World of Wonderment

The Journal

2010-06-07T20:11:00.004-04:00

First of all, I want to thank everyone who has contributed in the making of this very special cache. It was a blast. As I told the rest of the crew, never before have I been so miserable and had such a great time!

One reason I was so miserable was I underestimated the terrain for the area. I assumed this place wouldn't have much of an elevation change. Heck it's Illinois! If you look west with a pair of binoculars you can see the back of your head. I even studied the topo maps, and evidently there is some sort of a conspiracy with the map makers, because there aren't hardly any lines of declination for the whole Farmdale area. Some of us hike almost every weekend and we commented before we left that there couldn't be anything in this area that compares to the hills and knobs we've been climbing in Southern Indiana, it should be a breeze. What we soon realized is, yes the hills around Peoria aren't as tall as the ones back home, but man, they were steep. Most of the time it seemed like where ever we needed to go was up a 45 degree hill. Not only up a hill, but through thick underbrush that the deer couldn't hardly penetrate.

Then when we weren't climbing up or down a hill we were usually in mud. And a lot of time we were in grass over our head that when touched released a cloud of pollen right in your face. Then just because we weren't uncomfortable enough, the mosquitoes were as thick as anywhere else on the planet. Top all of that off with a heat index of 100 and you probably get the point. Yes we were physically miserable, but we were having the time of our lives!

We had planned on doing the whole thing in one day, but around 4 or 5 on Sunday afternoon we knew that wasn't going to happen. Especially since one of our team members wasn't 100%. So, we probably did about ¾ of everything we needed to do on Sunday, and decided if we were all feeling better Monday morning we would come back and finish this thing quickly. But, nothing happens with the Journal quickly. On Monday morning, we headed toward one missing waypoint that we had pondered about the night before over pizza and Google Earth when the rain started in. We had hoped it would pass by quickly (there's that word again) but soon it started to thunder, and opting not to add a lightning strike to our physical woes, we decided to hunker down in a nearby Mexican restaurant.

After lunch and some deciphering we knew exactly where to look for Jacob's treasure. Unfortunately, getting there was another problem. But problem solving is what our group does best. I think given the time and the opportunity the six of us could solve anything anyone throws our way. We could probably untie the Gordian Knot, and we could definitely figure out how to beat the Kobayashi Maru, so after some pondering, we found our way to the final and eventually had the log book in hand. It took us two days instead of the one we originally planned, and we were quite wet and exhausted, but we had tackled the Journal.

104 Caches in a Day!

2010-01-01T10:08:00.001-05:00

According to Todd Snider, “64% of all the world's statistics are made up right there on the spot”

I have always found it odd that when it comes to math and numbers, I'm a little slow, but for some reason I am obsessed with stats. For instance, I could tell you how many passing yards Peyton Manning threw for last year, just a touch over 4000, but ask me to divide 4000 by 16 and I'm a deer in the headlights. How many caches did I find in February 2005? Twenty-Two. Multiply 22 by 2005, give me a second to find a calculator. Numbers without context scare me a bit.

Since becoming re-obsessed with caching earlier this year I have had one main statistical goal in mind, and that was to find 1000 caches. In March of this year I had found around 300 caches and some time in November I noticed that I was sitting at 700 cache finds, with my goal of 1000 just over the horizon. After crunching some numbers I thought if I could really buckle down I could hit 1000 before the year was up. For some, doing 300 caches in 7 weeks wouldn't be much of an issue, but up till now I was only a casual cacher, just finding a handful of caches on some weekends, and occasionally going on little marathons of 20 or 30 finds. I was so casual in fact that in one 3 ½ year period I only had 72 finds, and had a streak of 601 days without a find at all. All of that changed when I went on a caching vacation in mid November, finding 74 in one week and ending up finding 176 for the month of November putting me just 150 or so shy of my 1000 cache goal before 2010.

Meanwhile a few coincidences happened. First I read a forum post on geocaching.com about a group of people finding 416 caches in a 24 hour period. Well if someone could find 416 caches in 24 hours, maybe I could find 100 caches in twelve hours. So I started looking for somewhere to try to find 100 quickly. The most logical place for 100 caches in a day that was close by was the Indianapolis area. Then simultaneously, a caching buddy of mine noticed that there was a cache (GC21KVT Challenge of the Century – 100 Caches in a Day) published 70 miles away in Indy, challenging people to find at least 100 caches in a 24 hour period. So one day while I was plotting my 100 caches in a day route around Indianapolis, Mickey4Jes sent out an email to our local group of cachers seeing if there was anyone interested in trying to meet the cache challenge of 100 in a day. I immediately responded back with a hearty yes, and gave her my plans, which I ended up modifying slightly to include the challenge cache. Then after a couple of dozen emails passed back and forth between interested cachers, we finally came up with a car full of crazy cachers and a date and time to undergo our feat. So early on the morning of Monday, December 28^th (A date which will live in infamy, in my mind anyway) five cachers, Me(djhobby), MonsterCatAmbush, Mickey4Jes, Geomafiosa, and Mouse! piled into a Durango and set off on our quest for 100.

We started out by finding a pay phone cache in Bloomington. Pay phones are the cachers friends when you're on a numbers run. Unless of course there is a police officer parked mere inches in front of the phone talking on his cell phone. Which is what happened later in the day. We tried to stare the cop off, but that didn't work, so after about 5 minutes of waiting, Geomafiosa bravely (or crazily) approached the car and tried to make him an offer he couldn't refuse, but as soon as she approached, he sped off immediately, letting us make the find.

One other thing I had to consider while planning, was what type of caches are best for a 100 cache run. My favorite caches usually involve hiking and ammo cans, but that obviously won't work. As a matter of fact we didn't see one ammo can all day, and only four caches that were even considered regular size. Of the 110 or so caches we tried, not one had a terrain over 2 and only 5 had a difficulty over 2. In other words, quick and easy wins the race. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Park and grab caches are the peanut butter and jelly for cachers, and the ammo can in the woods is steak and lobster. One way or another you have to eat.

Something we didn't plan for was the weather. When I had first started planning in November, it was still pretty warm, and snow was the farthest thing from my mind. But on Sunday night, just 12 hours before we were to leave, the temperature plummeted and it began to snow. Half the state was under a winter storm warning. By the time we left at 6am we had accumulated 3” of snow. Fortunately the road crews everywhere were very prepared (thanks road crews) and the roads were just wet, not slick at all. Unfortunately, snow literally adds a layer of difficulty to geocaching. If it hadn't snowed, I think we would have been a little quicker on our finds, and maybe found the 3 or 4 that we DNFed, but over all it wasn't as bad as I feared. But it was really cold. It never got above freezing all day, and the wind was brutal. Almost every cache we found was frozen in some way, either to the ground, or the lid was frozen shut, the log books too stiff to unroll, or the lamp skirts wouldn't come up. One lamp skirt was so frozen that I thought it was one of those rare ones that are permanently attached and I kept looking around for another hiding place even though the hint made it obvious it was a LPC. Only after a few vigorous kicks did it burst loose. On more than one occasion MonsterCatAmbush had to use his Rambo blade that he wears on his hip to pry a cache out of it's hiding place. (One time while caching he got attacked by a rabid coyote and ever since then brings protection, which luckily he had a few months later when he got attacked by a crazed rabbit) We all decided that the next time we attempt this, it should be closer to the Summer Solstice than the Winter Solstice.

After getting our first find under our belt, we drove up Highway 37 to Martinsville and made a few quick finds there. The two problems I had plotting out our route were, one, cache density, which we really don't have in the Bloomington area, and two, finding caches to do that none of us had found yet. For years, every time I would drive to Indianapolis, I would usually find a cache along the way to break up the long drive, so I had about exhausted all of the caches along 37, so instead we went straight north from Martinsville, to Brooklyn, to Mooresville, and then finally to the cache dense area of Plainfield, finding 10 or so caches along the way.

We tooled around the Plainfield/Airport area finding everything on our list but one, because of a nosy maintenance man, and then cached our way towards downtown Indy. There is a cache on Monument Circle that I have been trying to find for four years, and thought finding that cache would be the icing on the cake of a great day. But after braving near frost bite for 20 minutes we finally gave up and had lunch. We had been on the road 6 hours and we were nearly halfway to 100. Right on target.

We left the downtown area and slowly headed north, finding a couple of neat caches on our way to what I think of as the highlight of the day, Crown Hill Cemetery. This place is rich in Indiana history. At first I was a little hesitant of putting the Crown Hill caches on the list, thinking that deciphering the coordinates for all of those mystery caches would be too time consuming, but once we got rolling we actually made better time there than anywhere else in the day. We split into groups at one point to get the pertinent info from the graves at the posted coordinates and then regrouped and replotted our way through the cemetery with the solved coordinates. Well, we sort of replotted. I played typical back seat driver not knowing my north from my south regardless of the seven navigational units in sight of me telling me otherwise and tried my best to lead us the wrong way, but luckily Mouse! knew better than to listen to me and let Monstercat guide him through the gauntlet of graves. Later, when looking back at our bread crumb trail with my GPSr software, the phrase “drunken sailor” came to mind.

Something that I find amazing, before June none of us five had ever been acquainted. I had seen the screen names before, but that was it. But here we were, five people crammed elbow to elbow in a car laughing together for fifteen hours. I've been on long road trips with family and friends that I've known for years and couldn't wait for the trip to be over, but fortunately the five of us get along together great. We all first met at an event Mickey4Jes hosted in June, and since then we have gone on a few other cache adventures together, and even collaborated on a few hides, unofficially calling our selves “The Clown Crew” after a particular evil idea we are planning for a future hide in Bloomington. On the few logs that I actually put pen to ink I even signed us in as The Clown Crew 100. For the most part, we tried to avoid the time consuming part of unrolling or unfolding a log and writing our 5 names down at each cache. Mickey4Jes made little postage stamp style calling cards with our names on them that we dropped into the caches where they would fit. If it wasn't for those calling cards I don't think we could have signed a hundred logs, especially with it so cold, our fingers would have went on strike.

