[Jeremy]

@Team Hemisphere Dancer wrote:

This one works pretty slick as a quick way to log your finds. Just takes checking the found caches in gsak before running the macro. I wonder if there is a way to sync gsak with cachemate to do this for me? Anyone?

Jim, yes you can import your Cachemate finds into GSAK. This is a great feature that I use all the time… just mark the caches found in Cachemate while you are out in the field and then sync up when you get home.

This help document describes the details about what has to be done to get this to work (hopefully you can avoid having to know about these details using the macro below). Basically the CM2GPX utility is used to generate a GPX file from the Palm database, which can then be loaded into GSAK:

http://gsak.net/help/hs40000.htm

I wrote a simple macro to automate this process many moons ago. It looks like someone else has come up with a better / more complete macro to handle the Cachemate -> GSAK import.

http://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=6874&st=0&#entry41246

[Jeremy]

All fixed… thanks for reporting this.

There was a tiny bug related to determining the date to display for non-members. Members have a membership date and a joined date (which may or may not be the same… it’s a long story) and we display the earlier of them in the forums. Non-members only have a joined date.

Marc, thanks for being a guinea pig and testing the avatar change… you can switch back to the old red, white, and blue version. 🙂

[Jeremy]

@Buy_The_Tie wrote:

I have a 60CSx, and as a test I pulled the batteries out while it was connected via the USB cable, and the unit stayed powered up.

Cool, they must have changed this when they went from the 60CS to 60CSx? You still should be able to power it from the old 4-pin connector too if you want.

[Jeremy]

@rogheff wrote:

Is there a GPSr that can plug in to your cigarette lighter? That would seem to be a really nice option to have that would eliminate the whole battery issue.

Most Garmin handheld units can be powered externally.

In the bad old days when GPS units burned through 4 AA batteries in less than 12 hours, hooking them up to DC power to conserve battery power was regularly done. Ancient Garmin units of this time period accepted straight or unregulated DC automotive power (which can be 15 V or higher) from a cigarette lighter. All you had to do was cobble together some sort of cable to get juice from the car battery to the proper pins on the unit. Some Garmin units like this are the 48 series, 12 series, GPS III/V, etc.

Later on, GPS units got smaller and less power hungry. Garmin units from this age still had provisions for being powered externally, but they required regulated DC power. You had to provide “clean” power of the right voltage or you risked burning out the external power circuitry. Gone were the days of making your own cables… you were forced to buy special regulated power cables. Some Garmin units in this category are the eTrex serial series, Rino, eMap, Geko, etc.

Nowadays, MOST Garmin models with USB can be powered via the USB port. You simply provide a USB connection that has power and you are all set. I’d recommend getting a cheap cigarette lighter to USB power adapter (like this), and then you can use the USB cable that came with the unit (or any USB cable for that matter) as the power cable.

The Garmin GPSMAP 60C(x)(s) and 76(x)(s) units are the exception to this general rule. They are a throwback, as they can ONLY accept unregulated external DC power through their round 4-pin connector, not their USB connector. So with these units you can use the same power cable you cobbled up for your GPS 48 in 1996…

And in all cases powering the unit externally does not charge the batteries, unless the unit has internal batteries like the Nuvi series.

Confused? 😀

[Jeremy]

@-cheeto- wrote:

yeah, i beleive I read before that on your WGA profile page you need to put in your GC.com username and the link to your profile page. it has picked up my out of state caching.

Yes, you need to specify your gc.com profile link to allow the log harvester to grab your out of state logs.

We found using the link to be more reliable, as you could enter in your gc.com username slightly differently on the WGA site (i.e. zuma not zuma!, Bandits not bandits, etc.) and the harvester would not pick them up. Once you have entered a good profile link, you know with absolute certainty we will be able to find your logs. As an added bonus, scanning by profile links is significantly faster for the harvester to execute as well…

[Jeremy]

@AuntieNae wrote:

I know there is a button combination you can press to “reset” that unit. If someone can not help you here, the Garmin help folks would be able to tell you how.

The magical key sequence for a 60-series master reset is to hold down the Enter and Page keys when powering up. It will ask you if you want to erase all data… answer yes.

Holding down Enter while powering up will put it in a test mode. This is sometimes interesting to look at when geocaching in extreme weather because it shows the internal temperature of the unit. 🙂

It is worth a shot to try the reset first, because this is what the Garmin folks will ask you to do before sending it back. Note that after a reset it will take longer than normal, maybe 10 minutes or more, to acquire a satellite lock.

[Jeremy]

@Mister Greenthumb wrote:

Twin Valley and Cox Hollow are Family campgrounds. The group camp area is Hickory Ridge and is in the northern most part of the park. I’m not aware of any other group area so that is most likely the main gathering area.

Correct, the official WGA group camp will be the adjoining sites C & D in the Hickory Ridge area.

If you are bringing a trailer, you probably want to get a spot in the Twin Valley campground because it is the only one with electrical hookups.

[Jeremy]

@-cheeto- wrote:

Is there a formal process to requesting and getting space for camping at the event?

