Useless

I’m beginning to think that I am the world’s worst Geocacher, man. I’ve gotten to enjoy many nice hikes, which is really cool, but I rarely find the cache, and today was no exception.
After breakfast this morning (made by yours truly for the family while the wife slept in, thankyouverymuch) we took the kids to find the Rubio Haunted Area, but after 40 minutes of searching an area of about 40 square feet, we gave up. We did get to see a deer climbing up the mountain, though, which was really cool.
Been listening to the Oingo Boingo Farewell Concert while I’ve been home today. Boingo is one of those bands which for whatever reason is only associated with positive memories:

  • Gates McFadden dancing around to “Elevator Man,” way back when we were on TNG.
  • Darin and me cranking Boingo Alive while driving down to Disneyland on one of our numerous Annual pass holder’s trips during high school.
  • Going to a Laserium show at the Griffith Observatory to see the KROQ show in 10th grade, which was my first introduction to “Grey Matter.”

Actually, I do have one sad memory associated with Boingo: The Boi~ngo CD was one of my favorites back in the day, and it’s nowhere to be found in my collection. Sadly, it’s out of print, so I’m reduced to digging through the bargain bin at the Car Wash in hopes of finding one amongst all the Bob Goldthwait comedy albums. Oh, and their official website seems to be down.
So that’s two things.
But I saw a deer today. (ECHO $LAME_STAND_BY_ME_JOKE)
UPDATE: 10PM PST: Thank you to all the people who emailed me about picking up Boi~ngo on eBay, or half.com! I spoke with my best friend Darin, and he has a copy of thhe CD that we used to listen to at his house! I’m picking up a copy from him tomorrow. (That’s ethical, right? I bought the CD once, and it got lost, and it’s out of print anyhow…so getting a copy…that’s cool, right? Maybe I’ll “bid” on it from him.) =]

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66 thoughts on “Useless”

  1. A deer you say.. no kidding.
    Im thinking of starting one of those geocacher deals where i live.. but not many people own GPS systems around here.. kinda sucks..
    oh well.
    buy.

  3. oingoboingo is just one of those things that you can’t say without smiling just a little bit…
    gotta be one of the silliest names i’ve ever heard for a band…
    although the band ‘groovy aadvarks’ comes pretty close…
    and as for that stand by me reference…
    wow..
    have to admit, as i read it, the first thing that popped in my mind was,
    ‘cool..just like at the end of that movie….hahaa’
    anyhow, better luck next time on the geocache thing…
    and once again..
    read the harry potter books…
    cheers
    ty

  4. I did a search on blogtree.com for all blogs that are english. Didn’t realize you were blogging. But I’m new to the whole nonsense. You were like my hero as a kid.
    Anyway…If you or anyone you know maintains a .{dot}name domain, will you please let me know…I appreciate it.

  7. i’ve never been geocaching so i can’t help you with geocaching strategy…to tell the truth…i’d never heard of it until i found your web site…but you make it sound like great non-stressful fun…unlike some of the other activities out there…geocaching sounds like a good way to spend the weekend…but in my part of southern illinois it’s pretty much unknown…as for oingo boingo…i associate them with the late 80’s when i was working at a rock station in terre haute indiana…they clashed with just about everything we played back then…but i played ’em anyway…enjoy the relaxing moments of the weekend…i’m at the moment at work doing stuff leftover from saturday…hope too get back to my relaxation in a couple hours.

  9. Been ages since I went Geocaching with the b/f; the last time he scribbled down notes instead of printing the cache pages, and we thought the cache we found was a different one, so we posted all our notes (including the Travelbug we found) in the wrong one…but it’s still fun. And for someone as sedentary as I tend to be, that’s saying somethin’.
    And you’d’ve loved what KFOG did for Ten@10 on Halloween – they opened with “This Is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas, and went directly into “Dead Man’s Party.” You better believe I had the radio cranked for that. 😉

  10. Man, I’ve been looking for boi-ngo for ages too — it was always my favorite. I was tempted by the half.com link above, but turned out to be boingo, a different (later) album. I still have the cassette of boi-ngo I’ve had since 9th grade, and have been pondering burning it to CD before the tape dies. I did a thorough search through gnutella a couple times, to no avail aside from a couple of the better-known songs. Grr. Glad to hear there’s still fans out there (I just listened to my copy of Boingo Alive on vinyl the other night, first time in years).

