[Team B Squared]

@Jeremy wrote:

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. 🙂

Thanks Jeremy!

[Team B Squared]

The Michigan DNR recently acknowledged a cougar print up here about 5 miles from my house. Of course they will not acknowledge that there is a breeding population in Michigan, just saying that it must have migrated from the Dakotas.

DNR Confirms cougar track in Delta County

And a follow up to that article.

DNR: No New Cougar Sightings

Both articles were printed in March 2008 in the Escanaba Daily Press.

[Team B Squared]

Is there a good place to get pH testing kits? I found them in Wal Mart in the fish section, but they were kind of expensive (aprox $20) and they had a lot of them in one box. Is there a better place to look where it might not cost so much?

[Team B Squared]

@rogheff wrote:

Never bury a cache. A cache is considered buried if it must be dug up by hand or by tool. Placing rocks, bark, logs etc. over a cache is not considered burial, nor is placing a cache into a naturally occurring crevice or hole. If a shovel, trowel, or other pointy object is used to dig to hide or find a cache, it’s not appropriate.

While GC.com does not approve buried caches, other websites may not have such restrictions. Perhaps a Buried Treasure cache would be an exciting adventure.

I know I am out of state, but this statement jumped out at me right away. From the outside looking in it seems that the WGA is really trying hard to establish good working relationships with the WI dnr and other parks systems around the state.

I know that in Michigan, one of the major problems park systems initially have when approached is that they don’t want anyone digging in their parks, and for some reason when people hear about geocaching, they immediately think “buried treasure”. It seems to me that if the WGA were to advertise on their website that it was ok to dig to place or hunt caches (buried treasure) that it would be counter-productive to what the WGA is trying to accomplish. The stricter guidelines of gc.com are a definite benefit when trying to work with parks systems.

I do not feel that gc.com is the end all, be all of cache websites, but in this instance it is probably best to advertise their guidelines.

[Team B Squared]

@rogheff wrote:

Oh boy, jump in and close eyes.

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.

Yes, I can plug my Lowrance IFinder into the cigarette lighter in my car.

[Team B Squared]

@-cheeto- wrote:

yes I get to play with a several thousand dollar GPS unit almost every day for my job

but does it do a better job of finding tupperware in the woods?

Nope, I’ve never used it to hunt a cache. I have used it while hiding a few though. One in particular is kind of a tough hide. I saw someone hunting it so I stopped by to see if they needed help. They said they were looking for about a 1/2 hour for it. I asked the girl to stand exactly where the gps best zeroed out for her. Once she moved to that spot I told her to look down and her foot was about 6 inches from the cache.

On that same cache I had a person write and complain saying the coordinates absolutely HAD to be off by at least 50 feet because he couldn’t find it. I laughed pretty hard at that one (mainly because I have been annoyed by him in past logs for other people’s caches). 😆

[Team B Squared]

I work as a geographic information systems (GIS) specialist for an Indian tribe up here. GIS is kind of a mix of map making (cartography) and database management. Each feature in the digital maps that I create have information tied to it in a database behind the scenes.

An example would be a layer that has all the houses on the reservation. For each house, we have information such as who lives there, the address, resident’s ages, sex, square footage of the house, year built, and a lot of other categories. Using this information we could easily query and create to find out which houses were built before 1960 or anything else you would like to know. We have the ability to do this for just about everything on the reservation.

Basically, I make maps for a living, and yes I get to play with a several thousand dollar GPS unit almost every day for my job.

[Team B Squared]

@Team Deejay wrote:

I think its probably easier to define a kid friendly cache by defining what it is not…..

NOT hidden on a street sign, guardrail, lamppost or other noninteresting location, unless there is actually something interesting at that location other than the guardrail

NOT a nano. (These also qualify as not adult friendly) Bigger micros are fun for older kids, but the little ones still like small or bigger.

NOT leaky (nothing worse than opening a cache to find a lot of wet paper and rot or a solid block of ice)

I’m sure you can all add to the list.

If you use those guidelines you can change the letters to get away from the chicken thing. You could just call them NCC’s (not crappy caches).:lol:

Seriously though, I do like the idea, but it is hard to define what a kid friendly cache is, especially from the cache contents. A lot of caches start off with good stuff for kids before the swag quickly turns int McCrap.

We have a 6 month old who has never been to a cache, so I don’t know how to answer these questions yet.

Is it purely based on the size of the container?
Or do you have to take the container’s contents into account?
Does the final location (say a beautiful overlook) make a micro a kid friendly cache?
What about a micro at a playground? (assuming you let your kids stop and play instead of rushing to the next cache)
How long of a walk makes a cache find not kid friendly?
There are just so many variables to take into account here.

[Team B Squared]

@Trudy & the beast wrote:

This is clever: Daft Hands

That was great. I wonder how long it took to perfect that routine.

[Team B Squared]

My dad called to tell me the news yesterday morning. The conversation pretty much went…

Him: Did you hear?

Me: Hear what?

Him: Favre retired.

Silence…..

Me: Ok bye.

I couldn’t talk, I didn’t want to talk to anyone. My office is 90% Packer fans…it was odd, the most quiet I have ever heard it around here.

I am 28, he has been the qb since I was 12. I grew up with him under center, and he is the only Packers qb I have ever known. I vaguely remember Don (the Majik man) Majkowski, but Brett took over during my formative years.

I feel very fortunate that I was able to see him play about once or twice a year since 1993, even when I was living in lower Michigan (only about an 8 hour drive one way to Lambeau), and even got to see him coming out of the locker room while my wife, my mom, my dad, and I were on the Lambeau tour during training camp.

I suddenly feel a lot older this week. Wow

[Team B Squared]

I received that same email twice within a week last year. One of the emails said those pics were taken somewhere in Wisconsin and the other said that it was taken in Laingsburg, MI (downstate). I had to laugh at that. I used snopes to find out that they were taken in Wyoming.

[Team B Squared]

There, I did all my cheesehead buddies a solid and demanded Milwaukee for you as well.

[Team B Squared]

It would seem that an events forum would be at least as valuable as an off topic forum. I too, had never noticed the events section on the left side.

[Team B Squared]

I would probably not consider stopping to do a 4 mile or 7 mile hike one way while out caching for a day…but I would consider making a special trip to do only that cache. I say go for it.

[Team B Squared]

Congratulations Jim & Cathy! You must be so excited. Lynn and I are both very happy for you.

[Author]

Posts