Contraseña segura

For those of you who don't realize it, I'm currently vacationing in Spain, taking it easy in the little pueblo called Madrid. The other day, I passed one of those newspaper stands with all sorts of magazines and newspapers, and one of them caught my eye--mostly because there was a topless woman on the cover. (Hey, I'm a guy. I notice these things.) There's a topless guy on the cover too, but I didn't notice him at first. They're taking a peek at each others "goods"--but those goods are still hidden from view. (Barely.) The magazine was called "Muy interesante"--Spanish for "Very interesting." Interesting indeed!

Turns out, the magazine isn't a porno magazine--despite the misleading cover photo. I think they're a little bit looser about topless women adorning their magazines than we are in the states. The cover photo was part of an article about "The Great Couple Test--Are We Compatible?" It seems to be mostly a science-kind of magazine, with lots of information about recent scientific discoveries, stories about archeological discoveries, and an article about sunbathing with the scariest pictures of white people with the darkest tans I've ever seen in my life.

I brought the magazine with me to dinner to pass the time and read some Spanish, and one section about "Words" caught my attention. It has a drawing of a laptop with a combination lock on the monitor, and a hand twisting to open it. The article was called "Contraseña segura"--or "password security" in English.

What a bizarre coincidence! Not two hours after I posted about password security, I stumble onto an article about password security in Spanish!

The list of most commonly used passwords is naturally going to be different in Spanish than in English, but the meanings were largely the same. "Hackers circulate a list of no more than 200 words and combinations of letters or numbers that are most common. For example, 1234, contraseña, hola or yo qué sé are some of the favorites that people use. Also, love, felicidad or buenos días.

There are two things about that list I find interesting. One, they use the English word for love as a password a lot. And two, the most commonly used words in English (password, hello, happiness) is also used by Spanish speakers (contraseña, hola, felicidad). Spanish speakers correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand yo qué sé to mean "I know that." Which amuses me--I hadn't heard that as a possible password, but nobody on Atlas Quest ever selected it as a password so I guess the English counterpart doesn't get used much. An exception to every rule!

The article goes on to say that other popular passwords are the "names of pets, kids, birth dates or wedding anniversaries, telephone numbers, and common words like macaroni, sausages, cars." (Turns out, two people are using macaroni as a password on AQ--a word I had never thought to check before. Nobody is using sausage, however, and cars is too short to be a valid password on AQ.)

Then it recommends that passwords should have at least six characters, should not be a word you use regularly or can be found in a dictionary, and should use letters, numbers, and symbols, then goes on to recommend a "trick" by selecting the beginning of a book and converting the first line into initials, numbers, and symbols, using an example of Don Quixote, "En un lugar de la Mancha" which might map to "e1ldl*". In this case, they replaced the word "Mancha" with an asterisk (a common pattern matching symbol in the computer industry). Un, in Spanish, means "a" or "one"--so they replaced the word with the number 1 instead of the letter U.

And the article ends that you should change your passwords occasionally--but don't do it on a Friday because "you probably will forget it by Monday." Hahaha! I love the Spanish. =)

Doing a search for common foreign words as passwords has been coming up empty for me. If you absolutely must use a word for a password, perhaps foreign words are a better choice than English ones?

Choosing Passwords Wisely

I got a message from someone today who forgot their password. I won't name names, but in the message the person included the password they wanted, and that it "somehow" got changed because they "knew" that's what it used to be.

These kind of messages are usually rare for me--most people just tell me that they forgot their password, and I either send them to the Lost Password Center to reset it, or manually reset it myself if they're e-mail address doesn't seem to work. They usually don't send me the password they want it set to--I'd just as soon not know, and there's no reason I need to know. I can log into any account I need to with a "master password" when I need to--I never need to know anyone's actual password. Passwords are stored in the database in an encrypted format that's specifically designed so that I can't even decrypt it even if I wanted to. If hackers ever broke into Atlas Quest, they might be able to steal your e-mail address or cause all sorts of mischief, but there's one thing they can't get--it's your password.

Unless it's a poorly selected one. And alas, there are a lot of poorly selected passwords. Many moons ago, I read an article in a magazine about the ten most common passwords, and out of curiosity, I ran them through AQ's accounts to see if people actually were using them. Some of the most common passwords of all time, in case you're curious, include: password, 123456, qwerty, abc123, letmein, monkey, and money. Every single one of the most common passwords were being used by people--some of them in numbers that made my mouth drop open in shock. Passwords such as god did not get any hits since AQ has always required passwords to have at least five characters, even from day one.

I tried a few other "obvious" guesses including atlasquest and letterboxing, cracking loads of additional accounts. Then set it up so AQ tried using the same password as the trail name for the account, which as I recall, was the mother load.

Almost immediately, I added new restrictions on passwords to encourage people to pick better passwords. I made those most-common passwords off limits, and AQ will reject them. It will also reject any password if you use your first name, last name, or trailname as your password (or even a part of it). Which brings me back to the person who said that somehow their password had been "changed." Since the person told me the password they wanted, I could see the problem. It included their first name. The password wasn't changed--AQ had just rejected it as being too easily guessed and the person didn't remember their second choice.

A letterboxing website probably isn't a hacker's paradise, and even if a hacker did get into your account, they probably can't do more than delete your boxes or finds and send offensive messages in your name. But why choose bad passwords in the first place? Do you use the same passwords for your bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and other places where sensitive materials reside? Hackers DO try to break into those kinds of accounts, and easy-to-guess passwords make YOU a tempting target.

Some of you might remember the password cracker I set up the last time I discussed password security, and we had a lot of fun "cracking" accounts on Atlas Quest. All told, with all of the various guesses and such, we successfully cracked close to half the accounts on Atlas Quest. Without knowing any personal data about you, we could hack into about every other account given enough time to make guesses.

It might be a little harder now since AQ no longer allows the most common of passwords anymore (however, old accounts that made it in before the change still got to keep their poorly selected passwords, so those do still exist), but I bet there's still a lot of passwords you can guess. AQ will no longer allow you to use your first name, last name, and trail name (at least not what you entered when you registered on Atlas Quest), so those types of guesses won't be anywhere near as successful. But AQ doesn't know your birthday, it doesn't know the names of your children or pets, and it doesn't know much about you on a personal level, so it can't stop you from selecting those types of bad passwords.

