Jacob Barlow ( AD0OR )

Geocache : "Duck Tape"

2008-04-09T16:26:00.000-07:00

Another cache that is good enough to mention here is Duck Tape, by KELR Clan. It's a well done drive-by cache, very cute. Here are some pictures, it's just a pill bottle Duct Taped to a fence post and a rubber ducky is taped on there with it.

Geocache : "Matchstick Men"

2008-04-09T15:41:00.000-07:00

I have a couple of pictures that Chris ( DT6 ) took of me while I was placing this cache, I tied an Ammo Can to a rock, and left it in the middle of the river, we had a blast.

My Chalk Outline

2008-04-09T15:04:00.000-07:00

After a Geocache event Chris and I were having a little too much fun and decided to stage my death, I don't know if anyone noticed the chalk outline of me in the parking lot, but I thought I'd snap a couple pics to save the memory...

Crappy Cache

2008-04-09T14:19:00.001-07:00

Some people complain a lot about caches being crappy, I hear a lot about how caches hidden under the skirt of a light pole are crappy too, but we found the ultimate ( at least in my experience ) in crappy caches, it was so extremely crappy that it was awesome! I loved it! when a cache can make me laugh out load then I think it deserves a mention. I'm talking about 7ofclubs's Crappy Cache.... Here are some pics ....
You can see in that first picture that the "container" was a grocery bag hanging in a tree and he had written on it that it was a geocache...

Inside the bad you found what's pictured here -->

A diaper, eeewwwww..... with a toilet paper roll inside of it, which held the log ( an old piece of magazine paper ) in the 3rd photo.

<--- The "Log"

Anyway, that's about it, it was a fun stop and a memorable cache.

Our 11th State - Colorado

2008-04-01T08:49:00.000-07:00

We ( Helen and I ) have been keeping track of which states we've been to together, we just got # 11, Colorado on a recent business trip, we drove and and spent the night in Rifle, then in the morning delivered doors in Aspen and Eagle, then geocached our way back to Utah.

Watching For Wizardry

2008-04-01T06:53:00.000-07:00

Our Virtual Cache in Oregon is a fun one, today I received an interesting story as the answer for it, which, bytheway, didn't contain the required answer in it anywhere, but I liked the email and thought I'd save it here.

Hi,

the answer to your cache Watching For Wizardry (GC6F85) is:
According to the legend of the Klamath and Modoc Indians the mystic land of Gaywas was the home of the great god Llao. His throne in the infinite depths of the blue waters was surrounded by giant crawfish, his warriors, who were able to lift great claws out of the water and seize too venturesome enemies on the cliff tops.

War broke out with Skell, the god of the neighboring Klamath marshes. Skell was captured and his heart used for a ball by Llao's monsters. But an eagle, one of Skell's servants, captured it in flight, and a deer, another of Skell's servants, escaped with it; and Skell's body grew again around his living heart. Once more he was powerful and once more he waged war against the God of the Lake.

Then Llao was captured; but he was not so fortunate. Upon the highest cliff his body was torn into fragments and cast into the lake and eaten by his own monsters under the belief that it was Skell's body. But when Llao's head was thrown in, the monsters recognized it and would not eat it.

Llao's head still lies in the lake, and white men call it Wizard Island. And the cliff where Llao was torn to pieces is named Llao Rock.

Hope to receive your ok.

"Blue Steel"

2008-03-16T00:32:00.000-07:00

"Zoolander" is one of my favorite movies, It's a GREAT comedy with Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, AND Will Ferrell, any movie with ANY of those guys is going to be very funny, but having all three in it is marvelous. Lately I've found that the many great quotes from that movie have been stuck in my head... "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!."

But it's not just funny, it teaches us some really important life lessons, like "I'm pretty sure there's a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good looking. And I plan on finding out what that is." That one really hit me, I mean, what if he's right?
Or maybe I need to think about how people feel when I say certain things, as Hansel ( O.W. ) put so well here : "I felt like, "This guy's really hurting me." And it hurt."

