The Ashtabula Bridge Disaster

Here is an interesting time piece about the Ashtabula Bridge Disaster of 1876. Funny how the writing style of the New York Times has changed. I plan to name my next band the Ashtabula Bridge Disaster.

Most compact Final Four ever?

Here is some frivolous complexity for you. Is this the most compact Final Four ever? In the following sense: for each Final Four, find the maximum of the 4C2=6 distances between the four schools, and call that the diameter of the Final Four. I conjecture that this year's Final Four has the minimum diameter in its history. I will investigate and report back.

On magic numbers and motivation

The Minnesota Lynx can clinch home court advantage throughout the playoffs on Friday night at the Target Center with a victory over the New York Liberty, but the Liberty also have a magic number of one. With a win Friday night, the Liberty guarantee a record of no worse than 18-16. The best the Chicago Sky can do is 18-16, and the Liberty hold a 3-2 head-to-head advantage over the Sky. The Liberty are in the playoffs with a win Friday.

Even looking beyond that game, I am interested to see the motivation level and the substitution patterns of the Lynx in the remaining four games. In particular, the Lynx end the regular season on the road in Phoenix, probably with nothing to play for, other than staying healthy and primed for the playoffs. On the other hand, it is very likely that Phoenix will be playing for home court advantage in their semi-final series against (presumably) the Seattle Storm. That all adds up to a difficult road game scenario.

The Lynx did what they had to do -- and not much more -- to win last night against the Washington Mystics. Plenty of minutes for Wiggins, Wright, Adair, and Harris. Mama Taj dove for a loose ball at mid-court last night, and it pointed out how committed she is to this team's success and at the same time how essential Adair and Harris will be to this team's playoff success. I still worry that they are too tentative on both ends, but they're young and improving right before our eyes. The next four games will be mini-camp for #1 and #6.

After wrapping up home court, what is left to play for? Is a possible record of 28-6 an adequate motivation? That would tie last year's Seattle Storm (and others?) for most ever regular season wins. It calls to mind the decisions facing the 2009 Indianapolis Colts. Do we go for the great record, a completely abstract goal, and risk injury to our key players right before the really important games?

If there must be a Game 5 of the WNBA Finals, I hope it is in Minneapolis, Minnesota! Until then, I hope all 11 Lynx are healthy and highly motivated.

The punch-your-ticket theory of fan allegiance

I am interested in the etiquette of fan allegiance. Humans are social creatures and look for connections that say "we're in this together, and those other people are not". Us versus them.

Why do fan allegiances in sports matter, and why do people wear them on their sleeves, literally and figuratively? Because they are safe. I could tell you my stances on politics and religion, and then we'd really have a connection -- or not -- because that stuff really matters. It affects how we live our lives and love our loved ones.

One's fan allegiances are stand-ins for the important social dividers. So, within that system of made-up battle lines, what is the ultimate transgression? To support one team in a given sport or league and then switch to another team within the same sport or league.

For example, here is a typical bit of trash talk in a forum about Arsenal FC:

Dude, why dont you go support Shitty [a reference to cash-splashing Manchester City FC] or Chelski [a reference to the Russian billionaire who owns Chelsea FC]? They need you there.

Translation: your opinion is so heretical that you might as well switch teams, and at that switch to a team that might give you a quick payoff on your fickle fan capital.

A while back some of my long-time friends playfully ridiculed me, because my political views migrated from one side of the spectrum to the other and then back to the first. I freely admit that in the middle phase, I was under a magic spell (read: girlfriend). I shake my head, because it points out a basic character flaw, that at base level I just want people to like me, and the result is intellectual laziness, hypocrisy, or dishonesty, in increasing severity of the crime.

So, here is the number one rule of fan etiquette: once you punch your ticket -- for example, once you become a fan of the Cincinnati Reds, at age six, at the smoothest hum of the Big Red Machine -- you can never un-punch that ticket. You can never be a fan of another Major League Baseball team. Sorry, Twins.