If you're using a bad password now, consider changing it. Make your online accounts safe again!

Still don't believe? Try cracking accounts yourself and see how many you can break into with the Password Cracker.

I just want to say to the five people who use the word "goober" as a password--I'm honored. But you really need better passwords than that. ;o)

I'm also happy to report that while there are no "losers" on Atlas Quest, we do have four "winners"! Let's give our winners a round of applause. =)

What I Learned At LB Con....

I learned a lot of things at the letterboxing con. I learned, for instance, that you can pick padlocks with a soda can. Anyone in the TV room at the dorms Sunday night would have seen me making my very own lock picking tools. I decided not to take them back with me to Seattle, however, thinking it might look a bit suspicious going through security at the airport. I can always make more later! =)

I also learned that you never, ever want to share a room with Wassamatta_u--or sit in the front row of any talk he gives. (I do hope those eyebrows on the kids grow back.)

I also learned a few new letterboxing terms that I had never heard before. Several of my favorites I've added to the AQ glossary.

slink-boxing: Often seen at large events when large numbers of letterboxers look for a limited number of boxes. They stretch out as they walk to a box, then snap together when they stop to log in at the box, not unlike a human slinky.

slank-boxing: A combination of slack-boxing and slink-boxing. A group will slink to the box, then a designated person or two will ink up the stamp for everyone to make the stamping process go faster for the slack-boxers. Sometimes the slack-boxers won't even log their own stamp into the logbook due to limited logbook pages and the time involved.

S.P.O.P.: Short for Suspicious Pile Of People. Typically seen during large events where there are considerably more people than letterboxes. The people tend to cluster around the limited number of boxes, and at a certain point, you don't even need to follow clues anymore. You just look around for suspicious piles of people. "There must be a box over there--13 people are logging into something!"

ink in my ears: When you are confused or not sure that you heard a statement correctly, you have ink in your ears. For example, you might say, "I must have ink in my ears--I thought you just said that you went to a brothel after finding my letterbox!" The first known use of this term was by wassamatta_u. Not a big shock there.

What did YOU learn at the letterboxing con?

Live, From St. Louis!

It is I, Green Tortuga, live from St. Louis! =) Let's see.... we've already been busted by security guards. I wanted to get a picture of the arch through an arch, and they told me no photos. Blah. Come ON?! No photos of the arch?! So I moved on and took photos elsewhere, but I never did get one of the arch through another arch. Maybe next time.....

I don't have much time right now, and I don't dare leave any letterboxers alone to plot against me, but I wanted to share a couple of my photos at least. The arch is kind of a boring picture all by itself, and if you're too close, it's hard to get the whole thing in the photo anyhow. I found this angle with the lamp post in the foreground that I thought gave it a lot of character.

A bunch of us also took the tram to the top. Most people looked at the view through tiny windows. Positively claustrophobic up there! I looked at the view too, but I wanted to see straight down. Doesn't seem like most people were doing that, so here's my picture from the top looking straight down over 600 feet. I really needed a wide-angle lens to really get the effect, but it was wide enough to barely get the base of both sides of the arch in the photo. The people at the bottom can't even be seen in the photo they're so small!

Now it's time for me to find some boxes and boxers. To plot and have fun. Farewell! =)

The Last Photo....?

I have a few pictures to share from our trip to the Spy vs. Spy event near Lake Tahoe. Not of the event--I was too busy causing mischief and mayhem to get pictures, but after the event, Amanda and I spent a few days in the area and took our time driving back to Seattle. It's not like we're in the area often, so we wanted to make the most of it.

After the event, I got dumped off at various trailheads to find my way to wherever I wanted to go. Even in June, snow can be an issue at high elevations, so most of my hiking activities were confined to trails near or on Lake Tahoe rather than the mountains surrounding it. The mountains were calling to me, but they would have to wait another day.

For my first hike, I decided on a near-loop that would start me at the trailhead for Cascade Falls, take me around to Eagle Lake, come down to Emerald Bay, then end at the Eagle Creek Campground a short jaunt up the road from where I started. This is Cascade Falls. Not a very creative name for the waterfall, but it is pretty. =)

Next up is a photo of Emerald Bay with the rest of Lake Tahoe in the background. I stopped to rest, drink water, and admire the view because, WOW! What a view!




Next up is my first view of Eagle Lake. I reached the high point of this hike from this vantage point. The trail followed the ridge down towards the left to a gap another mile or two, then down the canyon back to the lake. It doesn't go straight down the mountain from this point!

I just love this old gnarled trees.

Snow plants were all over the place. I found this group growing alongside Emerald Bay.

This next photo, I swear I don't remember taking. I was as surprised to see it while going through my photos later as the next person. It appears to be a bird flying over Emerald Bay. I do remember taking photos from this vantage point--I just don't remember the bird being in it. And looking closely, it appears to be largely black or dark brown with a white head. Did I actually get a photo of a bald eagle?!
Next up is Vikingsholm, an interesting little place nestled along the shores of Emerald Bay. It's apparently open for the public to check out, but I only admired the outside. I had a scheduled to keep to and didn't want to be late for my pickup!

And another photo of Emerald Bay. I just liked the clouds and the light. I could hear thunder coming from those clouds as I hiked along the shore, but fortunately the rain didn't come for me.

The next day I did another hike from a scenic lake to a scenic meadow whose names I can't remember off the top of my head. Bearclaw Lake? I'm pretty sure it starts with a B. Anyhow, that's not important. Just after leaving the lake, I ran into a bit of trouble--the trail led me to a meadow, then disappeared! I scratched my head a bit, and tried to retrace my steps making sure I didn't miss a subtle turnoff or something. I examined the topo map I had for every tiny squiggle and mark that might help me out, but for the life of me, that trail was gone. So I took a photo of the non-trail. Do you see a trail in this photo? Neither do I, but that's apparently where it was supposed to be. I had a pretty good topo map to go cross country, however, so I wasn't terribly concerned about getting lost. (I did not, however, have the compass--Amanda and Lea had it to find letterboxes!) I determined that the trail led to the gap just to the left of the hill you see in the photo and headed for that. (The gap, not the hill.) The meadow was marshy, though, and my feet kept sinking in muck. It was like the Florida Trail all over again! In the photo, the meadow looks pretty solid, but trust me, everything in that photo has about a half an inch of water under it.