After Crown Hill we cached our way north again until we got to 86^th street. 86^th street is nothing but park and grabs all the way across the north side of Indianapolis east to Casselton. Just the way we like it. It was around this time that I started to notice that we had become unaware of muggles. We were in a caching Zen. Ignoring all who weren't part of our world. If there was someone in a parked car nearby, we just ignored them, piled out of the car leaving the doors wide open and started diving into the nearby shrubbery looking for our loot. I bet on more than one occasion we solicited the comment, “What in the world are those people looking for in that bush Ethel?” or, “Did you see that Carl? That man staring at his cell phone just vandalized that light pole!” We just didn't have the time to be very stealthy.

Somewhere around 12 hours into our adventure I realized it was definitely going to be a success. We were over 90 finds and still had 30 finds that I had targeted as being easy and available on our list if we needed them. I was never too worried, but it was nice to see that our goal was really close. Since it was almost unbearably cold, we decided to make haste of the last few and head over to the Challenge of the Century Cache as soon as we could. We grabbed a few more and made the challenge cache as our 102^nd find of the day. WooHoo! We had done it. Along the way each one of us hit some sort of milestone. I hit my 1000^th cache find, Mickey4Jes found her 800^th,Geomafiosa and MonsterCatAmbush went over 300 , and Mouse! found his 400^th We averaged finding a cache every seven minutes. We found caches hidden by 43 different cachers. We only had 4 DNFs. Mouse! made 23 U-Turns and only hit one fire hydrant. Mickey4Jes went through 4 different pairs of socks and two pairs of gloves. We ate 3 bags of chips, and drank 1 gallon of hot chocolate. Geomafiosa made 574 calls and tweets in at least two different languages. MCA told 5 inappropriate (but very funny) jokes and stabbed at least 4 caches. I slipped on the ice 4 times, and had my tongue stick to two different light poles. And all of us had a great time finding over 100 caches in a day! For me these numbers will be easily remembered.

King Kong Chasm

2009-11-14T08:58:00.001-05:00

Just kidding. Monstercatambush was commenting to me one day about how on caches that he's had a hard time finding you post something like, easy find, or quick find etc... so I thought I would do the same on this awesome cache that is not that quick to find. I started down this chasm from Redhawk's cache "Outback Oasis" and then went to his "Lost Well" cache and then over to this cache. The whole time I was skidding down the escarpment I was thinking about how hard it was going to be to climb back up. I didn't see any giant gorillas but there was enough gunfire rattling around through the Deam Wilderness to take one down.

Thanks for the fun!

alphabet sOuP GC1T5Q3

2009-10-31T20:57:00.001-04:00

Alphabet sOuP was an awesome adventure. When we finished, the final was unreachable unfortunately because it had fallen down inside the hollow tree it was hidden in. Some day when I have more time (right) I'll put links to all of my logs I reference in this log.

August 2 by Odyssey Posse
Darn that djhobby . . . despite the very explicit warnings not to do so set forth on the the cache page, he went ahead and broke this cache.

Luckily, I got a message from him via Facebook on my BlackBerry while I was out and about town. I was able to swing by and replace the cache with a camo'd matchstick holder in a more secure position. And that means I'm able to post this note and set the record straight before DJ posts some tall tale blaming lyncher for the malfeasance that hath been wrought on this poor cache.

All is good to go again!

August 2 by djhobby
Woo Hoo! FTF (Fourth to Find) That's my goal from now on, to always be fourth to find. I figure by the time I get to a cache fourth, all the bugs will have been worked out. Not so with this cache though. Unfortunately it had taken a little tumble from it's hiding place and was not to be reached. I tried to hold Tommy's ankles and lower him down the hole, but he wouldn't quite fit. Plus he kept screaming about snakes and ticks being in the hole with him, but you know how he exaggerates!

Thanks so much for publishing this challenging cache. If it hadn't been for you we would have never seen so many new places, meet so many nice people, or experienced so many fun times. Let's reminisce for a while. (Cue the harp music and make everything go blurry for a second)

During the course of finding these caches I have been water boarded, Tommy has been run over, met two different sets of cachers, I realized Tommy is blind, Tommy realized I am blind, fowned awt eye caynt spele, realized I can't count, nearly drowned, broke a geochecker, drove 290 miles for a First to Find, realized I'm allergic to bikers, found out Tommy is allergic to rattlesnakes and ticks, I've used the force on muggle cops, been Framed by the cops, met a sponge, ate a giant oreo, learned a lot of history, met tons of orphans, shelled out hundred of dollars for Tommys lunches, composed a limerick, spied on by a guy named Hugh Jazz, learned to add a pair of tweezers to my caching kit, poked a hole in my pants with a throwing star, used your kids oil paints more than they did, made the ultimate sacrifice, got our freak on with a weed farmer, told some GREAT jokes, lost Tommy forever to the carnival life, ran out of gas, made 1,238 U turns, ate 53 bags of potato chips, watched Tommy accidentally swallow a nano cache, but most of all, we have had tons, and tons, and tons of fun!

Thanks for the great times!

August 4 by Odyssey Posse
Congrats to djhobby on reaching his goal of being FourthTF on this cache. It's a quite specific goal that takes a lot more planning and careful timing than one might think. So kudos to DJ! I'm glad I could supply the caches for such a grand set of adventures to be had by you and Tommy. My final request is that you would share that limerick that you wrote. I need new material.

On second thought, just hold on the limerick. My next stand-up gig is actually in Nantucket, so . . . well . . . you know . . . that would be kind of awkward.

August 4 by djhobby
Here's the original without any Nantucket references (GC1J2QQ)

There once was a cache 'round a pole
I searched and I searched every hole
I found the cache finally
It was very tinally
Now it's no longer my goal

So now I thought I should compose a new one.

~~There once was a cache about soup~~

No, No, I don't like the direction that's going in.

Let me try again.

There once was a cacher named Duane
Who loved to hide caches for the game
He hid a lot of nanos
and used a lot of camo
rolling up those tiny logs is a pain

August 4 by Odyssey Posse
Excellent! That's some of the finest poultry I've read in a long time. djhobby a poet . . . and didn't even know . . . oh, you know how it ends.

It's a good thing I have a stable of young children who spend up to 2 hours every day rolling those tiny nano logs.

View Under Construction GC1R9YK

2009-10-31T20:00:00.001-04:00

August 2 by djhobby
After trying to approach this one from every direction but the right one for over a half an hour, we finally made it. We made 15 U turns on this cache, a new personal record. On our last turn around near the new road, I looked at Tommy and said, "Look Tommy, Parliament, Big Ben." I think he got the joke, but he didn't laugh. Then he told me that you have a cache named the same thing. I'll have to check it out next time, if I can get around to it.

When we finally got to within a few hundred feet we parked the car and started off towards the cache. Before we got too far, a truck pulled up and a curious fellow started up the road behind us. Thinking we may be trespassing, we turned around and introduced our selves. I said we were geocaching, and luckily he had heard of our sport before. He said he knew of an ammo can hidden down the tracks (GCD4D?), but not of the cache we were hunting. (I said, "View Under Construction?" and he said, "No, I live down the road." ??) He said when he first discovered the ammo can he thought it was used to trade drugs. I guess when he saw us he thought he must have found the kingpins of the whole operation and was wanting to get his freak on with us. Unfortunately we had to leave his company and venture up the muddy road. After Tommy took the track-hoe for a few laps around the construction site we got down to business. Tommy cried for his Mommy when he saw all of the weeds surrounding the cache area, and he didn't want to have anything to do with it. Especially after the "Just Say No To Crack" cache. He said he was afraid of another rattlesnake bite, but honestly I think he's a little scared of ticks. (which we found in abundance today, I'm thinking of changing my geocaching handle to The Tick, or ticked-off, or The Tick Hunter, or something like that) Anyway... as we got closer I was afraid it might be covered up with dirt. Just about 5 feet away from the coordinates there are piles and piles of dirt from the road construction. I thought, "oh great, we travel all over southern Indiana to finish this Alphabet Soup challenge, and on the very last cache we need to finish before the final, we won't be able to get to it because it's covered in a yard of dirt." Fortunately by this time Tommy had the hang of the track-hoe and uncovered the cache quite nicely.

So now we have finished the Alphabet Soup challenge A-Z, so off to Santa Claus to finish, if I can only remember were we parked the car.

Just Say “No!” to Crack GC1NBQM

2009-10-31T19:52:00.001-04:00

August 2 by djhobby

We found this one today without too much trouble. Tommy got bit* while reaching for cache, unfortunately it was in a very sensitive area of his anatomy. I immediately called a doctor, who said I should suck the venom out and Tommy would be just fine. When I hung up, Tommy worriedly asked, "What did the doctor say?" I looked at where the snake bit him and said, "Sorry Tommy, he said you're going to die."

*No Tommys were actually hurt during the writing of this log.

May the Schwartz Be With You! GC1VY8C

2009-10-31T19:48:00.001-04:00

August 2 by djhobby

While I was distracting the local diners with my John Candy imitation, Tommy scoured the area. After he gave up, I went to the trunk and got out our favorite cache finding tool and combed the area. It didn't take long for us(me) to find it after that. Thanks for the fun!

Peppermint #1 GC1WGMG

2009-10-31T19:40:00.001-04:00

August 2 by djhobby
Wow how strange is this? I was wanting to put out some caches in the area, and thought the water park would be an excellent place for an ammo can / travel bug hotel. So Saturday I came and scoped out the area, but there really wasn't any where that was a great location. There is still a lot of construction going on, and all of the landscaping around the parking lot is still yet to be done. So I figured I'll just place a small 35mm film canister for now, and when all of the construction is done, I'll find a place for my ammo can. So I drive back Sunday morning, find a suitable place for my cache, take the coordinates, and go on my merry way. An hour or so later I get an email saying there was a new cache published in the area. I think great, I'll find it today, where is it? And wouldn't you know it's at the water park! Well knowing that the cache I placed is probably going to be too close to the already published cace, I decided I'd better go get mine, and maybe I'll get a first to find on the new cache while I'm at it.