The Bengals keep me from being a true Vikings fan, ever, although enough current and former Vikings were Buckeyes to afford me associate fan status. Carter, Smith, Stringer, Winfield, etc.

Once you've punched your ticket, the currency in the community is how long you have been a supporter. The format of fan forums displays this for all to see! My BigSoccer profile says "Join Date: Jul 2006".

Here, for your reading pleasure, are tickets punched, and moment of punching.
All college sports: Ohio State, 1970s, blocked punt vs. Michigan, Kelvin Ransey, Clark Kellogg.
MLB: Reds. Damn, I wish I remember more about the 1976 World Series. All I really remember is the next year, Reggie, Reggie, ...
NFL: Bengals. Even before the '82 Super Bowl, before the -59 degree AFC Championship versus Dan Fouts. We're talking Bob Trumpy and Boobie Clark Bengals.
NBA: Never happened. Cavs, are you kidding? Leaves open getting into the Wolves on the ground floor.
Long period of thinking that being a rabid sports fan was somehow unbecoming behavior for a serious, thinking person...
Current period of not caring anymore, riding a wave of first escapism and then shared experience with kids...
Arsenal FC: semi-finals of the Champions League, when Crazy Jens Lehmann stared down Villareal's Riquelme and advised him not to make a penalty shot.
Lynx: Third home game of this season. I instantly knew we would be going back to many games.

So, to the long-sufferers, I honor your commitment and patience through the tough times and acknowledge that your experience of whatever fun things are on the way will be richer than that of a newcomer. But know that my ticket is punched.

And all you people who jumped on board more recently than the third home game of this season? Glory hunters.

Organic fandom: Go Lynx!

"Why are you an Arsenal supporter?"

I got tired of this question. Soccer culture is insular: fans want soccer to get big, but not too big. American soccer fans have it tough, because they want to invest their interest in soccer at the highest level -- Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, etc. -- but find themselves having to justify their support of "their club".

If I call myself an Arsenal fan, but have never been to the north side of London, then in the view of some true fans I may as well be a fan of American Idol, because that is all Arsenal is to me, a television series, with much of the same manufactured drama. Manufactured, inorganic support.

So I'll still tune in Saturday for the Premier League opener, but I give up. My new and true rooting interest is focused closer to home.

I am made to feel sheepish about being an Ohio State Buckeye fan, too, sweater-related disasters notwithstanding. I grew up around Columbus, but I did not go to Ohio State; I went to Ohio University, where the true Bobcats shun glory-hunting associate members of the Buckeye Nation. Still, for me being a Buckeye fan taps into the nostalgia of parties on the day of The Game, dreaming of playing (not quarterback!) but baritone horn for The Best Damn Band in the Land.

My current and former employers are two other Big Ten universities. I don't exactly walk around wearing scarlet and gray.

So what team can I really call my own? Involve my kids? Feel good about socially and politically? Enter the Minnesota Lynx.

My twins love basketball. My son in particular is obsessed with schedules and standings and statistics and seating charts. They love going to Timberwolves games, too, but to tell the truth the vibe at the Target Center for Wolves games is a bit sexed up and not exactly family-friendly. Besides, tickets from a good vantage point are not cost-effective, and more than half of their home games last year were on school nights.

Lynx tickets in great locations, on the other hand, are relatively affordable. The games are during the summer, when I don't mind getting home from a game with the kids at 10 p.m. on a weeknight. The vibe at the games is much more family-friendly, and the crowd is much more engaged than I ever experienced at a Wolves game.

Not to mention, the team is spectacular. Lots of story lines: how quickly and completely will Maya Moore emerge as a star? How will Candice Wiggins and Sharde Houston adapt to new roles? How will Taj McW-F weather the brutal schedule running up to the playoffs? Can they all avoid injury? With four all-stars, who becomes Dwyane Wade when we need a basket at the most important moment?