Anyhow, near the gap, I finally came across the trail again and followed it out the rest of the way without any additional trouble. The trail went down through a steep canyon, enormous in scope, but sadly puny in pictures. I won't post those photos because it really doesn't do the area justice. Instead, I'll leave you with these two photos of flowers I found growing alongside the trail. =)

Amanda and I then started our trek back to Seattle with a quick stop at Lassen National Park along the way. This is a place I've wanted to visit for years, and the only national park in California I had never visited. It's tucked away far in the northeast part of the state, alone and neglected. A park few people seem to be aware of, and fewer people seem to visit. As the area was along our route, it seemed like the perfect time to visit. When would we get another chance?!

We stopped at the Visitor's Center, learned a bit about the park, then decided on a game plan. I would hike down from the Visitor's Center--there's a trailhead right there that leads to Mill Creek Falls, then I could hike out past two lakes and the thermal features of Bumpass Hell. It seemed easy enough at the time.

And the hike to Mill Creek Falls was indeed easy. A simple waterfall, but nice. The trail was well-traveled and snow-free, although I passed nobody along the entire route. I took photos, ate a snack, drank some water, then continued on my way.

I encountered the first problem almost immediately: There were no bridges crossing the creeks that fed the waterfall. The spring runoff was quite impressive, and while I could have tromped right through the water, I preferred to keep my feet dry if possible. I scouted around, trying to find a series of rocks and boulders I could jump across, and finally did so without getting wet. Or dead. The creeks feed into the waterfall. If I slipped and couldn't stop myself from getting swept away by the current, I'd be going over the falls! I took a photo from the top of the falls, and wondered imagined being swept away and over the falls. Would the photo survive? Would they find my body and see the last photo I ever took? Or would the camera and photo be ruined by the water or the plunge?

I crossed the stream a bit upriver as far as I could--enough so I felt safe that if I did take a dunker into the water, I could get out before I went over the falls. I made it across the creek safely and dry, but not before taking this photo of some flowers growing in a rocky outcrop in the center of the creek. The flowers fascinated me, growing there in the center of the creek. Surrounded by water on all sides, save from the torrents of water. Protected by the torrents of water, in fact, assuming hungry animals wouldn't want to fight the raging water to get here.

The trail was becoming increasingly difficult to follow. It was clear that few people ever hiked out beyond that view of the waterfall and across the water. My map showed a trail here, but it was obviously need of maintenance past the falls. I followed the thread of a trail another mile or two until it reached another small meadow and I bumped into the first couple of patches of snow. The snow didn't concern me too much--I expected patches of it along the way in shady areas. Then I looked up across the meadow and my heart sank. I saw patches of land. A nearly universal layer of snow covered the upper end of the meadow, completely obliterating the trail underneath. Where the heck had all that snow come from?!

Now the hike became a battle. Me against nature. And nature was kicking my butt! Several times I lost the trail completely, searching ahead for any signs of human intervention. A cut log, a marker on a tree, the faint hint of a trail where the land occasionally poked through the snow. The snow crunched underfoot, but I slogged along, wondering if I should turn back. At least it would be easy to follow my own tracks back out. The trail ahead looked like it hadn't been hiked all season, however. I couldn't follow the tracks left by the hikers before me--there were none! I had a trusty topo map, and read the land for clues about the correct direction to go. The compass, once again, was with Amanda. This time, I really wished I had the compass. I had miles I needed to hike through this snow, mostly in trees that blocked many of the waypoints that I could use to mark my progress.

But mostly, I watched for the markers on the trees. They were few and far between, but whenever I spotted one, my heart lifted. I knew I was still on the right track. I knew a search party would eventually find my cold, lifeless body if I somehow died out here. Just so long as I was still within view of one of those markers.

I was thrilled when I finally reached Crumbaugh Lake--the first major waypoint I was hoping to hit. I didn't venture near the shore--I wasn't entirely sure exactly where it started. The snow led right up over to the edge, and the edges of the lake were frozen. I didn't want to get too close to the shore to find out that I was actually over the water before I plunged through the snow and ice to my death. So I steered clear of the shoreline.

I felt pretty confident that I had found Crumbaugh Lake, but I didn't see any signs to mark the location. I compared the shape of the lake to that on my topo map, and compared the location with the mountain ridges surrounding it. Yes, this must be the lake I decided, although a sign to confirm it would have been nice.

I veered around the left side of the lake--according to my topo map, that's where the trail was and significant areas that were exposed to the sun had no snow at all on that side. At the far side, I found a sign confirming that it was indeed Cumbaugh Lake which pleased me enormously. The sign was positioned where they expected most hikers to come in at--not where I hiked in from.

I also pulled out my umbrella. The sun was hot, and I wasn't in the trees anymore.

The next waypoint on the hike was Cold Boiling Lake, but this one I figured would be comparitively easy to find since it fed the creek that led into Crumbaugh Lake. All I needed to do was follow the creek and I'd get to the right place. So off I tromped.

I was so confident about following the creek, I largely stopped looking for the markers on the trees. Put my topo map away, and charged through the snow, keeping the creek within hearing distance at all times. Which isn't to say that I wasn't keeping my eyes open for markers, cut logs, or signs, but I stopped searching for them as actively as I did before. The creek would guide me. I was sure of it. As long as I didn't follow it up some unrelated tributary. =)

Along the way, out in the middle of nowhere, probably not on any trail at all, I found a message for me in the snow. It said, "Fun." The word was made of twigs, that seemed to have fallen randomly from the surrounding trees. Or maybe some other hiker with a twisted sense of humor really had passed by, but if they did, they left no tracks in the snow. The snow around the twigs melted faster than the rest of the surrounding snow--the dark twigs absorb the heat of the sun more than the reflective snow does, then the heat melts the snow. So the message was inlaid into the snow. I felt certain that the trees were mocking me.