So as I'm circling the water park parking following my GPSr to the new cache, I notice the arrow is pointing right at the cache I just hid. Now this is just too weird, I thought maybe I had the wrong coordinates in my GPSr. But nope. I had hidden my 35mm film can only inches away from this cache! I hadn't bothered to bend over and scan the area as I placed my cache, if I had, I might have found this before it was even published. I was still first to find though, but just barely. Too weird, cue the theme music to the Twilight Zone.

August 4 by Odyssey Posse
Found this one while we were in town today. The minute I saw that light pole, I felt a magnetic attraction that was simply overpowering. So after I signed the log, I went ahead and hid my own cache right alongside the other one.

No, not really.

But I did think about it.

TFTC!

You Can't Fight City Hall GC184B6

2009-10-31T19:35:00.001-04:00

August 2 by djhobby

Tommy and I found this one as a bunch of carnies looked on. I guess they were just setting up the rides for the Schiezenfest. One of the homely carny girls smiled a gap toothed come hither grin at Tommy and I haven't seen him since. Oh the life of a carny. Thanks for the fun!

Hide in Plain Sight IV GC1P7EH

2009-10-31T19:30:00.000-04:00

September 12 by djhobby
I asked the Monstercatambush on one sunny day
Can you help me to find my way?
You're so much ~~older~~ (probably not so much) and wiser too
Would you help me, Monstercat, I'm feelin' blue?

He said, "You're not doin' too bad, not bad at all
You're just tryin' to walk, son, before you can crawl
You've got stacks of DNF's to the sky up above
Now all you need is to find you a cache"

He sent me searching, got to make it found
He sent me searching, I said, "Look on the ground"
He sent me searching, he said, "Look all around"
And I'll tell you maybe it can't be found

Son, you can find anything in this Geocaching world
But you won't be happy, son, till you find your cache
You can be happy, if you try
Find Hide in Plain Sight IV and you'll be satisfied

He sent me searching, got to make it found
He sent me searching, I said, "Look on the ground"
He sent me searching, he said, "Look all around"
And I'll tell you maybe it can't be found

Oh, you sent me searching

Get your daily dose of Iron! 2 GCK3ZW

2009-10-31T19:27:00.001-04:00

There were millions of mosquitoes here

August 23 by djhobby (666 found)
I looked for this one for about 30 minutes and never found it. I'm pretty sure the mosquitoes have carried it away. I tried to get them to take me to the cache, but they couldn't quite lift me up. Everytime they got me about 2 feet above the ground I would slip out of their combined jaws and fall to the ground. I was willing to risk it, if it wasn't for the river. I think they carried it to the other side, and I didn't feel like risking a dunking.

Gus Paved the Way GCJ26G

2009-10-31T19:20:00.001-04:00

June 22 by djhobby
Before looking for the cache, I decided to visit this memorial for one of our local heroes. I have always considered Gus a national household name, but one day at work a couple of younger coworkers proved me wrong. Somehow the topic of Gus Grissom came up and one coworker, who was raised in Illinois, asked who is Gus Grissom. Well I was shocked to say the least, I thought everybody knew who Gus was. Then I asked him if had ever seen the movie "The Right Stuff" and he asked if that was a music video for one of those boy bands from the 90's..... Well after my fit subsided, I thought I would ask another rather young coworker who is also from Illinois if he had ever heard of Gus Grissom, and he said yes much to my relief, "Isn't that the guy on CSI?" What are they teaching these kids now days, especially the one from Illinois.

Anyway, as I went in, I noticed that there wasn't anyone around, and something I've always wanted to do was to see what it would be like to sit in that capsule. So since I was all alone, I availed myself and shoehorned myself down into the Gemini capsule. Now no illegal make believe would be complete without some pretend chatter between myself and Houston, with me making the chhr sound and saying over all the time. Then unexpectedly after flipping one of the million little toggle switches in the capsule, it lit up and started to hum! Evidently they had never disconnected the batteries!! Now this is awesome news. NASA has made batteries that will hold a charge for over 40 years!! Do you know what this means for geocaching? We could charge our GPSr units, throw them in our pack, and not ever have to worry about them being flat again. I was so excited that I pumped my fist in elation... and accidentally hit one of the buttons that controls the thrusters. And wouldn't you know it, they still worked! But unfortunately the capsule started spinning around like a top, and I had to scramble out of the thing before it killed me. As I stood there watching, the capsule started spinning faster and faster, crashing into everything, much to my dismay. But not wanting to get into any trouble I tore out of the parking lot before anyone was the wiser.

Oh yeah, your cache is missing.

Can You Spot the Cache 2

2009-07-21T10:11:00.001-04:00

What, Me Worry? or: How I Learned to Stop Complaining and Love the Coin

2009-06-16T10:28:00.000-04:00

This is the story behind the geocache I recently had published "What, Me Worry" I'm sure some people are curious at to why I dedicated a cache to the reviewers, and in particular The Mad Reviewer.

A few months ago, the only interaction I had ever had with a reviewer were a few short suggestions about difficulty ratings, or attributes, the general sort of things that go along with trying to get your cache published on Geocaching.com. Then in April, I published two caches, that I thought were going to be an on going series called What/Where. I have wrote about those caches in more detail here previously, but basically I posted a satellite image from Google Earth of where the cache was hidden and that was it. The local reviewers published them, the caches had a few finds, and they received positive feedback. But for reasons not of my local reviewers doing, they had to be archived. I was a little upset at first and I sent the reviewers a note to pass along my concerns about my caches being archived, for no good reason in my opinion at the time, to whom ever wanted them archived. I never heard back from the reviewers, and afterward I thought maybe I shouldn't have voiced my complaint. Hey it's just a game, and if I want to play with the frog, I have to play by his rules. I also realized that geocaching.com is not the only place to post a puzzle cache. (But it is the place with the most traffic)

After that, things began to change slowly. Realizing the human element behind the reviewers, I started leaving more and more detailed reviewer notes, I even joked a little. Then I published "The Deam Wilderness Watering Hole." I left a question in the reviewer notes and the The Mad Reviewer kindly provided an answer, and even suggested a funny name. And over the last couple of months, every time I have published a cache I have tried to be more and more personal in my reviewer notes.

Then out of the blue I recieved an email from The Mad Reviewer. She (I'll refer to The Mad Reviewer as female, I don't know if TMR is male or female, but I have a feeling she is female, if I'm wrong I appologize) says she wants to send me a gift. She explained that she had recieved some special volunteer items, and had decided to give them away to cachers that met a few key criteria. She felt that I placed neat and interesting caches, and I was also kind to the reviewers and other cachers. Now I don't think I am any more deserving than any other cacher, but hey if being nice to my fellow humans gains me accolades, I'll take them. So after a few more email exchanges, she let's me know that I should be receiving something in my mailbox soon.

Well after nearly wearing the hinge out on the door to my mailbox, the post man finally left me my present. In amongst all of the bills and junk mail I found the following:

Now how cool is that! I feel like I won the Geocaching lottery.

And that's the story of "What, Me Worry? or: How I learned to stop complaining and love the coin!

2009-05-17T09:22:00.001-04:00

Chipmunk Base Camp GC12DBF DNF

2009-05-12T10:47:00.001-04:00

May 11 by djhobby (464 found)

A long time ago there was a chipmunk named Nathaniel. For a chipmunk he was unusually squirrely. He would gather all the nuts he could find, put them in a big pile, and declare that he was the king of all Nuttingham. Then he would chomp off the meaty part of an acorn and put the acorn top on his head like a crown, and say Ceasar was his great great great grand rodent. Then he took up his tiny violin, and started playing Midnight Oil's "Beds are Burning" while he set fire to the forest, obliterating all signs of his pile of nuts or any geocaches in the area.

Can You Spot The Cache

2009-04-26T20:58:00.001-04:00

Stick in the Mud

2009-04-23T08:13:00.001-04:00

Stick in the mud: An old fashioned person who is reluctant to change or innovate. Or a person set in their ways. One who lacks initiative, imagination, or enthusiasm. A person who is unwilling to try anything new or do anything exciting.

I really like geocaching, but sometimes lifting light skirts in a walmart parking lot, or finding a 35mm film canister in a cemetery, gets a little old. They have their place I guess, they help beef up your stats, but my favorite find is one in which the hider went out of his way to make the find interesting. Not just, oh here let me stick this film canister under this light pole while I'm parked here. To me, geocaching is about adventure, seeing new places, and using your brain a little to find something tricky. My favorite caches are either ammo cans hidden along a nice hike, or puzzle caches that took me hours of work to solve. I don't think anyone would say their favorite cache was a 35mm film canister hidden in the corner post of a fence around a cemetery.

Recently I decided to hide a geocache in the cemetery next to my house, somehow PrariePartners and the rest of the Indiana Spirit Quest crew had missed this place. Not wanting it to be a mundane hide I puzzled on how I should hide it. This is what I came up with:

What/Where #1

You are looking for a pill bottle hidden somewhere in South Central Indiana. It is not at the posted coordinates but you are welcome to look there if you dare. Cache has a unique first finder prize so be sure you grab it.

For a few years now I've been playing a game on the forums here called What/Where Basically someone posts a pictures of a building or monument that looks unique from the satellite imagery from Google Earth and everyone else tries to guess where it is and then post the coordinates to prove your answer. If you find it before everyone else then it is your turn to post a picture.
Then last week my brother decides he wants to try to find a few park and grab caches while he is out of town, but he forgot his GPSr. So he calls up a friend, who then uses Google Earth to steer my brother toward the correct light poles and guard rails etc.... to find his caches. Well these two things gave me the idea to start a series of puzzle caches that don't require a GPSr to log a find.

