This is an open letter to the politicians who decided it would be better if our browsing history wasn’t private.

As we all know on March 28th House Republicans outvoted the Democrats to repeal the “Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunication Services” law. President Trump signed off on the bill on April 3rd.

I’ve heard and read people say that they’ve nothing to hide so why does it matter?

It matters because it’s not just us but our kids, too. If you have kids with phones or tablets, kids that get on the web and surf around — well what they do online is now up for sale. Comcast or your ISP of choice or cell phone provider can take that usage and sell it to Walmart or Target or whoever else they want.

It’s not just our browser history that we need to worry about either. Before the FCC’s privacy laws went into effect, various ISPs were actually hijacking their customer’s searches.

Imagine if you will:

1. You search for “brownies” in Google
2. Comcast intercepts your search and sends it to their partner before sending it to Google
3. The partner has a deal with Duncan Hines so the partner tells Comcast to send you to duncanhines.com
4. Comcast sends you duncanhines.com without you ever seeing Google’s search results page

ISPs were actually doing this in the past before the privacy laws took hold. Your online, personal data is no longer safe from prying eyes and people with money. We’ll now be profiled and sold and so will our kids and so will their searches.

Imagine again if you will:

1. You’re walking around in public with your cell phone
2. Verizon knows where you are based on the cell towers
3. Verizon analyzes where you went and sells all your travel/shopping patterns
4. Verizon does this every moment your phone is turned on

That’s real life but it’s no different if you swap out “walking around” with “surfing the web” or “snapchatting” or “facebooking.”

When Maggie asked me why the House voted to repeal the law, I told her that our laws often aren’t really about protecting or helping us, especially in this case. This law repeal is about helping corporations. It doesn’t serve us, the people of the United States, at all.

From the way I read S.J.Res. 34 though, we’ll have the option to opt-out instead of the more strict opt-in as before. I hope that’s the case. I couldn’t find any settings in my Comcast account on their website and I imagine it would be the last thing they’d add if they did.

Regardless, I set up PureVPN for Maggie and I to use. All our internet traffic is tunneled through it so Comcast and T-Mobile will only know we’re connecting to a VPN. Where we go from there and what we do will be off limits. PureVPN also doesn’t log our data.

And for the people who voted for Trump, Maggie and I thank you.

#politics #privacynews #maggie

☀️💘 #photos #sunsets

#photos #cats

Definitely at CrossFit.

#photos #facebook

One of the greatest things about my life right now is that I don’t feel like I owe anybody an apology nor do I feel like anyone owes me one either.

That’s pretty bad ass.

#forgiveness #goteam

Source: @cabel on twitter.com

#foodtrucks

I can’t believe I’m eating carrots for a snack at 10:30 at night. Like an asshole.

#allislost

For someone who likes to drink, having over 67 fluid ounces of Coca-Cola in one bottle only causes problems.

#photos #soda #thestruggleisreal

I’m thinking of getting out Grandpa Jimmy’s canoe 🛶 🤔

#photos #weather

Afternoon sunbeams in the trees, April 2008

So on Monday night I was up past 1am, way beyond when I should’ve been asleep. Way beyond. I’m old and really shouldn’t be pretending that I’m still in my teens. Every now and then though something magical grabs hold of me though and I’m up for all hours.

Anyways on Tuesday (yesterday) morning I’m driving to work sleepy as hell¹ and I started my morning directional prayer. I always ask for guidance when I’m driving to work, that’s when I first pray.

The prayer was something humbly along the lines of…

God, me staying up way past my bedtime and feeling cranky right now is totally my fault. It’s all my doing. I wasn’t stressed, can’t blame staying up late on some childhood issue or anybody else. It’s all on me. But if ya got a little help to spare in me making it through this day without being an asshole, I’d appreciate it. Whatever your will is, please just help me accept it.

I had an email waiting for me at work that I wasn’t all too eager to deal with. I was sure something had blown up, that I was going to have to respond with some bad news to the client. After I investigated the email and related issue though, I found out that there was no issue. It was a mistaken date range on the report and that was the end of it.

The rest of my workday was pretty much stress free as well and that rarely happens. I put my headphones on, listened to my favorite #musicvideos and just did mind-numbing, uneventful work all day.

That my friends is another example of grace pure and simple. Sometimes I’m let off the hook even when I shouldn’t be, even when I put myself on that hook — the only thing I had to do was ask. That doesn’t always happen but when it does, it’s profoundly meaningful in ways I cannot describe.

So much of my spiritual beliefs are built on personal experience. After I had a handful of encounters with grace, I really started feeling it was something real.

When I was drinking it was an endless cycle of me drinking irresponsibly, screwing up, and then drinking some more.

In the here-and-now I try really hard to make it an endless cycle of me screwing up, asking for God’s help, and accepting whatever outcome comes my way. Most days I’m grateful, too.

¹ I wanted to say “fuck” because that’s what you do when you’re me but I’m trying to clean up my act.

#grace #advancedsoul