I reached Cold Boiling Lake after another hour or so of hiking--covering a distance that normally would have taken me half that time. Like Crumbaugh, I shied away from the shoreline, not exactly sure where the snow ended and the water started. On the far side of the lake, the snow vanished from view, and I had high hopes that my snow trouble were finally over. The trail was supposed to climb up a south-facing slope, and south-facing slopes tend to have significantly less snow than north-facing ones. I hoped this was the start of a snow-free zone once again.

I stopped to rest, eating a Pop-Tart and drinking much of my water. I also pulled out the walkie-talkie and tried to call Amada on it. I was already an hour late from when Amanda expected me to arrive, and I still had miles to hike before reaching the trailhead where she would pick me up. I knew she'd grow increasingly concerned the longer it took for me to hike out. If she were at the top of the ridge, there was a chance she could pick me up on the walkie-talkie and I could put her mind at ease. But alas, she didn't respond to my calls.


The trail climbed up the ridge, along which was mostly free of snow. Occasionally there were large patches of it, but finding the route consisted of continuing to go straight until the snow stopped and that's where the trail would be found. The trail looped around Cold Boiling Lake nearly 180 degrees, but this time up the mountain ridge rather than the valley I followed to it, passing by a bird's-eye view of Crumbaugh Lake. I couldn't help but notice that had I hiked directly up the steep slope from that lake, it would have been completely snow free. I'd have missed Cold Boiling Springs, but under the circumstances, I wouldn't have minded.

I finally reached Bumpass Hill, a cauldrin of bubbling mud, fumerales, and boiling hot springs--an impressive display of nature. I had also reached what I considered to be civilization. I saw two people in the distance walking on the boardwalk--the first people I had seen since leaving the Visitor's Center earlier in the day. The trailhead was still another mile or two away, but a lot of people hike out to Bumpass Hell to see Earth's fury, and I knew the trail would become clear, well-trampled, and populated at this point.

I tried calling Amanda again from the walkie-talkie, and got a response. She was at the trailhead, waiting for me, and glad to know (finally) where I was and when I would be arriving.

I wandered around the thermal features a bit taking pictures, then continued my hike to the trailhead. The two figures I saw from a distance had already left, so I never spoke to them.

The hike out was exhausting, pushing through snow nearly the entire way. At least the trail was quite clear from the multitudes of people who tromped through it before me, and packed down considerably better than before. But I still found the snow exhausting and frustrating.

At a viewpoint where I could see the parking lot, I slipped on a couple of stone steps, slamming an arm into the pointed edge of the rock step--the most serious fall of my hike, ironically within view of the parking lot! I cussed a few times, then called Amanda again on the walkie-talkie, telling her that I could see the car and that my arm hurt like crazy.

At the trailhead was a wonderful, large, bright orange sign with a warning: "Trail Hazardous: Travel not recommended." Ha! NOW they tell me this? When my hike is over?

I got into the car, finally ready to go home. I needed a rest. =)

The Last Big Update

No, not the "last" as in there will never be a big update again, but whenever I made changes that are so pervasive, so far-reaching, that I can't update individual pages of Atlas Quest without fearing that something will break, I have to take the site offline temporarily to upload all of the changes in one fell swoop. I tend to call these the Next Big Update. "It'll be in the Next Big Update." "It'll be fixed in the Next Big Update."

The update has been done, and I figure some of you would like to know what it included. It's not the Next Big Update anymore, however. It's in the past. It's now the Last Big Update.

Most of the big changes are under the hood and not readily apparent. The most striking changes that are actually visible are when you try to add or edit a box, tracker, event, or group. The main one was to redesign the layout to be a bit more flexible and fluid so it works better on mobile devices. I got rid of the column on the right hand side of the page where it didn't always fit on small screens or other people who used large fonts. Since I'm using floated DIV tags rather than tables, it's also will use all of the horizontal screen space your browser allows that should reduce the amount of scrolling necessary to fill out all of the forms. Mostly minor stuff.

Since I was mucking around with that stuff, I made a couple of small improvements to those screens as well. You can now drag-and-drop the boxes in a series in the order you prefer rather than the convoluted drop down list for the order you want the boxes to be in. You can also delete boxes in a series directly from that page instead of having to using the Delete Box button. Again, pretty minor stuff.

Another small tweak that's completely invisible is that most places that use radio buttons or checkboxes (such as the hike type and attributes respectively on the Advanced Search page)--you can now click directly on the text associated with the radio button or check box to select it. Previously, you had to aim your mouse at the relatively small target itself. Those who have trouble controlling the mouse or use the site on their iPhones or other mobile devices might find it easier to hit what you're aiming at. =)

For the most part, though, there's not much to write home about. The bulk of the chances are "under the hood" and completely invisible. I wrote a lot of new classes and improved a lot of previously existing classes to help speed future development. I refactored a lot of code to make it more reusable and idiot-proof it against myself.

Given the sheer size of the changes involved, you can pretty much count on there being bugs and glitches. I wanted to do this update in the middle of the day so I'd be around to monitor and check for bugs and get them fixed as quickly as possible. Usually I do them late at night then go to sleep soon after, and bugs don't get fixed until I wake up again the next morning. =) (Not to mention that updating the live site is a LOT faster from this wi-fi connection I'm using at the library rather than a dial-up connection from home.)

Most of my testing has been done on FireFox. The last couple of days I've been using IE8 to look for formatting problems that might show up with that browser and caught the worst of offenders, but it's not anywhere NEAR as well tested with IE as FireFox, so if something clearly doesn't look like it's supposed to, do let me know. I only tested with Chrome, Opera, and Safari for all about ten minutes each, so those are more likely to formatting issues.

Happy Trail!

-- Ryan

PS. I did add a new icon option for your stats label with this update. =)

AQ Turns Five; Stops Sucking Thumb

If you haven't been able to tell from the theme, it's another AQ birthday, turning five years old today. Last year, I had this idea to buy another domain name and put the original version of Atlas Quest up so everyone could see how much it has changed and grown over the years. Alas, I never got around to it. Seems like there are always more important things to be working on. Maybe next year? Maybe for when it turns 10 years old? Gotta love those zeros at the end of numbers.