And Derek really cares about kids too, he went so far as to set up " the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too" where they teach you that there's more to life than just being really, really, really good looking. Right kids?

There are too many great lines from that movie to list here, but if you like stupid silly humor in a movie, you'll love Zoolander.

Mugatu: SHUT UP! Enough already, Ballstein! Who cares about Derek Zoolander anyway? The man has only one look, for Christ's sake! Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigra? They're the same face! Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! I invented the piano key necktie, I invented it!

--------------------

How to Do the "Blue Steel" Pose from Zoolander

Pose your lower body, this is mainly up to you (popping of the collar is highly suggested).
Tilt one of your shoulders towards the camera.
Make sure your face is looking directly at the camera.
Pucker your lips; do not close them together, make sure there is a little space in the middle.
Squint your eyes just a bit, as if there is a strong wind or sand blowing at you.

Breathe in and hold it to make your chest look bigger.
Look into the center of the lens, which will make your eyes look stunning in the photograph.
Do not turn left, as this would result in "Magnum" instead.

Do not do this around ladies you do not want attracted to you.
Does not work as well for women.

Google Maps

2008-03-16T00:21:00.000-07:00

I'm a huge fan of Google Maps, I always use it to look up where things are, I've also really enjoyed the new things they add to it, like Street View, so I thought this video was great!

The Looooong Weekend ( Friday, the 7th to Monday the 10th )

2008-03-11T19:11:00.000-07:00

I think I drove about 1,600 miles this weekend, and I'm tired! Friday Helen and I got up early and went to Wyoming for a door delivery, I enjoy that drive, Wyoming's pretty barren but really pretty to me, and there's always a lot of wildlife, I stopped to take some pictures of a Bald Eagle.We were taking the doors and trim to a new home in the hills above Pinedale, to get there we drove by the "Museum of the Mountain Man" which reminded me of one of my best friends, Bob Puttman, a.k.a. The Grizzman, he's what I always wanted to be, a real Mountain Man, and he's probably the best cook ever, at least with Giant Cheese Burgers, I lived in his house for a few months at the end of my mission, that's where we got hit by a tornado....

We got done there in Pinedale and decided to head over to Idaho, Geocaching along the way of course, and then we decided, "Hey, Montana's only an hour away, lets go there so we can add it to the list of states we've been to! "
So we drove up to Monida, ( a small "town" on the border of MONtana and IDAho = Monida, I thought that was both clever and funny, and yes, it's really called that. ) We came back down and spent the night with Helen's Sister and Bro-in-law Olivia and Shawn.
We enjoyed our short stay in Idaho Falls, Idaho and after IHOP and a little shopping were off towards Utah, except we didn't make it too far, we met up with our friends Brian and Jenni ( PeanutsParents on Geocaching.com ) and went caching into the night in Pocatello with them and slept there that night, so that left Sunday morning to travel home to Utah, stopping for a few caches and enjoying the scenery of Northern Utah.

While I had fun in Idaho, the recent trip only confirmed my old theory that Idaho Sucks. I guess I'm just spoiled living in Utah, compared to Utah both Wyoming and Idaho are so boring and ugly, I enjoy my visits to them because I LOVE to travel, but I wouldn't want to live there!

It felt good to get back to Utah but the first thing I did Monday morning was hop back in the truck and head back up to Pinedale, same house, more doors, this time I was pulling the big box trailer..... and that's how I drove 1,600 miles.

We're the FARMERS! LOL

2008-03-11T18:55:00.000-07:00

Photo of the day, driving in Salt Lake Valley we saw this, we had to laugh, it's not even out in the country, we thought that Lehi's "Pioneers" was a dumb mascot, but this beats even that.

GSAK Troubles

2008-03-05T19:02:00.000-08:00

I've LOVED GSAK and all it can do to enhance my Geocaching, I've told everyone that it can do anything and I really do believe that, the add-on macros are fun, I can make lists of who are the top finders of my Geocaches, I can load my GPS with caches within half a mile of the freeway from here to San Diego that have not had a DNF in the most recent 3 logs and do have travel bugs if I want to, I can think up any combination and filter my database to that and then load that into the GPS and Palm, but today I started having problems... one after the other, and now it's past 8:00pm and I'm still here at the office trying to fix them, sheesh.... but I reckon it's worth it for all the fun it's created ad these are the first problems I've had with it.