All you have to do is figure out where this location is from the satellite imagery and find the cache. It should be easy to find for an experienced cacher once you get to the right area.

Well yesterday I get this email:

It has been brought to my attention that the two caches recently published in the "What/Where" series (GC1PNXT and GC1PCJ8) do not meet the guideline for GPSr usage therefore I must archive them.

From the guidleines:

[i]You as the owner of the cache must visit the site and obtain the coordinates with a GPS. GPS usage is an essential element of geocaching. Therefore, although it is possible to find a cache without a GPS, the option of using accurate GPS coordinates as an integral part of the cache hunt must be demonstrated for all physical cache submissions.[/i]

http://www.geocaching.com/about/guidelines.aspx#guide

The picture has enough landmarks that you can just leave the GPS in the car. Other similar cache submissions have been denied for this same reason.

Please feel free to use these locations for new submissions.

Thanks for understanding.

RH

And here is my response:

What/Where Caches

I know it's a guideline, and you are just following it, but I've had great feedback from these hides.

So since I don't know who brought it to your attention, I'm going to
complain a little bit to you, and maybe you'll pass my complaint along
to who ever brought it to your attention, not that I think it will do
any good, but I'll sleep better tonight.

As stated, the guidelines say I must visit the sight and obtain
coordinates, which I have done, and the Google Earth coordinates are no
further off than my Garmin Etrex Legend which I am allowed to use to
find my coordinates. Who knows how far some peoples coordinates are
off when they post their caches. Aren't we taking everyone's word
that their cache is actually at their posted coordinates. I feel
slighted that I'm not believed that my cache is not at the posted
coordinates or not findable.

Also the guidelines state that GPS usage is an essential element of
geocaching. I agree with that, and cachers have told me that once
they have obtained their coordinates from google earth, they went out
and found the cache without any problem. My picture is nothing more
than a giant hint, once they got in the right area. If someone was
going to find my cache, they would first match my picture on geocaching.com
to one on google earth. Then they would get the coordinates for that
area and load it into their GPSr. Once their GPS unit led them to the
cache area they would use the clues to find the actual cache. How is
this any different from any other geocache, other than the way the
cacher obtains the coordinates?

If the issue here is findability (I just invented that word and
copyrighted it) my caches are just as easy as any park and grab, once
you get in the right area, and they are way easier than most puzzle
caches.

You are obviously doing your job, and a thankless one at that, so I
harbor no bad feelings. That is not the point of my rebuttal. I just
feel that someone, somewhere is being a little too straight laced about
our game of geocaching, and is smothering creativity. Creativity that
is not causing anyone any harm. I could understand if it was a safety
issue, but to me this just seems like someone not liking my thinking
out of the box.

Thank you Reviewer Hilts for your time, and please understand that I
know it's just a game, and a fun one at that, but I would hope that
you pass along my complaints

Bad Mojo

2009-04-14T08:55:00.001-04:00

Sometimes even a find needs a little mojo in it's logs. This one is from a few weeks ago after searching through a landfill full of trash, yard waste, broken bottles, silk flowers, and even an occasional head stone. Who throws out tombstones? Oh and did I mention it was raining, and the name of the cache was Hard Rain?

Movie Cache: Hard Rain

April 5 by djhobby (439 found)

I may have to watch this movie again some time now that I've found this cache.

This cache had some serious mojo going. It shook its chicken foot at us while we were deciphering the puzzle, thunder started rumbling in the background. We knew we were probably in for trouble. We hop back into the cachecar to get closer to the final coordinates but that leads us to some private property. So we look at the puzzle again and find out I gave Tommy a wrong digit while he was putting in the corrected coordinates. Probably because we were looking out for zombies (GC1F016)

When we finally got on the right track, Lyncher almost fell down about a 10 foot drop off into the dead people's trash. He was blindly following that evil arrow on his GPSr and not paying any attention to where he was going. Probably because it was just starting to spit a little rain. Bad Mojo is smiling.

So we start searching amongst the rabbit warren of briars, broken bottles, silk flowers, and believe it or not a discarded tombstone, but no luck. Mojo shoots some lightning out of it's beady eyes at us. I finally give up, but I'm entangled in some sort of vine that I swear is trying to strangle me. Mean ol' Mojo starts to cackle.

Somehow on my way back to the cachemobile I almost step on the ammo can. This must make Mojo furious, because no sooner do we snap the lid shut on the can than it start to rain with a fury and Mojo starts to howl.

Some how we make it back to the cache-U-V and ride the storm out, but now every time I turn on my garmin, I smell sulfur and I can hear just the faintest growl in the background. Yikes

More DNF Fun

2009-04-12T21:08:00.000-04:00

The Skibos Sisters

April 12 by djhobby (415 found)
I tried to find this one early this morning but came up empty handed. FTDNF YES!

But in my defense it was probably because of the poisonous Cane Toad that I found. As I was circling around the spot where I thought the cache ought to be, I spied what I thought might have been a very unique cache container, a plastic frog. But then I picked it up I realized it was alive! In my astonishment I gasped, and the toad, doing what toads do best, hopped. Unfortunately it hopped right into my gaping maw. I spit it out immediately, but after a few short minutes my head was spinning around faster than the arrow on my GPS unit. I finally fell down, but fortunately I could still reach my phone. I called my wife and she came and got me and took me to the hospital. Luckily the effects of cane toad poisoning wears off quite quickly and I was able to go home shortly. As a matter of fact I even found a few caches today!

Even though I couldn't find your cache, as I was laying on the ground hallucinating waiting for my wife to show up, I kept imagining skibos hopping around. It got so bad I came up with a limerick to commemorate the situation.

There once was a penguin named Willy

Who thought is was always very chilly.

He donned a small hat

But he always felt a draft

And he sneezed himself quite silly.

DNFs

2009-04-10T16:07:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I wonder if your average geocacher posts their DNFs? Some people might think it's a blight on their record. Or they might think, everyone else found this so why can't I. Me, I look at a DNF as an opportunity to let the cache hider know a few things.

First and fore most, the cache may be missing. You may be giving them a heads up that it needs some maintenance. I list this reason first for my fragile ego. Because if the cache is there, I'm finding it, I'm just that good! Or so I tell myself. But in reallity I bet I have dozens of DNFs and then the next day someone logs a find. It would be interesting to go back and count the number of DNFs I've had that were found later.

Other than letting the owner know it may be missing, I like to let the owner know that maybe my DNF is because they hid it really well. A virtual pat on the back for a well placed cache. Prarie Partners hid a micro (micro is stretching it, maybe a half micron) on a telephone pole in Bedford, IN once that I must have logged 4 DNFs before I finally found that one. I'm sure he got a kick out of it, because he knew it was there, I just couldn't find it. I imagined him pumping his fist in the air in victory everytime someone logged a DNF. And well he should for that devious little hide.

My favorite reason to log a DNF though is not to compliment the owner on a great hide, and not to let them know it may be gone, but to write a DNF story. If you haven't noticed, I like to exaggerate a little bit, so every time I have a DNF I try to tell some outlandish story. I think of it as therapy. In one day last week according to my logs, I was attacked by zombies, and recieved an electromagnetic pulse from aliens rendering my equipment useless, had a run in with someone dressed as Big Bird, saw A-Rod and Madonna, and was harrased by Poe's Raven.

April 5 by djhobby (414 found)
As Lyncher and I were walking up to this one we were struck by anvoverwhelming stench. We immediately looked at each other and Tommy said, "Oh no not again." But yes too late, the zombies had risen. It seems like every time we try one of these cemetery caches this happens. We saw them starting to claw out of there graves in their never ending quest for brains. While I looked around for the cache and tried to stay out of the reach of the undead, Lyncher ran back to the car and got his emergency zombie kit. The kit consists of a baseball bat and a light chain mail shirt. Not near the protection of the full suit of armor and sword that we keep at home but it does come in handy if you are in a jam. Tommy donned the chain mail and started swinging but soon we were overwhelmed with the undead muggles. We quickly abandoned our search and decided to try again when the dead stay that way.

April 5 by djhobby (414 found)
Lyncher and I tried to find this one, but as soon as we pulled up to ground zero we saw an eerie light shoot down from the sky and hit the Jolly Old Elf. After a few minutes of this blinding light it started to dim and we saw some sort of saucer shaped flying thingy in the sky above us. After playing the theme music to Close Encounters a few times it shot off into the sky. After that, nothing electronic or magnetic worked in the vicinity. It must have been an EMP pulse. I love love redundancy, oh wait wrong cache log, (GC1EJ0B) anyway, our GPSr quit working so we have to log this one not found for now.

April 5 by djhobby (414 found)
As we were parking the car someone in a Big Bird suit ran up to the window of the house right next to the park and started banging on the window. Pretty soon someone called the cops and we abandoned our hope of finding the cache with such a commotion going on in the area.

April 5 by djhobby (414 found)
We had some trouble with this one. Every time we would get near a big black bird would get in my face and start quothing. After 15 minutes of "Never more" we gave up.

April 5 by djhobby (414 found)
We tried to find this one Sunday, but with so many people around it was hard to search. Little did we know that the Yankees were having their opening game of the season here. A-rod and Madonna had a huge crowd around them, and of course they decided to sign autographs right where the cache was. We couldn't get anywhere near it.

47 Caches in 12 Hours!

2009-04-06T16:48:00.001-04:00

This weekend I visited my sister who lives in Santa Claus, IN. She has a great little lake to fish in, and I spent all day Saturday on the lake getting sunburned and catching the occasional bluegill. The fish weren't biting like they usual do, but a bad day fishing is better than a good day at work. Usually the fish there don't even give you time to sip on your drink. Every time you reach for your can, a fish notices this and gets itself hooked on your line. This time we only caught about 50 bluegill. Which gave me plenty of time to down my frosty libations. Hooray for beer.

