[Jeremy]

Thanks for all the submissions everyone! If I counted right, we have 9 potential shirt designs (not counting the different variations / options for each design) from 7 artists. Not all were posted here, as some emailed / PMed / or snail mailed in their designs.

I plan to post all the entries in the Campout Committee forum tonight, so if you have a great idea that you haven’t posted or want to tweak a design you’ve already submitted, you have until midnight tonight. I think the goal is for the Committee to pick a design by the end of the week.

[Jeremy]

@labrat_wr wrote:

what about a person looking at their gps walking off the cliffs?

You stole my idea! 🙂 I thought of a “walking off a cliff” shirt logo design based on this Groundspeak shirt a while back… but I haven’t had time to put pen to paper on it (plus it would look like a kindergartner did it with jumbo crayons). If someone has the artistic talent to put such a design together, I think it would be pretty cool.

Note that we’ve received 5 designs so far. All are “shirt worthy”, but many are not “shirt ready”… i.e. some cleanup will have to be done to them. So don’t be afraid to submit just a rough sketch if you think you have a good idea.

Someone also asked about including the new WGA logo in the shirt design. While it is not a requirement, it definitely would not hurt your odds if you did. So far, 3 of 5 designs have included the logo.

[Jeremy]

@Trekkin’ and Birdin’ wrote:

Watch for the cache page and registration by Monday the 30th.

So never fear, the registration process will start soon! Looking forward to seeing you all there!

The registration form was enabled last night and the event cache page was approved today. You can register using this link:

Registration Form

The cache page:

GC1PBQM

And don’t forget to buy your campout shirts and pay for your camping fees in the WGA Store.

[Jeremy]

@furfool wrote:

Where is the GC cache page for the WGA camp out? When I clicked on the camp out event on the home page and went over to the see GC cache page for this event, last year’s page comes up.

Wish we had one. 🙁

Actually, the information on the cache page is basically the same as what is on the WGA site. We are waiting to activate the cache page until we have registration open on the WGA site. We don’t want to open registration until we have the WGA Store set up so people can pay for the group camping and buy shirts. This store set up is really what is holding up the works, but there is a motion on the table now that should get us past this.

Watch for the cache page and registration by Monday the 30th.

[Jeremy]

@Decrepit wrote:

Am I loosing it? ❓ Didn’t I read somewhere that there was going to be a cache container contest or was that related to something completely different?

That would be at the 2009 Cache Ba$h (GC1KZHZ)… so you’ve got until August to construct your creative container(s). 🙂 If you want to be creative before that, we will be having a night cache contest of some sort at the Geo-Campout.

6:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. MOST CREATIVE CACHE CONTAINER CONTEST Any age. Design the most unique cache container and see if you win. No names on the container, stop by registration to let us know which one is yours. Additional tickets will be given for each creative container and a prize for container voted as best. Be sure to vote for your favorite!

[Jeremy]

Here is the new WGA CafePress store:

http://www.cafepress.com/wga_store

Right now there are only a few apparel items, but we will be adding items to it in the future.

If there are any items you want to have added (take a look at the old store or here to see some of the other things available from CafePress), please post your request here or PM me. There is also a bug on the CafePress website preventing us from customizing small items (mugs, buttons, magnets) with the WGA logo at this point.

[Jeremy]

@Team Deejay wrote:

2. If you don’t want to change the name for some reason (a broken keyboard, let’s say), just export the first, then sync the palm, then export the second with the same name, then sync the palm again. The files will be combined in Cachemate, but that should be what you are looking for with Palm Cachemate. (Pocket PC Cachemate is different.)

I think for this to work, she’d have to sync it (with Home caches), open Cachemate on the Palm to get those caches imported, then sync it with the other set of caches (Mission caches), then open up CacheMate and import those caches. Just synching twice without an import wouldn’t work.

In any case, renaming the file and doing one sync is a much better option. 🙂 You can also control which of the PDB files get imported first (useful if you are dumping caches into different categories and there is overlap) by using the skip button on the import window.

