Postcards from the Trail

It is going to be an outstanding year for desert wildflowers. All the reports say it will rival or exceed the last El Nino year, 1998. We have learned to watch the rainfall that Southern California and Arizona receives starting in October. This rainfall will help the flower germinate the following spring. It needs to had a continue supply through February along with moderate temperatures.

We usually go to Tucson to see the flowers but newsreports started mentioning Death Valley. DV averages about 2 inches of rain a year but already it has received 5 inches since July 2004. The rangers are forecasting a good bloom.

We have never been to Death Valley but what a perfect complement to climbing Mt. Whitney. We can now visit the lowest point in the continugous US after having climbed to the highest point.

We've booked a flight into Las Vegas and reserved a car. The drive is about 2-3 hours and is actually the closest airport. Ontario is pretty close also but we really didn't want to do that drive again.

Unfortunately, most of the accomodations at Furnace Creek are booked. Oh well, we'll go camping. We've flown and camped before. We just use our ice chest as a suitcase and put all the gear in the ice chest. Of course, we can't fly with camp stove fuel but our small backpacking stove has a detachable fuel canister so we'll just swing by the REI before leaving Vegas. Actually, there is also a Whole Foods so we can also grab some gourmet grub before leaving.

I am actually looking forward (somewhat) to camping. I love it at night when you can see the stars. I can't say that I'm looking forward to sleeping on the hard ground.

Of course, we hope to do a hike or two. We're only going to have three nights so a bit of sightseeing and short hikes. We mulled over renting an SUV but we really don't think we'll use it in the short period. So we'll have to stick to the paved and good gravel roads.

But we couldn't resist the lure of Tucson. Initially, it sounded like the rains had mostly missed Tucson but the Sonora Desert Museum is also predicting a stunning show. So we booked also a quick trip to Tucson the weekend after Death Valley. An early flight out to Phoenix, two nights and then return at midnight. That will give G one day to work on his plants for the spring sales.

I almost didn't think I'd make this month's tasting. Sunday I was attacked with some pretty bad malware/spyware. I've worked on it for the past four evenings and I think I've finally got my computer cleaned up. I'll post later the sad story and lessons learned.

My wine for this month's Wine Blogging Wednesday is a bottle of Warwick "Old Bush Vines" Pinotage. I want to thank Cook Sister! for hosting it.

I am very interested in knowing more about wines from South Africa. We are planning a trip to South Africa to see the wildflowers in September. We are planning on doing a tasting or two and I need to know more. I plan on checking Cook Sister! blog more to learn about South Africa.

This is my second tasting of the Warwick Pinotage. It is from the Stellenbosch region. The price was $18.00.

Label Notes:

Pinotage is a uniquely South African variety which was born and raised in our valley. Pinotage is particularly concentrated and full bodied when grown on 'old bush vines'. This wine displays an alluring array of mouth-filling dark fruit flavors, a lush seductive texture and a lingering finish enhanced by carefully managed oak maturation. This is a wine to enjoy now or in the next 4-5 years. Warwick Cellar is on the premium red wine slopes of Simonsberg, near Stellenbosch. Established in 1770, the winemaking tradition was revived in 1964 by the Ratcliffe family.

Tasting Notes:

I really enjoyed this wine. Immediately after opening, it had a slightly smokey flavor which left after it had been opened for a while. It has a nice garnet color. I definitely agree that it has a strong flavor of black fruits such as berries and black cherry. It is a little tannic but still very drinkable. It is slightly soft but yet has a very full texture.

I had it with a couple of thick lamb chops seasoned with rosemary ang garlic. For a vegetable, I roasted some fresh aspargus and carrots. It stood up well to the asparagus. After dinner, I had a nice aged cheddar from Fiscalini Farmstead.

I got hit by a 'driveby download' on Sunday. Yes, it was an unlucky 13th. I naively was reading a message board (not SlowTalk) and clicked on a link. It took me out to a site to provide song lyrics. Those sites are notorious downloading malware/spyware to your PC. If I had only known....