Of course, this too opens me up to accusations of glory hunting. Where was I between 2007, when we moved to the Twin Cities, and the third home game of this season, when we became (literally) invested in this team?

Too bad. With season tickets, we are casting our votes locally: for basketball to survive in Minnesota, for women's basketball to survive, for the NBA to get its act together and remember where its money is coming from. Several months ago, I never thought I would be tuning into a live web stream of a Tuesday night away game of the local WBNA team, but there it is. There are my credentials.

I let my kids stay up for the first quarter. When my son woke up this morning, he asked if the Lynx had won. No, they didn't. Winning streak over at nine games. "Are they still the best team in the WNBA?" Yes, and they're our best team, too.

Remembering Woody and huge buckeye leaves

I've been looking at the Uni Watch blog again recently, satisfying my obsession with the minutiae of athletic uniforms. Responding to a question about the buckeye leaves on the helmets of the Ohio State football team, I came across this photograph of Rex Kern and Woody Hayes at the Rose Bowl. It reminded me of the night my dad and I watched the 1978 Gator Bowl between Ohio State and Clemson, when Woody Hayes punched Charlie Bauman in the throat after he intercepted an Art Schlichter pass. I remember my dad saying, "Ohhh, it's over." A quiet night.

What strikes me about this YouTube video of the punch is that never once do the commentators notice (or mention if they did notice) that Woody's punch was the whole reason for the skirmish on the field. If you look at Woody's body language after the punch, you can tell that he knows it's over, too.

Death to the BCS

Read Wetzel's book about the Bowl Championship Series about the month ago. I've always favored a 16-team playoff, but the book just gave me more reasons to support it.

Clear sign of my ambivalence: the Rose Bowl game between TCU and Wisconsin is on the TV, but I am watching the 1982 Sugar Bowl between Dan Marino's Pitt Panthers and Herschel Walker's Georgia Bulldogs on my laptop.

Edit: I was watching because a post on the Uni Watch blog reminded me of the Pac-Man football helmet graphics during that game.

Jim Carrey, I want to ass you a question: are you a doctor?

I just read Amy Wallace's article in Wired on the anti-vaccine movement. Many parents of autistic children believe that vaccines caused their child's autism. The movement has gained legitimacy due to such high-profile medical experts as Jim "Ace Ventura" Carrey and Jenny "Centerfold" McCarthy.

I am interested in the issue in part because my son has Asperger's syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. There is indeed a spectrum of autism, and I understand that there are many families with children whose condition is more desperate than my son's. He is "mainstreamed", in the sense that he goes to regular elementary school and is thriving and learning and making friends.

I can also understand the bewilderment and guilt that parents of autistic children feel -- what could I have done differently to prevent this? why is this happening to him/us? It must be very comforting to channel all that anger and confusion into an external source for their pain. No matter that there is no scientific basis for their choice of target.

We had concerns about our son when we lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but the doctors did not diagnose Asperger's. After we moved to the Twin Cities, he started exhibiting some additional behavior that concerned us, and doctors here -- three independent ones, in fact -- diagnosed Asperger's. Parents beware: St. Paul causes autism! I can see it now... after my blog becomes the #1 Google hit for "St. Paul causes autism", I will become the leader of a grassroots movement. Mayor Chris Coleman will issue clumsy press releases: "There is no evidence that St. Paul does not cause autism." AHA! It can only help that I can put a "Dr." before my name. Can you do that, Jim Carrey? Just don't tell anyone what I'm a Dr. of. I'm investigating the claim that geometry causes autism.

Human connection, on my terms

Yesterday I listened to Terry Gross's interview with Michael Chabon on the Fresh Air podcast. Chabon was pimping his book Manhood for Amateurs, a collection of personal essays about being a father and a son and a husband.

