2 Years of geocaching

We have just reached our 2 year mark of geocaching.
That is 50 finds for the 1st year, and 154 finds in the second year.

That makes it an average of almost 2 caches each weekend, for the last two year (52 Weeks * 2 years * 2 caches per weekend = 208 caches).

Not bad going. There are other cachers who do a lot more caches then we do.

However something interesting I saw on the SA rankings page (SA Georanking Statistics) is that very view of the high find cachers find many TBs and coins. It seems like that we at least find almost one coin/TB for every cache we find. But this does not mean we only do caches where there are coins/bugs. On the contrary I think I spend a lot of time at events getting all the numbers from the TB's and coins. Also I have now for a while already, only loged a TB/coin as discovered if I have taken a photo of it. Just discovering it because it was on some list, I no longer do.

My log book for the 3rd year will now also include a list of all the more interesting TB's and coins we as the DamhuisClan have come across (I will include some TB's of previous years).

My current Logbooks (for year 1 and 2) can be seen here:
DamhuisClan Logbook - Year 1
DamhuisClan Logbook - Year 2

Should someone be interested in browsing through the log book I can email a low quality PDF document to them. Either leave a comment, or email me.

Legend has it....

'Legend has it', (on hearsay) that an internet financial institution's web site is a little safer after today. Hopefully I helped some little community, without them even knowing it.

It would have been nice if "they" had given me 1% of the money on what would *they* could have spent on damage control, had I not found the security risk, and had I rather gone to a newspaper then to *them* (but just as paying your TV license: It was the right thing to do [to go to *them*])......

Some stuff.

Wow, it has been 4 months since my last post. That is not good.

Some updates.

Diablo, went quite well, but at Nightmare it is much more difficult then on the other levels. And I must add I like it that way.

Bottom room is still being completed. We actually worked on it a little today, where we sealed the sealing, and touched up a few places where we need to paint. Basically the following still needs to be done:
1) Paint the walls and sealing.
2) Complete the connection of the electric point.
3) Put in the kitchen cupboards.
4) Tile the kitchen.
5) Clean everything up
6) Get someone to rent.
7) Build movable gate.
8) Build a carport.

What was a 2 or 3 months project has become almost a year project. It seems to take a lot of effort to complete. Pappa assisted with putting in the door, and although there was a kink on the left door wall, the door fits superbly.

My car's timing belt broke 2 weeks ago. Lots of money to fix it. Basically the money we had saved up for the kitchen for the granny flat, was spent on fixing the car.

Last weekend we went geocachcing with Wildbirds. Awesome day! with 14 caches done, although only 12 were new for us.

Plans for moving over seas.
We have been thinking for a while on moving overseas, and in all of our minds we were planning on going to Canada. An email from Lode, made me think about the one thing I realy dislike. Long, VERY cold days. I get headaches when I get really cold for very long times.

Rudolf has just completed LeJog, which is a bike ride (peddle bike) from the most south-west point in the England to the most Northern point in Ireland. 10 days riding, and 2 days rest. He made it, and it looks like an awesome thing to do. I thought that if I were a little fitter, I could do something similar with the kids, and UK or Europa would be the ideal place to do this.

This got me thinking again of the possibility of moving to UK again. Although the one thing would be not working in London itself. I find things in London to formal, and to fast moving. If we do move to the UK, it would need to be in a smaller town. Now moving to the UK does not seem so bad, and there are lots of extra perks. Things such as my cousins in Holland. Trish's cousin in Switzerland. All of Europe's city's are no longer that far away, and a much better chance that our parent would come visit us (more often?). Also Rudolf is in London, and could be of great assistance to us moving there. Also there are over 30,000 geocaches in the UK, which helps.

So although Canada is most definitely not out the door, I (or hopefully we) are thinking of the possibility of UK. Need to do some more homework.

