.

 

Check it out at http://boulter.com/gps/ and let me know if you have suggestions for further improvement.

 

Jeff

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quote:
Originally posted by Kealia:

_Cachers in the San Mateo area:_

 

I just visited http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=2e76a29b-d181-4769-9a51-141cda8050e8 and left a pair of Free passes to Six Flags/Marien World in Vallejo! They expire on November 2nd so they need to be picked up and used ASAP!

I wasn't going to be able to use them so please enjoy!


 

Just bumping this to the top of the new page so it gets viewed. I hope somebody sees this in time to take and use the tickets!

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quote:
Originally posted by Kealia:

quote:
Originally posted by Kealia:

_Cachers in the San Mateo area:_

 

I just visited http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=2e76a29b-d181-4769-9a51-141cda8050e8 and left a pair of Free passes to Six Flags/Marien World in Vallejo! They expire on November 2nd so they need to be picked up and used ASAP!

I wasn't going to be able to use them so please enjoy!


 

Just bumping this to the top of the new page so it gets viewed. I hope somebody sees this in time to take and use the tickets!


If these are still up for grabs tonight, I'm going to grab them tomorrow morning and talk Joani into going. I know she wants to go because they have a bunch of smashed penny machines there. icon_smile.gif

 

--Marky

...Be nice to your fellow geocachers, they might be Hemlock...

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Travel bug slowdown???

 

Has anyone noticed that there seems to be a slowdown of TBs in our area lately? I know a bunch were gathered up for the recent picnic, but from what I can tell most of those have been distributed.

 

I have a bug, Nellie's Vacation TB, that is sorely needing to travel -- she's been hanging around for a couple of months (and some of that is because she got "lost" on my desk for a few weeks). She's in my Travel Bug Coffee Break cache - http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?ID=91319 - and would love to hitch a ride. There are three others in this cache that would to be swapped with some others to keep moving. I'm wondering if a Travel Bug stopover cache like this is actually stifling the appearance of bugs in other caches ... what do you guys think?

 

Kristine

 

Kreebelle

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I know the "end of summer" tide has ebbed. Searches, and finds are off too.

 

Back east they are already talking about a winter hiatus, due to early cold weather.

 

My Travel Bug motel is FULL, 7 bugs in there. And it is on a Major highway junction.

 

The only solution is to make a concerted effort to move the bugs and keep them flowing.

 

(I even have moved bugs to another TB Motel 8 miles away, just to move them, even though I have "found" that cache many times, it is handy to just move them.)

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THIS is the PUBLIC face of Geocaching, when someone learns of the sport this is where they come to

learn more, what are YOU showing them?

http://blacksheep.rootsweb.com/

International Black Sheep Society of Genealogists

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Many of us would like to visit the hotel, but the hours are extrememly restricted. PErhaps you could consider moving it to a location that can be accessed after 6PM.

 

quote:
Originally posted by Bo Peep & The Sheep:

I know the "end of summer" tide has ebbed. Searches, and finds are off too.

 

Back east they are already talking about a winter hiatus, due to early cold weather.

 

My Travel Bug motel is FULL, 7 bugs in there. And it is on a Major highway junction.

 

The only solution is to make a concerted effort to move the bugs and keep them flowing.

 

(I even have moved bugs to another TB Motel 8 miles away, just to move them, even though I have "found" that cache many times, it is handy to just move them.)

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THIS is the PUBLIC face of Geocaching, when someone learns of the sport this is where they come to

learn more, what are YOU showing them?

http://blacksheep.rootsweb.com/

International Black Sheep Society of Genealogists


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Just a reminder that you are all invited to Woof!'s Wild & Woolyt Wenty One Weekend Whoopla the weekend of November 21st. It should be a lot of fun. Just wanted to give everyone enough notice to mark your calendars and save the dates.

 

We are planning to caravan down on Friday and return on Sunday. Post a note to the cache page, or contact Kablooey or me with any concerns about the driving or hotel arrangements. If gambling isn't your thing, don't worry we'll probably be caching the whole time anyway. You are welcome to join us for part or all of the weekend. Hope you can make it! icon_smile.gif

 

Happy Halloween

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I thought I would share this with everyone. This is an e-mail I received today from Geocaching.com

 

HI!