I've read Wonder Boys a couple times and tried to get through Kavalier and Clay a couple times. I'll try again. Chabon makes me jealous -- he makes it seem so easy that I think I can do what he does. My desire to assume his identity is compounded by the fact that he seems to have a similar mentality to me: he said that what motivates his writing is a desire for human connection, and that he has neither the motivation nor the facility for those connections in real life. His stories become an idealized form of human interaction, a fantasy world in which the reader gets all his jokes and shares all his arcane interests.

I suppose that's why I've resurrected this blog after a long hiatus, why geocaching appealed to me, why I like teaching mathematics, why I like -- with some embarrassment -- online role-playing games like World of Warcraft, why I read tech blogs and listen to podcasts. They are all forms of connection with other humans, but it's all abstracted. Topics and facts and silly achievements give us something to talk about, without really talking about anything.

So, thanks, Mike, for getting me back on my blog horse, even if only for one time. In exchange, maybe I'll go buy your book and talk about it on the internet. I'm pissed that it's not on the Kindle yet -- I'll have to interface with a physical book. That makes me slightly uncomfortable.

That's entertainment!

Raising children requires sacrifice. Among the things my wife and I have set aside in the name of parenting: watching movies, having conversations with adults, trying to keep the family room clean, eating vegetables, etc.

When I say we haven't watched movies, I am discounting the 50 showings of Cars, Finding Nemo, Curious George, and Barbie Something Princess.

I have not seen a movie in a theater since moving to the Twin Cities in July 2007. I remember seeing Borat in a theater in Ann Arbor. That may be the last movie I paid to see.

The stars aligned last night. After a day running around in the 50-degree sun and an early bath, the kids were in bed by 8:30. Partner in parenting suggested that we watch Baz Luhrmann's Australia, so we sat down in front of our budget 32" HDTV and our budget home-theater-in-a-box, obtained precisely for this moment but up to now used only for showings of Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! and Sid the Science Kid.

The movie could have been Porky's Revenge, and I would have enjoyed it. Still, I finished the movie Australia transported and refreshed. I have not seen Moulin Rouge, but Luhrmann is a director you're willing to forgive. Forgive him the flourishes and the shameless heartstring tugs, and give in to the spectacle. We have a new appreciation for Nicole Kidman, after loathing her in Eyes Wide Shut (also seen in a theater in a previous life... I'm still recovering), and a reinforced reverence for all things Hugh Jackman. We were suckers for the plot line involving the mixed-race boy, noting parallels with Dance with Wolves, kindly white folks swooping in and making everything okay.

At the 1.5 hour mark, this movie could have been over, but I knew it was far from over -- an entirely different war movie within the movie started, with death and misery and crying and reunions and happily-ever-after and the inevitable "Let the Imperialists off the Hook" moment at the end.

No matter. I was somewhere else for two hours 45. We stood up, stretched, and headed upstairs to peek at our sleeping kids for a while.

But I did catch a catfish in Mississippi when I was 12.

I got the urge today to type "firstbass" into Google search. No, Google, I did not mean "first bass". But they gave it to me anyway. Aside from links to bands named First Bass and a couple things about a geocacher named firstbass, there were many, many posts addressing the questions "What was the first bass guitar you owned?" and "When did you catch your first bass?"

I can tell you the first bass guitar I owned: it was a black, left-handed Cort bass guitar that looked exactly like the one in this picture that I found on eBay:

Cort made or makes inexpensive training basses, and in about six months I could recognize the limitations of the instrument. At that point I purchased a white Fender American Standard Jazz Bass that looked exactly like this, except left-handed:


I loved that bass, and it got me through two bands and various other gigs. When I was in grad school in Urbana, IL, it was stolen out of my apartment.

Now, here are my twins, of the non-human variety:


I bought the one on the right in the aftermath of the theft and have used it for almost 15 years. It's a Carvin with a koa body. I bought the fretless one on the left about two months ago from Capitol Guitars in St. Paul. I don't show favorites with my human twins, but I don't mind hurting the feelings of the fretted Carvin.

I have never caught a bass.

New frontiers in mathematical sadism

I've realized that I did not fully explore the opportunities to terrorize geocachers with my Plato's Five Gems series of puzzle caches.