Suddenly, a windows installer box popped up along with lots of different popups. Crap. The dirty little popups also wouldn't let me close them safely by clicking on the upper right corner or right clicking and choosing close. Grrr... Next thing I knew, Norton was popping up left and right telling me a trojan was trying to run. Double grrr.. I checked Add/Remove programs and several pieces of junk software had been installed. My toolbar was changed to MySearch and there was a lot of junk on the tool bar.

I unplugged my connection from the network and started to do some scans. I already had Ad-Aware and SpyBot. They caught quite a few. Next I ran Norton and it found some items but couldn't delete them. Sigh... It was taking at least an hour to scan my machine with Norton. I did some manual deletes. Okay. I thought I was clean. I plugged back into the network. Damn. There went Norton again. They were still on my machine. 4 hours later and several scans, I was back where I started. So I decided to load on XP sp 2 that I fortunately had on disk.

Monday, I mentioned it to a couple of co-workers and did some searches on the virus, etc. One of the coworkers mentioned safe mode. Right... now I remember, I need to boot into safe mode so those little buggers don't load and then I can get them. I also remembered reading a great newsletter by Brian Livingston at Windows Secrets. His January 27th newsletter went into details how many anti-spyware software would miss most malware. It mentioned the new Microsoft Anti-Spyware Beta being one of the best.

I went home early. I downloaded the MS Anti-spyware beta and installed it. It found even more. I spent about 4 hours scanning and cleaning. Everything was looking good. Okay... I booted out of safe mode and plugged back into the network. EEEeeiiiii. There goes Norton again. They haven't left. Time to load on Zone Alarm so even if the bugger is on my machine, I'll keep it in a small cage. I also had a program name to search on.

Now it was time to pull out the big guns. The Windows Secret Newsletter mentioned a great study by Eric Howes. He gives some right-on tips on his page comparing the different anti-spyware programs. It also has a great part on what to do when you have been infected. I did a bit of googling on the offending program. The next step was to run HijackThis and have someone knowlegeable analyse the log. He lists several different forums to get help on the Hijack This log. I used and highly recommend Techsupportforum.com. I posted a log in their Hijackthis forum and within a few hours I had a reply. They were right on the mark at getting rid of most of what was lurking. They give clear instructions on what to do and I've seen them stick through some tough cases. I am in support and I work on a message board. I know what the job is like. My hats are off to them. They do a remarkable service. I am also going to send them a donation.

I followed their instructions and thought I was fine. But something was still lurking. I configured my machine to startup with Norton, ZoneAlarm and the MS Anti-spyware software loading automatic on startup. Yes, it takes almost 3 minutes to boot up but it is keeping it at bay.

Shortly after booting up, the MS Anti-spy told me that My Search Bar was trying to change my browser toolbar. It would catch it and I'd delete it. But it was happening everytime I logged in. Hmmm.. They recommending running anti-spyware and anti-virus again. I downloaded a new version of Ad-Aware. It got several items but it was still there when I logged in. I also tried Trend Micro's Housecall anti-virus scan. No luck.

I've had spent almost 15 evening hours to try to kill this. I decided to give it one more try tonight. Whenever I got the message about MySearch bar trying to make a change, I would also get a pop-up about Norton making changes to my browser. Hmmm.. This seemed strange. I was also getting pop-ups for Norton's automatic update. I decided to check the IP address. It went to a strangish location. So I decided to do the Live Update via the software instead. Low and behold, it had a virus definition update. So scanning began again.

I booted into safe mode. Ran updated Ad-Aware. I was clean. I also went though my Windows\System32 folder and noticed an unusual name exe from the 13th. I noted it. Then ran Norton. It found two threats and sure enough one of them was the suspicious file, winbhgk32. It couldn't delete it but I knew where it was... I deleted it from the folder, rebooted and logged on. Nothing. Loaded the browser. Nothing. Woohoo! I think I might have it.