 

Your cache "Border Patrol #1" has been confiscated by the Mountain View Police Department. Here is the email we received at contact@geocaching.com

 

"I work for the Mountain View Police Dept in California, in the Property &

Evidence room. A citizen found a geocache and turned it into our Police Dept

since they didn't know what it was. Is there a way to track down the owner

of this particular cache? Generally we keep found property for 90 days and

then destroy it, but I'd rather be able to return it to its rightful owner."

 

(Name with held)

Property & Evidence Officer

Mountain View Police Department

(650) 903-6375

 

Please contact him right away.

 

Regards,

 

Nate, Geocaching.com Admin

He says he'll hold it for a maximum of 90 days. There is no broken law,

 

I talked to the guy today and he seemed really interested in the sport of geocaching. I plan to pick up the cache next week and talk to him more about caching too.

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quote:
Originally posted by DavidT21 & Fisherwoman:

I talked to the guy today and he seemed really interested in the sport of geocaching. I plan to pick up the cache next week and talk to him more about caching too.


Maybe you should take him on a cache hunt with you. Just make sure you go for a cache that has legal parking. bad_boy_a.gif

 

--Marky

...Be nice to your fellow geocachers, they might be Hemlock...

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quote:
Originally posted by djs_111:

Is it true that the SF Bay Area is the center of the geocaching universe?


I don't think this is true, but it is one of the hot spots, for sure. Lot's of great caches of all types in a fairly high concentration.

 

--Marky

...Be nice to your fellow geocachers, they might be Hemlock...

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quote:
Originally posted by djs_111:

Did you remember to mark a waypoint for the car?


 

I'm not sure why we're taking about marking the car (though I will suggest that in the city that's an awfully good idea). But if you want to read about my own personal nightmare of caching in the "wilds" of southern Utah and forgetting to mark my car, see my log of a cache in Pinto Canyon I visited without, um, marking my car. Short version is that a .25 mile trek from car to cache turned into a 5+ mile hike (5.5 hours) out of the canyon when I could not find my car because of a series of unfortunate events and track deletions/trackback snafus, etc. I survived, wished I had brought a buddy and/or more water, etc. Log is at: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?luid={88E5BA16-C761-488D-9C99-E7BBAEF269E6}

 

Kreebelle

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Hi Kreebelle --

 

How are things going with the "cache of the week" selections? I noticed it's been stalled on the Oct 17 date and was guessing you were out of town.

 

It might be good to scale back to "cache of the month" once you get through the initial rush. That would give some of us a chance to visit multiple cache's prior to voting and might lower your workload!

 

Anyway, nice work getting the process up and running and sorry to hear about your Utah misadventures.

 

/Lefty

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Hmmm, gee, not sure WHAT to do. I have a policy against no negotiation with terrorists, but tell 'em to contact me with their beef and maybe it won't require negotiation. icon_smile.gif

 

Kristine (who will return with the cache of the week perhaps morphed into the cache of the month in the next day or so ... have been up to here in other stuff ... sorry for the delay)

 

quote:
Originally posted by fizzymagic:

I recently receved the following note from Venona. I am not sure what to do with it. Any ideas?

 

quote:
We are demanding for Cache of Week not in evil San Jose location area. Is big Bay Area area for making Cache of Week. If demands met not then we take hostage bug for travel.

 

Kreebelle

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I noticed that Marky and Joani passed the 2000 finds mark. Congrats M&J! I don't think I'll get there myself until 2005 at the soonest!

 

I recently realized that I haven't seen much from marwagsalot recently. From his profile page, he hasn't even logged in since September. Anybody know if the dog retired?

 

Jeff

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Reader mail & answer from Earthlink.net's newsletter:

 

Geocaching revisited…

"I am shocked that you would advertise for Geocaching. They promote breaking the law by trespassing across private or federal property. For example, go to The Outer Limits where they acknowledge that the cache is on Vandenberg Air Force Base, a federal reservation. At this time in our national security, I don't think it's a good idea to trespass on a federal reservation. And, I don't think it's a good idea that EarthLink promote a Web site that encourages breaking the law."