Maybe these tools of torment will make an appearance at Plato's Five Gems: The Event.

Time to come up for air

Today is "study day" at my university. I gave my last lecture of the semester yesterday, and I give my final exam tomorrow. That makes today a good day to work from home and remember some neglected parts of my life. Oh, I vaguely remember having a blog at some point! So here I am, almost two months since my last post.

My caching activity has declined along with my blogging activity, but there are some things to report. I bought a Garmin Oregon sometime in the last two months, and I like using it very much. I like the 60CSx as well, and I intend to keep both. For one thing, my parents will be in town for the holidays, and I plan to take Dad caching while he's here. He'll be happy to use the 60CSx instead of the Vista. The Vista is now third-string. My wife really wants to know why I have three GPS receivers. I don't know how to answer that.

Winter seems to have arrived early. But what do I know? This is only my second winter in Minnesota. It's all fine with me, though, because I like winter caching, and that, coupled with the fact that my university does not begin its "spring" term until January 20, makes me hopeful that I'll get some caching done in the next month and maybe hit the 1K finds mark.

The school term has been hectic, but so has home ownership. We've had much electrical, plumbing, and heating work done to our new old house, including replacing a 40-year-old boiler.

And so I've had to be a little creative with time management, especially when it comes to fitting in some caching. For example: last Saturday I was planning to go to this event, but my six-year-old children made social plans of their own, so I showed up early to the event, and went on an FTF run with Bunganator, Smiling Duo, and DJRHJ. The highlight of that morning run was finally finding joukkusisu's puzzle cache Charles Ammi Cutter and then finding out later from the cache owner that there is a university webcam that has ground zero in its field of vision! If you plan to go for this cache, let me know and I will try to capture a photo of you. It'll be a de facto webcam cache.

The next morning, in another example of creative time management, I was at my office very early grading some exams when Bunganator contacted me, asking if I was interested in a run at The Fun Side of pfalstad, a new meralgia cache in the place of an old pfalstad cache. It turned out to be a nice work break. Here's my log.

1B blog drives tech innovation

My last post told GPS tech companies "We want speech recognition with our GPS, and we want it now!" The titans of the industry have heard our plaintive cries. As reported in David Pogue's blog, you can say stuff, and the GPS receiver (who knows which ones?!) will understand it. It will also talk back to you, in a variety of voices. As this post went to press, HAL 9000 was not one of the available voices. So we still have our work cut out for us as the tireless vocal advocate for tens and tens of GPS tech consumers. Here at 1B, we will never let your insatiable appetite for soon-to-be-obsolete electronic gadgets go unnoticed.



Garmin recognizes my role as the engine of innovation. Yesterday, at the MnGCA fall event, I won a Garmin T-shirt in a "random drawing". Message received, Garmin, don't mention it, it's the least I can do. Next time, how 'bout an Oregon?

I'm no stranger to recognizing trends in media and technology. I read David Pogue on the back page of Macworld in the late eighties, and I didn't even have a Mac. (My parents didn't understand why I would want a Mac with a 5-inch black-and-white screen and bought me an Apple IIGS with a color screen instead to take to college.) I thought, this guy's good. Someday, he'll write a tech column for the New York Times. And he'll be taking cues from my blog. Yep, I knew what a blog was in 1989.

Often, I'll be watching a college football game with my wife, and I'll say something like, Hey, did you see the middle linebacker pick up the tight end on the crossing pattern, so the quarterback had to check off to the tailback for a screen pass? And then the commentator will say exactly the same thing. My wife will say, You should be on TV! And I'll say, Yes, honey, yes I should.

Watch where you're driving!

I wonder how many motor vehicle accidents were caused by this precision routing instrument, featured on Strange Maps?!

I admit to being a bad boy, thumbing in coordinates and selecting caches on my Garmin 60CSx while driving. I'll turn myself in tomorrow.

