Since there is little Geocaching software available for Linux (such a shame!) I have been spending a lot more time on my Windows partition of my PC. Of course now that it is reloaded and I have NOT taken SP3, it runs great.
I have installed "Cachemate" on my PDA and I have to say that as a Geocaching DB program, it works well. I have pretty much figured it out and have about 50 or so caches in various catagories (by city) in it already. I spent the better part of the afternoon doing that while working from home.
The other part of that time was spent downloading and installing PC based Geocaching software. I am still not sure I really need it but one piece has been helpful. "Cachemagnet" takes gpx files downloaded from geocaching.com and allows you to manipulate them and also pull sat maps from the coords, all while having the cache notes in the same program. My geocaching buddies in WV (Knightmare_Duck and Rycherox) swear by GSAK, but I have not played with that one yet. it is an all in one wonder tool that many geocachers like to use. It is shareware but it only costs $25.00 so for them it may be worth it. Right now the only thing I need is something to transfer the .gpx files to my PDA and EasyGPS does that well enough and is free. I think CacheMagnet will do that as well and it also has maps with the option to print them. That kinda defeats the purpose of using a PDA but some people just have to have paper. I am trying to break that habit.
I am anxious to try this style of caching and if all goes well I will nab one or two on the way home from work tomorrow.
I did a little spring cleaning in the closet in my home office today. I got rid of a box full of 1.44 floppies as well as the really old PC work let me borrow. I had forgotten that I had two if them and only returned on. Both were in the 650 mhz range and not worth much but they both ran Linux well enough. I have been carrying around 2 laptops for more than a week now since we have been given new Vista laptops. I am still not comfortable with Vista as an OS since a lot of things do not work as expected (Citrix will not work with IE7...it wants to keep launching Java...does anyone know how to fix this? It works in Firefox perfectly but IE is the "browser of choice" at work). I like the idea of having a back up. I have not had to use it yet and as the days and weeks go by, the chances of me having to have to use it grow slimmer and that is a good thing. One, I will not have to carry two laptops and accessories around and two, I can re-roll the old laptop and use it as a sandbox at home.
I still have a lot more to clean out from the closet but I will get there. Most if not all of my PC junk is in two large totes with one 1GHZ machine on the floor collecting dust. I would use it as a server but it is incredibly noisy. I think it has either Debian or Ubuntu loaded on it.
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