—Bobi

 

Editor's Reply: We check out all the Web sites we review carefully, and Geocaching.com does not promote trespassing. If you look at their Guide to Creating and Hiding a Cache page you'll find this: "Will it be on private or public land?—If you place it on private land, please ask permission before putting it there! If you place the cache on public lands you need to contact the managing agency to find out about their rules. You will be in violation of federal regulation by placing a cache in any area administered by the National Park Service (US). The National Park regulations are intended to protect the fragile environment, and historical and cultural areas found in the parks."

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quote:
Originally posted by PhilippeGPS:

Reader mail & answer from Earthlink.net's newsletter:

. . .At this time in our national security, I don't think it's a good idea to trespass on a federal reservation. . . .


 

At this time in our national security it would be the best if we all just stay at home and watch TV. This is all we need. Oh, and surrender any caches to the nearest local Police station, of course. SIGH!

 

_____________________________

... where is it?

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Where's Fizzy? I upgraded my Mac OS and need to reload his pgx2html program. Unfortunately, the link is broken and I can't get Fizzy to respond. Does anyone have a copy of the program?

 

BTW, California Geo-Coins are taking orders for Christmas. I'm ordering a few and offered to distribute orders (you pick up) for our local area (CVC and Livergultch).

 

Now, anyone have that gpx2html program?

 

Bill of Green Achers

 

''I want to know how God created this world.  I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element.  I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details." -- Albert Einstein

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quote:
Originally posted by Green Achers:

Where's Fizzy? I upgraded my Mac OS and need to reload his pgx2html program. Unfortunately, the link is broken and I can't get Fizzy to respond.


 

I don't know, but he is archiving some of his caches with the note "The cache container has been removed. This cache will remain archived until Groundspeak implements policies that treat cache placers with respect."

 

It may have something to do with

 

this post.

He may have had some disagreement with TPTB.

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Anybody know how the Geocaching log pages select which number to put next to your name as the "Cache's found" number? They seem to update them in a haphazard fashion leaving some interesting older logs where someone said a year ago that this was their first find but the log page states they have 200.

 

Here's an example from a well known caching duo ...

 

July 5, 2002 by Marky (1805 found)

Our first cache after getting a GPS on the 4th. It was an adventure learning out to use the GPS. .....

 

Of course we know Marky&Joani are well past 2000 now! So ... I'm confused but guessing this has something to do with software reloads/update schedules.

 

/Lefty

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That depends on the time the page was last rendered, see the bottom line:

Last Generated: 10/28/2003 4:34:41 PM (GMT)

 

And just before the logs start, you have this line:

Cache find counts are based on the last time the page generated.

 

Therefor - if a cache hasn't been touched since a year you will find the cache count for the folks from a year ago. I guess since it is very resource intensive to calculate those numbers they do it only when the cache page gets updated and then store the whole page somewhere. This whay they do not need to run the count for all the logs on the first page everytime someone clicks on the page. They just pull it out of storage and display it.

 

Makes sense? This is my story.

 

Cheers

 

_____________________________

... where is it?

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quote:
Originally posted by Lamneth:

I don't know what's going on with Fizzy, but the link is here: http://home.comcast.net/~fizzymagic/gpx2html.html

Thanks for the link and the heads up. I'll make sure he's ok tomorrow. I'd be surprised if he's not just busy and has no other problems.

 

Bill of Green Achers

 

''I want to know how God created this world.  I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element.  I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details." -- Albert Einstein

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I did talk to Fizzy and got the low down. Keep working his puzzles - as his caches will remain.

 

I've been able to down load his Perl gpx2html and the MacPerl program. Putting everything together is more difficult than solving Fizzy's Puzzles! Now I'm wondering if I should just learn MacPerl and write my own program. It might be faster than trying to figure out my problems. Are there any Mac/Cachers out there that successfully upload Geocaching data to a PDA (besides using Virtual PC - which is really slow and pains taking)?

 

Bill of Green Achers

 

''I want to know how God created this world.  I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element.  I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details." -- Albert Einstein

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quote:
Originally posted by Green Achers:

 

I've been able to down load his Perl gpx2html and the MacPerl program. Putting everything together is more difficult than solving Fizzy's Puzzles! Now I'm wondering if I should just learn MacPerl and write my own program. It might be faster than trying to figure out my problems. Are there any Mac/Cachers out there that successfully upload Geocaching data to a PDA (besides using Virtual PC - which is really slow and pains taking)?


