Can Someone Give This Guy a SWAG Decal!?

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Local Cachers in the News

Read all about it.

World’s Largest Wind Farm Planned In Oregon

The Portland Business Journal reports that Oregon has just been given the go-ahead by The Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council to build a 909 MW wind farm in the north-central part of the state. That's enough energy to power 200,000 homes.



Read all about it.

So Much for Our Evening Bike Ride

We sure don't want to be sucking this black smoke during a bike ride.
Wait a minute - is field burn smoke supposed to be BLACK!?

You'll Never Count Sheep Again

Go ahead and click here. I dare you.

Backflipping Helicopter

The First 100 Domain Names

Apple.com was the 64th domain name ever, registered on February 19, 1987. Missing from this list: Microsoft.com

Read all about it.

Jeep Hood Makeover

See, I do other stuff besides geocache:

Pilot Pulls Record-Setting 9.6Gs

Local Cachers in the News

Don and Judy Bacher and granddaughters Jessica and Stephanie Dilbone, all of Albany, explain the basics about the popular hobby in our "Fun 101" recreation series.

Watch the Video

Please Don't

Rush Plays Rock Band Backstage at Colbert

The rock band Rush played "Tom Sawyer" on the video game Rock Band. I like them on real instruments better.


Turn your speakers up, and watch the video here.

California's New "Hands-Free" Law

Shifting Boulders & Shivering Shoulders

Here is my DNF log for Every Time You Come Around Monkey, a micro hidden in a huge stack of boulders:

"Pablo Mac flopped (and almost worse) on this one. I had just arrived and got 2/3 of the way up, and when I unwedged a hand-sized rock, five or six huge rocks above me dislodged and moved a couple of inches down toward me, causing me severe gastrointestinal challenges. I dove the eight feet or so down to the ground and skeedaddled outta there as fast as my geotruck would launch me! The memory of the sound and vibration of those shifting boulders cause me...well, this is a family-oriented site, right?"

Watering the Roof

Mac & PC Cars

The New Way to Demolish Buildings

How do they do it ?

First, they replace the support pillars at ground level with computer-controlled metal columns. Then, a crew carefully demolishes the entire floor by hand, leaving the structure resting on the mechanical pillars, which then go down slowly until the next floor is at ground level. They replace the support pillars again with the mechanical ones, destroy that floor, and repeat the operation until they get rid of all the floors.

This makes it look as if the building is shrinking in front of you, or being swallowed by the street. According to the company, this method greatly reduces the environmental impact of the demolition, as well as the time. Kajima says that it speeds up the task by 20%, while making it easier to separate materials for recycling, as well as reducing the amount of products released into the air.

What's the Plan?

If Your Travel Bug Goes Missing

From the weekly Groundspeak LoBot Mailer:

1. Send a polite email to the geocacher who last grabbed your Travel Bug and remind them of its goal. Please allow adequate time before sending this message; remember that this geocacher may be on vacation or have other extenuating circumstances for which they cannot go geocaching.

2. If you have not received a response and you feel your Travel Bug is lost forever, mark the Travel Bug as "missing" so that another geocacher does not expect to find it in a cache.

3. To prevent your Travel Bug from being lost or mistaken as a signature item, place it a zip-loc bag with a printed mission. The more obvious you make it, the less likely it will be kept as a trading item.

My only comment on these items involves the Ziploc® bag recommendation: How many Travel Bugs (and, for that matter, caches) have you seen in flimsy, hole-ridden Ziploc bags? Water always seems to get in anyway, so why bother? Unless you're using one of the heavy-duty freezer bags (and those will eventually leak, also), just work to make your Travel Bug itself resistant to the elements.

Other ideas or comments?

Read more about trackable items.

Goat Tree

Gotta Get a Gunbus

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So Close to Dude's Place...

...yet so far away.

You Might Be An Alien Abductee If...

...you recognize four of these five experiences:

1. "Waking up paralyzed with a sense of a strange person or presence or something else in the room."

2. "Experiencing a period of time of an hour or more, in which you were apparently lost, but you could not remember why or where you had been."

3. "Feeling that you were actually flying through the air although you didn't know why or how."

4. "Seeing unusual lights or balls of light in a room without knowing what was causing them."