Road Trip!

2008-03-05T18:33:00.000-08:00

I really really really like to travel and explore, which is part of the reason I love my main hobby/obsession Geocaching. This past weekend we went to St. George and spent the weekend in a little warmer climate, it was so nice, the trip didn't start out so good, I got off work about two hours early and was very excited to have two extra hours to find caches on the way down South, but on the way to the first Geocache we were going to looking for I got us stuck in the mud, two hours later we were back on the road again, now having wasted the two hours I was so excited about having we just drove straight there ... After our arrival in St George Helen wasn't feeling too good so I met up with Chris and Brian, two of my best friends who were in town for the same event and we had fun looking for caches into the night, the next morning was the Breakfast event and after that we spent the day finding and hiding caches, I think we found about 100 and hid about 10 that weekend.

Now this coming weekend I need to take some doors to Pinedale, Wyoming so we decided to turn that into another caching trip, from there we'll cut over to Idaho and see how many caches we can dig out of the snow up there.

I'm excited about daylight savings on Sunday, more daylight after work to play with. Monday I go to Pinedale again with the rest of the doors.

Is Winter Gone? or is it just playing another joke on me...

2008-02-27T15:27:00.000-08:00

The sun is shining and the sky is blue, I look out my office window and can see the tops of the mountains, finally!!! I love hiking and exploring but not so much in the snow, this winter has felt so long and everyday I've wished the snow would melt, then the mud that will leave behind will dry out and then I can go hike my feet off, I'm in pretty bad shape so I'll have to start off slow, but I'm hoping to hike Maple Mtn. a few times this summer, before the big Event hike in late July / early August so I can not only get in shape but place a bunch of Geocaches for everyone to find when they come on the hike, if I do that, I'll probably leave stashes of food and water spaced along the trail too, so I won't have to carry anything on the "big day..." that's what I've done some years, back in the good old days, I'm excited to for that event, last year we did a campfire event in Whiting Campground the night before and I think we'll do that again this year, it seems like a good tradition to start, and I LOVE traditional events, like Potters Pond, St. George in March, the Swell in April, those are the best kind, the kind you can expect and look forward to all year.

Lasik , by DamnMenace

2008-02-25T07:17:00.000-08:00

Wow, I noticed that one of my favorite caches was archived, so I looked at it and couldn't believe what I saw, this log is just ridiculous, the cache is supposed to be extremely difficult, the owner is known for that and the cache is rated accurately, there's no reason to stoop that low and be exactly what he posted in his log, oh, wait... maybe he was talking about himself.... nevermind.

"A Criminal Found Your Cache"

2008-02-19T14:54:00.000-08:00

Recently I was checking my emails and saw a log notification "A Criminal Found Stargate P40111" which is the cache located right on our front porch, I laughed a little at the username "A Criminal" and also at how it made the Subject of the email sound, anyway, I didn't think anything of it, after all, the entire log was "look what I found," I figured it was another newbie who didn't feel like saying much.
Later on I logged onto the UTAG Forums and noticed that he ( a criminal ) had posted on a thread where we had been discussing 'Google Street View,' I had been "debating" on if it was creepy or wrong or not, I was on the side saying that it's cool and there's nothing to worry about to those people saying that "nut-jobs" and bad guys will be using this to watch us and figure out how to rob us. Anyway, this "Criminal" had posted that he used Street View to find the Ammo Box on our porch and take it, I thought that was weird and immediately called Helen to have her look and see if it was really gone, sure enough, it was, so was this a playful joke from a friend or a creepy weirdo?

His post had shown where he left the cache "because it was too bulky to carry on his bike" and it was a park a few miles from home, I decided to go down there and check it out, I saw footprints going to the only big tree in the park and I followed, the cache was up there, I grabbed it and headed home. I looked up the IP address that he posted from and ran it through a tracking site, it was posted from Salt Lake, I thought it would have been more local, well, the mystery is on!

