July 18 More caching stuff
A) A beautiful coin is available for doing some caches in New Richmond in the Gaspe. We may go for it as it is not thaat far from Campbellton, and we have never been to Gaspe.
Here is a link to the coin
http://img.geocaching.com/track/large/860fe70c-c8a6-49ea-950b-14a563fd835d.jpg
and there is the passport
B) I noticed also that there is a windmill series in that area. It sounds great. Here is an extract from the description
Located in the Carleton windmill park the Girouette caches serie includes 73 winter friendly caches hidden in the vicinity of the 73 windmills.
A joint effort from Tracker@230 and Alleycat333 we hope you enjoy the search and the breathtaking scenery.
C) Been back a few days from our long trip. We cached a few days in Niagara Falls area because we were there for a wedding. Caching was good but prices for everything were excessive in that area. We avoided all pricey tourist stuff but got a lot of caches. We met a Kingston ON cacher and an Ottawa cacher and found a few with them, including a virtual at the falls.
D) I am kind of frustrated with the number of new young cachers with smartphones who are out finding caches and often logging them more them once. Some have begun hiding caches in what I would call questionable places and with coords that are less than accurate.
E) It is good to have goals when geocaching. Been continuing to pick up caches on the dates that we have less than 10, with the aim of having 10 on every date on the calendar. 3 days left this month, 1 in august, then none till end of December. Our other goal is to get 3650 caches again this year.
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A bit off topic.
Here is a picture from the wedding in Niagara Falls. The bride and groom are skaters with Disney on Ice.
Actual photo
Groundspeak has changed the email notifications that we receive when people log our caches. Based on the response in the forums, cachers are upset. I am so upset that I posted in the forum and alo sent a note to groundspeak.
What is the big deal and why is everyone upset?
Here is old subject line for these notifications
[LOG] Owner: ggoguen_1 found Lourdes (Traditional Cache)
It shows me the nature of the log and who logged it. The first change brought us the following notification
Homard / Lobster – Scoudouc River Series (GC17V2B) has a new log!
There was no mention of the nature of the log (found, DNF, needs maintenance,etc) and no mention of the cacher who logged it.
The notification was then changed slightly to show the nature of the log
Owner Notification: SWAG in Shediac (GC22ZPD) has a new Found it log
It still doesnt meet our needs.
There is another problem with the new notifications. I created filters in my email to send geocaching emails to a a separate folder. For soe reason these new notifications now end up in our inbox.
Anyhow here is what I posted on the forum
*********************
We live in the Shediac area of NB which is a summer tourist area. We have 428 active caches. This time of year we get many notifications about our caches. It is extremely important to me that the reasons for the notification appear early in the subject line so I can quickly see if there are caches with problems such as DNF or Needs Maintenance, etc..
I may also be getting dozens of Found it logs from the same person. It is easier to go through all the notifications if I go through all the ones from the same person at the same time. So I also need the finders name to appear early in the subject line. In other words I much prefer the old notifications which said:[LOG] Owner: ggoguen_1 found Lourdes (Traditional Cache)(2). It is also useful to see who was out finding our caches.
I also set 4 filters to send the notifications to a separate folder if certain caching words appear in the subject line. Well it seems that the changes somehow short circuited my filters because todays notifications ended up in my inbox. I guess I will have to wait to see what will be the final decision before reworking the filters.
PAul
*Thankfully Groundspeak has now changed the subject line of their notifications back to the way it was. I am happy about that but they have left the content in the new html format and it is a bit more trouble getting to the content of the logs. I had to re-do my email filters and my geocaching emails are now in my geocaching folders.
* I have often said that we are goal oriented when it comes to geocaching. So we will try and get the new August souvenirs. That means trying to get 6 different cache types in August, each of which gives us a souvenir and then we earn another souvenir if we get all 6. For us that means a bit of planning and some trips, since we do not have some cache types remaining in the Moncton area.
* I am really frustrated with the caches put out by young people with smart phones. They have no idea about caching, have only found a few and are hiding in unacceptable places including private property. We had no luck finding one that had been duct taped to a lone light pole on a busy street in Moncton. It is gone of course. Here is the cache http://coord.info/GC57Z7F where you will find my request to archive and a link to the light pole