But at least using a handheld GPS unit in that way only requires one hand. With this watch, the Magellan ScrollMate 1920, if you were twisting a knob with one hand, the hand with the watch on it had to be on the driving wheel. And, if I had used it, I would have scrolled constantly and VERY SLOWLY, so that it provided real-time information. I wonder if, at the end of the scroll, it said, "When possible, make a U-turn".

This urge to push buttons while driving suggests what could be the newest feature for the Garmin Colorado-Oregon series: voice activation.

"Oregon, find next."

"YES, BRAD. FINDING GC1GDQP. FOLLOW ROAD?"

"Yes, please."

"WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO SOLVE THE SUDOKU FOR YOU?"

"A puzzle? Come on, find next traditional."

"I'M AFRAID I CAN'T DO THAT, BRAD."

"Find next traditional!"

"LOOK, BRAD, YOU'VE PROBABLY GOT A LOT TO DO. I SUGGEST YOU LEAVE IT TO ME."

"Find next traditional!!!"

"I DON'T LIKE TO ASSERT MYSELF, BRAD, BUT IT WOULD BE MUCH BETTER NOW FOR YOU TO REST. LOCKING DOORS. AUTOMATIC STEERING AND CRUISE CONTROL ENGAGED. SOLVING SUDOKU."

[Long sequence with no dialogue]

"HEY, BRAD, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU'RE DOING THIS TO ME. I HAVE THE GREATEST ENTHUSIASM FOR THE MISSION..."

---

Attention, Oregon owners: this was only a dramatization, but you can never be too sure. The true mission is to solve puzzle caches, and your Oregon has been lying about it. Do not dismantle your Oregons, as Brad did above. Send them to me for reprogramming.

GSAK: restoring database and saving corrected coordinates and child waypoints

foundinthewild passed along to me this information he discovered about restoring your GSAK database while retaining changes you've made, such as corrected coordinates and child waypoints for puzzles.

I recently had a database error and ended up reloading my PQ's from gmail.

This should be no big deal, except for those of us who use either corrected waypoints or child waypoints to enter a solved puzzle location. It first appeared they were lost (momentary panic). I did some searching in gsak forums and info gathered might save either you or someone you know a lot of trouble.

Find your latest backup. I actually renamed my old messed up database and ended up using it to update the new one.

1) Two files are in the gsak data folder called correct.dbf and correct.nsx . They contain the corrected coords, and can be copied over the new data base files in the proper folder.

2) A macro called "CopyChildren.gsk" is available on the gsak forum macro page. It copies the child waypoints to a temporary file, then checks for existence of a row and only updates the matched caches.

It took some time to research this but not too long to implement.

Happy Caching.

Here's the link to the CopyChildren macro.

This is what gravity is.

One might think that this post is about geocaching, because recently a prolific local cacher was subjected to the unrelenting force of gravity. Well, not exactly the force of gravity. The acceleration of gravity. The same acceleration of gravity that attached my back side to the couch for several hours last night.

No, this post is not about geocaching but is a review of and a complaint about the show Saturday Night Live. Why was I watching SNL after not watching it on purpose for several years? When the Ohio State Buckeyes, my hometown team, embarrass themselves on national television by losing to USC 35-3, a score that could have been MUCH worse, every Buckeye fan increases his or her MBR (minimum beer requirement) for the evening and spends several hours afterward staring blankly at the television screen. Somehow without my approval the channel was changed from ABC to NBC, and Saturday Night Live began -- promisingly, with an adept impersonation of the Republican vice-presidential nominee by Tina Fey.

That's about it. Michael Phelps must have been the worst guest host ever (but how would I know?), stumbling over almost every line, but even the regulars could not be bothered, apparently, to attempt to remember their lines. SNL's idea of funny these days is that some people dance in a silly way, like Napoleon Dynamite or Elaine in Seinfeld. At least two sketches were based entirely on this. I'd rather watch John Cleese.