"Just Another Throw Out"

2008-02-18T14:19:00.000-08:00

Oh boy... Pretty much daily I have to roll my eyes at people, often Geocaching people, but only because that's who I choose to associate with, they just seem to be addicted to complaining, either the cache is too hard so it's not fair and I'm a complete jerk for putting it out there or it's way too easy and it's Geo-crap and it's "Just Another Throw Out.."
I wish people would grow up and realize it's JUST A GAME and we can actually have fun with it, weird, I know, but I've seen it done before, it's fun to see when it's not me they're complaining about though, another cacher placed a cache that was published today and called it "Just Another Throw Out" his description on the page was :

Typical easy to find throw-out cache. With all the low quality throw-out caches that have been place recently, I decided to create my own. I would like you to say what you think, about this and other bad caches in your logs. Do not leave anything of value, as it might get muggled.

Now I thought it was funny and just fine, but a note was posted :

NOTE by Del & Dix When this cache first appeared I thought about running out and try to be the FTF, but when I read your notes, I was applaud. Not everyone has the capabilty to do puzzle's, multi's or unique caches like some of yours. I will admit, on some of your caches I am totally stumped, but that does not mean I will give up trying. At the same time - Just like you when a so called low-quality cache cames up I too will run out and find it. I'm not sure why you are bashing this sport/site. I thought you really like it. I was gong to join and pay the dues on the other site next week (the one you had sponsored me) so I would have more caches to go to. But I feel like if people have to bash this site to make the other site look better then I don't think I won't to me a member. I wasn't going to say anything, but since you asked us to write in our logs about the low quality throw-out caches that have been placed recently I had to write this note. Thanks for letting me vent and I hope to see you on the trails.

Now I don't see anything "appalling" about that cache page, and I don't see how he was "bashing this sport..." but the cache owner replied with :

NOTE by Apollo 17 Just having some fun, and raising awareness at the same time.

That's all good now, or it should be, he was "Just having some fun," that's what I like to hear, it's what the game should be about... but no, the next thing posted was :

NOTE by roymccabes You clearly have a differently defined idea of "fun". Your idea of fun is what most other people would consider rude. I, for one, won't bother with this or any other cache of yours.

Man! calm down, roymccabes sounds like another friend I had now, this other friend swore to never find another cache hidden by a certain person after he deleted her log, kind of extreme I think, but people can do as they please, that's the nice part of it all.

Anyway... that's about it for my rant on silly Geocachers taking the game too seriously for now, but there will be plenty more.

16 Feb - Oh 8

2008-02-16T20:02:00.000-08:00

This morning I met with Matt to give our Cows some more grain, Helen and I are in charge of feeding the cows on the weekends since we live the closest to them,
they are so big, dumb, stupid and cute, and soon they're gonna be burgers.... YUM!

So here I am in the office after taking care of the cows, listening to Podcacher and browsing Geocaching.com .... Kind of the story of my life.
Oh, and wondering why I get so much junk mail on my other accounts, I've never had a problem with that on Gmail,
but I have accounts on all the other 'popular' sites as well and I get between 10 and 100 junk emails a day,
seriously, who falls for those? obviously enough people do that it's worth it to mister someone that he keeps sending them out to us,
grrrrrr.... Less Intelligent People always ruin life for the rest of us.

Another thing I've been doing lately is exploring Google Street View, it's very fun, basically Google had a car
drive down every street with a GPS and camera set up, it takes pictures in every direction every few seconds and the
result is that you can click on a spot on a road on Google Maps and it will show you a view as if you're really there,
you can turn around 360° and everything, the photos ( at least in Utah ) were taken in mid to late 2007.
On the UTAG Forums we've been talking about it and some people are very concerned about it, though I think there's nothing at all to worry about and in fact think it GREAT!

