Almost all who know me are aware I spend way too much time working on things--my job, ConTrak Systems, photography, etc.  A lot of what I do keeps me indoors and concentrating on a computer screen.  I am trying to keep with photography as a way to get me out and doing things.  As it's difficult for me to make trips to find places to shoot, that can only motivate me so far.

Enter geocaching.  I knew about the sport for some time now, but never had the motivation to get with it (nor the will to put down money to get a good GPS).  Programming ConTrak for hours at a time gave me that motivation needed to do something else, so I chose to get involved in the sport.

Most of you are probably unfamiliar with geocaching.  The short of it is a worldwide treasure hunt: people hide things, post the coordinates online, and others go to find it.  Most caches are hidden in places of interest to the person, so searching for a cache will take you to a good place.  It's for the trip.  A cache consists of a log book and, sometimes, stuff, the latter of which you can take if you leave something in return.  The draw, for me, is that it gets me going places and it's fun trying to find the caches.

So, how have I done?  The image to the left shows my stats and is a link to more detailed information.  (I'll talk about the handle in a moment.)  I'm trying to find at least one cache every one or two days--two a day, if I can.  There are some I still can't find, but that just means I will have to go back to look for them.

All right; the name.  Using "PhoenixPo" all the time is tiresome and really doesn't convey anything; that's point one.  Point two is I am fiddling with creating a team from the people I know so I can do stuff with them.  I am playing around with "GSO Rangers" at the moment.  I am partial to the belief user names should use part of the team name, so I have to use "Ranger".  A cacher in North Carolina is called "Night-Hawk", which gave me an idea (plus doing this with Sarah pushed it over the edge to the animal name territory).  As the fox is my preferred animal to use in association word games, I decided to use it in the user name.  If anyone has another suggestion, I'm all ears.

What have I learned?  Well, first I learned my GPS can be fifty feet off the mark or straight on.  Since it's mostly off in a predictable way, I just have to follow it to forty or fifty feet north of where it says the cache is located.  It's confusing and I am still struggling to understand this error factor.  I also learned some people can be quite devious and creative when it comes to hiding stuff.  Finally, I learned there are still more things for me to see right around my place--perhaps places I could even photograph.

This just means ConTrak development will be delayed just that much.  I'm not worried too much because I already know I can't complete the entire thing in a year anyway.  ConTrak is extremely technical and taxing because I am doing some cutting edge stuff.  It wouldn't be as taxing on me if I was working with someone else who concentrated on design.  But, no, it's just me.  Ah, well.  Geocaching or ConTrak development; I get to find stuff either way.