Five years ago today, I bought the domain name atlasquest.com and started setting up the account and copying files over, turning the site live. I remember the day well. It was the first time I ever bought a domain name, and it was rather exhilarating. I always thought it would be fun to have my own domain name to play with, but never had any compelling information to put on it so never did.

The site was "feature complete" for about a week or two before I bought the domain name. I spent the time testing the website, letting a handful of close friends take a peek at it before making it live, and debating what domain name to buy. At the time, I was happily unemployed and had absolutely no income, which was why I waited until June 24th to actually take action. That's when a "new month" would start, and I could wait nearly two month to pay off the bill without incurring any interest or penalties. =) If I brought the site live just a day earlier, I'd have only had a one month grace period before the bill came due.

The 24th is burned into my brain for another reason. Since that was the date I started Atlas Quest, it was a convenient date to run monthly backups. There are some tables in the database that almost never change (such as the names of all the cities in the world), so it didn't make sense to save those tables every night. What a waste of space and computing power. So I ran them monthly. Full backups, once each month. Atlas Quest would also check for certain inconsistencies in the database and fix them. And it would compress the data to fill in all those gaps when data was deleted. AQ was pretty busy every month on the night of the 24th doing all sorts of things that never happened at any other time of the month.

There still are some activities that AQ runs on the 24th of every month, but it's a bit more spread out now. Full backups are now run weekly. Space for the database to run isn't nearly as restricted now as it was in that first year when Atlas Quest ran on a shared hosting provider.

When Atlas Quest first went live, I never expected it to become what it has. I imagined a little site with a really cool location-based search, and since I absolutely loathed the Yahoo Groups, figured I might someday add some message boards. (AQ 1.0 had no message boards at all.) But I was running out money, living off of my live savings, and needed to think about getting a real job that paid real money. I wanted Atlas Quest to be my foot in the door. "Yes, I do have a sample of my work. Check it out!" Keep in mind, I had been unemployed for about 2 1/2 years at this point--a rather large hole in my otherwise flawless resume! ;o) I felt like I needed something to compensate for that and impress the pants off of a potential employer.

Later that same year, Atlas Quest continued to grow. Since the site was hosted on a shared server, e-mails from AQ bounced like crazy whenever the IP address was banned for being a source of spam. (I didn't send any, but other websites on the same server apparently were.) So I created the AQ mail system to get away from the bouncing e-mail.

I also implemented the first, rather primitive version of the message boards. And finally, created the Trip Planner, another innovative method of searching for boxes to serve my own selfish needs: An easier way to find listings for boxes on some of my road trips. =)

And, just before the end of the year, I made a huge decision. I set up a system for premium membership. Atlas Quest was growing remarkably quickly, and I was scared my web hosting provider would eventually boot me off for 'abusing' resources. I could afford to run Atlas Quest out of my own pocket with a shared hosting provider, but I certainly couldn't afford to run it on a dedicated server that looked like it would cost somewhere north of $100/month for even the cheapest plan. That's a lot of money when you're unemployed! Heck, even if I were employed, I didn't really want to be spending that kind of money on a hobby website! =)

So I set up the premium membership as an option, hoping it would at least cover the cost of a dedicated server if it ever came to that. One of the main perks it had was the ability to record finds on unlisted boxes--something I never considered a critical feature for letterboxing, but something a lot of people were requesting.

Within an hour of uploading the premium membership option, two people had signed up for premium membership at $15/year. I called up my mom, telling her--she was skeptical anyone would ever sign up for a "premium" membership--and I told her, "Guess what?! I have two, count 'em--TWO premium membership! Thirty bucks!" (I didn't mention to deduct the PayPal fee from the $30.)

And my mom was shocked. SHOCKED! Her exact words were, "What IDIOT would give you money for your website?" =)

I still tease her about that, calling her up again when the 100th premium member signed up. "Guess what?! There are now one hundred IDIOTS who've given me money for my website!" =)

(I use the term "idiot" with the greatest of affection here. Honestly, I think the relatively cheap price of a premium membership is well-worth the amount of fun and enjoyment the site provides for regular visitors.)

And a wonderful thing happened--the site started earning enough money to pay for a dedicated server. So shortly before AQ's first birthday, I started shopping around for an improved web hosting experience. There were two issues I wanted to focus on: One, getting AQ off of a shared server, and two, using a web host that had excellent support options.

I wanted to get AQ off of the shared server so e-mails would be more reliable, DOS attacks against other websites on the same server no longer affected AQ, improved security, and a whole bunch of other reasons.

And when I had a problem or something didn't seem to be working as expected, my experiece with their customer support was terrible! If there was a problem, I wanted someone hosting my website that would hop on the problems in minutes and 24/7, not "within 24 hours" or during "normal office hours."

And while looking for the ideal host, I discovered a magical thing called VPS. Virtual Private Servers. Not really a shared server in the traditional sense, but not quite a dedicated server either. It was sort of this middle ground, nearly as cheap as many shared hosting providers, but with all the benefits of a dedicated server. It was a "virtual" dedicated server.

To make a long story short, I upgraded to a VPS. The cost of running the website went from about $10/month up to $45/month overnight. Which was FAR less than I had been expecting of even the cheapest dedicated servers. (I've upgraded the VPS a couple of times since then, so it's costing more now, but Atlas Quest to this day is still running on a VPS. Someday, I might have to upgrade to a dedicated server, but that could still be years away!)

So I found myself in an unexpected situation: Atlas Quest was profitable! =) I was planning on spending anywhere from $200-$300 per month on a quality dedicated server, set up a premium membership to pay for it, then it turns out I'm paying $45/month for a hosting service that precisely met my needs. Depending on the number of premium members signing up in any given month, I would be profiting anywhere from $150 to $250 in most months.