It took 5 days and almost 20 hours!

Lessons learned? A lot!

Keep Up with Windows Update I hadn't kept up with the Windows updates and I suspect that some of the malware took advantage of the vulnerabilities.

Apply Windows XP sp 2 Service pack 2 would have probably helped. I would have at least had a firewall to prevent any attacks on other ports.

Run a commercial Firewall The Windows XP sp 2 firewall is okay at preventing things from coming in but does absolutely nothing once you have something on your PC. A real firewall such as ZoneAlarm will alert you to both programs trying to get in and get out.

Get help I work in support and I couldn't have done it alone. Find a good support board on line or someone who regularly deals with this to help you if you are infected.

We have been having remarkable weather. The jet-stream seems to have split and we are getting sun while Southern California and the Southwest is getting rain. That means even more flowers for us. It was time to hit the trail.

G wanted to so Mount Si but I wasn't really interesting in that long of a hike. So we decided on doing Section Line trail on Tiger Mountain. It was sunny but cold. Little did we know there were also icy roads. The first indicator was the DOT sand time coming on I90. Then there were the flares. The right lane was frosty white. Sure enough there was a spin out and Jeep Cheroke in the ditch. Too bad they took out the back of a State Patrol car first.

We parked, put on the boots and gingerly walked up the road to the trailhead. The frost was beautiful. We headed off to Nook trail and away from the crowds. The cold was nipping at my cheeks but I was warm. Soon we made the junction from Nook to Section line. It is such a killer. Straight up. It was a little bit icy in spots but not bad. The really steep part is under thick evergreen forest so it was not slippery. But that last part after Railroad. You think you are almost there and there is still a kill 1/2 mile. But finally we broke out into the sun. Such a gorgeous day. Views to the east of Cascade foothills. To the West, the Olympics and the Seattle skyline. You could even see the Space Needle.

After a Luna bar and a Clif shot, time to go down. It was so busy and icy. I almost slipped once or twice. But it went fast. It wasn't bad until we got almost to the car and it was slippery and frosty still.

Overall a great winter hike. 5 miles - 2:45 time.

I thought I was finished and won the battle with malware. But I was wrong! I was still 'bugged' by warning from MS Anti-spyware (MAS) telling me that My Search bar was trying to change my toolbar. It would only happen when I switched between G's account and my account so I didn't notice it until a couple of days had passed and G logged on. I did another scan and found some more remnants of the viruses but I just couldn't get rid of this warning about My Search Bar.

I finally went out to the MAS newsgroups at Microsoft and got a couple of other good pieces of advice. A member found the guid for the program and I was able to search for the guid in the registry. I found a reference to it in 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Internet Explorer \ Toolbar \ WebBrowser'. That got it.

I'm also giving SpywareBlaster a try. I'm hoping it will block those critters.

Some other pieces of advice

If you have more than one account on your PC and use XP, turn off System Restore on all the accounts. This will prevent the registry entries for these critters from being backed up.

Boot into Safe Mode (F8 on startup) and thoroughly scan all accounts.

Scan with multiple anti-spyware programs and a virus checked.

Use some type of spyware blocker and keep it up to date.

Another week of rain in Southern California! Is it going to dry out in time for our visit? So far, Death Valley has received over 3 inches since the beginning of January. The hills are green, the valley is in bloom and the rivers are flowing. But there have been good reports of flowers. Yooohoooo!

G has been doing a tremendous job organizing and packing the camping gear. We went out and got a new icechest with wheels and a handle. This will make it much easier to get in and out of the airport. We've packed the softgood (tent, sleeping bags, poles) in a long duffle bag. We've got stove, boots, cooking gear, food in the ice chest.

Here are some great sites for planning a trip to Death Valley

National Park Official Site
California Wildflower Hotsheet
Death-Valley.US They also have a great forum for checking the latest information.
Death Valley Tourist Information from Ridgecrest. This page is an excellent set of information and links. I highly recommend this page.
Death Valley National Park Links