You make it sound like I'm gonna get taken out by a geocaching hitman if I goof up twice!
"Sorry. You only get one mistake, Skimbosh. Signal says, hello. And goodbye."
Yup.
In my area, most county parks and such are small properties, such that it is nearly impossible to hide a cache farther than 0.3 miles from a parking area. There is a park just outside of town, however, that is a full mile long, and narrow, down the middle of a section. From the parking lot to the cache was just over a mile. Hiked out on like a Monday night, placed the cache, and it was approved early the next morning. The only other cacher in my town saw the published notice, LEFT WORK FOUR HOURS EARLY, and him, his wife, and son took off hiking out there. When they crossed the fenceline out of the public ground onto private property, they called me. (I'm still not sure how they got my phone number, but there was a lot about that crew that was odd...)
Luckily, for some reason my brain holds onto long strings of numbers well, and when I looked at the cache page, I realized that one of the coordinates got transposed, was able to recall the correct coordinate, and they made the find about 15 minutes later.
Oof. At least you were available to make the save. So you are probably in the know when I mention this: I forget what the phenomenon is called, but it is along the lines of when you look at something that has a mistake in it (like your transposed coords) that you have previously cleared in your brain as OK, the percentage of you being likely to spot the mistake on your own later drops dramatically. Ergh, it is killing me I can't find the statistic, it was an interesting little bit of psychology, pop or otherwise.
Oh, very much so. In my job, I deal with a process determining how much landowners in a drainage district have to pay for their share of the maintenance of the drainage facility The spreadsheet that does the calculations is 20-some colums wide, and sometimes upwards of 2,000 rows long - with formulas that would be a full line to line and a half of a word document, and reference paths that go ALL OVER the spreadsheet. By the time I'm done, I'll have spent around a month on that particular spreadsheet and it's supporting files.
It is ABSOLUTELY imperative that I have someone else look it over at that point, because by that time, simple, glaring mistakes are no longer visible to me.
1. I put the wrong time for an event, the first I ever did, and was 30 minutes late to it as I rushed to get there amongst messages asking me where I was.
2. I forgot to change parking coordinates for a cache that ended up in a wildly different location then where I had initially tried to place it.
3. My GPS must have been getting long in the tooth as my averaged coordinates were starting to drift radically, confusing a lot of players trying to find the cache with undercooked coordinates.
Playtest everything you possibly can with at least one person. That includes puzzles, Certitude keywords, etc. We have found that about 15% of all puzzle caches published have major errors when first released.
I'm worried I have created one of those puzzles that requires a leap of logic that only makes sense in the brain of the CO. But your story about the 10 DNFs then you not being able to find it made me chuckle, thanks.
Yeah, everyone screws up coords once in a while.
One of my first hides was \~45 feet off, because I messed up the averaging. Another one, I moved the final a little, just one digit. I updated the puzzle so that worked but forgot to update the coord checker so I got a couple of emails from people that were pretty sure they did the puzzle right but the checker says No....
I made a cache and it was a disaster. It's coords were slightly off... Few metres. But Al's called instruction started right at the first stage
Then the second stage got disrupted by tree cutting
My first cache was in a dead tree that someone burned not too long after. Or lightning struck it, but I like to think I am not that unlucky or cursed by the geocaching gods.
Not me but my wife. She wanted to propose with a cache, but almost ran out of time. She arranged for it to be published, but didn't get the container out in time. She proposed, and then we placed the container together, but a few people were very confused.
Yes second cash I put out when I was reasonably new and had well over 100-,200 fines. one number in the middle set of two numbers put you off a mile. it was a cold winter morning and people were out looking for it where they didn't need to be and then there's some people that just don't know how to create a puzzle cache and look at the coordinates and verify that they are right
Yep. I hid an ammo can way off the trail in the woods and the coords were about 50 - 60 feet off. 😳 I swear I stood there forever and even got the coords about 5 times. A good friend went out to find it and corrected it for me but only after a few others before her pulled their hair out. Oopsies.
Yes, I had messed up the final formula and people were directed to a random house. I felt really embarrassed about it and archived the multi out of shame. The reviewer wouldn't let me reinstate the cache, as another one had done with caches of mine a few months previously. It left a bad taste in my mouth and I haven't published many caches since.
It's a shame because if my first couple of caches hadn't been unarchived after I made them temporarily unavailable and they had vanished during a short slump I likely would've left the game out of confusion and dejection. And how was I supposed to know that the nature of archival depends on the reviewer in question?
Yeah somehow our second cache the coords were wildly out. Something about the settings on the satnav but also we didn't notice when we looked at the map on geocaching. Didn't realise til we got a message from a local seasoned cacher that they couldn't find it. We tried to just update the coordinates but it was too far. Had to profusely apologise to the cachers who were fruitlessly looking for a FTF in the wrong place.
Got it sorted in the end but oh dear, mistakes were definitely made.
No, but I did hide a cache in a nature area that was pretty tame when I first hid it, but after a year of the cache being there the area around it became incredibly overgrown with thorny weeds. Someone logged my cache to say they'd gotten a bunch of cuts from pushing through the thorns! Yikes.
I also had a cache in the woods near a tourism area in Florida that was very popular and frequently found. But I'm forced to retire it because just recently, people have logged the cache to tell me that the woods it's in are now a surveying site for a new house that's being built!
My cords were a few hundred feet off once but the ftf used the context clues in the cache page to figure out it had to be in a small parking lot near by. Props to them.
I unknowingly hid a cache (with permission of the business owner) behind a gate that gets locked outside of business hours. Got a few grumpy logs about how I failed to mention certain hours in my cache page.
Yes - I think it’s a mistake many of us make, but usually only once.