Easter Weekend's Diablo game, and some geocaching

Well, we did play Diablo II over the weekend, but it was a lot slower going then I had expected. The plan for to quickly finish off the current Nightmare game and then by the end of the weekend finish the complete game again at Hell difficulty. One of the problems we had was that Glenda's character could not be found in any of the backups I had made. So Glenda took one of Trish's level 78 sorceress. Our Characters were only about level 62 when we started. The playing characters were thus 2 sorceresses, 1 Amazon (bows) and 1 Necromancer. It was a bit of a problem for us playing as we did not have someone with swards up front. We stated latish on Thursday afternoon about 6PM and played until just after 10 PM. Nightmare level was still not finished.

Saturday morning stated early at about 8AM and by night time we had finished Nightmare. We decided to try the cow level, but we were killed very quickly. We restored our characters as they were just before the cow level and started Hell. By around 10PM we had just killed "Blood Raven" in the graveyard, and decided to leave the evening there. We left the game running on Trish's machine so we could carry on the next day. Saturday we continued from around 8AM, again till about 10 PM.

Sunday morning we did not play as it was Easter-Egg-Hunt for the kids at Ouma's house. We met up with my sister and Tante Tanneke. Tante Tanneke made lovely mushrooms from eggs and tomatoes. The kids enjoyed the easter egg hunt as well. Just after 1 PM I got an SMS from the video store that we had to return the borrowed videos. Wow did not realize that it was that late already. So we left in a hurry and took back the videos. We got another one for the kids to watch that day as well, while we played Diablo.

We continued our game again at about 3 PM and the plan was to play to about 10 PM. I did not want to make it to late, as I was hopingto go geocaching around Cullinan the next morning.

10 PM arrived and we were very close to completing Act 1 on nightmare. So we all decided to just finish of Andariel and then stop. Just before 10H30 she was dead and Act 1 completed.

At this point Glenda's sorceress had not yet leveled as she was much higher then ours, but by now she had less then 10% experience to go to level. So we decided that we would play a little more until she at least leveled.

We started Act 2 in the sewers and had some amazingly good battles down there. Matt's Bones were of good use keeping back the enemy, and my Valkry also helped lots.

With just a little to go on Glenda's experience we ventured out into the dessert and down one of the tunnels and that is where the wheels came off. We all died going to level 2 in one of the tunnels. It took us to 2PM in the morning to get back our bodies and getting Glenda to level.

At this point we decided not to go geocaching in Cullinan as we had to be back by 2PM for when Neville arrived, and the house looked like a bomb had hit it. There was also a little bit more of cleaning to do in the bottom room.

Monday morning we got up at around 9AM and started cleaning the house, and taking the PCs back to their normal places. Cleaned the bottom room, as well as the rest of the house.

Neville arrived at about 3PM and luckily he wanted to go do some geocaching. We did quite a few I had already done, but there was one "Spot a Boeing" that I had not yet done. We did a few more in the west end of Edenvale as well.

Tuesday afternoon, after work, we did a few more caches in the Kempton Park area, where there was another one I had also not done.

All in all a good weekend.

Side Note: Hell level in Diablo II is a lot more difficult the the other levels. One thing that makes it more difficult is that a lot of the monsters are immune to one or other thing. But this adds a interesting twist to the game, as one can no longer just shoot bows or whatever at them, one needs to change quite often from fire to cold to poison quite often to kill them. Although it is much more difficult I like this level a lot more then the others.

Fixing the granny flat, Easter, Diablo, and geocaching

Today I stayed home from work, so we could get a tiler in to tile the kitchen and bathroom portion of the granny flat. I left home at 7AM to go find a tiler, and drove around quite a bit between CTM and Tile Africa to find one. Eventually I found someone at Tile Africa. He wanted R500.00 for the 12 m^2 but I said R400.00 which he accepted. He subcontracted the mixing of the cement out to another guy.

Very quickly he was 2 rows further down then we were on Saturday, and he also did a very good job around the washing basin, and toilet. In the morning he said he should be finished by 3 PM but in the end I took him to the taxi rank at about 6 PM. Somewhat later then he estimated, But none ever the less a job well done.

Once the kitchen is done I will use Alex again to tile the walls of the kitchen.