5. "Finding puzzling scars on your body and neither you nor anyone else remembering how you received them or where you got them."

Read more here.

The Infamous Double Slit Experiment

A Walk on the Oregon Trail

Anyone for Corn on the Cob?

True Generosity & Humility

It's a beautiful thing when people give of themselves to contribute to society.



It's something altogether different when someone spends their "wellness break" Photoshopping a little humor into their blog posting. Hey, it's hot outside, ok?

Gmail's New Security & Protection Features

More reasons Google's Gmail service absolutely rocks!

From the Gmail Blog:

"We understand how important your Gmail accounts are to you, so we're adding a new layer of information and control. With this new feature, you can now track your recent sessions and you can also sign yourself out remotely."

405 Skater Responds to Critics

If you saw my previous blog entry about a guy who skateboarded down the I-405 freeway in Los Angeles, he has another video out explaining his actions that day:

So You Want to Be a Blogging Star?

Here’s what a number of successful bloggers with successful nonblogging careers say are the ways to think about getting into the business of blogging.

Huge German Company Switches from PC to Mac

One of Europe's largest newspaper publishers, Axel Springer AG, has announced plans to migrate its 10,000 employees and 150 newspapers in 30 countries to the Mac

Speaking in a video message that's now available through YouTube, company CEO Mathias Döpfner notes the following four reasons for the shift:

iPhone 3G - A Geocaching Find

July 11, 2008, is the release day of the iPhone 3G, a device anticipated for its promised speedy connectivity and its one-stop application shopping. But a small and growing segment have their eyes fixed specifically on the integrated GPS chip: they’re geocachers.




Read all about it.

Emails from Dude/Sweet are NOT Suitable for Work!

I got an email from Dude of Dude/Sweet to tell me their 500th cache find was announced on a recent Podcacher Podcast. While that's cool and all (congrats!), he failed to warn me about the potential for unsuitable ads appearing in the AdSense bar in my Gmail.



I smell a lawsuit...

Transparent Canoe

I want one!



The canoe, that is.

Rest Stop Recon Declared "Retarded and Juvenile"

I received a message regarding my Rest Stop Recon cache from JFtrochez:

"Perhaps you should consider revising this cache description so that it sounds substantially less retarded and juvenile. All the other caches in this neighborhood were kid friendly and I had my 8 year old nephew thinking we would be able to get to this one. I happily accept these challenges, however, about 100 yards from it, my nephew called it quits on me.

Please do other people a favor and make sure you note that this is NOT at all a family friendly spot."

My friendly reply:

JFtrochez:

I'm sorry you feel disappointed with your experience with my "Rest Stop Recon" cache. You are a new and relatively inexperienced geocacher, and are obviously feeling very emotional and traumatized about your failed attempt to find it, so I will forgive your insults. In nearly two years of this cache's existence, you are the only cacher to express comments so “retarded and juvenile,” as you put it.

Both the description and attributes, as well as the YouTube videos about this cache make it pretty clear as to the terrain challenges represented by this cache, so I see no need to revise it.

Just so you know, kids younger than your nephew, including my son, who is also eight-years-old, have successfully negotiated their way to this cache. I would encourage you to try my cache again, but I'm actually more inclined to encourage you to simply ignore it. On that note, I encourage you to ignore all of my caches, as they are not all designed or intended to appeal to all types of cachers. I do own a number of "kid friendly" caches, but I wouldn't want you to experience anything unexpected and thus feel the need for more emotional outbursts. That approach would be a lot easier on both of us.

Thank you for taking the time to express your feelings. Stay safe, and keep on caching!

- Pablo Mac

When Environmentalism Meets Reality

Fox News Airs Altered Photos of NY Times Reporters

Below is a screenshot of Fox & Friends featuring the photo it used of Jacques Steinberg, with the original photo on its left. Comparing the two photos, it appears that the following changes have been made: Steinberg's teeth have been yellowed, his nose and chin widened, and his ears made to protrude further.



Similarly, a comparison of the photo of Reddicliffe used by Fox News and the original photo suggests that Reddicliffe's teeth have been yellowed, dark circles have been added under his eyes, and his hairline has been moved back.