[Jeremy]

Bump.

Last call folks… you have until the end of the weekend to vote in the Board election. Many members have already participated, but we are below the record number of voters we had last year.

[Jeremy]

At the time they submitted that event to the WGA, I believe it was not on geocaching.com. Now that it is approved and listed, I changed the link that we have for it to point to the event cache listing.

[Jeremy]

Congratulations to the 2009 Cache of the Year winner, July – Peanuts Series Mystery Final.

It was a close race with several caches in the running up until the end. Full results and member comments on the winning cache will be posted soon.

[Jeremy]

@Johnny Cache wrote:

What’s everyone’s thoughts on the current voting system? Would ranking the 5 votes, like they do in sports, be a better alternative?

Here is an alternative, widely used in Australia, Ireland, and other countries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_voting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote

It is much more complicated than our current voting scheme and has its own issues. In the end, I’m not sure it would change the outcome much… but people may feel better that their votes aren’t being wasted and that the election is more fair (and thus be more likely to vote in the first place).

In the last two elections it seems people have become wise to the things Johnny mentioned… like voting for someone you aren’t sure of just to “use up” your 5 votes could bump your preferred candidate out of the top 5 and cause them to lose. There have been more ballots submitted with only 2 or 3 votes.

[Jeremy]

Another update in election monitors saga. I am back on because the person I really wanted to win decided not to run, but Becky Waldmann has decided not to serve as an election monitor because of a possible conflict of interest. So Gwyn Calvetti, Brian Geoffrey, and myself will be assisting with the administration/execution of the 2010 election.

Just one week until voting starts…

[Jeremy]

One other election note. Since someone who I have close ties to decided to run for the Board, I will not be an election monitor this year and Brian Geoffrey (Buy_The_Tie) will take my place. So Gwyn Calvetti, Becky Waldmann, and Brian Geoffrey will be assisting with the administration/execution of the 2010 election.

[Jeremy]

Bump.

We are now about halfway through the nomination phase of this year’s election. So far there have been about 50 nominations by over 20 members. Obviously a number of qualified folks have declined, nine people are on the ballot, and a few are still deciding whether to run. 50 nominations may seem like a lot, but this is actually less than we received in the past few years.

The deadline for nominations is January 30. Though if you are serious about nominating someone, please do it soon… it takes time for us to send them a nomination email, for them to accept the nomination, and for them to obtain a second nomination to get them on the ballot.

[Jeremy]

I created a new CafePress store many months back at the request of some members… I think I also posted the link somewhere in the forums. I forgot to update the link in our Main Menu… but that has been corrected. Here is the direct link:

http://www.cafepress.com/wga_store

Right now the only items in the store are shirts. Adding other items like mugs and bumper stickers can be done but each different item type requires a specially sized version of the logo graphic… we will get around making these soon.

If there is a certain type of item you’d like to see, post it here, PM me, or email cafe-store wi geocaching com. (cheezehead there is a gray hooded sweatshirt available if you are willing to pay $35…)

Does anyone know of any decent alternatives to CafePress? Some of the CafePress prices are quite high, and we have little control over how the store looks.

[Jeremy]

Yes, the recent logs harvester was fixed this morning and it appears to have picked up all new logs this afternoon. The changes to geocaching.com were essentially cosmetic so only minor tweaks were required.

You can resume your normal geo-stalking activities. 🙂

[Jeremy]

Moved this topic to the Suggestion Box forum at the request of gotta_run.

At one time the Board considered both maintaining a list of volunteer presenters by region, as well as creating an online system for submitting and tracking requests for presenters. I think I still have the preliminary designs for these two things sitting around somewhere.

However, at the time (2007?) it was felt that we didn’t get enough requests to justify creating these tools, and handling these requests informally (via asking for help in the forums) would be OK. But it appears in some cases that this informal handling has not worked well and things have slipped through the cracks…

[Jeremy]

@-cheeto- wrote:

For those coming to the campout with campers/pop-ups typically the reserved group sites are tents only. Not sure about the space at Bong as this will be my first time camping there.

Good question Shane.

The group campsites at Bong are for tents only. They would not be large enough to accommodate travel trailers and RVs.

For those with trailers, I’d recommend getting spots in the Sunrise family campground to be close to the WGA group sites and the picnic shelter. Sunrise sites 1-30 are actually right behind the group campsites. The other Sunrise sites should be within reasonable walking distance.

[Jeremy]

Didn’t you see the article related to this in the recent newsletter?

The WGA has decided that changing the logo on our 1000s of web pages would be too time consuming and costly. Soon we will be mailing out a sticker with the new WGA logo on it to all members. If seeing the old (“classic”?) WGA logo on the website bothers you, you are encouraged to paste the sticker on your monitor or laptop screen over where it appears.

[Jeremy]

Yes, I definitely would not try the direct Indiana Jones route to Saddle Mound on snowshoes. It is very steep, and worse, rocky (snowshoe damage possible!). The Marcus Brody route is doable, but you’d have to do some digging in the snow at the top to come up with the find.

In that same general area, I think Logging Railroad Cache 2 (GCZ982) and VRR #2 Wangreen Hill (GC16W9H) would be fun on snowshoes but maybe not “epic”. Or some others in the Black River SF, like Wildcat’s Revenge (GC53D7)? Not sure how well some of the rural roads in this area are maintained in winter though.

[Jeremy]

This was an old referendum that was entered in the system long ago but not activated or officially approved by the Board. The start date was set into the future (2009)… so it didn’t appear on the site until now.

It is NOT an official referendum and has been removed. The Board clarified the status of non-residents (individuals who are not Wisconsin residents) who want to join the WGA in 2008.

So nothing to see here… but good eyes spotting this Marc. 🙂

[Jeremy]

@Team Deejay wrote:

Maybe you are hitting back and then forward. That would do it on any browser.

If you do this (back then forward) in some browsers you get a warning message saying that you are about to “repost form data” or something similar. If you see such a message, STOP because it means you are going to redo some action (in this case, send your post again creating a double post).

We could increase the minimum time between posts, which right now is 30 seconds. If this were a minute, then you’d be more likely to get an error message saying that you posted another time too quickly instead of creating a double post. Though thread stealers going for a FTP may get annoyed by this restriction…

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