 

You don't need to use MacPerl unless you're on OS 9. OS X comes with regular 'ol perl which should run Fizzy's stuff just fine. Let me know what you're trying to do and I may be able to help.

 

Yesterday I wrote some code to take the zipped gpx files I get from pocket queries and automatically convert them to pdb files suitable for CacheMate. Much less hassle than GPX Spinner/Plucker and faster.

 

Jeff

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Hi Jeff,

 

I just upgraded to OS X and while I read it has perl, I could neither find it nor make it show itself by several farmer attempts at running his program. All I can say is the more I get into this, the dumber I feel. If the end result wasn't so great, I'd drop the whole project and go caching.

 

Bill of Green Achers

 

''I want to know how God created this world.  I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element.  I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details." -- Albert Einstein

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Green Archers and Fizzy,

 

Thanks for posting the link to the program gpx2html. I saved the .gpx files from Geocaching.com email into a directory on my PC along with the file gpx2html.exe. After running gpx2html, I move the html to the Pocket_PC My Documents folder. When I put my Pocket PC in the cradle, the cache pages copy automatically. Then I just click on the caches.loc file and EasyGPS comes up, which loads the coordinates into my GPS.

 

Here is the net effect, I'm can cache paperless, and the only typing I have to do is to log my finds on Geocaching.com. Thanks Fizzy!

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Paperless is where it's at! It's a big time saver as well and that's why I'm willing to spend the hours fighting to get it back. [Lost the ability due to upgrading to OSx].

 

While I was in the process of regaining lost ground, I also took care of a wish list item... I'm now able to upload and download (and synchronize) my GPSr (Magellan Sport Pro) via my Mac. How did I live without this ability before? Talk about saving time.

 

Bill of Green Achers

 

''I want to know how God created this world.  I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element.  I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details." -- Albert Einstein

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Friends,

 

Seven geocacher parties gathered and a total of 13 folks embarked on the quest of the Fellowship of the Ring. Let it be known that we succeeded. This excellent multi by mbrill had quite a few visitors this Sunday noon.

 

If you haven't done this cache yet, get a handful of friends together, take the book along and set off for a true adventure. It can be done in less than 5 hours or can take a few weeks.

 

This cache hunt was the prime example why geocaching can be such a wonderful experience. Even when critters are guarding the cache site!

 

WeBeDnD's account of the quest would make JRR proud.

 

MotorBug summed it up very nicely:

quote:
Found new friends, took wonderful memories, and signed the log.

 

Our thanks to mbrill for putting this cache together. The Fellowship will tackle TTT next.

 

_____________________________

... where is it?

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So where are all the new caches in the south bay?

 

There isn't a "new" cache closer than 17 miles away from me, which is very abnormal. Of course I have plenty of others to do, so it's not really a problem.

 

Is Hemlock taking a break? If he is, I fear the deluge of caches when he resumes!

 

Jeff

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Off Topic: Skiing & Snowboarding

I've talked to a bunch of my geocaching friends and have found that quite a few of them also share another passion of mine, sliding down snow covered hills.

 

The snow is falling and I'm getting excited about heading up. Last year I only made it up twice but I'm hoping that I'll go up more often this year. The cold temps and winter weather pattern are really kicking this into gear up in Tahoe. You can keep track of what I am up to related to skiing/snowboarding on my Ski Page. I will usually post a few days in advance of when I am planning on going up and usually have an empty seat or two in the cachemobile (which makes a nice skimobile)...

 

--Marky

...Be nice to your fellow geocachers, they might be Hemlock...

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New "Visit the Gallery" feature on cache pages!

This is so freakin cool. Recently added is the ability to see all the pictures posted to a particular cache. Here is the Gallery Page for the infamous Kiss the Dog cache. This is especially awesome for locationless caches.

 

--Marky

...Be nice to your fellow geocachers, they might be Hemlock...

 

[This message was edited by Marky on November 07, 2003 at 09:35 AM.]

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quote:
Originally posted by bthomas:

Ooooh! Ahhhhhh! And in Profile, there's a place for my 2000 photos.


Nice Gallery Ben! Fun to browse through all the images and read the quotes. Neat to have them all in one place like this. Some things you don't know you want them until you have them. big_smile.gif

 

--Marky

...Be nice to your fellow geocachers, they might be Hemlock...

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