  11. Always a pleasure to read your observations, you “deer” thing you. Good luck next time on the geocaching!

  12. Talking about things that stick in your head. It didn’t take many episodes of TNG for me to suspect that Gates McFadden was a professional dancer, and one of those first “dancing doctor” subplots confirmed it, but…
    Several years ago I had finally gotten around to acquiring the special edition DVD of Labyrinth (from Billy’s bargain basement or something) and noticed as I read the liner notes a “Cheryl G. McFadden” saying to myself “could it be?”… Didn’t take long in the special features section to find out it was “Cheryl Gates McFadden” and to watch her describing all the work put into so many of the scenes. Talk about an ultra geeky-cool thing to find out — if only very belatedly.

  18. Yep, went to find a cache that was an hour and a half drive away and the same thing happened. It was an absolutely beautiful area, but we couldn’t find the darn thing. Ack! I think that’s the only annoying thing about geocaching. NOT finding the cache!

  20. It took a foreigner’s introduction to hook me on both “Dead Man’s Party” and Bryan Ferry’s “Bete Noire”. So embarassing.

  21. I’m lousy at this passing along links thing, but I searched ebay.ca for Oingo Boingo, and found the boi~ngo LP on there for $8.99. Have no idea if the LP does you any good, but there it is.

  23. Hey! “Meat Bob” is a great comedy album! I listened to a lot of Boingo back in the day, and now my memories of “Elevator Man” are forever colored with that image. Not sure to thank you for that or not. 🙂 Great blog entry though.

  24. I was raised on Oingo Boingo, Running on a Treadmill and the Forbidden Zone to be precise. I have a great deal of respect for the band as well as for Danny.
    The Farewell album is one of my favs, perhaps because it has the best version (in my opinion) of Insanity. I think the album really demonstrates their ability to play all different types of music… they were so versitile. Yay!
    I’d have to say that Boingo remains my favourite band. There just seems to be something about them.
    “I’m so sorry, please forgive me. Who do I pray to, to straighten out this problem…”

  25. Hmm. I’ve found almost 20 caches and have never struck out.
    Do you bring the “cheat” along?
    I always print it out and use it as a last resort.
    Sometimes I need it, usually not.
    Also make sure you enter the coordinates right or you may find yourself down the side of a cliff looking around 1/4 mile from the real spot (really happened to me 🙂

  26. Here’s something creepy: As I was reading this entry, Oingo Boingo came on the
    radio. Well, not really the radio, of course, which only plays crap, but one of those
    music-only stations you can get with digital cable. “Just Another Day” is the song.
    Don’t get discouraged with the geocaching. My boyfriend and I started geocaching
    after reading about it on your site, so we have you to thank for helping us discover
    one of our very favorite activities.
    We live three states apart, so geocaching is a great activity we can do whenever we
    visit each other without having to take a bunch of equipment on the plane.
    We don’t always find the cache either, and yeah
    that’s disappointing, but the hunt is fun in itself and so is just being outside in the
    fresh air appreciating nature.

  27. It also helps to print out the comments from all the previous visitors to a cache… there are often valuable hints that are NOT in the cheat that can help you find the prize. I often print the cheat and comments, and blindly pack them into my backpack so I’m not tempted to cheat… so then I can bust that stuff out if I’m really truly lost.
    Actually, that’s how I *used* to do it. I either download it all to my Treo, or dial up to look up the cache page on it. Horribly geeky.

  28. Hey wil, I can send you boi-ngo in ogg or mp3 format if ya like. I can’t imagine not having this album 🙂 It’s also available on half.com for $8.50 after shipping.

  29. I know what you mean about not finding the geocache, there is one here, over in Post Falls Idaho, that I couldn’t find. I later found it on my second try, I had actually kicked the natural looking object it was hiding in the first time around, but never picked it up to look under it till the second try. It’s a very addictive passtime. You should hide a cache yourself. I happened upon the Geocaching.com site while looking for links about Movable Type. Dragged out my old Magellan 2000 and it never found a sattelite! Faulty firmware I guess… So I ran out and got an E-Trex Legend. Glad I sprang for the extra expense over the cheaper models… the mapping makes it so much more functional. Keep looking!