Okay, that's not a lot of money, but when you've been unemployed for 3 1/2 years (at this point), it sounds like a fortune! Which was the first time I started wondering, "Could I actually make a living off of this website?" I was still living primarily off of my life savings, but at least my life savings wasn't being depleated at the same rapid rate that it had been before.

The next couple of years, I kind of felt like I was somewhat in a race. Could I earn enough to live off of before I ran out of my live savings? I actually did apply for a couple of part time jobs, hoping to suppliment the earnings from Atlas Quest enough to make an actual liveable wage, but alas, nothing happened of them. (Even REI turned me down. ME?! After thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, they didn't think I was up to snuff? The losers. *shaking head*)

It wasn't until 2007 that Atlas Quest finally earned enough that, for the first time in 6 years, I was able to pay all my expenses without having to dip into my savings. My earnings were still below minimum wage given all the hours I put into the site, but I was happy. I no longer needed to worry about finding another job. I had somehow changed from being unemployed into being self-employed. I may not get paid much, but I felt like I more than made up for it in the joy of working at a job I loved to do. =)

Last year, I started funding my retirement accounts again. (Not sure why--now I don't even want to retire!) And perhaps there's a better, more-fullfilling job out there somewhere, but I'm not aware of it. I feel like I'm the luckiest person in the world to have somehow stumbled into this job.

Five years later, and it seems like I should do something particularly special for Atlas Quest on this birthday. I thought about having a "Free Listing WEEK!" Maybe keep up the balloons and confettii for several days instead of the usual one.

Except that I'm in the middle of a major upgrade (mostly under the hood type of stuff--you won't be seeing major changes to the public interface), and I don't really want to make any changes to the live site right now in fear I'll break something. But then I remembered.....

I keep forgetting about Free Listing Day. There's a small piece of code that lists which days of the year is Free Listing Day. I keep forgetting about it, and never update the file. For those who were on the ball, you would have noticed a Free Listing Day last May 8th, also known as Cranmere Day. But I forgot to announce it.... And today, AQ's birthday is a Free Listing Day, but again, I forgot to announce it--until now. =) (A little late in the day for most people, I would image.)

Free Listing Day started as a way of saying thank you to all those people who support Atlas Quest in something other than monitary ways. I know there are times when money is tight--I've been there, done that. Given the economy of today, there are likely a number of folks who can no longer afford a premium membership even if they wanted to.

Perhaps you've help other members with their questions on the message boards, or suggested improvements that have made Atlas Quest website a better place to be, or have acted as a comic relief when things get tense. There are many ways to support Atlas Quest beyond becoming premium members, and the Free Listing Day was started as a way of saying thank you to those people.

But now, I keep forgetting to say thank you and have forgotten to announce the last two Free Listing Days completely. *slapping self* So, I'm tweaking the way Free Listing Day works in the future. From now on, they will be more often and predictable. There will be at least one Free Listing Day each month. And (for the time being, at least), it will be on the 24th of every month. I'm thinking it might be fun to make the day each month selected at random so it's more of a surprise when you do see it, but for now it's set up to run on the 24th of every month. (And remember, AQ runs on Pacific time, so remember about time zones if you aren't in this timezone. It's the 24th of each month, Pacific time.)

So enjoy some of the perks of premium membership one day each month, even if you can't afford it. You deserve it. =)

Subterfuge, Deception, and Lots of Fun!

I attended the Spy vs. Spy event this afternoon. The description for the event includes: You are a spy. You steal. You lie. You cheat. You live in the shadows. You sleep in "safe houses". You do all of this in the name of the country that pays you the most. You are dishonorable. You have no alliances.

That sounded like fun. Serious fun. And a little while later, I got an e-mail from Doublesaj asking if Amanda and I would be interested in joining her and John as Team Chuck. Chuck, being the geeky inadvertent spy from the Chuck TV series. I can identify with Chuck, so a team was formed.

Doublesaj says she invited us into her team because she knew we'd be competitive. We'd take the spy thing seriously. We'd play to win.

We didn't want to disappoint. Given the nature of the event, sabotage was the first thought that came to my mind, but alas, the few rules that were established said we were not allowed to remove or move letterboxes to other locations. Just as well, I suppose, since otherwise other teams would have done that to us. But surely we could work out a couple of sneaky little tricks to put ourselves ahead and/or put other teams further behind. But how?

We came up with numerous scenarios, most of which my teammates blame on me. Hmm.... Okay, admittedly, I might have been the most intrigued with how to follow the letter of rules while enthusaisticly breaking the spirit of the rules. =) We were spies. It was expected.

The e-mails we got about the event included interesting pieces of information about Slick Kitty, who hosted the event. She likes the color purple. She likes Dr. Pepper. She likes diamonds, and chocolate-covered strawberries with almonds. So we found potential bribes. We had a purple visor, Dr. Pepper (both soda and Jelly Bellies). We had bribes. We weren't sure what we would use them for, but we wanted to be prepared. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. We were spies. Bribes were not above us.

We also needed to know the lay of the land. We headed out to the park the day before, and scouted out the area. Learned the trails, identified likely landmarks that might be used in clues, and... hey, we were in the area.... we looked for boxes. We didn't have any clues, but I never saw a rule that said we couldn't try looking for them anyhow. We did find one of the boxes that afternoon, the codebook, giving us an official head start.

And despite looking for these boxes with an enemy combatent (Princess Lea was with us), we managed to keep the secret of the codebook from her. There were 18 boxes in total, but 4 were the critical ones we needed to win the game, and we already knew the location of one of them.

But our big idea, the one to really get us ahead of the game, was to create decoy boxes. We couldn't do anything to the real boxes, but what if someone found what they thought was the real box? They'd log into that and move on, not knowing that they'd been had until it was too late.

So the night before, I secretely created a few extra boxes to use as decoys. I made logbooks, I carved stamps, and I created decoys.

The decoys actually served two purposes. The first and primary purpose was to get teams to overlook the real boxes hidden just behind the decoys. The second, in the event that the decoy did not fool a team, it would still slow down the other teams. As every letterboxer knows, when a letterboxer finds a letterbox, you HAVE to stamp in. It's ingrained in our culture. It cannot be avoided, so in a worst-case scenario, at least the decoys would slow other teams down as they stopped long enough to stamp into both boxes, and perhaps cause a great deal of confusion when they found two boxes rather than one.

