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Sadly, I will be working most of the day today at Apple in the Mall of America. Leslie is with her family at her cabin in McGregor. This is my first time away from the largest of my family get-togethers. My uncle Tab is a minister in Duluth, and for the traditional holiday gatherings, he and his family are in Duluth. So the Fourth of July weekend is a time for everyone to migrate back home, to celebrate our nation’s independence, but most importantly, enjoy family.

This day is a chance for my extremely large, Iron Ranger, Italian extended family to enjoy one another’s company, catch up on the gossip of recent happenings, but most of all, to show other newcomers to our family what “family” really means. From Florida to Oregon, Wisconsin to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, my family has trekked back to Eveleth to watch the annual Eveleth Fourth of July parade since I can remember. We stake out that certain street corner on Grant Avenue in front of the bank, and plop down our folding chairs, park the strollers, and get ready for one of the best parades I’ve ever known.

My favorite of any summer activity (yes, even more than my recent disc golf hobby) is the annual bocce ball tournament at Bootsie and Louie’s cabin on Saint Mary’s Lake. It’s the most official-yet-relaxed sporting event ever. Wimbledon and the like: take note. Yes, we pay a friendly entrance fee, but the money goes to the winning pair and the runner up pair. Ever since I was little, I wanted to win that tournament.

I’ve had several moments in the past few years where I was worried about making an appearance. I worked in the Boundary Waters at Charles L. Sommers – Northern Tier National High Adventure Base during the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school. Yet, I was able to make the trip down, and I even brought a co-worker away from his family in Illinois. Four summers ago, Leslie and I made the trek from northwestern Wisconsin from Tomahawk Scout Reservation, our first summer “dating” (even though as co-workers we couldn’t really say that). In the summer of 2006, she and I drove up from the Twin Cities to play in the bocce tournament, Leslie a returning newcomer the family was expecting. Last summer, I was scheduled to work at 4pm back in Hibbing on the 4th, so although I made it to the parade, the Elk’s Club after-party, and a good portion of the bocce tournament, I had to jet early, and I even made it to the final pairing, albeit playing as a stand-in for my cousin Jillian’s boyfriend (who I heard never actually showed up).

I think that growing up makes a person want to move away from his hometown, but to an extent, there are always those memories you want to rekindle and re-live. No matter how far from the Iron Range I move, I promise my family that I will make it back for them- to be with them- every 4th of July from this day on.

I hope all of you have a great Fourth of July weekend with your family and friends. I never wanted to admit it, but sitting here alone at my desk in my apartment in Little Canada, absence does make the heart grow fonder of the ones you love.

Today, I will be in the company of co-workers who are also far from home. I will share with them my stories of family at the Fourth. Tonight, we shall create history of our own: Downtown Minneapolis on the Fourth of July. I will post pictures and videos as soon as possible.

I love you and miss you all! I will be calling to talk to you several times today. A call to everyone: don’t let Richie rig the tournament brackets and somehow manage to get to the finals AGAIN.

Finally, after three days of tinkering with CSS, help from the Twitterati, and the motivational vibes of Tiësto, I was able to remove the unwanted WordPress theme elements from the style.css, the footer.php, and the sidebar.php. W3 Schools was a bit of help in explaining more about Cascading Style Sheets and Hypertext Preprocessor (CSS and PHP). Slowly, I am learning. And you know, I feel like this makes sense.

Something that makes no sense, makes sense.

Don’t overthink that one. I’m certainly not worried about any of you really nitpicking my blog anyhow.

I head to Boston in three weeks; and hopefully by that time, I will know more about WP, coding, and be able to hold my own in a discussion with very intelligent people. I mean, I am heading to PodCamp Boston, and I although I have tinkered with some HTML since about high school, I don’t believe I have any more experience with coding than say, anyone else. (Although reading the first portion of this blog might have you convinced the other way)

Brewery tour(s) in the next few days. Flat Earth Brewery in Saint Paul, and Minneapolis Town Hall Brewery in Minneapolis. Look for blog posts regarding my visit. There will be growlers…

IMPORTANTLY, I have added photos and videos from McCarthy Beach State Park camping, the once-a-year visit to Witch’s Hat Tower in Prospect Park, Minneapolis; and my visit to K102’s 1st Annual Country Splash in Somerset, Wisconsin. Check my .Mac gallery for the photos and videos.