There are a bunch of people with various responses to this thread and others but could we or do we have a way of indicating our intentions a bit more formally than this?

If you plan to tent camp in the WGA reserved group campsites, we should be opening up online registration for that shortly… definitely before the end of the month. Spots are available on a first come, first serve basis. We are only allowed 60 people on the sites we have this year.

Also note that there will be a fee charged for camping in the group sites. Typically it has been $8 to $10 per night, but we haven’t set that yet.

If you don’t want to go this route or if you have a trailer/RV, you can reserve a spot in one of the two family campgrounds in the park. These sites go from $15 to $20 per night.

[Jeremy]

Dom, the motorcycle in the picture doesn’t look like a Harley. It appears to be one of those crazy foreign jobs. 🙂

I do agree that Wigwams are a great place to stay while traveling across the wild expanses of this great nation on a bike.

[Jeremy]

Congrats on the 2k milestone Anne! (And I know you also bumped up the number of states you cached in over the weekend.)

With the explosion of earthcaching (is that a word?), maybe they need an Earthcache master level above platinum to recognize folks for achievements like this…

[Jeremy]

@kbraband wrote:

I remember how cold it was at the first WGA campout at Gov. Dodge. Some of us in tents had catalytic heaters, which were a relatively new item back then. Once others at the group camp saw them, several of them made a run to the nearby Farm & Fleet store in Dodgeville to pick one up.

I’m pretty sure that our members bought all the portable heating devices in the greater Dodgeville area (I know, I looked myself and couldn’t find any!). I remember that even with these fancy heaters, many people did not tough out a second night of below freezing temps. I also remember someone’s stupid weather radio going off with “freeze alerts” several times one night.

But there’s no need to worry about cold nights this year mates… with global warming kicking in (six additional years worth of greenhouse gases are now in the atmosphere), I predict we will need to break out the portable air conditioning and swamp cooler units this year. 🙂

[Jeremy]

It does sound like an Ethernet hardware or driver problem, which would be indicated by the lack of a “link” light on the router and the fact that you can’t get an IP address assigned (by DHCP I assume).

Have you checked the cabling between the router and computer? (Plugged /unplugged, used a different physical port on the router, tried a different cable?) When you say you tried to “bypass” the router, were you then plugging directly into the modem?

If you know how to bring up a command prompt, run ipconfig /all and see what it thinks is up with the Ethernet adapter.

(Attempt to find humor in the situation: Maybe you burned your Ethernet card out by transferring all that data so quickly when you were using Firefox? 🙂 Seriously, I find it hard to believe that installing Firefox could cause a problem like this, and the corrupt OS diagnosis from the Geek Squad doesn’t seem right either.)

[Jeremy]

Congratulations on the anniversary Ken! More importantly, thanks for taking the geocaching ideas you saw in Illinois and spreading them to Wisconsin by placing your own caches in early 2001.

Also, thanks for the reminder about my own 7-year anniversary coming up on March 4. She (my addiction) would have been quite upset had I forgotten about it. 🙂 I wonder what kind of gift you are supposed to buy for this occasion?

@marc_54140 wrote:

Along those lines, I always wonder how Jeremy V managed to get #41?

I’m a trendsetter Marc… I’ve always got my finger on the pulse of popular culture and have my eyes open to the world, looking for the next big thing. 🙂 Seriously, I saw a posting in a usenet newsgroup and another on the letterboxing site about the creation of the geocaching website. I signed up, but waited until some relatively close caches popped up before going out on my first hunt (I was not as ambitious as Ken).

[Jeremy]

@Team Honeybunnies wrote:

As for the comment about transparency, this will be nice. I thought about posting, asking if we could at least get a quick synopsis of what happened at the meeting.

There will be minutes posted soon, probably tomorrow. (I had to do some business traveling which delayed my typing them up, and they need to be approved by the Board before being published.)

I’m making an effort to condense down the 6+ hours of discussion into something that is not too long and boring to read…

[Jeremy]

Dave, if it is not a problem for you to deal with the numbers (do the bookmark lists max out at 500?), then I would be in favor of sticking with the usual 4 month period. I think it would be good to get folks to check on all of these caches that have been sitting buried under mounds of snow for four months. No doubt many have had water seep in and so forth and will be in need of maintenance.

@Team Deejay wrote:

Additionally, I received a suggestion that we add a rule stating that you can only get credit for visiting a cache once during a given month. This person pointed out that some people posted a DNF, then later replaced the cache and posted a find, then went back a week later and confirmed that it was still there. The person suggested that a person should get credit for whatever maintenance they do and other bonuses, but should only get credit for one visit. I’m persuaded that this is a good rule to add, but I’d again like some feedback.

I just assumed you could only log a cache once per time it was lonely. (Now if you DNF it and then go back on a separate visit and replace the container, then I’d allow the DNF visit to be deleted and replaced with the higher point value maintenance visit.) I think the rules should be changed to close this loophole and prevent people from padding their stats with spurious visits.

[Author]

Posts