2005 Summer Vacation – August 7th – Day 9

After lunch we drove to Astoria with my brother, Jim, and his family. Our first priority was the Astoria Column which the kids want to revisit every time we come to the area. The 125 foot tall column was built in 1926 as a monument to the arrival of the railroad in the Northwest on what appears to be the highest hill on the edge of town. The column is painted with 14 25-foot-long scenes depicting the history of the settling of the west spiraling from the bottom of the column all the way to the top.

The view from the parking area of the Pacific Ocean and Columbia River is magnificent and, if you climb the 164-step spiral staircase inside the column, the 360-degree view from the top is even more spectacular. But the main reason to climb to the top is to throw balsa gliders out over the countryside. With the right breeze and a good toss the planes can fly for quite a long time before being swallowed by the forest below.

The gliders are sold at the gift shop across the parking lot for 70 cents each or 5 for $3.00. We bought each of the kids 5 planes to take to the top and then I went downwind of the tower to collect planes that didn’t make it into the forest. I was able to collect enough planes to give each of the kids two more trips to the top with 3 more planes each time.

After that workout we waited at the Maritime Museum for the little Trolley Train but it was too crowded so we drove back to Long Beach and Jim treated us all to wonderful ice cream cones at Scoopers. It was a great way to end the outing.

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• 2005 Summer Vacation

Steve Gibson of Sheilds-Up! fame made some interesting points on his Security Now! Episode 3 podcast with Leo Leport regarding the possible advantages of using 2 or more routers in series within a LAN.

Of course, the primary use of a router is that it allows multiple computers to utilize a single internet connection. A byproduct of this is that the router creates a hardware firewall preventing unsolicited internet traffic from reaching the PCs.

So if one router protects you from malicious traffic on the internet what use is there for a second one? It allows you to create a second inner LAN. Computers can be placed on the regular ‘outer’ LAN or on the super-secure ‘inner’ LAN.

• Machines on the “Semi-Secure” (middle) LAN can access the Internet, but they are protected by the “External NAT” from most Internet badness.
• Machines on the “Super-Secure” internal LAN can also access the Internet, first by going out through the “Internal NAT” and then the “External NAT”. As with machines on the Semi-Secure LAN, the “External NAT” will keep unsolicited traffic from entering the network.
• Because the Semi-Secure LAN is on the OUTSIDE (WAN side) of the Internal NAT, the machines on the Semi-Secure LAN are unable to freely access the machines behind the Internal NAT.
• The machines behind the Internal NAT can access the machines in the middle, but NOT the other way around!

Gibson gives three uses for creating this secure inner LAN

1. Isolate a router’s DMZ network and servers:
   The network can be set up to allow traffic past the first router to a specific machine. The rest of the machines can be protected from not just any ports that were opened on the outer router but also from any nasties that might somehow have infected the machine(s) in the outer LAN.

2. Isolating an open or low-security wireless access point: Anyone who gains access to your wireless access to your network also has access your LAN and therefore has access to the data on other machines on your LAN.

3. Protecting a high value machine from the rest of the network: If others on your network (kids @ home or employees @ work) get a computer virus it can easily spread to other computers on the same network.

In all 3 scenarios creating an inner secure LAN would be a good idea. Remember — Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not after you.

The podcast mentioned above has a good discussion on this topic as does this article at Gibson’s site, NAT Router Security Solutions.

2005 Summer Vacation – August 7th – Day 9

We got out on the beach a little after 9am to do a little crabbing. Low tide was at 9:45 so we were right on schedule. We took the new Expedition for it’s first beach drive.

The beach along the Long Beach peninsula is considered a state highway. You can drive along the beach if you follow the rules (and the police do monitor these “roads”, trust me, I know). The speed limit is 25 miles per hour and pedestrians have the right of way.