[Jeremy]

Since this is a long and winding resolution (though excellently crafted by Ralph), let me highlight the two most important bits / changes:

– Committees have been empowered to take action and make decisions on their own, without any Board approval or input. (Assuming there is no fiscal impact or the action/decision isn’t controversial.)

– All committees will now have designated chairs (chairpersons). In most cases one chair will be a Board member and the other will be a non-Board member.

In the past, committees have come up with great ideas but they weren’t acted on (or at least not quickly). An example of this delay was the member suggestion about adding information on “Places To Eat” to the website. The Website Committee picked this up and developed a proposal… but it really went nowhere until the Board voted on it.

Also, some committees have languished or failed to do much of anything because there has been no clear leadership or people driving them. Designated chairs serving as leaders, discussion moderators, and cheerleaders (to get people fired up to do something) will hopefully help. We also believe having non-Board member committee chairs will provide an opportunity for WGA members to get their feet wet in the leadership arena (pool?) before they take the plunge (going off the deep end?) and run for the Board.

[Jeremy]

Thanks for the reminder Gary.

I wouldn’t miss it for the world, and I’ve been training all winter so we can defend our title. Team ZigZagNuts will be faster than ever… we’ll be so speedy that we’ll just be a blur as we cross the finish line way ahead of our competition… if you blink, you’ll miss us as we collect our giant chocolate medallion grand prize.

Seriously, it would be great to see some other WGA teams/members come out for this. Last year there were several teams from south of the border (IL), including one that took second (or was it third?) place. That just ain’t right! 🙂

[Jeremy]

@Team Black-Cat wrote:

No, it looks like the old one hasn’t been replaced yet. I used the address from the new logo anouncement, so it may NOT be permanent.

Since several people are using the following image of the new WGA logo on their cache pages / profile pages / personal web pages:

http://wi-geocaching.com/images/wgalogo_09_300.jpg

I will keep this image permanently on the server. But TBC is right, this is not the “official” banner image we recommend for use on cache pages (so it will not change automatically if the logo is tweaked in the future, etc.)… we will have that image uploaded and the new HTML posted shortly.

[Jeremy]

@marc_54140 wrote:

I seem to remember him mentioning that there is a Vista – Palm fix. Maybe in another topic?

Here is a topic that discusses the Palm / Vista issues and a possible fix:

http://wi-geocaching.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=7518

The Vista fix to allow HotSyncing appears to work for most people. The other option, copying the CacheMate .PDB file to a memory card if your Palm device has one, will probably continue to work for a long, long time…

[Jeremy]

@Team Deejay wrote:

– Making sure the name/address/phone all match (or at least don’t not match)
– Human checking of submitted information (looking for obvious fake info)
– IP address checks

To be honest, I really wish this wasn’t necessary, and maybe it really isn’t.

I believe this isn’t necessary. This is one Board member’s “solution” to a problem that simply doesn’t and hasn’t ever existed.

We considered the possibility of vote fraud and sock puppets when we wrote electronic voting into the bylaws. At that time, there was an argument as to whether we should not allow members to sign up and vote while the Board election was taking place. After some debate, the doubters were convinced that allowing new users to vote would not do anything to harm the veracity of the elections, and it never has been a problem.

We do the things listed above to check the votes. We also double check the votes from new users. I see no way we wouldn’t catch blatantly fraudulent or sock puppet votes, especially given the small number of votes that are actually cast. A waiting period would not do anything other than frustrate those who legitimately want to vote. It is essentially creating a second class of membership or “probationary member”, and for that reason I oppose it.

The bylaws already give us the authority to throw out any votes cast by users who don’t meet our membership requirements or who we even suspect are not legitimate… i.e. sock puppet accounts. We’ve exercised this authority in the past to invalidate Board votes from those who didn’t meet our residency and age requirements.

As far as the 40 new members signing up in January argument vs. a much smaller number in December, this is statistical hogwash that has nothing to do with the Board election. Here are the real stats that matter:

6 people voted for the Board that would have been excluded by this proposed new rule. These six people were (without naming names):

– The spouse of a well known SE WI geocacher. She wanted her own account specifically to vote for the Board… otherwise they normally share an account.

