[ACME_WildCachers]

Isn’t this a little bit like asking me to choose my favorite child?! OK, if I have to pick just one cache type, it would probably be Unknown/Mystery/Puzzle. I think they appeal to my problem solving nature. I love that extra “aha” moment when I figure out what is needed to solve. I’ve found myself gravitating towards this type as I plan my own hides, too. The puzzle solve adds a fun an extra element to the experience that can be used to really carry a theme through. And last, solve-at-home puzzles keep me involved in geocaching even when the weather or other things might prevent me from going out to find caches.

My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.

[ACME_WildCachers]

Do I have to answer in the form of a well-thought out analogy? 🙂

I tend to gravitate toward snacks that are both salty and sweet. Something like Pretzel M&M’s or trail mix. Take that as you will.

My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.

[ACME_WildCachers]

I honestly do not know that it would have occurred to me to run for the board if I had not gotten a surprise nomination. But I thought things over for a few days before accepting, and ultimately decided this was a good opportunity that I wanted to pursue. Other cachers in my area have started looking to me for guidance, and I really do enjoy helping the figure things out. Joining the board would help me increase my impact on geocaching across the state. I look forward to being able to better promote aspects of the game that will improve things for everyone. This will also give me an excuse to travel to areas I’ve not seen before, and meeting more of this great community. I also think that my past experiences should make me well-suited for the responsibilities of the board.

My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.

[ACME_WildCachers]

Reposting as I edited my original reply and it seems to have disappeared.

While it has been a while, I spent three of my four years at Kansas State in different levels of the residence hall government. I first represented my floor within my building Governing Board, then later was a building representative and eventual Vice President of the larger Association of Residence Halls. Over that time I helped plan events, coordinated technology to support board goals, and eventually headed up a committee that drafted and won approval of a complex new policy.

In my day job at Epic I work with customers to troubleshoot and address production issues, implement new software features, and meet their goals for success. At the same time, I also work on changes to our software, regularly meeting internal deadlines and quality standards. So I’m routinely juggling competing priorities.

I am sure that the WGA would be a new adventure for me. But between my governing board experience and my ability to juggle priorities successfully, I feel prepared to be successful with whatever it might throw at me. I would not have accepted the nomination if I didn’t think I could give this the attention it deserves.

My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.

[ACME_WildCachers]

Geochecker seems to be back.

My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.

[ACME_WildCachers]

@labrat_wr wrote:

I wonder if anyone uses the “close enough” setting on Geochecker.
trying to think of a time when that could be used. I think I saw it used once where it said that “you don’t have it exactly correct but close enough to give it a shot….or something like that meaning those coords will get you to within a few seconds of the correct solution.

The other day I was working on a puzzle and had all but the hundredths place for the north coord and the thousandths place for the west coord. This was a series final for which I was in the hunt for FTF, so I started wondering If I could make the find without actually knowing the last two digits. (I wouldn’t have actually attempted the find without doing the rest of the series, but I was curious if it would be possible.)

I don’t have exact numbers anymore, but I believe it was something like 60 feet for a hundredth of a minute and 6 feet for a thousandth. With 10 possibilities for each digit, I could narrow it down to within approximately 60 feet east to west and 600 feet north to south. That might not be so bad if only one digit was unknown, because then I could search in a line. With both digits unknown, it’s an area of 360,000 square feet which doesn’t seem very reasonable. This particular cache told me the name of the park it was in, and I had enough to know it was near the northeast edge of the park. So I probably could have shaved off at least half of the 600 feet, but that didn’t seem very sportsmanlike. Anyway, I thought it was interesting to think of minutes in terms of a measurement I’m more familiar with.

Edit: now that I’ve started to read cheeto’s link, I see a lot of this is covered there.

@labrat_wr wrote:

Oh, and I believe Hemi WAS being sarcastic 🙂

Being a sarcastic person myself, that’s how I read it (is that sad?). Still, I haven’t been reading this forum long enough to know for sure, so I didn’t want to seem like a jerk if it was a real question.

My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.

[ACME_WildCachers]

Looks like the domain is registered to Groundspeak…

Whois Record

Domain Services Provided By:
000domains,
http://www.000domains.com

Registrant:
Groundspeak
PMB 321
24 Roy St
Seattle, WA 98109 4018
US

Registrar: 000DOM
Domain Name: GEOCHECKER.COM
Created on: 26-JUN-06
Expires on: 26-JUN-11
Last Updated on: 24-SEP-08

Administrative, Technical Contact:
Administrator, Groundspeak
Groundspeak
PMB 321
24 Roy St
Seattle, WA 98109 4018
US
206-405-1945

I was expecting an individual or small business since that’s usually the case with a bandwidth problem. Maybe they’ll get it back online sooner than I thought.

My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.

[ACME_WildCachers]

@Team Hemisphere Dancer wrote:

What’s Geochecker?

