Cache Mania

It has come to my attention that Nina has sold her WorldCaching Store to someone in BC.  Nina is returning to her studies.  After 5 years of running WorldCaching she was ready for a change.  From what I’ve heard she wants to have the transaction completed by September.  That doesn’t leave a lot of time for the new store to open.

Tags: retail, store, Worldcaching
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I’ve crossed the line a few times and geocached in an area I shouldn’t.  Sometimes the cache was obviously placed on private property and other times I wasn’t so sure.  How far would you go?

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Tags: property rights, tresspassing
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Come fall you can frequently find me in front of the TV on a Sunday afternoon watching football.  From time-to-time you’ll see a wide receiver land awkwardly.   I have gained a new appreciation for their toughness when I watch them “walk it off”.  Last Sunday I sprained my ankle while trying to re-hide a cache that was hidden just a little bit higher than my arms would reach.

You can see a fair bit of swelling in my ankle.

Luckily we were not far from the car when it happened.  I was able to walk to the car under my own power but only barely.  I was surprised to realize that I was experiencing a little bit of shock.  I got the shivers and felt like being sick.   I haven’t been to the doctor yet so at this point I’m assuming it’s just a sprain.   In researching treatment for this kind of injury I found this great page on treating an sprained ankle.  It can take more than a year for a severe sprain to heal!

I’ll be doing two things as soon as I’m mobile:

1. buying hiking boots, not shoes
2. buying a folding splint and ice pack to carry in my backpack

Tags: ankle, boots, hiking, injury, swollen
Posted in Rants | 1 Comment »

I found out about this movie last year.  I was intrigued because Geocaching factored into the story as a way to bring the two main characters together.  I sat down last night and popped in the DVD.   The story was very predictable, misfit falls for pretty girl, pretty girl ignores misfit, girl and boy eventually get together.   I laughed a few times and found the movie enjoyable.  Would I recommend it, sure, but it’s not a must see kind of  movie.

There are a number of recognizable faces in the cast, Rachael Taylor (Transformers), Christopher McDonald, Lea Thompson and Dean Winters.  The supporting cast was probably funnier than the main characters. There is a dinner scene that had enough awkwardness to make it quite funny.  This movie is not for children.  There is a fair amount of profanity and a few sexually suggestive situations.

I wanted to see Splinterheads because of the geocaching connection.  There were a variety of cache containers found throughout the movie and they looked quite authentic.  The character’s use of the GPS was a little “hollywood” but what can you expect from a movie.  There is an underwater cache that I quite liked but you just need to watch a couple of trailers if you want to see it.    It would appear that GC.com paid to be a sponsor.  The website gets a prominent appearance on screen.

This would be a good movie to watch with some geocaching friends.  It might even be neat to create a series of caches similar to those discovered in the movie.

Tags: Movie, review, Splinterheads
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A couple of months ago I was out caching and my GPS started acting up.  I was getting lines across the screen.  There was conversation amongst myself and the cachers I was with that perhaps the Colorado 300 needed a firmware upgrade.  Luckily Northern Penguin had his laptop with him and by chance he had the latest GPSr firmware on the laptop.  While standing in a parking lot at 2200 we flashed my Colorado.  No joy.   It was not a software problem as I had hoped.

I knew I was going to have to send the unit in for warranty repair but I was hesitant.  It would take too long, it would be too much of a hassle, it would be an all around pain in the ass.   I was wrong on all counts.

I contacted Garmin support to start the return process.  I was informed that as a Canadian I had to send the unit to the Canadian repair depot.  This would save me having to ship cross-border, twice.  The Canadian repair company is Raytech Electronics.  The Raytech site was very easy to use and within minutes I had received authorization to ship the unit back for repair.  Their system even prepared the shipping label for me.   It cost me about $9 to ship the unit to Quebec.

About a week after sending the unit in I received an email stating the unit was being returned to me.  I was it afraid it was going to take upwards of 6 weeks and here I was getting my GPSr back within two weeks.  My unit was toast so I was sent a replacement Colorado.  The noted didn’t say for sure but I think it was a refurbished unit.  I didn’t mind as it was better than having no GPSr at all.  The total cost to me for the replacement was $9, the cost of postage, one-way.

The support people at Garmin provided even more help to me today.  The one downside to getting a replacement unit is that I would have to reload the unit with my information, including my maps.  Installing the maps was going to be a problem.  I’d somehow managed to render my original disk unreadable.  I could not install the maps without the disk.  I called Garmin software support to see what they could do.

I’d already been in touch with Garmin on this issue once before.  At that time I was told too bad, so sad but you’ll have to buy a new installation.  That communication was done over email and I had the feeling that email support was outsourced.   Today I actually spoke to Michael in Kansas.  It took us a while but he figured out that I could buy replacement media to solve my problem.  I immediately placed the order with Michael, it wasn’t Garmin’s fault I buggered up the disk.  For $15 plus shipping I was going to get a replacement disk.  I had to send proof that I actually owned the original disk.  The was a bit of a nuisance but manageable.

I recommend you reach out to Garmin support as soon as you have a problem.   I’m very happy to have my GPSr fixed and a replacement disk ordered all for less than $35.   That sure beats shelling out another $500 just to replace what I already owned.  Thank you Garmin Support!

Tags: Colorado, Garmin, support, Warranty
Posted in GPS Hardware, Rants | No Comments »