We also considered how to improve our stamp-in time. I carved a team stamp the night before so we could just stamp in with one stamp rather than each of our signature stamps, and we used an ink pad rather than our usual markers since we could stamp with an ink pad faster than markers.

The morning of the event, before the event started, we got there early enough to plant the first decoy for the codebook since we already knew where that box was. Then we had another hour before the event was officially to begin, so we continued looking for additional boxes early.

We found two more--Sherlock Holmes and the Disguise. The Disguise was one of the four that we needed to get to win. Sweet! Sherlock was nice to know about, but wasn't critical to winning the game. At least that meant we didn't have to waste time "finding" it later. We were incredibly lucky that of the three boxes we found before the event actually started, two of them were the critical ones we needed. We planted another decoy box with the Disguise.

We also had another incredibly lucky stroke of luck--there was a mole we needed to find, and as it turned out, John was the mole. He let us in on this secret that morning, and another diobolical plot was hatched. We didn't want others to find the mole--he needed to be found to win the game as well. People were to tell John a phrase, and if they were correct, he would give them the last of the five stamps necessary to win the game. We needed to make sure nobody else got his stamp.

So we implemented a 'defense.' Whenever we saw another group, John would hang back so if someone tried to guess the secret phrase, they'd ask one of us first. And we'd give them a stamp! Once they thought they had the mole stamp, they'd stop asking around and never get around to John....

Some would say we cheated, but that seems a little extreme. We were spies, after all, expected to be "dishonorable." Other teams should be doing the same, and we racked our brains trying to think of ways that other teams might trick us! We worried most about wassamatta_u. We knew that of everyone involved, he would be the most dishonorable lout of them all. But we were pretty pleased with our advanced preparations.

The event started. Slick Kitty interrogated most of the teams, including us, and she seemed to focus on John and myself as being most likely to be the mole. We pointed to Amanda, describing her recent travels to Amsterdam and Dublin, but Kitty would have none of it. Sweet little Amanda? (That's what makes her such a good spy!) Yes, as spies, we'd even throw each other under the bus. =)

The game was now afoot, and we finally had the official clues to all of the boxes. We worked out the codes in them, then started off to find the ones we hadn't already found. We were amazingly quick and efficient, and our incredible luck finding just the boxes that were necessary to win the game kept coming up surprisingly often. One of the needed stamps was held by Sherlock Holmes, a character walking around who quizzed us about the character. We couldn't exactly hide a decoy on the person, we went went with plan B and planted the box with another nearby box that wasn't necessary to find--just to slow down other teams who needed to log into two boxes instead of one.

After we got the last box, we thought we were home free. We just needed to check in and we had it bagged. Until we crossed paths with the Salad Tongs. They accused us of being Russian spies, and--most horribly--they were right. We were employed by the Russians and having been caught, we were to be branded traitors and hung. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

But we were spies. We wouldn't go out without a struggle. We offered gifts, some people might call them bribes, but 'gifts' sounds nicer. Most of the gifts were the bribes we brought for Slick Kitty. Now we had more important things on mind--saving our necks. We bribed their kids. I offered some hand-carved Tortuga stamps. We squirmed. We begged. There may have even been tears.

They made out like bandits, but they finally agreed to let us go. We checked in, officially winning the game, at which point we admitted to our deceptive, nefarious ways to get so far ahead.

Because, quite literally, we could not have won without the clemency granted by the Salad Tongs, we gave them a trophy we won in appreciation. They helped us win, after all (though admittedly, if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have been in such trouble in the first place!)

We ate, we laughed, I warned others about the decoys we had set out so people could find the real boxes now that time was no longer of the essence. Eventually, we headed out again to find the rest of the boxes that we hadn't found yet--those that weren't necessary to win the game, and we picked up the decoys we had planted earlier now that they were no longer necessary.

The decoys did work, too! The codebook decoy had two teams that stamped in, but did not stamp into the real codebook box. The disguise decoy had three teams that stamped in, but only one of them found the real box when we finally pulled the decoy. Several people logged into the key decoy, though one person wrote, "Ryan, you evil bastard!"--so I don't think that decoy fooled him. ;o) I did see how many people logged into that decoy, but I didn't check how many of them logged into the real box. Of the three, it was the least effective decoy given the hiding spot involved. The passport decoy wasn't much of a decoy since we hid it with a different, unrelated box, but several people did sign in so we know it did work to slow other teams down at the very least. Mission accomplished! =)

Speaking of those decoy boxes.... I've listed them on AQ for those who found them and want to record the find. (They are real letterboxes, with stamps, a logbook, and even clues to follow--though admittedly, the clues were poached. Being spies, however, we felt it was okay in this particular instance.) If you aren't sure if you found the decoy or real box, the decoy stamps didn't actually fit into the box of the official stamp-in sheet since we didn't know the correct sizes of the stamps ahead of time. If your stamp didn't fit the space for them correctly (either too small, too large, or the wrong ratio for the dimensions), it's a decoy.

There are some members of my team who would rather not have me reveal our diabolical methods to win the game. I'm telling you them for two reasons. One, I live in Seattle and there's a good chance I wouldn't make it to subsequent events. And two, the next time there is such an event, I wanted to encourage more subterfuge and deception among the teams. =) More paranoia. More backstabbing. More fun! To make it harder to fool people with decoys next time, and perhaps to get a few new rules added to the game next year. (It's always cool when you know there's a new rule--only because of your evil ideas.) Though I kind of hope that decoys aren't forbidden in the future. That was fun, and it would have been very interesting to see how things would have played out if several teams were out planting decoys. I tell you--we were extra careful looking for additional boxes behind the first ones we found and making sure we found the real box... just in case another team was planting decoys as well, we didn't want to fall for our own trick!

