Welcome to the Jungle, Bling, and stuff

Welcome to the Jungle

Last night started quietly enough. I left work and headed home.  Everything was quiet, my wife and kids were at seven peaks.  So I sent a sad and lonely message to Jac0b begging him to do something.  I was pretty bored, and did not want to be alone on a nice evening. 

So he wandered over and off we went geocaching.  It was about that point that I realized that my gps was filled with caches from my trip to southern Utah.  So I was at his mercy.  We decided to head off and look for two.

The first was one that I had not found before and apparently needed the help of another village idiot to not be able to find it.  Success!! well if you mean failure.  GC1QB3K Cricket Lake We had no luck at all.  Well we did notice that people almost drained this tiny swamp at one time.  Wow it was sure nice someone put an info sign in the middle of an industrial park at some stupid pond.

Well we headed for the next one.  GC1efeg Computer Geek.  That was apparently was far more difficult then either of us had hoped. But right next to it was a trail heading off into the reeds.  Of course neither one of us could pass this opportunity down.  So off we went down the trail.  We were kicking ourselves that we had not brought a cache container.  What a great place.  Reeds were head high, under and over logs, fish and muskrats were running off.  It was a great place and spooky as well.

Well it just so happened that I had a cache container in my pocket.  Thanks to LV2WJ I had a dna tube in my pocket.  Not what we wanted, but evil anyway. After a long drawn out hike we found a home for the little evil thing.  Today it became GC2B07J Rumble in the Jungle.  We discussed the name for some time.  And there was a desire by one of our party to place a second evil cache here, but perhaps I will come back and place a larger one.

Bling

Woo hoo today my coin came

I thought it looked sweet.  It is possibly the largest coin that I have seen.  2" round or a tiny bit bigger.

Stuff

Today was the new code realease from Geocaching.com.  If you did not notice the little "feedback" button on the right of your screen you should.  It takes you too a new page called "get satisfaction".  It is a specialized forum for sharing ideas, and for reporting and responding to bugs.

For example two of the largest ideas (after about 5 hours) are

Bring Back Virtual Caches with 474 votes in favor, and listed as "under consideration".

Challenge Icon with 272 in favor, also "under consideration" and has the following lackey comment "We are exploring the idea of more official Geocaching Challenges now. There are many different types of challenges so this can be... erm... challenging. I would love to hear your thoughts on what challenges everyone enjoys the most and how they can be better integrated with the site."

There are a number of other tweaks. GC codes pull down to links if you wish to copy them.  Feel free to poke around. Hopefully it is friendlier than ever to play on the site.

This weeks Podcacher, friends.

I really liked this weeks Podcacher Show 275.0: A Puzzling Day. It was one of the better podcasts that I have heard in the last few weeks.  I think it appealed to my evil streak.  Anytime you can come up with new puzzles it is a good thing.  Podcacher is one of my insperations.  I have a few that I took ideas from them.

In all it was a great show.  The pet GPS tracker would be good.  I really love the reverse geocache you can check it out here.   It is an idea where you need to get a box to a particular spot.  Then it will open. You need to take the cache container to the coordinates, then it will unlock.  I looked at the design at one point.  I should delve into it a little more.  i have a few hardwood boxes that I made some time ago that I would like to try it on.

I am still working through some of the caches in my list.  I am down to about 140 caches to go through.. i have a lot on hold that I am working on as well.  If I have not looked at your cache, or if you are wondering what is going on.  I have forgotten them before.  I have had as many as 300+ caches in my queue and on hold when I got back from scout camp.  So feel free to pipe up if you are wondering what is going on with yours.  That is what email is for. 

Friends

I wanted to toss in a bit about my friends.  I was reading the latitude 47.  The blog of groundspeak.  they just had an article A Journey of 1001 Days of Geocaching.  It made me think of some of the great friends and local cachers there are.  I will try and write a bit about them when I get the chance.  This guy has done 1000+ days of caching.  Yet Dr Jay passed 1200 in the past few weeks, and he has 700+ ftf's.  Jac0b passed 1800 caches.  I remember early on wondering who these two were. I am happy to have met them and count them among my friends.  

We have so many fantastic people here in Utah.  I have a hard time listing and naming them all.  Many I have met, and many more I have yet to meet. So until we do meet.  Good luck and good caching.

Geowoodstock lost.

Well I was getting all exited for heading up to Geowoodstock.  I was looking forward to spending time with lackeys and with friends that I had made on the internet and with PeanutsParents. I was slow at getting everything set up because of the cost and things going on at home (ie trying to pay bills)

Then I decided.. I am going home tonight and buying tickets. Yep.. that is what I am doing... buying tickets. Then on the way home young lady pulled out into traffic and smashed my little car.  I knew I could not buy tickets, but I held off for as long as I could.

The realization hit me last night that this years events had passed me by. Gone.

<sigh>

Well maybe next year.

Podcast mania

I spent a fair amount of time this week trying to listen to the different geocaching podcasts. This week they were so so.  I was listening to last weeks as well.  I have the ability at work to download them and stick them in my ear while I work.  It is far better than sitting and listening to the same songs over and over

Podcacher has came to be my favorite.  They talk about a few of everything. I listened to show 273 called Invasion, Fire Tacks and a Big Green Frog.  They are interesting.  Cover a number of subjects.  It was not one of  the better ones, however this last one is Show 274: Geocachers Vs Plants.  There was a great idea that one area had about using geocachers that were out in the woods to locate and identify noxious weeds that are growing in the area.   The full article is located Here.  A few other ideas were thrown in there.

Geocaching podcast was a bit different this week.  For some reason that I missed the guys did not get together and just one of them did this weeks program.  It was on Leave No Trace and geocaching.  I completed the training to be a Leave No Trace Trainer a few years ago.  Though I am not rabid like some, there are a large number of Leave no Trace principles that apply to geocaching.  I have thought about writing more about Leave no Trace and coming up with a training program that is specific to the geocaching program.

I am just starting to listen to todays and it has Jenn  as a guest.  Jenn is one of the great people from the Lillypad in Seattle.  I have had a few phone calls with her.  So I look forward to listening to her discuss geocaching.

I listened to this a bit.  They only broadcast once a month.  I had wanted to listen to a geocaching podcast from nearby.  They are as close as possible.  Unfortunately there is not one locally, and I am not sure that it is a good idea for me to put one together, but in the end I decided that it was not a great idea.  Maybe someday when I am done with the reviewing idea.

Well that is it for the day. Heading off to listen to Geocaching Podcast.  I will post a bit more about it later.  Go Jenn  :D