Last year as we were hunting for sand dollars we chanced upon some tide pools containing crabs. We caught at least a dozen by wading in and grabbing them from behind. We did not know what the rules were so we released all that we caught. This year my brother, Jim, made sure we knew the rules before we headed out.

Our luck was not near as good this year as last. Not only did we not find any sand dollars, we only found two crabs, and Jim was only able to catch one of them. It was a male though and it was about 8″ across so it was a keeper. Crab fettucini was added to the evening’s menu.

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• Crab Hunting
• 2005 Summer Vacation

My youngest daughter, Kirsten, and Lizzy, the youngest daughter of the friends we were visiting in Lacey (near Olympia), were looking like they needed something fun to do. I asked Lizzy if she would like to go hunt treasures in the nearby parks and I got an enthusiastic yes from her so the three of us were off to hunt the elusive tupperware.

The nearest cache to their home is called Thank You and is in a nice wooded city park. Wish we had trees like these over in the Tri-Cities – but am glad it doesn’t rain like it does here. I explained what we were looking for and gave some rudimentary instructions on how the GPSr would get us close but we will have to search for it.

It took some searching but I finally noticed some green of an ammo box showing from the hiding spot. I called the girls over and they were then able to “find” it too. The girls traded the toys they brought for a little energizer wild animal & a deck of playing cards. As always I left some million dollar bills.

Next was Wonderbits, located in another nice little park. The paths through the park were very well kept. The clue said you may need to dig the cache out of a log, which I thought would give away the location too easily. But, alas, the GPSr brought us to a spot crowded with fallen trees. The girls and I started looking in both ends of each tree section until we found the container. The girls traded some McDonald’s toys for 2 ‘wonderbit’ rocks in the cache and I left a couple of million dollar bills.

I actually got myself turned around after finding the cache and we exited the woods to find ourselves in the wrong parking lot. I need to force myself to mark the car location anytime I am going to get out visual range of the vehicle. It never seems necessary when you are headed in to find a cache. You are following an arrow but don’t realize that you have taken 6 forks in the paths because they were obvious. On the way out, without the little arrow to help you, each fork in the path looks just as good as any other.

Don’t Bet on It was next on our route. We arrived at an office complex and parked the car. The GPSr led us around the building where, if it had been a week-day, we would have had hundreds of eyes peering at us through the multi-storied tinted windows. The hiding place for this one surprised me because when I saw the location I ruled it out. Obviously I was wrong but only for a short while.

All three of us signed the log but we forgot to stick a million dollar bill in the cache. The girls saw a large artificial boulder near the cache location and decided they needed to climb it.

We then drove over to hunt for Lacey Drive-Inn. After some searching I spotted the cache, a large altoids tin that blended in so well with the utilities on the outside of the building that, even though it was completely out in the open, it was almost impossible to see.

After I spotted the cache I called the girls over and let them find it for themselves. They were impressed that they thought they had scoured the area earlier yet did not see it. We all signed the log and left a million-dollar bill.

It was almost 2pm so the girls and I stopped at McDonalds for a quick bite to eat. It was also getting to be time to head back so we would see what caches we could find on the way back to Lizzy’s house.

The Lacey Civic Plaza cache was real close. The girls found this one near one of the flag poles. A million dollar bill would not fit in the container which was just barely large enough for the log.

Next on the route home was Good Year Guy which we failed to find. According to the logs on Geocaching.com we were not the only ones who have not found it recently so it probably is no longer there. Sometimes a cache is not re-hidden well enough or a non-geocacher chances upon the cache container and pilfers the contents.

Our last cache for the day was The Qwest for Brooks Park. Except for the misspelling of ‘quest’ the cache is appropriately named. I drove around the block at least twice looking for a way in to the park. We finally found our way in and the girls used the GPSr to figure out where the cache must be located. Lizzy was the one who found the cache and we all signed the log and I left the obligatory million dollar bill.