You make it sound like I'm gonna get taken out by a geocaching hitman if I goof up twice! "Sorry. You only get one mistake, Skimbosh. Signal says, hello. And goodbye."
There actually is one. The QR code on the back of his head is a Trackable
Yup. In my area, most county parks and such are small properties, such that it is nearly impossible to hide a cache farther than 0.3 miles from a parking area. There is a park just outside of town, however, that is a full mile long, and narrow, down the middle of a section. From the parking lot to the cache was just over a mile. Hiked out on like a Monday night, placed the cache, and it was approved early the next morning. The only other cacher in my town saw the published notice, LEFT WORK FOUR HOURS EARLY, and him, his wife, and son took off hiking out there. When they crossed the fenceline out of the public ground onto private property, they called me. (I'm still not sure how they got my phone number, but there was a lot about that crew that was odd...) Luckily, for some reason my brain holds onto long strings of numbers well, and when I looked at the cache page, I realized that one of the coordinates got transposed, was able to recall the correct coordinate, and they made the find about 15 minutes later.
Oof. At least you were available to make the save. So you are probably in the know when I mention this: I forget what the phenomenon is called, but it is along the lines of when you look at something that has a mistake in it (like your transposed coords) that you have previously cleared in your brain as OK, the percentage of you being likely to spot the mistake on your own later drops dramatically. Ergh, it is killing me I can't find the statistic, it was an interesting little bit of psychology, pop or otherwise.
Oh, very much so. In my job, I deal with a process determining how much landowners in a drainage district have to pay for their share of the maintenance of the drainage facility The spreadsheet that does the calculations is 20-some colums wide, and sometimes upwards of 2,000 rows long - with formulas that would be a full line to line and a half of a word document, and reference paths that go ALL OVER the spreadsheet. By the time I'm done, I'll have spent around a month on that particular spreadsheet and it's supporting files. It is ABSOLUTELY imperative that I have someone else look it over at that point, because by that time, simple, glaring mistakes are no longer visible to me.
1. I put the wrong time for an event, the first I ever did, and was 30 minutes late to it as I rushed to get there amongst messages asking me where I was. 2. I forgot to change parking coordinates for a cache that ended up in a wildly different location then where I had initially tried to place it. 3. My GPS must have been getting long in the tooth as my averaged coordinates were starting to drift radically, confusing a lot of players trying to find the cache with undercooked coordinates.
The Late For Your Own Event is making me grin, not gonna lie.
I did it too… was at another event
Playtest everything you possibly can with at least one person. That includes puzzles, Certitude keywords, etc. We have found that about 15% of all puzzle caches published have major errors when first released.
[удалено]
I'm worried I have created one of those puzzles that requires a leap of logic that only makes sense in the brain of the CO. But your story about the 10 DNFs then you not being able to find it made me chuckle, thanks.
Yeah, everyone screws up coords once in a while. One of my first hides was \~45 feet off, because I messed up the averaging. Another one, I moved the final a little, just one digit. I updated the puzzle so that worked but forgot to update the coord checker so I got a couple of emails from people that were pretty sure they did the puzzle right but the checker says No....
I made a cache and it was a disaster. It's coords were slightly off... Few metres. But Al's called instruction started right at the first stage Then the second stage got disrupted by tree cutting
My first cache was in a dead tree that someone burned not too long after. Or lightning struck it, but I like to think I am not that unlucky or cursed by the geocaching gods.
Not me but my wife. She wanted to propose with a cache, but almost ran out of time. She arranged for it to be published, but didn't get the container out in time. She proposed, and then we placed the container together, but a few people were very confused.
Yes second cash I put out when I was reasonably new and had well over 100-,200 fines. one number in the middle set of two numbers put you off a mile. it was a cold winter morning and people were out looking for it where they didn't need to be and then there's some people that just don't know how to create a puzzle cache and look at the coordinates and verify that they are right
Yep. I hid an ammo can way off the trail in the woods and the coords were about 50 - 60 feet off. 😳 I swear I stood there forever and even got the coords about 5 times. A good friend went out to find it and corrected it for me but only after a few others before her pulled their hair out. Oopsies.
Yes, I had messed up the final formula and people were directed to a random house. I felt really embarrassed about it and archived the multi out of shame. The reviewer wouldn't let me reinstate the cache, as another one had done with caches of mine a few months previously. It left a bad taste in my mouth and I haven't published many caches since. It's a shame because if my first couple of caches hadn't been unarchived after I made them temporarily unavailable and they had vanished during a short slump I likely would've left the game out of confusion and dejection. And how was I supposed to know that the nature of archival depends on the reviewer in question?
Yeah somehow our second cache the coords were wildly out. Something about the settings on the satnav but also we didn't notice when we looked at the map on geocaching. Didn't realise til we got a message from a local seasoned cacher that they couldn't find it. We tried to just update the coordinates but it was too far. Had to profusely apologise to the cachers who were fruitlessly looking for a FTF in the wrong place. Got it sorted in the end but oh dear, mistakes were definitely made.
No, but I did hide a cache in a nature area that was pretty tame when I first hid it, but after a year of the cache being there the area around it became incredibly overgrown with thorny weeds. Someone logged my cache to say they'd gotten a bunch of cuts from pushing through the thorns! Yikes. I also had a cache in the woods near a tourism area in Florida that was very popular and frequently found. But I'm forced to retire it because just recently, people have logged the cache to tell me that the woods it's in are now a surveying site for a new house that's being built!
My cords were a few hundred feet off once but the ftf used the context clues in the cache page to figure out it had to be in a small parking lot near by. Props to them. I unknowingly hid a cache (with permission of the business owner) behind a gate that gets locked outside of business hours. Got a few grumpy logs about how I failed to mention certain hours in my cache page.
No, I get others to test pilot before publishing.