What a great time we had, though! Thanks Slick Kitty for putting the event on, even if we did stretch the rules to the fullest extent that we could get away with. But hey, we're spies. We never claimed to be honorable. ;o)

Same wet spot - new and improved box

I created a special administrative page to list all of the varied responses included in the "first aid" section for letterboxes. The feature gets abused a lot, but I didn't really have an easy, systematic way to get rid of all of the fluff showing up in it. So I finally made a special page that displays to me every single box with a first aid request, and more specifically, what the request is.

I'd say of all the boxes listed, about half of them have used the first aid box incorrectly. The first aid option is meant to request help from finders of your box. Perhaps a full logbook needs to be replaced, or a cracked container needs to be replaced. Or maybe a stamp is missing and you hope someone can replace it for you.

It's a request--a call for help. It's not supposed to be used to write your clues, it's not supposed to be used to tell others that the box has moved or that the box is missing. It's not to warn that there is poison ivy in the area or that people should carry sunscreen or bug spray.

My favorite 'first aid' comment so far is the one in this title: "Same wet spot - new and improved box!" It sounds so.... well.... Taken out of context, it's really quite hilarious. But, again, if that's the kind of message you are leaving for first aid requests, it's being misused.

Here are some other examples of how NOT to use the first aid:

* bring your swimming and snorkel gear!
* Bring Binoculars -- Leave the Dogs at Home!
* May have been destroyed in a wild fire - unsure of it's status. [Note: Change the status of the box to unknown.]
* missing [Note: Change the status of the box to unavailable]
* Box has been replaced. See updated clue.
* reported possibly missing 5/2007
* construction at the zoo might have eliminated this box
* Several reports of this box trying to swim to Europe...
* the recent torrential rains may have washed this letterbox down slope--wonder if it's in the neighboring detritus? [Note: This is probably better mentioned in the clues itself.]
* CANNOT FIND THIS BOX.
* Mosquito repellant
* Probably washed away in recent rains
* Currently missing from the gathering. It's not a cootie.
* Ok
* watch out for blackberry brambles.
* Gone baby gone
* theres a new clue at letterboxing.de !
* Box found in nearby garbage can. Will replant soon.
* HELP ME!!!! [Note: Okay, technically it is asking for help, but since it fails to describe what help is needed, it's not very useful.]
* none
* Stamp and logbook replaced
* MISSING & MURDERED BY A LAWN MOWER!
* Caution-Box fills with water. Please carefully rebag
* Beginning 01/05/08- this park will be closed on Sundays
* Reported missing after first finders. I have yet to verify. [Note: That's called an unknown status]
* Boxes to be replaced soon.
* Box pulled for the winter! Come back in the spring! Thanks! [Note: Change the status of the box, or at least mark it using the new seasonal attribute.]
* may be on the ground, at the base of the tree, or fell into the woods.
* Heard that the bench might be gone! :( [Note: This kind of stuff should be in the clue!]
* I've moved from the area.... so as time goes by this box might need maintnence..... thanks
* I've been told the area around this box is under construction and may not be available at this time.....

Here are real examples of the proper use of the first aid option:

* Needs rescue from new construction in area [Note: This is slightly different than the last example of what not to do. Here, the person is asking for help to rescue their box. In the example of what not to do, the person is telling you that the box may or may not be unavailable--therefore, the status is unknown. The person doing the finding is not being asked to help in any way.]
* Needs outside of box marked. Adoption requests welcome! [Note: The first part of this is okay. Adoption requests are best left directly in the clue itself.]
* A new logbook might be nice, maybe someone could help.
* I need a sandwich sized box RIGHT AWAY!
* Logbooks Full! [Note: I'm assuming, of course, that the person is requesting to have the logbooks replaced.]
* logbook is wet, so if you can replace it with a small, dry book, it would be much appreciated. [Note: Basically the same thing, but better worded. =)]
* Clues need to be verified!
* Stamp missing - if willing to help replace it, please email me

In related news..... As I find first aid comments about "box missing" or "possibly missing," I've been changing the status of the boxes to reflect the comments, then removing the comments. It's always better to change the status so people can better sort through active boxes from missing ones.

I've now gone through all of the first aid comments on boxes marked as active, unknown, or unavailable and removed the ones that were being misused. I still need to go through the retired boxes, but that's probably not nearly as critical since most of you aren't searching for retired boxes anyhow. But I need lunch, so the retired boxes will wait until later today!

The Results are In!

Plant-A-Letterbox Day has come and gone. For those of us out here in California, it was a beautiful cloudless day.

The official results can be seen on the Plant-a-Letterbox Day page of Atlas Quest. I waited a bit for stragglers who had planted boxes but not yet listed them or their clues had a chance to list their boxes. I figure by now, most people should have, but the numbers could still change slightly as more time passes.

As of this minute, the final results are:

Total boxes listed	764
Total traditional listed	684
Total non-traditional listed	80
Total number of planters	306
Total for traditional planters	284
Total for non-traditional planters	47

A detailed breakdown isn't available on Atlas Quest, so I'll mention some of the more interesting details here.

Breakdown by Type
Traditionals: 684
Hitchhikers: 21
Virtuals: 6
Postals: 10
Personal Travelers: 5
Cooties: 10
LTCs: 13
Event Boxes: 9
Others: 6

Top Ten by State
New York: 142
Washington: 56
North Carolina: 55
Michigan: 43
Oregon: 37
Ohio: 34
California: 32
Ontario: 31 (okay, not a state, but close enough!)
Georgia: 25
Pennsylvania: 24

Top Ten Planters (traditional boxes only)
Scout: 37
Milagro: 16
Water Lily: 14
FourWaters: 11
Sahlie: 11
Eiryn: 11
turtlelove: 11
Pioneer Spirit: 10
Turtle Song: 9
Gischer Gryffindors: 9

Next year, Plant-a-Letterbox Day falls on a Monday. It's Memorial Day Monday, but still, a Monday, so I figure there will likely be similar results next year. That'll likely be the last good year for most people since subsequent years will be during the work week. In 2006 and 2007, the day fell on a work day, and the number of plants exploded last year when it finally fell on a Saturday. I suspect 2011 it'll drop again accordingly. Next year, though.... next year will probably be similar to this year.

Until next year.... And you actually have 367 days (as of today) until the next Plant-A-Letterbox Day! Start preparing now! =)