I ran across this article and realized how desperate some people are to make a sale. You really wonder if the folks he was dealing with even considered that if he was willing to do this, what made them think he was being honest with them? Would you buy a car from a guy who was willing to do this? Almost like the Nigeria Scam you realize it takes 2 dishonest people for the scam to work. Let’s not just hope we never run into anyone this clever or desperate to sell us something but pray that it is not tempting for us to participate.

From KHOU news in Houston, Texas:

Robbins Autoplex has been around since the 1930s. It is family-owned and operated. The Humble dealership has weathered many storms, but none like the case of veteran employee Tobias Green. Green was arrested early Wednesday on charges of burning cars for customers. He is charged with arson and insurance fraud.

As 11 News first reported, Green allegedly called his scheme the “rotisserie special.” Investigators say he’d torch cars for customers, but there was a catch. They had to agree to use the insurance money to buy a new vehicle from him.

“We believe he is approaching everybody, for the most part, who is upside down in their car and has good insurance,” said HFD arson investigator Scott Clemants. “If they have good insurance, than he talks to them about his deal in a backroom.”

Clemants said they once watched Green in the act. “The suspect had come into the location with another female and intentionally set a car on fire,” Clemants said.

Before joining Robbins, Green was a police officer in Ames and Liberty counties. Investigators believe that experience may have taught him how to make the arson fires look like an accident to fool adjusters.

They point out that arson schemes drive up the cost of insurance for everyone else.

As shipped, WordPress the title of RSS-comment-feeds only include the author. This makes it real difficult to understand what a comment is about since all you have is:

• by Joe Schmoe

as the title of a comment in your feed reader (I use Newsgator Online) and then their comment. So you get a series of comments regarding different posts from the same site, many of them looking something like this:

by Joe Schmoe
I really agree with you on that but you may want to check out xyz.com

I had previously hacked the WordPress code to add the title of a post to the RSS feed. I was able to remove that hack and use PostTitleInCommentRSS plugin from Scattered. I modified the plugin to output:

• by: Joe Schmoe Re: Post Title

instead of

• by: Joe Schmoe on Post Title

When I see something I like on someone else’s blog I always want to find out how they did it – and more often than not it is a simple WordPress plugin. Well, someday someone may see something they like on my blog and want to copy it. Now they can! I just installed pluginsUsed from AndrewSW.com and am using it my page: Wordpress - Plugins Installed .

This plugin displays the plugins that are active in one of two ways:

• displayPluginsAsTable() – which displays as a nicely formated table with links to the author and plugin URIs.
• displayPluginsAsList() – which displays a list of links to the plugin URI suitable for a sidebar

Both are php functions so to use them on a regular post or a static page you must use either RunPHP or PHPExec plugins. I have been using the PHPExec plugin.

Started out the morning hoping to find a few geocaches. Using CacheMate I promptly drove to the closest cache to the motel, Road Going Nowhere. I parked the car and headed up the blocked road spur to what looked like a good path into the “woods.” The GPS said the cache was about 50 yards in, so in I tromped. I spent about 30 minutes searching but to no avail. Finally decided to give up on this one and search for some easier caches.

Next was the Mark Twain Cache which turned out to be a bronze sculpture of the writer sitting on a bench prominently placed at the corner of a fairly busy intersection. I could not sit with ole Mark because the seat was very wet but I wasn’t much in the mood for sitting. A litte searching produced a small altoids tin that was cleverly hidden.

As always I left some million dollar bills in this cache as I did in each cache this morning. They were all micro-caches this morning so I did not have to worry about trading – though I usually never take anything but always throw in a couple of million dollar bills if there is room.

Sunset Drive-Inn was the next cache on my list. The coordinates placed me in a undeveloped lot with some trees. Where could it be? Looked around the area and decided there were only a couple places it could be and sure enough it was at the first place I looked.

