Arrowhead Marsh, Oakland
Fri, 30 Nov 2001 16:42:27 -0800
From: Don Lewis
We were surprised Thursday morning to discover that the entrance road to Arrowhead Marsh (and "Mitigation Marsh," in Martin Luther King Jr Regional Shoreline near the Oakland airport) is closed and will be until at least December 15. We talked to a foreman and he said that the first of the year is more likely for re-opening, especially given the current rains. The road will be paved all the way in and new restroom(s) installed.
This will make it difficult to see the Burrowing Owl but you can still walk in on the water-edge paved bike trail after parking along Swan Way. A much shorter way is to take Edgewater Dr north from Hegenberger Rd, and turn left at Pardee Ln, which takes you to the eastside bike trail near the pedestrian bridge over San Leandro Creek slough.
Thanks to Bingham Gibbs's planning, we hit a very high tide from 9 to 10 AM and were treated to 7 (and maybe 9) Clapper Rails, two seen for as long as we wanted from the pier at 10-foot distance. Also noted a Sora, swimming around looking for some dry land, of which there was none. Quite a few Green-winged Teal and the usual cast of characters, augmented by a male Barrow's Goldeneye, a juvenile Osprey and the Merlin who has been hanging out there. The latter was in the small bare tree just at the east end of the footbridge (Don't forget to look up!, as it used to say on Denise Wight's bumper sticker. I say that because I was standing under the tree, oblivious, deciding whether the rain warranted running for the car when Larry Gibbs came along and said to Look Up).
Don Lewis
Lafayette, CA
Worm alert
Fri, 30 Nov 2001 17:12:32 -0800
From: Tom Condit
I just got an e-mail apparently from an EBB subscriber with the subject line appearing to be a reply to one of my EBB messages. This e-mail reached me blank. That's because I use Eudora rather than a Macrosuck e-mail program. The fact that the address of the sender began with an underscore "_" is a clue that this is the new worm going around, which infiltrates MS e-mail programs, selects random messages, and sends replies to them enclosing the worm itself. Had I been using Outlook or Express, one or more of you might have gotten a similar message from me, passing the worm along. So ... A word to the wise: One of you on this list has a worm in his or her computer. Get your virus programs updated. Do a sweep. Then get rid of your Microsoft e-mail products. (This thing may be infiltrating Netscape as well, but I don't think so.)
Tom Condit
Editor's Note: I am omitting from the archives several more messages about this. Note that the infected messages are not being sent through the list itself, which rejects attachments and other coding that might conceal a virus. For more information about the particular worm that has been hitting many of us, see
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.badtrans.b@mm.html
This worm does not do serious damage to your computer, but it does try to keep a log of your keystrokes and send them off to someone (a trick for capturing passwords and other private information). Fortunately, I had updated my anti-virus program a couple of days ago, and it intercepted the virus before it could do anything. --Larry