Teresa from yousguys came to visit me on February 24th and 25th to attempt geocaching glory, i.e. find as many caches as possible in 2 days. Can you say.....
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I mean my husband actually gave me permission to act like I was single without child for a FULL weekend!
So in order to prepare for our Glorious Adventure that was soon to commence, I decided I had better hurry and update my GPS with the most recent local area Pocket Query... this of course happened on Friday afternoon while Teresa was driving all the way from Arizona just to go geocaching with me... can you say BAD IDEA for the technically challenged.
The following encounter is not to be attempted by an impatient, pregnant, frantic woman while also trying to act normal sitting at her desk at work....
About 0900 on Friday morning, I turned on my computer and much to my dismay realized my computer had been re imaged a few months ago and all my Internet downloaded programs, like my GSAK geocaching application, were gone. I groaned and downloaded the program back to my computer. Then I had to open Geocaching.com and transfer all my pocket queries back onto GSAK. About 45 minutes later I plugged my Garmin GPS into the computer and tried to send data to my GPS.... error no GPS device found.. oh crap.
After thinking about it for a few minutes, I remembered I needed to re download all the Garmin Communicator and Garmin Plug-ins required for you Garmin because of the re image..... So another 15 minutes later I retried sending a data file to the GPS.... error.. no GPS device found... dammit! After trying a few more futile things like unplugging and replugging in my GPS, shutting it down and turning it back on, and finally trying to send a single geocache file to the GPS to no avail... I realized I would have to call the Garmin help desk.
The man who answered the phone at Garmin was, like usual, smarter than God when it came to geocaching applications and all things about a GPS. After a bunch of trouble shooting things that didn't work, he asked me to make sure my GPS was plugged in.. well duh yeah it's plugged it I'm not a complete idiot. After making sure the GPS was plugged in correctly he asked me to try the port with a jump drive or something to make sure the port worked.. which I did. Guess what, the stupid port that I had the GPS plugged into didn't work. Therefore it wasn't connecting to the computer.. and panic set in until I remembered there are some extra ports on the back of the computer.. tried the ports, guess what GSAK recognized my GPS and the data file was successfully sent. Feelings of utter relief set in and I may have told the guy from Garmin I loved him.
So crisis adverted. I had my updated pocket query on my GPS, we were ready for two full days of nothing but pure caching glory, right? Wrong.
As I unplugged my GPS from the computer and attempted to look at a few geocaches to check the data transfer, I realized to my horror.. THERE WAS NOTHING THERE!! What in the hell!! It's probably noon at this point, Teresa is just hours away from arriving, I'm trying to be calm at work and not cause a scene... (didn't happen, I think I still owe a few dollars to the Buck Bucket for cussing)......
I, of course, called back the Garmin help desk. This time however it's not my long lost love who has all the answers to my dumb technologically challenged questions, instead its a sweet way to perky girl who knows NOTHING about geocaching, any geocaching applications, or the particular model of my GPS.... great. Doom is near, I am a failure. I am sorry Teresa I have failed you.
I'm sorry that is mean, she might have been a brunette....
So I quickly recap my day so far and all the trouble shooting that was done with the previous Garmin employee. She has me try to send some data over the GPS while she is on the phone with me and than check my GPS to see if it transferred... Well no it didn't, imagine that. Why do you think I called you?
She says "We may need to reset your GPS". At this point, its like, okay what ever the will fix it. So we run through the steps, which requires a person to hold down 6 buttons (exaggerating again, only 3) on your GPS at the same time until it restarts, well I either cannon physically hold down all these buttons at the same time or something so I can't get it to reset. Then all of a sudden she says, "WAIT, do you have maps loaded on your GPS?" ........ Well yeah... She says,"It might erase the maps off your GPS if we reset it, if they are saved to a disk take the disk out first." So basically I am hoping that my failed attempts at resetting the GPS, were in fact failed attempts. After removing the disk, I try to press all the tiny buttons again, at the same time, for like 20 seconds, and finally it resets. We try to send more files to the GPS, it says download successful, but once again when I try to search for geocaches on my GPS there is nothing there. At this point, I'm pretty sure I'm screwed and won't have a working GPS this weekend.
Then she says to go the Geocaches folder on the GPS and look in there instead of trying the Find Geocaches button... I do.. HOLY SHIT!!! They are there!! Angels start singing, the heavens part!! I have caches on my GPS!!! Then I hurry up and slam my maps disk in the GPS and ta-da the maps are there as well!!
As we both think about it for a minute, I'm pretty sure we both came to the same conclusion at the same time..... I'm inside a building with tons of metal, my GPS isn't picking up satellite signal, so when I tried to "Find Geocaches" on my GPS, nothing would come up.............. yeah....
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Stay tuned for Goecaching Glory - Part 2 which includes a clown car, a small grass fire, and a police officer
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