Before I went down to Santa Clause I pulled up Google Earth to see what the caching scene was like in that area. Boy was I surprised. There are over 50 caches within 5 miles of my sisters house! Well I couldn't miss this opportunity. So I called up my caching brother Tommy (Lyncher) and told him to get down to Santa Claus on Sunday and let's spend the day caching. Tommy was so excited about the idea he came on Saturday and camped out in the cold so we could get an early start. We had to start early or we would have froze to death. We were more than happy to start at first light, just to get in the car and out of the cold.

The first cache we attempted was Agent P by Odyssey Posse. It's an interesting puzzle that took me a while to figure out. I was on the right track but couldn't quite figure out the last part of the West coordinates. I tried a few different things, but every time I would check my answer with Geochecker.com it would say I was incorrect. I showed a friend the puzzle and he immediately came up with the same idea that I had, and after a few minutes he figured out the whole thing. Now came what I thought would be the easy part, finding the thing. But as I would learn through out the day, no hide is easy when it come to Odyssey Posse. Tommy and I arrived in the area, and it was relatively muggle free. I let Tommy circle around the cache area for a bit while I fished out my phone/GPSr. He looked all over where he thought it ought to be but he didn't have any luck. So now it was my turn. I walked right up to the spot and said, "Here it is Tommy." and retrieved the cache. Experience pays off, because I had seen a hide like this before (Thanks Prarie Partners). One Odyssey Posse puzzle down, now off to Framed!

Framed! is going to go down as one of my all time favorite caches. The puzzle part I figured out with a little help from Google and Odyssey Posse's hint. The find was a whole other problem. Tommy and I kept circling and prying and proding in this one particular area, over and over again, with no luck. One thing we learned over the day, is don't try to find any of OP's caches with a preconcieved notion of where to look. Because it's not going to be there! I had in my head that it was going to be in this certain area, and I looked and looked, and looked, but no luck. I even double checked the coordinates in my phone, making sure they were the solved puzzle's coordinates, and not the incorrect ones posted on geocaching.com. Finally I grabbed Tommy's GPSr and I walked around with both of our GPS units in my hands until I came to a spot where they both agreed upon, which was about 60 feet away from where I had been looking. Doh! This brought me to a whole other object that I had to search all over, but still no luck, when finally after about another 10 minutes of searching in vain, I looked over and saw it about 20' away, somewhere Tommy and I thought it could never be. But there it was. Diabolical came to mind, and not for the last time that day. This has got to be the most unique cache container ever. I wish I could share but I don't want to ruin the find.

Before the day was up we found 47 caches, 25 of them by Odyssey Posse. Almost of all of them were unique in some way. Tommy couldn't retreive the Ultimate Sacrafice because he was too hungry and his hands were shaking. After reading the words on the bench he felt the same way as OP, and was a little leary of eating there, but the food inside was just fine. Who Let the Dogs Out was another one that gave us fits for about 15 minutes until Tommy spotted the little devil. It took us another 15 minutes to sign the log and get the bloody thing put back in it's container. We cursed OP's name for hours after that one. Signs was another find that we assumed where it was going to be and we weren't even close. Rural Legends had us stumped for a quite a while until Lyncher spotted the needle in the haystack. Odyssey Posse gave us one of the best days of caching anyone could ask for. Any one of his caches could be considered a destination in of itself, and Tommy and I got to find 25 of OP's well thought out, interesting caches in one day. Hooray for us. Hooray of Odyssey Posse!

Odyssey Posse isn't the only great hider around though. We found some great ones in the woods hidden by Daggy. Four of them near the beautiful Colonel Jones Home located in part of Lincoln State Park. Trailside Tower was one of our favorites. We looked for quite awhile on this one until Tommy happened to spot it. Spotting it was one thing, actually putting our hands on it and signing the log was another. Weee. Kermit was another fun one. Tommy was standing right next to it, and I said, "Check along there. I bet judging from the name your close to it." So he walks on by it and looks in some stump, (he said he was peeing, but I don't believe him) I walked up to where he was and found it right away. It was also in a very neat container.

We found some neat caches hidden by Dr. Who and K-9, and some difficult ones hidden by Squire Boone. Dr. Who and K-9's caches took us to a little park in Santa Claus called Yellig Park, where all the roads nearby have football names. Tommy and I are suckers for football. But we were a little disappointed to see a soccer field on Super Bowl Rd. I hate soccer. Squire Boone had a few devious hides. We thought Riverwalk I in Jasper was going to be a cakewalk from the description, but no such luck. Fortunately (I think) it had just stormed and there was no one on the trail, so Tommy and I had plenty of muggle free time with this cache. It would be hard to explain what you were doing if you were caught red handed on this hide. Sub was another neat cache from Squire Boone. On the way to it I read the hint and told Tommy what I thought it was going to be, and I'm sure he thought I was a little crazy. As soon as we pulled next to it, I told Lyncher, "There it is!" and I had it in my hands before he could hardly get out of the car. Experience strikes again. Another one of note was Movie Cache: Hard Rain by Squire Boone. It was based on the movie Hard Rain shot in Huntingburg at the cemetery the cache is located in. We had no sooner put our ink on the log and shut the ammo can when it started pouring down rain. The day had started out as being a glorious 65 degrees and sunny, but this cache lived up to it's name and put a slight damper on part of the day. We were kind of hoping it would rain enough to be able to ride jet skis through the school, but it quit in a couple of hours. Since we were in Huntingburg and doing movie themed caches, we decided to find A Cache of their Own, another hide by Odyssey Posse. I had never seen this stadium in the flesh. It's pretty neat. My sister was an extra in the movie they shot here A League of their Own. This cache is probably one of OP's easier caches except for the fact that it was pouring down rain. Tommy and I didn't mind getting a little wet since we were properly kitted out, but my phone/GPSr is not waterproof. So I took a bearing from the car, judged the distance and swam over to the cache area. Did I mention it was storming? Tommy had came to the same conclusion and OP's hint matched what we thought ,so we started poking around. Somehow, an animal of some sort, a dog maybe?, had done it's business mere inches from the cache. After seeing all of these crazy containers OP had thrown at us all day, I thought maybe this was one of those fake dog doo hide a key containers, but after poking it with my boot I was sadly mistaken. Fortunately it was raining hard enough that in the swim back to the car my boots were pretty clean.

After the day was through, we had found 47 caches, 15 ticks, 4 other Geocachers, no mushrooms, and one awesome sunburn. My new personal best for a one day total. We averaged finding a cache every 15 minutes for 12 straight hours. Not bad considering 12 of the caches we had to hike to in order to find, and we stopped and ate for about an hour. Now to log all of these. TFTH OPYMB

FTF

2009-04-03T08:39:00.001-04:00

Well this is just plain weird. Last weekend I found a cache placed by ~Batman & Catwoman ~ called Smokestack! which I blogged about a few posts ago. Then last week ~Batman & Catwoman~ were first to find on my hide Harrodsburg Park. Which inside that cache (spoilers here, hide your eyes don't read any farther) I placed the url for a website with some unpublished puzzle caches. One of the puzzles requires you to call a phone number which I have a voicemail setup that gives the coordinates for the cache, but B&C were calling the wrong number. After emailing me with their solution I let them know they were real close and a few minutes later the phone rang so they must have figured it out. Then last night I saw a newly published, unfound cache ten miles away, hidden by no other than ~Batman & Catwoman~. One of their amusing Awesome Movie Quote caches. I just had to be first to find. My wife thought I was crazy, going out in the freezing cold downpour we had last night, but I had to put my pen on that piece of paper before any other! Here's my log:

AMQ #21 - "Hey Howard, there's your china man"

April 2 by djhobby (364 found)
Hey hey, FIRST TO FIND! I'll see your FTF and raise you one. We keep running into each other's caches.
I was sitting at home watching Lost on the tellie with my wife (yes I'm married, Married? yes married (visit link) when my email chirped in that I had received something important. So I hastened to see what was waiting and lo and behold it was my weekly notification from Geocaching.com about any new events, or news, and especially any new caches in the area. And what do my eyes fall upon?! A brand new cache just 10 miles away placed by Batman and Catwoman! "What?" I think,....this is just too bizarre. I quickly log on to Geocaching.com and .. yes it's true, NO ONE HAS LOGGED THIS YET! So I quickly jump into my "AUTOMOBILLLE?"( (visit link) and drive to Bedford to get my FTF.
Wolfboy (who you may have heard of) has some sort of disorder. Every time someone says the word "automobile" he has to say "AUTO-MOBILE" just like Long Duk Dong does in this movie. It is impossible for him not to do it. I once won a six pack of beer from him because he couldn't go without quoting this movie after I said "automobile"
TFTC TNLN SL FTF W00T AUTOMOBILE?!

TerraCaching

2009-04-02T14:54:00.001-04:00

Evolouie asked me today if I had ever heard of Terracaching. It just so happens that I just became a registered user a few weeks ago, and I had yet had the opportunity to try to find any. Since it was just about lunch time we decided to try to find one. First off we had to find out what cache we wanted to tackle. Since there are only 4 or 5 near us we chose the nearest one Patricia. I manually loaded the coordinates into my phone and out the door we went.

The terracache was located along the Clear Creek Trail which has 10 or 15 geocaches along it already. To get to our objective we had to pass by a geocache that I had already found and Evolouie had not. Neither one of us thought to grab this cache info before we left, but I strained my memory and pretty soon we had the cache in hand, but alas no log book. We didn't let this minor set back deter us though, and we headed on down the road.

After a short walk on a glorious day, we came to the terracache area, and with a little circling though the briars, we (we meaning Evolouie) found the cache. On a side note, the Clear Creek Trail has a ton of people on it, even during the day. Don't these people have jobs? Two grown men climbing around in the bushes must look a little bizaare, but hey they should be out working and contributing to the economy and quit worrying about us! Anyway we retreived the cache, signed the log, and eased on down the road.