We of course did some Geocaching today, we found 4th Meal, a lamppost hide at Taco Bell in Springville, and Take a Flight, a micro in a fence post at the Springville-Spanish Fork Airport, and Meow Mix, a regular sized cache in plain sight on an industrial road in Spanish Fork...
We also decided to work on the new Multi Cache that Russ put out, only we ended up doing it wrong and didn't realize that until we were almost done, he's put numbers on signs around Spanish Fork and we had to go to ten signs and get numbers, but we didn't know we needed to get letters there too, ( the letters we VERY tiny and hard to see ) so we ended up doing it all twice, and by the time we got done it was time for lunch at "Little Acorn."

After lunch we went to today's Event at Rock Canyon Park, it was very cold but still a lot of fun, I mostly just visited with Tom and Dave, oh, and watched Jay shoot down the hills at amazing speeds and loose his hat and just be overall very entertaining.

Well we were pretty cold and tired after the Event, so we came home and watched a couple of episodes of our favorite TV Show, CSI. We're in Season 4 right now, ( trying to get them ALL on DVD ) and I'm kind of mad a Catherine, I mean, I guess it's okay if she wants to start dating again, but why that guy? I just don't like him, he has "I'm secretly a mass murderer rapist" written all over his face... sheesh..

To finish off the night we hung out with Helen's Sister Sarah and Sarah's daughter Rachel, pretty fun, and that's my life today.

Another of the many times starting a blog...

2008-02-15T11:17:00.000-08:00

Well here I am again, I don't know how many times I've thought it would be fun to start a blog and post regularly, but it's been quite a few, each time I see a friend who has been doing a good job at posting on theirs regularly it makes me want to try again, This time the inspiration came from a Geocaching friend, Emily.

It's been an interesting week, the weather was awesome to start the week off, it felt SO good to have somewhat of a break from the snow and winter sadness. But then out of the blue came a huge snowstorm, you'd think people who live here would learn to slow down on the road, but they don't, the traffic became so bad that driving from Orem to "The point of the mountain" ( normally a 15-ish minute drive ) was taking hours.

I got to run some doors up to Park City this week as well, we've been working on a project up there for several years, a lot of good work comes out of that town for us.

There's a Geocaching Event coming up on Saturday, Helen and I try to make it to all of those that we can, but the event I'm REALLY excited for is in a couple of weeks, The 4th St George Geocache Meet and Eat.

We had a great time up in salt lake at the Harlem Globetrotters game.

Our little "Goal" of hiding at least a cache a day is still going strong, since New Years, we'll see how far that will go.

I worked on solving some "puzzle caches," basically the coordinates are ciphered in some way and you have to figure them out before you can go look for the cache, the puzzles I've solved this week have both been put together by "Mom the Cook," the first one, "Utah's take me out to the ball game" was obviously baseball related, which is a problem because I actually hate the game, LOL... I'm a basketball only sports fan myself. The "Puzzle" was a list of fifteen baseball players, in Geocaching there are fifteen numbers in the coordinates that tell you where the cache is located. ( for example : N 40° 12.345 W 111° 12.345 ) So that made it pretty obvious that each player somehow represented a number, my first thought was that it was their jersey number... But I later found out from a friend that it's all about baseball positions, which I didn't know anything about, luckily Wikipedia did, this page gave me everything I needed to know.
The other puzzle was one called "solvethepuzzlefindthecache.....GSAK," in this one it's a rather long narrative, but all that really matters is she mentioned that her first Event she ever attended is the key to the cache, easy enough, the only thing she has control over on that page is her log which can be edited at any time, sure enough, it was edited yesterday with " SHTKADEGHZERODZERO" stuck in at the end, one of her often used cipher methods is to substitute 1 with A, 2 with B, 3 with C etc... on down to 26... applying that to her string of letters get me what I needed, now to go find those caches!

Last night for Valentine's Day we went out to east at "Olive Garden," the only problem was so did everyone else in Happy Valley, so it was a 1 1/2 - 2 hour wait before being seated, we waited it out and had a great meal, while waiting I saw about ten people I knew come in, which is always a lot of fun for me, including by older Brother Jason ( with Austin & Andelin ), Kirsten Harmon, Micky Miller, Aubrey Averett, oh, and Helen saw an old friend from her home ward too.