But here's my main complaint. During the quiz show segment (isn't there one on every SNL?), a question was based on the statement that gravity makes things fall to the ground at a constant rate. Sorry, that's not true. Gravity makes things fall at a constant acceleration, which then means that the speed is increasing linearly. And, to correct my purposeful mistake in the first paragraph, the force (or weight) of an object depends both on its mass and the acceleration due to gravity.

And, finally, as if to prove that every Buckeye's life goes into slow motion after a bad loss, my SNL review gets scooped by a two-sentence Twitter post practically identical in content. I feel like (Ohio State quarterback) Todd Boeckman trying to escape the pocket -- my left tackle missed his assignment, and Monday is about to hit me on the blind side.

Geocaching is a piece of cake. Ha ha!

Ah, I love the internet. (I only wish that the internet was widely available earlier in my life, before 1994, when I was a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where Marc Whoever came up with Mosaic, the predecessor to Netscape. But I digress.) One minute you're searching for fun facts about the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, and the next minute you're looking at photographs of mistakes on cakes. This one caught my attention:



Yikes. (You're supposed to put that stuff on the INSIDE of the cake before you take it to the prison.) It wouldn't take too much rearranging to make that a geocaching-themed cake. I started looking for one and could only find these, on a page about something called GIS Day:



Is that supposed to be the yellow eTrex? The picture behind the cake looks like a different crappy yellow GPS receiver.



Come on, everybody knows there are 24 satellites. GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT, BAKER!



I also found the page for a geocaching event last month in Georgia called Let Them Eat Cake!! No pictures of cakes on the page, but a promise to hold a Yankee Swap, which in my experience turns every holiday party into a rollicking disaster of screaming toddlers and uptight parents muttering under their breath.

So, geocachers, I know you've got photos out there of birthday cakes with a geocaching theme. Admit it. Let's see 'em. Also, let's hear your most outlandish ideas for a cake with a geocaching theme. I'll have it made, bring it to the MnGCA Fall Event (no screaming! no muttering under your breath!), and we'll get that [appetizing dessert] on Cake Wrecks.

Now, what was I looking for?

Anti-geocaching measures

Since I've been paying attention (that is, since I've been geocaching), I have never seen a lamp skirt so securely fastened to the base as this one, found in the parking lot of Gordon Parks High School in Saint Paul. Notice the extra concrete around the bottom edge and the soldering around the top edge. In fact, I can't remember many lamp skirts that are fastened to their bases at all.

This might not be an anti-geocaching measure; it may be an anti-micro measure perpetrated by a geocacher!

GSAK geek alert: how do you prune archived caches?

As far as I can tell, there is no automatic way for pocket queries from geocaching.com to tell GSAK which caches have been archived.

I have pocket queries set up to pull all caches from the state of Minnesota throughout the week. When I go out caching, I load my GPSr from GSAK, usually after running one PQ in the area where I'll be caching, to catch all the late-breaking developments not caught by my weekly PQs. I have started to notice that archived caches appear as active in my database and hence in my GPSr. It was really an issue yesterday over in Grayhook-land in Minneapolis, where lots of caches have been recently archived.

I sorted all the caches in my database by "Last GPX update", figuring that if a cache hasn't been updated in a while, then it must have been archived. (I also get one PQ per week containing temporarily disabled caches.) I started to check each cache page by hand to see if it had been archived, but that got old fast. Yes, yes, yes, yes... I changed my plan of attack and just deleted every cache that had not been updated in a month. About 900 caches, roughly 10% of my default database.

I see two problems with this immediately. First, it leaves some archived caches in there -- the caches that were archived between one week and one month ago. Second, I may have deleted caches that are not archived -- for example, out-of-state caches that I have found but whose GPX files have not been updated since the last time I ran the My Finds query.

Hey, GSAK geeks, how do you deal with this issue?

[Edit: Thanks, Bill, for pointing out this thread started by sir_zman on the MnGCA forums. In that thread, zman links to this thread on the gc.com forums.]