My first impressions of Terracaching is so-so. I love the idea of a rating system. That is something I wish Geocaching.com would impliment. I have even kicked around the idea around of starting my own 3rd party rating system for geocaches but I don't quite have the html skills to do it properly. When you log a cache on terracaching.com you must rank it, which is very interesting. But the ranking system there is pretty confusing. There are tons of numbers thrown out, but I don't have the foggiest notion of what they all mean. So I give a thumbs up to trying to rank them, and a thumbs sideways for making the rankings confusing.

Something I don't really care about on terracaching.com is trying to find caches in my area. I couldn't find anywhere to put in a zip code, or state or county or anything. Finally Evolouie figured out to click the map and zoom into our area. There aren't too many around so it shouldn't be hard finding all of the close ones.

After finding the cache, I wanted to log it. So we get back to the office, and I pull up Terracaching.com, and I can't find where to put in my log entry. After a lot of fumbling I finally found the correct place to input my log. I didn't quite realize it at the time, but I was FTF. Woohoo! My first Terracache and I'm FTF. Another interesting thing about terracaching is it takes a confirmation code found in the log book to log your find. I don't think it's like that on all the terracaches but this one it was mandatory.

One other annoyance about Terracaching.com is the registration requirements. You have to be sponsored by two other members to become a member yourself. Before that you are pretty limited as to what you can even do on the web site. I'm not sure why that is, but it's annoying. It only took about 24 hours to get registered but by then the excitement of finding a terracache had wore off.

I keep trying to think back to the very first time I logged on to geocaching.com, and if I found that whole process confusing. I'm sure I did at the time. The terracaching process certainly has room for improvement, but it's still an interesting alternative to geocaching.com.

Acronyms

2009-03-31T15:06:00.000-04:00

A lot of times while logging a lot of caches you find yourself saying the same things over and over again. So to save us from carpal tunnel, some ingenous person has come up with some neat acronyms for geocaching. You always want to say thanks for one thing. So instead of typing thanks for the cache 20 times, you abbreviate it with TFTC. Took nothing left nothing has become TNLN. Signed the log, is now SL.

So for a lot of my logs I'll type a little blurb about the weather, or the area, or what ever I remember about the cache, and then finish with TFTC TNLNSL. Which is another way of saying:

Thanks for placing this cache here in this creepy cemetery, I didn't take anything out of the cache because McDonalds toys don't interest me anymore because I'm a grown man. And since I didn't take anything, I'm not going to leave this cool LED flashlight that I've been carrying around for a month. I did however sign the log, whith my own pen because the one in the cache is broke and dried up. Also the log was also full and pretty damp.

Imagine how labourious that would be to type that 20 time a week. So to even shorten my logs even further, because I'm all about effieciancy, I have come up with few more acronyms for things that I am always typing in my logs.

GABARC - I got attacked by a rabid coyote
IHTKIWMP - I had to kill it with my pocketknife
IWWCTL - I wonder what coyote tastes like

Hopefully someday, these will get adopted by the whole geocaching community.

Smokestack!

2009-03-29T20:51:00.001-04:00

My friend Ben (who I refer to as Wolf Boy in my logs. We started calling him Wolf Boy one evening after going to an upscale steak house with a bunch of friends. The waitress asked Ben, who has bigger and weirder hair than Don King and Donald Trump put together, how he wanted his steak done, and he looked at her like a deer in the headlights. Then he looks at me and says "Uhhh.... DJ, how do I want my steak done?" Like this is the first steak he's ever ordered in his life! I've seen this guy eat a whole cow in one sitting! But for some reason he's forgotten how to order. So, me being the good friend I am and always looking for a way to embarrass my best friend in front of others say, "Don't mind him, he was orphaned as a child and raised by wolves, and this is his first night out" Thus the Wolf Boy moniker. ) who I drag along geocaching once in a while, said after finding the tenth 35mm film canister of the day, "That's it? We drove 25 miles out here in the boonies, and then spend thirty minutes circling around in these woods, and all we find is a piece of plastic? I think there should be a law saying you can't place these things unless there is something cool near by, like a roller coaster or something." (He's always spouting off about rollercoaters, but you take him to Vegas and try to get him on the one on top of the Stratosphere, and he's all, "There is no *bleeping* way I'm getting on that thing!" I know, I've tried.)

Anyway, Ben calls me up this morning and says, "Hey let's go do something." So we go through the usual routine of, "What do you want to do?" "I don't care what to you want to do?" "Oh, I don't care, ride a roller coaster or something?" "Ok," I say exasperatedly, "I'll pick you up in an hour."

So I get on the interwebitudes, and go to wanderindianaI'mboredwhatistheretodoaroundhere.com and come up with Fast Times Karting on the north side of Indy, about 75 miles from here. Also being the crazy cacher that I am, I load up 20 or so park and grabs between here and there into my GPSr. I pick Ben up and he immediately asks where are we going. I decide, since he's a downer on geocaching that all I'm telling him is that we are going to take a leisurly drive up to Indy, in the hopes that after geocaching and karting he'll change his mind about caching. But he takes one look at my phone sitting in it's craddle up on the dash with Google Maps pulled up and sighs, "We're not going spelunking again are we?" Ben is a little...uh little,...uh how can I say this....scatterbrained?...which means he sometimes forgets what things are called, like geocaching is called spelunking and Bucca di Beppo's is called Beepo's and he forgets that he likes his steaks done medium rare, that sort of thing. Every sentence is an adventure with Ben.

So after grabbing a few park and grabs at cemeteries and the such with Wolfie sitting in the car, I decide to chuck the geocaching out the door and just drive on up to the Kart place without stopping for anymore caches. One of the caches, Smokestack!, reminded me of my childhood. Here is the cache description:

Many years ago, Batman went with some friends to an Indianapolis Indians baseball game, traveling north on Hwy 37. As they reached this approximate place on the highway, someone in the car yelled "Smokestack!" Batman was puzzled, and someone pointed out the smokestack on the horizon (which, as it turns out, it just inside the I-465 loop). According to the friend, this was a "game" they played in their family; on any trip towards Indianapolis each person tried to be the first to spot the smokestack and yell "Smokestack!" No points were awarded or anything - it was just for fun and gloating privileges.
Batman brought the game idea home to Catwoman and they've played it for years. But Catwoman rarely gets the first sighting - Batman has a keen eye! In fact, if we had to estimate the score since Batman and Catwoman first learned of the game, it's probably 1,288 to 3.

Depending on the time of the year, the smokestack can sometimes be seen sooner than this point on the highway. But we placed this cache so we could share the smokestack game with you. Enjoy the cache - it's an easy park and grab!

Here is my log:

My wife and I play a similar silly game with forsythia. Years ago my mother tortured me as a kid and made me and my sister go yard-saling (is that a word?) with our mother and her friends. As we drove around all over the state, my mother and her friend would have to call out, "Ohh what a pretty forsythia, ohhhh look at that one, oh there is another one over there"..... ad nauseam. So years later my sister and I are chuckling about this in front of my wife, retelling the horrible situation our mother put us through. So what does my darling wife do the next spring? Calls me at work, shouts "Forsythia!" into the phone, and hangs up.

So now it's a challenge each spring to spot the first blooming forsythia of the season and ring the other up for bragging rights.

Then a few years back I was visiting my sister in the fall and she was talking about wanting to put a "foddershock" in her yard. I ask her what in the world is a "foddershock?" And she explained that it was a bundle of cornstalks with straw bales and pumpkins and other fall stuff sitting around it as a yard decoration. So on the way home I spotted one, pointed it out, and yelled "FODDERSHOCK!" So now we play that stupid game.

Then one day, I was commenting on the amazing number of large metal decorative stars on peoples homes everywhere around our house. A few weeks later we went on an all day road trip/geocaching adventure and I pointed out a star on someone's home and said, "Look there's another one. And over there's another one. And another one." So we played that stupid game all day. Those stars are everywhere!

Now it's evolved to cover just about everything. Who spots the first christmas decorations, fireworks stand, easter egg tree, etc...Now thanks to you we have a new game to play. "Smokestack!" It's a good thing we don't have kids, or we would be torturing them as my mother tortured me so many years ago.

TFTC TNLN SL

Ben did find one of the caches interesting today. ISQ #580 Seargent Duke. Seargent Duke was a Revolutionary War veteran. It's not every day that you see that in Indiana.

So we eventually made it to Fast Times Karting and Wolf Boy had a blast, even if we are both a little too big for the karts. Probably because of all the steaks we've eaten.

Marathon Weekend

2009-03-24T09:27:00.001-04:00

My wife's brother Tommy came up from French Lick and wanted to do some caching, so since it was spring break, we decided to do the ones on the IU campus. The campus was pretty much a ghost town. The only students left were the ones that couldn't afford to go anywhere. I wondered if this recession has spoiled some parents plans. Instead of getting to go on vacation and send their spoiled kids to San Padre, if they just sent their spoiled kids.

We started out with the web cam cache 'X' marks the spot This was my first web cam cache. Interesting, it's not an ammo can in the woods interesting, but still interesting. I had tried this one a while back but the web cam page wasn't working. This time everything went smooth with my wife capturing the photo back home. There were still a few weirdos around but when made our big Xs and made fools of our selves in public, the weirdos saw we were one of them, and left us alone. After that everything else was your normal geocaching afternoon in an urban area.

So it was about 8pm and we still wanted a few more finds so we decided to find some more around Bloomington. I loaded up all the caches around Bloomington that I thought were park and grabs into our GPSr and we lifted light pole skirts until 12:30 am!

Then for some ungodly reason, the next morning we decided to do it again, and we found geocaches from here to the north side of Indianapolis and back, making our grand total for the weekend 40 I think. We found 34 in a 24 hour period! Most of our finds were uneventful, but nice. We found the Indiana Cache Across America cache which is a real interesting series. There is a cache hidden in all 50 states and if you find them all there is a bonus cache in Washington D.C.. Now that would be a challenge.