Next weekend is Easter, and every second year (or so) we play a game called Diablo II from start to finish. There are 5 of us playing. Trish and myself, with Jerome, and Matt and Glen. Sometimes we have vistors join us for a day or so (Rog and Nik), but they are not as hardcore as we are. We start setting up Thursday night, play 10+ hours on Friday, 10+ hours on Saturday, Sunday afternoon about 5 hours, and then 10+ hours on Monday.
The first year (2005) we completed the complete game including the cow level in the 4 days.
Last year (2007) we completed the 1st 4 chapters and only got halfway up the mountain before the end was the weekend drew our adventures to a close. Each year we play the one level up from the previous one. So this year we should be starting on Nightmare level.
Will add feedback by next weekend on how Diablo went for us.

The weekend after Easter we will start cleaning up all the building rubble. And there is quite a bit of that lying outside the new front door to the granny flat. With a bit of luck it will be rented out by the end of May, or early in June.

P.S. We reached out 140 geocache this weekend, by attending an event in western Johannesburg, and the hightlight was meeting Erik the geocache reviewer for South Africa, all the way out from the USA, who is/was here on holiday.

Modderfontein Duck Derby

Today was the annual Duck derby at the Modderfontein dam hosted by the Edenvale Rotary club. I have heard of it before, but this was the first time that went to the event. You buy a number, and it is then allocated to a cute little yellow duck. The ducks are then released, and a race between the 1000+ ducks ensues down the river.

We got there quite early and walked around looking at the various kiosks, and also bought something to eat.



At 13H30 it was time for the duck derby. Lots of people and kids were standing along the river back, help the ducks that get stuck along.












Great fun was had by all, and we even took Bobbie (our Jack Russel) with. He loved getting out of the garden, and lots of kids wanted to stoke him. However if there were other dogs close by he started to bark, and at one point it got a little to much. I think he also thoroughly enjoyed the the outing with us.



In the morning I also quickly went past "Lightning Strike" which is a geocache about 150 meters from the event. From the log book it seems it was our 37th cache we did. We are currently on 139, and thus almost 100 caches ago that we were here last. We swapped a Kudu or Rhino head for a small compass.

Our beloved Smokie is no more.....

Last night our beloved African Gray parrot died.
Trish saw him sitting on the pool fence in a very uncomfortable manner, and a very distant look in him. We were not sure as to the cause of this and took him to the Vet. I thought that maybe something was stuck in his crop, as he lifted his head quite high at times, and put the top of his beak into the lower one. Then there were times that he seemed with it and times he would fall all over the place.
On the way to the Vet, he brought up a whole lot of food, and I thought Whew .... no expensive vet bills. Trish preferred that we take him for a checkup. Things did not improve with Smokie while we we waited to see the vet. When we saw the Vet and told him our story, he wanted to rule out metal poisoning, by doing an x-ray. The x-ray showed nothing. At this time he was having seizures, and would go into trance and then come out again. The Vet gave him some Valium or something to help with the secures, and would phone us later to let us know how things went.
One of the longest hours went past that we had in a long time. When he phoned it was not good news. Smokie was was still having the secures. We would now wait and see how what happend to smokie in the morning.

We made ready to go to the Vet in morning at around 8AM. About 20 to 8 then Vet phoned with the bad news. Smokie passed away during the night. He will be missed, as he was part of the family. No more saying goodbey to him and the kids in the morning. And no more chin rubs in the afternoons when I get back from work. No more bell rings when it is dinner time, so that he can come to the table to eat with us.

Smokie we will miss you dearly.

Why I want to start blogging....

My dad keeps a diary of their lives for the past 7 or so years. It is amazing to read and I saw a few things in my dad that I had forgotten, and a few other things I did not know. I tried to start a diary in the beginning of 2007, but is soon fell flat, as I had not much to say.

I am an avid geocacher, and keep a detailed log book of those activities. I quite enjoy keeping the detailed log, with a few pictures to remember each cache. I am also an avid internet addict, and suffer a little from internet-less. So combining my internet addiction with the little bit of log book keeping, a blog seems like the perfect fit. Lets see if I keep this up for some time.