Next was supposed to be a cache at the Home Depot but as I approached it I realized I was on the wrong side of the interstate. As I drove I saw a walkway over but it was still too far away. Then I remembered seeing something about a walkway and sure enough my GPS showed Tumwater Bridge Walk The hint for the cache said it was at kid height and, sure enough, I wish I had one of my kids with me. Wasn’t sure this old body would get to the cache but was able to retrieve the large altoids tin.

Freddys was right at the overpass. I pulled into the employee parking and saw a light post – and immediately knew to lift the bolt cover for a quick cache & dash.

Well it was time to be getting back to the hotel so we could check out and visit our friends. I still had the De-Pot to do over at Home Depot. I pulled in next to the cache location and scoped out where in the landscaping a cache could be hidden. A little sluething and I found the little film canister.

As an auto insurance agent, Washington state drivers license (and identification card) numbers have always been a part of my job. I have used them often enough that I have the pattern that the state uses memorized so that if someone tells me their driver’s license number I can usually tell them their birthday. It can be fun to tell people that you can tell their birthday from their checkbook. They do not realize that the driver’s license number they have printed on the check tells all.

Washington state encodes your last name, first initial, middle initial, and your date of birth into your driver’s license number. A Washington Identification Card uses the same number as the driver’s license for someone who does not or cannot drive. This online program by Alan De Smet will calculate a drivers license number for you if you want a good guess at what someone’s license number would be.

His site also has the best explanation I could find of how the system works:

These license numbers look like the following:

• WOO**JT546KA – “John T. Woo” born on May 1st, 1946
• WALKECR579DU – “Christopher R. Walken” born on March 31st, 1943
• LLLLLFMYYXmd – Pattern deciphered below

Drivers License Status

You can go online and check the status of a Washinton License or ID Card number. The screen shot on the right shows what information is available online.

Deciphering the Number

2005 Summer Vacation – August 5th – Day 7

After visiting Fort Clatsop and getting some lunch we drove over to Fort Stevens State Park.

We followed the signs to an old wreck, the Peter Iredale, which ran aground during a storm in 1906. The rusting hulk is more than half buried in the sand on the beach. We viewed it from the car since we did not plan to play on the beach and saw no need to get out in the wind and track sand into the car.

We then drove over to the Historic Military Site which had a small museum and what remains of the original Fort Stevens. The original fort was constructed in 1863 for the Civil War and remained active until shortly after World War II.

I had no idea the west coast had any involvement in the civil war. It is hard to imagine Union soldiers standing guard over the mouth of the Columbia. The stories one reads usually take place in the east coast states with some mention of states as far west as Mississippi. A brochure at the fort explained that President Lincoln ordered the construction of the fort due to British and Confederate sea raiders in the area. There was a need to protect the shipping coming in to the Columbia River as well as to deter foreign powers from taking advantage of the situation.

On June 21, 1942 Fort Stevens gained the distinction of being fired upon by a Japanese submarine roaming off-shore. The submarine fired 17 shells at the fort but the fort did not fire back and no damage was inflicted on the fort.

The concrete gun batteries, which are the most prominent feature of the site, where built between 1897 and 1904. Using their FRS radios the boys had great fun playing a modified game of hide & seek in the many rooms and passageways.

As we were leaving a group was beginning to set up for a civil war reenactment scheduled for later in the week.

Inside the museum there is a scale model of the fort which helps give you an idea of what the encampment at the fort looked like when it was still commissioned. Also inside were some of the guns and shells that were used as well as one of the WWII era mines that was used to protect the mouth of the Columbia River. Detonation of the mines was electronically controlled from the Mine Commander’s Stations at Fort Stevens or across the Columbia River at Fort Columbia

Near the museum a long house has been reconstructed at the site of a Clatsop Indians village. Lewis and Clark traded with these Indians during their stay at Fort Clatsop. My lack of knowledge regarding Native American culture was evident in that I thought that all Indians lived in teepees.

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• Fort Stevens
• 2005 Summer Vacation