Along the way we found a nice park in Mooresville, IN that has 10 caches hidden in close proximity. It has a great mix of ammo cans, micros, and my favorite, a puzzle cache called "Gift"ed. I had solved the puzzle and deciphered the coordinates from home, but when I updated cachemate in my Q it showed the original coordinates, not the solved coordinates. (Spoiler Alert) So Tommy and I decided to solve the puzzle again on the spot, which required the recital of a famous christmas song. We gathered quite a few stares singing carols to each other in the midst of this busy park. Then after we deciphered the puzzle again, I realized that cachemate had a check box in the options to show the corrected coordinates, and the answer was already there. So that was fun, and Tommy thought I was an idiot, which probably isn't far from the truth. The park also has a devious find called Pioneer Gazebo. Somewhere hidden on a 10' diameter gazebo is hidden a micro. Tommy and I thought we looked everywhere and we came up empty handed. I was convinced that it must not be there anymore, until we came home and logged it, and someone else logged it found that same day. I'll have to go back and try that one again. I hope this doesn't end up being another Phoney Cache! At least phoney cache was near my route for my daily commute to and from work, and I could spend a few minutes each day looking for it. This Gazebo cache is nowhere near anywhere I travel regularly, ...at least not yet anyway!

Then we made our way up to the Indianapolis Colts Training Facility to find Go Colts! Tommy and I are huge Colts fans so we wanted to pay hommage to our team. By this time I was pretty beat, so Tommy did most of the retreiving on this one. Then since we were in Indianapolis, I wanted to try one that I have at least 3 DNF's maybe 4. P.P.S.S. #4 Monument Circle This one I am convinced is not there and you can't tell me otherwise!

So we ended our day on a down note, so I decided we had better go eat at Shapiro's Deli to make us feel better. I'm not sure an $11 turkey sandwich fit the bill. Two sandwiches with chips and a drink. $26! I could buy 4 foot longs with chips and drinks at Subway for the same amount. But at Subway I wouldn't get that NY city asshole attitude like I do at Shapiro's.

Time for a blog reboot

2009-03-11T17:30:00.000-04:00

This thing has gotten somewhat boring to upkeep so I'm going to start blogging about something that interests me. Geocaching. Caching is something I spend a lot of my time doing so I might as well blog about it. I'll probably still post the occasional funny video or oddball story, but for the most part I'm going to turn this into a Caching blog. If you're easily offended by someone's political or religious views that are different from your own, I would advise don't read any of my older posts. For now, I'm leaving them there because I did spend quite a few hours posting them. But from here on out, I'll TRY to keep this PG13 and politically neutral.

2009-03-10T20:40:00.001-04:00

This Kids Livin' On A Prayer

2009-03-01T11:13:00.001-05:00

Awesome Clapton Solo

2009-02-26T14:47:00.001-05:00

To see more go here Wired.com

Safety First

2009-02-26T14:19:00.001-05:00

This DEA agent is teaching a class on gun safety and accidentally fires his weapon. Here is the whole story from Snopes

Shining

2009-02-26T13:55:00.001-05:00

The original trailer to The Shining

Helicron

2009-02-24T10:46:00.001-05:00

I can't imagine why these weren't more popular?

Chad Vader Does the Oscars

2009-02-23T15:16:00.001-05:00

Warp Core Breach to the Future

2009-02-23T14:53:00.001-05:00

Happy 200th Birthday Darwin

2009-02-20T15:52:00.001-05:00

From Mikero.com

That Last Post Reminded Me Of This

2009-02-20T12:50:00.001-05:00

via videosift.com

Revenge

2009-02-20T10:27:00.001-05:00

I've Tried This Before, It Doesn't Work

2009-02-17T16:11:00.001-05:00

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

DIY Half Life Movie

2009-02-17T15:21:00.001-05:00

Great Video of a Shuttle Landing From the Cockpit

2009-02-17T09:56:00.001-05:00

Space Shuttle STS-98 Landing from Cockpit View
by shuttlesource

Is This Real or a Hoax

2009-02-16T15:48:00.001-05:00

Alec Baldwin Playing with his Wii

2009-02-16T15:43:00.001-05:00

Klingon Nightschool

2009-02-11T14:26:00.001-05:00

Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | More Video Clips

World Without End

2009-01-29T11:07:00.000-05:00

If
you loved Pillars of the Earth and want to read 1000 pages full of
great characters revolving around medieval life in a growing English
town, re-read Pillars of the Earth and save yourself the slight
disappointment from reading World Without End.

World Without End would be a good book on it's own, but when it is
inevitably compared to Ken Follet's masterpiece Pillars of the Earth,
it falls way short. The characters in World Without End are strikingly
similar to their ancestors from Pillars of the Earth, but not as
fleshed out or likable. You never really find out what motivates most
of the main characters. And as with Pillars, Ken Follett tried to make
the plot drive around a great construction project, but for some
reason, I never knew if it was the bridge, or the hospital, or the
tower, and I never really cared. It seemed to me the book could be
summed up by saying: a group of the main characters get together in a
public place, they argue, a poor decision is made by some bureaucrat,
something bad happens as the result, some people have sex, some people
die, repeat for 1000 pages.

An O.K. book, but not great like Pillars of the Earth

The The Impotence of Proofreading

2009-01-20T15:29:00.001-05:00

Revolutionary Road

2009-01-15T21:07:00.001-05:00

I just watched Revolutionary Road. What a horrible mess of a movie. It was well done, well acted, and so well directed, I give it 7 out of 10 for the production value, but the plot was miserable. Not miserable meaning it didn't make sense, but miserable because the characters were such miserable people. I started out liking the movie but the more it dragged on the more I hated it. As with most movies, after the first act, I thought it was an interesting story, and I should hold my judgment until it was over. After the second act, I was still thinking, not too bad, but could be better. Even halfway through the last act I felt the film had some redeeming value. But in the last scene where the husband of the realtor turns his hearing aid down, I was struck with the total piece of work the director was shoveling, and I fucking hated it. I would recommend having a medical procedure done over watching this movie. Booooooo

Good Riddance Al Gore

2009-01-15T08:48:00.002-05:00

From the Guardian

After eight long, tiresome years, President Al Gore won't be missed. Even if he did save the planet

No one thought Al Gore would be a loveable president, but, after eight years in the White House, he has gotten truly tiresome. The droning voice, the purchase of an eco-friendly robot dog, the campaign for carbon-free diamonds - all these things were hard to take, and he has been way too smug about reversing global warming. I think we've gone too far in the opposite direction, especially in light of the glacier that recently crushed Wasilla.

I think I started to dislike Gore when he stirred up a media storm after the Feds broke up the terrorist ring conspiring to fly airplanes into buildings back in 2001. He could have let it pass quietly, as Bill Clinton did with the millennium plot arrests in 2000. Instead, Gore held a press conference to milk it for political gain and scare us into a 15 cent per gallon gas tax. But who can afford to pay over a dollar and a half per gallon? No wonder we're resorting to electric cars these days.

And why did he pressure the universally admired Fed chairman Alan Greenspan to step down early in 2002? Replacing him with that old warhorse Paul Volcker was a nasty surprise, especially when Volcker choked off a promising housing boom in 2002 and imposed old, outdated regulations on lenders. Some properties lost as much as 8% of their value that year. Now housing prices are rising really slowly, and GDP barely grew by 3% this year.

To be sure, Gore did accomplish some good things in foreign policy. The Middle East is definitely better off now that Israel and Palestine are separate states. It was clever to transfer the most diehard West Bank settlers to the Gore Biosphere in North Dakota. But in Iraq, even after the demise of Saddam from virulent salmonella, Qusay has proved to be no more agreeable than his father, and Uday is simply out of control. (Grinding up the players of the national football team and roasting the remains on a stadium-sized spit was the nadir of his coaching.) When a group of foreign-policy luminaries - from Bill Kristol to Paul Wolfowitz and Kenneth Pollack - urged Gore to invade Iraq and remake the entire Middle East, the president didn't even listen. That's rude.

Then, of course, there were the countless scandals and ethics problems. Recall that in 2003 a department of justice official failed to report receiving a bottle of Bordeaux wine from the French government, even though experts agree that its value would be in excess of the amount permitted as a gift. Then there was the case of politicising federal agencies, when Gore officials were accused of changing the wording in a report on global warming to say that it was a "severe" rather than a "serious" threat. The Republicans held hearings on that for weeks.

Of course, the biggest disappointment was Gore's failure to handle Hurricane Katrina properly. Not only did the massive evacuation of New Orleans prove a costly and time-consuming overreaction, since the levees - fortified in 2003 - held up fine. The emergency management agency also took over 24 hours to set up trailers for evacuees along the Gulf Coast, leaving them without government housing assistance for a full day. And Gore's decision to single-handedly venture into a flattened house in Mississippi and free a trapped two-year-old showed him to be an irresponsible showboat. Sure, President Gore knows CPR, hears like a German shepherd, and has the strength of 10 men - but we didn't need to see it.

All in all, the Gore combination of psychodrama and condescension won't be missed. It's also time for the Democrat stranglehold on power to end. What we need now is a bit of adult behaviour: a Dick Cheney presidency won't be eventful, but at least it will be calm.

It's Not Easy Being Cheesy

2009-01-08T06:48:00.000-05:00

Horsey Ride Gone Bad

2008-12-25T18:37:00.001-05:00

bush Ducks Questions About the War on Shoes

2008-12-15T15:03:00.000-05:00

This just in, bush has declared war on all shoes. He has launched air strikes against Nike and Adidas. He said moments ago, in a press conference (one in which all the reporters were barefoot) that either you are with him or against him, and that the wearing of all footwear by US citizens is unpatriotic. The patriot act is to be modified immediately to state anyone caught wearing shoes outside of their homes automatically give up all their rights, and can be searched with out reason and detained indefinitely.

Too bad the shoe wasn't loaded. Out of all the strapped on explosive device wearing, IED chucking suicide bombers, we have to get the one who forgot to light the fuse. Oh well just 40 more days or so and then people can start throwing their clothing at Obama. Oh wait, a lot of people are already throwing their underwear at the rock star.