  30. hey Willie I aint posted in a while. I was just curious if you have any positive memories of doing the voice overs to one of my favorite childhood movies The Secret of NIMH?
    I was surprised to see your name in the credits the other day after I watched it.
    hops.

  31. Getting a copy of the CD from your friend will make the record execs about as much money as it would if you buy it second-hand.

  32. yeah Oingo Boingo is pretty cool. Then again I liked the Chris Gaines album (which is considered one of the worst albums out there).

  33. I’m so embarrassed.
    I needed to have the lame SBM joke pointed out.
    And I only watched the DVD a couple of days ago.
    *wishes ground would swallow him up*

  35. Never heard of the band, but good luck finding it. If you can’t find a legitimate copy of it somewhere, then go ahead and get a copy from a friend, you already owned a copy of it before, so that should quell any moralists who believe that copying cd’s is wrong….*feels a rant coming on about pirating music but does his best to quell it*.

  36. Oingo Boingo is a favorite of mine as well, though I got a lot of crap in college from my roommate’s boyfriend, who had never heard of them… 🙂 Then again, he was a GWAR fan… 🙂

  37. Wil,
    Havn’t posted in a while, but I got to say 1.good job fixing breakfast for the wifey. 2.good job trying to find the cache. 3. GREAT JOB seeing Harry Potter I saw it Saturday and it so rocked.
    Keep up being as geeky as possible and I will to.
    Best to you and your family……
    Matt……

  38. Will,
    I have (i think) every oingo boingo CD up to Boingo Live .. [like a jacket or cassette box or whatever]
    including Boingo .. if you can prove to me you own the tape or a broken CD .. i can help ya out.
    [copywrite crap dontchyaknow]
    I know how much it sucks to loose that ‘one’ cd that you cant replace anymore. I have a handful of cd’s that i only play copies of .. because they can never be replaced.
    [Good for your soul is one of them :P]

  39. Wil,
    I know how you feel about geo-caching. I’ve been doing this for a while and I usually don’t find the cache on the first try – uness it’s really obvious. =) However I love the hunt itself, finding the cache itself is just a really cool bonus. =)
    Last week I was within 3 feet of a cache and couldn’t locate it (I have since gotten an email from the cache owner.. turns out I was RIGHT next to it so will go back sometime this week, with gloves!) The next one I tried had me stumped for a while. There were two trees, and exposed ground. That’s it. I knew it was there, took me a bit to work out exactly where however. 😉
    I’ve not listened to Oingo Boingo in a while.. Glad your freind had a copy you can borrow. =)

  42. It takes finding a few caches to get the “cache sense”. You just start to see where people tend to hide caches. I have found a little over 30 of them here in the Tampa area and it get’s easier.
    Maybe hide a WWDN cache?? And post on your site when people find it? That would be cool.
    Happy caching!

  43. There is actually a cache off of Bimini that is in 70ft of water. Looking forward to strapping on the tank of nitrox for that one!!

  44. Wil,
    Here is how you can get an officially licensed copy on BOI~NGO (aka BIG ONO) in MP3 format.
    Goto http://www.3mp3.com and signup for the eMusic site (free 14 day / 50 track trial too!) and search for Oingo Boingo…and BOINGO! you have access to it! Download it and it is YOURS! No DRM like stupid PressPlay and others.
    Be Seeing You!
    Number 41

  45. Wil,
    I’d like to say it was my near encyclopedic knowledge of popular culture, but I actually own the album. Now I have a sudden urge to go buy a Tab. 🙂 Congrads on finding a copy of Boi~ngo!

  49. burning a cd is so ethical. You are basically borowing his back up of the original. You should always back up your cds.

  50. Ok, silly young brit comment but did/has Oingo-Boingo have/got Danny Elfman in it of Batman/Spiderman/Nightmare before christmas fame?
    Please delete as appropriate.
    Gates McFadden dancing!
    Wow!
    Almost as good as Gates Mcfadden Choreographing dwarves for Labyrinth. Almost.

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