– A spouse of a well known NW WI geocacher.

– A geocacher from NE Wisconsin with over 600 finds who signed up in early January 2009.

– A former member who decided to sign up again under a new user account because his membership expired and email address changed.

– A geocacher from NE Wisconsin with over 300 finds, caching since early 2008, that I personally met at the West Bend Cache Ba$h.

– A geocacher from western Wisconsin with less than 50 finds, but who was active geocaching, active in our forums, and registered as a member well before the election.

– Most important statistic: 0 Board votes were cast by sock puppet user accounts or non-legitimate members

Also, most of the Board voting takes place in February anyway (some years, all of it). So why are we looking at the 35 new members created before Board voting began on 1/26/2009 anyway??

Personally, the best bylaws change that might be made would be to publish the names of all the members who did vote. That way, the entire membership could see for themselves that all votes were cast by real Wisconsin geocachers (as apparently some do not have faith in those who serve as election monitors?).

[Jeremy]

We actually (in the early days, using the old Ultimate Bulletin Board (UBB) software) used to allow folks to delete their own posts. The Board back then voted to restrict this for a couple reasons:

– “Trolls” would post something controversial in nature, create a “flame war”, and then delete their own post(s) to cover their tracks. With that software they also had the ability to remove an entire topic they started which would also eliminate any posts other people had made in that topic.

– Some people didn’t like what they had posted so deleted things days or weeks after the fact, or were neat freaks and cleaned up after themselves. This left gaps in discussion threads that made reading and understanding them difficult… as sometimes you only had part of the “conversation”.

@Team Black-Cat wrote:

10 or 15 years ago when drive space was still over $1/MB, it may have been a concern. I can’t see the forums taking up that much space by today’s standard. I’m sure our most excellent web master will correct me if I’m wrong, but I would guess the entire text of the forums since the board started would fit on a single USB “zip” drive.

As far as the posts taking up space… the entire WGA “main” database is currently only 300 MB. This is the text of every forum post ever made, all the user/membership data, and all the data in almost every module (COTM, LCG, Wiki, etc.)… though certain things like the store, Cache Rescue, and election information are contained in separate databases. So yes, I’d say storage of WGA forum posts in perpetuity is a non-issue.

If anything, I’d only consider allowing deletion for a short period of time after a post is made. We already allow editing a post up to one hour after a post is made. IMHO, you should have less time to delete, like 5 minutes, just to allow people to remove double posts that sometimes happen when folks click the submit button twice or when something is accidentally posted in the wrong forum. But since the double and misplaced posts happen so infrequently and are easy for admins to clean/correct, leaving things alone would also be OK by me.

Plus I think not having the ability to delete posts keeps some people who might be prone to attacking / quarreling with others on their best behavior. You can’t undo or unsay things in real life, so I think it is only fair that you can’t undo posts here either.

[Jeremy]

@ToyotaRyan wrote:

The program is called Foxmarks http://www.foxmarks.com/ . It will sync up your bookmarks between Safari (Mac only), Internet Explorer (Windows only) , and Firefox (All supported OS’s). I don’t know quite yet, this might get me to switch back to using Safari as my primary and Firefox as my secondary browser.

I’ve been using Foxmarks with Firefox for over a year and it works great. Prior to that I used a number of different bookmark synchronization plugins for Firefox and IE for that worked somewhat but never seemed to get everything right… Foxmarks does. With 3 computers at home and another 3 at work, this program keeps me happy by giving me the same set of bookmarks at whatever computer I happen to be using at the moment.

They recently added a feature where you can (securely) synchronize your saved passwords too.

[Jeremy]

I can confirm that what OPS posted (holding page and enter while powering up) is correct for a reset. After doing this, it will ask if you want to clear all data… select yes.

As far as a virus infecting or doing anything strange to your GPS, you really have nothing to worry about. Though I have heard about a virus for Magellan units… apparently it is highly contagious, as you can get it simply by pressing the power button to turn the on. It causes extreme slowness, horrible accuracy, and makes all the menus impossible to figure out. (Just kidding Magellan users. ;))

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