Seperated at Birth

2008-12-14T08:34:00.001-05:00

Can you tell which of these is my friend Ben and which one is a walrus?

DIY Kindle

2008-12-12T13:26:00.001-05:00

Recently my wife watched an episode of Oprah that had Jeff Bezos hawking the Kindle, an electronic book reader. I had looked at them before in passing but hadn't ever considered buying one. Although I am an avid reader, I read on average a book a week, I "read" 99% of my books with my MP3 player. I don't make the time to sit and read a book, I listen to them while I am at work, or driving, or working around the house. My wife on the other hand likes to curl up in bed at night and read, something you can't do with an audiobook. So while she was watching Oprah talk about her Kindle, I said off handedly that I didn't think it was that neat of a product, and asked Nikki what she thought of it, and she said it looked really neat. So since Nikki-mas (Nikki's birthday) was fast approaching, I decided to go to Amazon.com and buy her one. Everything went smooth with the electronic checkout, as it always does on Amazon, until I got to the shipping form. The estimated shipping date on her Kindle was 16 to 20 weeks away. I thought the three weeks I gave myself before Nikki-mas was enough but I underestimated the effect that Oprah has on her minnions. I went ahead and ordered it, but it bothered me a little bit that Nikki wouldn't have anything to open up under our Nikki-mas tree on Nikki-mas morning. I thought about getting her a card and putting in a reciept for the Kindle, but that just didn't seem very festive. Then, on Nikki-mas eve, the perfect idea struct me. Why not just make my own Kindle, I'm kind of handy, and surely with all of the discarded gadgets lying around my house I could make something similar. So ladies and gentlemen, without further adieu. I give you THE SWINDLE.

THE SWINDLE v1.0

As you can see, it has everything you would need, a bright back light that can be turned on and off, that also doubles as an electronic bookmarker, so you will never loose your place. It also comes with the ability to either connect wired or wirelessly to almost any network. And as you can see in the next picture, it has a 10GB hard drive that will alow you to save thousands of books to take with you on the go and read at your leisure.

Animal Kaleidoscope

2008-12-11T11:03:00.001-05:00

I kept waiting for a coyote to come in and take care of things.

Mario Hits the Streets

2008-12-10T11:28:00.001-05:00

Levitating Water

2008-12-06T15:20:00.001-05:00

Monkeys Riding Bicycles

2008-12-06T06:16:00.000-05:00

Coffee Mug Chocolate Cake

2008-12-02T19:32:00.001-05:00

I found this recipe on the internet, and after making it for my wife I thought I should share.

The Most Dangerous Cake Recipe in the World

What you will need:
1 coffee mug (must be microwave safe)
4 tablespoons flour (that's plain flour, not self-rising)
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons baking cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips
(optional) some nuts (optional)
Small splash of vanilla

Directions:
Add dry ingredients to mug and mix well.
Add the egg and mix thoroughly.
Pour in the milk and oil and mix well.
Add the chocolate chips, nuts (if using), and vanilla, and mix again.
Put your mug in the microwave and cook for three (3) minutes on high.
(The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed!)
Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.
EAT! (this can serve 2 if you want to share!)

This was called the Most Dangerous Recipe in the World

And why is this the most dangerous cake recipe in the world? Because
now we are all only 5 minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of
the day or night!

Two Guys on a Motorcycle

2008-12-02T15:55:00.001-05:00

Every once in a while, my friend Ben and I will find ourselves in a situation where we need to go somewhere and the only means of travel is his motorcycle. I have always opted to just stay home, than to risk the ridicule we would receive. I say always, but about 10 years ago, for some reason after getting really drunk at home, Ben and I decided to go to a bar, and we only had his motorcycle to ride. So being drunk I didn't care at the time that I would have to hold on to Ben, while he bent over the handlebars and stuck his ass in my lap. I remember thinking the next day that I probably stuck out like a sore thumb. If people had cell phones with cameras, I'm sure someone would have taken a picture of us. After that I told him the only way I would ever ride with him again would be if he had a sidecar. Well recently he bought a new bike.

At least this guy has on a helmet. But did they have to do this in the rain?

Steve Mobs the Mapple CEO on the Simpsons

2008-12-02T06:50:00.001-05:00

Bart is my brother from a different mother. The Simpson's writers can still deliver.

Atlas Shrugged

2008-12-01T19:52:00.001-05:00

I know there is probably not anything new to say about a novel written in 1957, but Atlas Shrugged is just as relevant today as it was 50 years ago. As I'm reading Atlas Shrugged and listening to the news about the current U.S. financial situation, I think Ayn Rand could have been writing about today's economy. In her book, just as today, large, iconic, too big to fail businesses, start going under, and just as in her book, the U.S. government spend trillions of dollars to bail them out of their financial needs. Corporations start to rely on the taxpayers and the government to bail them out of poor fiscal practices, and soon the whole economy is based on how well a business can get a handout, and not on how well it performs any useful service to the world.

One of the most moving, and insightful passages of Atlas Shrugged is the dialogue that hard working entrepreneur Francisco d'Anconia delivers to a crowd of untalented, non-working, arrogant, aritocratic government sanctioned looters of other people's hard work, who damn him for having money by saying that "Money is the root of all evil." Here is his response:

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?
"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions--and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made--before it can be looted or mooched--made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.'
"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery--that you must offer them values, not wounds--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?
"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money--and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich--will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt--and of his life, as he deserves.
"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard--the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money--the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law--men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims--then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are.
"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood--money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves--slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers--as industrialists.
"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist.
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.
"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-- as, I think, he will.
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."

This book is something every CEO of every company should have to study.

Fundamentalist Atheists

2008-12-01T09:08:00.001-05:00

My Favorite Pastime

2008-12-01T09:02:00.001-05:00

People often ask me what I did over the weekend, so I video taped what my wife and I do on an average weekend.

A Savior was Born

2008-12-01T08:24:00.000-05:00

Bailouts

2008-11-28T17:09:00.001-05:00

Thanksgiving Pie Chart

2008-11-27T06:07:00.000-05:00

Man Vs. Car Wash Wand

2008-11-24T08:42:00.000-05:00

Car Wash Wand Wins

The Morning After

2008-11-23T06:59:00.000-05:00

A Bank Robber Trying to Shop

2008-11-21T10:50:00.001-05:00

Dirty Cartoons?

2008-11-20T20:18:00.001-05:00

Here are some more cartoons that may prove you have a dirty mind.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Chairman Meow

2008-11-20T13:06:00.001-05:00

Obama's Use of Language Upsets Some

2008-11-19T09:39:00.001-05:00

From the Huffington Post

In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.

Millions of Americans who watched Mr. Obama's appearance on CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday witnessed the president-elect's unorthodox verbal tick, which had Mr. Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every time he opened his mouth.

But Mr. Obama's decision to use complete sentences in his public pronouncements carries with it certain risks, since after the last eight years many Americans may find his odd speaking style jarring....read on

Oh, Bush, you have spoiled us with your stupidity.

Guitar Hero on a Bike

2008-11-19T08:37:00.001-05:00

The Hand

2008-11-18T13:55:00.001-05:00

This might be a bad idea.

A Tribute to Drinking

2008-11-18T10:31:00.001-05:00

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Idiots Destroy Horse Statue - Watch more free videos

Sorry about the douchebags in the video, I couldn't find a better rendition of Pat Dailey's Out Drinkin. So hit play and turn off your monitor for this video.

DIY Wicked-Awesome Dive Bomber

2008-11-18T07:58:00.001-05:00

Click the picture for instructions on how you too can make this awesome flying project.

Street Art

2008-11-18T07:49:00.001-05:00

Check out this guy's art. It adds a little whimsy to the mundane.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex

2008-11-14T21:29:00.001-05:00

I forgot how funny this movie is.

Dwight vs. Jim

2008-11-14T11:10:00.001-05:00

Cow Tipping the Hard Way

2008-11-13T17:44:00.001-05:00

Pay close attention around the 40 second mark in this video.

Sebastian's Voodoo

2008-11-12T13:22:00.001-05:00

Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom

The Matrix Runs on Windows

2008-11-11T09:55:00.001-05:00

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Found on Dvorak.org

Bears Playing Hockey

2008-11-10T11:18:00.001-05:00

I so wish for this to be real.

Ice Hockey Playing Bears - video powered by Metacafe

Let's Start a New History

2008-11-09T11:44:00.000-05:00

New World Order

2008-11-09T08:08:00.002-05:00

It's funny to think that there are people out there that think this way.

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Eddie Murphy on the First Black President

2008-11-09T07:48:00.001-05:00

Change

2008-11-07T09:00:00.001-05:00

The republican's Recovery Plan

2008-11-06T10:19:00.002-05:00

Here is an IM between Rove, Cheney, Bush, and Palin on how to fix the republican party.

Cheech and Chong are a Little Late

2008-11-06T10:05:00.001-05:00

See more CheechAndChong videos at Funny or Die

Drag Racing

2008-11-06T07:39:00.000-05:00

A guy I work with is always talking about how much he loves to go drag racing on the weekends. I don't think he does it illegally in the streets like these ~~guys~~ people, but you never know about people's private lives. I must admit that it looks like a lot of fun, I might even try it some day.

A Quick Introduction to Politics For Barack

2008-11-05T09:20:00.001-05:00

Please

2008-11-05T08:15:00.001-05:00

Hope not Nope

2008-11-05T08:01:00.000-05:00

This Just In

2008-11-05T07:57:00.001-05:00

We have a new winner

Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job

2008-11-05T07:23:00.001-05:00

WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress,low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation's broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, "It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can't catch a break."

One of These is Not Like the Rest, Can You Find It?

2008-11-05T07:14:00.001-05:00

The answer is in the comments.

And The Winner Is

2008-11-04T23:19:00.000-05:00

Vote Calrissian

2008-11-04T07:39:00.001-05:00

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Peter Griffin Understands World Politics

2008-11-04T06:12:00.001-05:00