I don’t know you, so I’ll assume that’s a legitimate question and not sarcasm. Cache owners can add a link to Geochecker on their puzzle caches so potential seekers can see if they have the correct coordinates before attempting to find the cache. When you click through to Geochecker, you enter the coordinates you’ve determined from the puzzle and the site will give you a simple yes/no answer on whether it’s correct. If you’ve got the right coordinates, it will show you a map with a marker. I like seeing it on puzzles because then I can figure out right away that I’ll be headed to the right spot, and I don’t have to bug the owner or wait for his/her reply.

My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.

[ACME_WildCachers]

@DGDK wrote:

I’m having the same problem, and it’s no better this morning.

The “Bandwidth Limit Exceeded” message means that the site has received more traffic within a given period (usually a billing cycle) than the hosting provider allows for the owner’s current hosting plan. Unfortunately, it could be down for a while until the next billing cycle starts or the owner decides to pay for more bandwidth to get the the site back online. I guess we’ll just have to wait to confirm our puzzle solution; or we could just email the cache owners to confirm.

My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.

[ACME_WildCachers]

We have a bookmark list for our favorites near Madison so far. There are several of the Leopold Legacy series on there, but we like May (GCKAKC) the best. Probably our all-time favorite in Madison is Mr. Elver’s Cache (GC362D) which is a 9 stage multi that’s very well put together. It took us 4 attempts, but most of that was spent stuck in the same location. If you have better luck than us you could complete it in an hour or two.

We’re nearing our 100th find, so I’ve also been looking for caches with a little something extra. I’ve been considering several listed in this thread. Some are closer to Madison than others.

I’m interested in hearing some other ideas, too.

My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.

[ACME_WildCachers]

@-cheeto- wrote:

I often do this on my caches that I archive. Perhaps not a 500 word essay but I do often post information about why it was archived or a tidbit about the history of the cache or the reason it was created in the first place. I also sometimes give warning on upcoming archival, especially if it’s a puzzle.

I looked at a few of your archived caches after reading through your list in the other thread, so I did notice you’ve included more info than most. I’d like to see more owners handle things this way.

@-cheeto- wrote:

Interesting fact you may not have known. Did you know that if you delete a log it’s still written in the groundspeak datbase somewhere?

I didn’t know that, but I’ll keep it in mind if I decide to shoot my mouth off in a log. 🙂

@gotta run wrote:

So, for the most part, giving a long explanation of why a cache is archived is like speaking to an empty room.

I can understand this argument as well, and even acknowledged the fact that many people wouldn’t see the info in my original post. Speaking to an empty room really is fruitless, but I don’t think the analogy is quite right. Leaving more info in an archive log is more akin to speaking into a recorder. You might be in an empty room, but you’ve left something that can be played back if someone happens to enter the room later.

My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.

[ACME_WildCachers]

I’m not aware of anything other than what sandlanders mentioned. However, I also had some thoughts while reading the other thread that seem to fit better over here.

I’ve been caching off and on for 3 and a half years, so there have been plenty of caches I intended to go after that wound up archived before I could get to them. I can remember a few times when I have found a cache print out from a while ago, thought to myself, “that sounds like fun!” and then realized it’s actually too late because the cache has been archived.

I’ve noticed that many times the owner’s archive log just says “thanks for visiting” or “time to go” or something similar. As someone looking forward to completing a find, I’m left wondering what happened. This particularly bugs me when one out of a series goes with no explanation. I always assumed that most owners would want their cache to remain as long as possible, and therefore would only archive it if a problem prevented it from continuing or they were tired of the maintenance involved. I hadn’t really considered archiving as a natural way to allow new caches into an area before reading the other thread. I can definitely understand that reasoning, but I’d also like to know that’s the reason. Is that selfish?

I guess I just see a little irony in the way most caches are archived. Cache owners generally seem to encourage finders to write at length about their experience with a cache and their journey finding it. Many hiders, on the other hand, end a cache’s life unceremoniously, without returning the favor and sharing any of their own experiences in maintaining the cache or explaining why it’s time to let it go. Many of the posts in the other thread have more explanation about why a cache is gone than was included on most archive logs. It’s true that it’s not as easy to find an archived cache on the website, so one could argue that many people would never see the archive log itself. Then again, I’ve found myself reading through logs on lots of archived caches lately (some of them archived several years ago), and now I know I’m not alone.

Thoughts?

My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.

[ACME_WildCachers]

We ended up doing 11 caches in the area around Miller Park. Our next trip will certainly need to take us farther away, so I’m still looking for recommendations if you’ve got them.

My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.

[ACME_WildCachers]

We haven’t had a chance to do many, but our favorite multi is easily Mr. Elver’s Cache (GC362D). It’s in a popular park on Madison’s west side and has 9 stages. The clues are clever and offer a nice challenge, plus you end up seeing pretty much the entire park to complete it.

My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.

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