Leslie and I went camping up north, near where I grew up, at McCarthy Beach State Park. She and I have been slowly augmenting our collection of camping equipment for over a year. This was more of a shake-down than anything else; although McCarthy is a nice campground, it is just that: a campground. We got a slightly isolated site, and we didn’t have electricity, we even used backpacking food. I was rather sad to see the large amount of people who think “camping” entails using a huge RV / fifth-wheel tow behind trailer with an unleaded generator. We took a few cool pictures of a little chipmunk who had a tunnel just outside our tent. Also, this was the first time that we brought both bikes somewhere using the Thule car racks. There were quite a few nice trails skirting the campground, but I was saddened to find that the trails threading through “private” land (something really interesting, within the bounds of a Minnesota state park) were ill-kept. I really wanted to peddle my way back to Pickerel Lake and sit on the shoreline. I haven’t been back there since I was 11 or 12 years old. It’s a small, rather deep lake, and the Department of Natural Resources stocks it with rainbow trout. We had dinner at a local favorite: Bimbo’s, a bar/restaurant. If you are ever out near Side Lake, Minnesota, the hot wings there are a must. I will post the photos of the chipmunk at a later date.

So while reading the Washington Post I came across this. Seriously, people are going to have no personal security in any aspect of their lives in a short while.

The ID Chip You Don’t Want in Your Passport

By Bruce Schneier
Saturday, September 16, 2006

If you have a passport, now is the time to renew it — even if it’s not set to expire anytime soon. If you don’t have a passport and think you might need one, now is the time to get it. In many countries, including the United States, passports will soon be equipped with RFID chips. And you don’t want one of these chips in your passport.

RFID stands for “radio-frequency identification.” Passports with RFID chips store an electronic copy of the passport information: your name, a digitized picture, etc. And in the future, the chip might store fingerprints or digital visas from various countries.

By itself, this is no problem. But RFID chips don’t have to be plugged in to a reader to operate. Like the chips used for automatic toll collection on roads or automatic fare collection on subways, these chips operate via proximity. The risk to you is the possibility of surreptitious access: Your passport information might be read without your knowledge or consent by a government trying to track your movements, a criminal trying to steal your identity or someone just curious about your citizenship.

At first the State Department belittled those risks, but in response to criticism from experts it has implemented some security features. Passports will come with a shielded cover, making it much harder to read the chip when the passport is closed. And there are now access-control and encryption mechanisms, making it much harder for an unauthorized reader to collect, understand and alter the data.

Although those measures help, they don’t go far enough. The shielding does no good when the passport is open. Travel abroad and you’ll notice how often you have to show your passport: at hotels, banks, Internet cafes. Anyone intent on harvesting passport data could set up a reader at one of those places. And although the State Department insists that the chip can be read only by a reader that is inches away, the chips have been read from many feet away.

The other security mechanisms are also vulnerable, and several security researchers have already discovered flaws. One found that he could identify individual chips via unique characteristics of the radio transmissions. Another successfully cloned a chip. The State Department called this a “meaningless stunt,” pointing out that the researcher could not read or change the data. But the researcher spent only two weeks trying; the security of your passport has to be strong enough to last 10 years.

This is perhaps the greatest risk. The security mechanisms on your passport chip have to last the lifetime of your passport. It is as ridiculous to think that passport security will remain secure for that long as it would be to think that you won’t see another security update for Microsoft Windows in that time. Improvements in antenna technology will certainly increase the distance at which they can be read and might even allow unauthorized readers to penetrate the shielding.

Whatever happens, if you have a passport with an RFID chip, you’re stuck. Although popping your passport in the microwave will disable the chip, the shielding will cause all kinds of sparking. And although the United States has said that a nonworking chip will not invalidate a passport, it is unclear if one with a deliberately damaged chip will be honored.

The Colorado passport office is already issuing RFID passports, and the State Department expects all U.S. passport offices to be doing so by the end of the year. Many other countries are in the process of changing over. So get a passport before it’s too late. With your new passport you can wait another 10 years for an RFID passport, when the technology will be more mature, when we will have a better understanding of the security risks and when there will be other technologies we can use to cut the risks. You don’t want to be a guinea pig on this one.

Bruce Schneier writes often on security subjects.