My Blog

Thoughts, experiences, and insights from my journey in technology, automation, and the occasional failed experiment.

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Mar 03, 2026

20 min read

An Open Letter to Every Lawmaker Who Has Never Felt Chronic Pain

I'm a 49-year-old chronic pain patient with a fused spine, a late-in-life AuDHD diagnosis, and nearly a decade of opioid dependency behind me. Medical cannabis gave me my life back. In return, my home state of Texas won't let me legally access it, federal law calls me a criminal for crossing state lines to get it, and the same government that approves pharmaceutical cannabis derivatives wants to strip my Second Amendment rights over a plant. I'm done being quiet.

Healthcare Policy Analysis Personal Story

Feb 20, 2026

9 min read

The Information Noose: The Systemic Erasure of the First Amendment

The founders knew that controlling the flow of information is how kings control what people think. In 2026 that control is being rebuilt from two directions: billionaires buying the pipes, from CBS to TikTok to a bid for CNN's parent, and a Presidency squeezing the valves with lawsuits, FCC pressure, and press bans. The answer is not to fight inside their systems. It is to build new ones.

Free Speech Policy Analysis

Feb 11, 2026

12 min read

Six Zero-Days and a Side of AI Risk: The February 2026 Patch Reality Check

Microsoft's February 2026 Patch Tuesday fixes 54 vulnerabilities, and six are zero-days already exploited in the wild. The quieter risk: three remote code execution flaws in GitHub Copilot and popular IDEs that prompt injection can trigger. What to patch first, how to stage it, and why AI coding agents need to be treated like privileged services.

Cybersecurity Patch Management AI

Feb 10, 2026

12 min read

The Privacy Crisis: Surveillance Technology and Its Impact on American Cities

ALPRs aren't just traffic cameras. They record every passing plate, innocent drivers included, and EFF's analysis of Oakland's own data found them concentrated in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Commercial databases sell the sightings, and some Flock cameras were found exposed to the open internet with no password. Stop asking if ALPRs catch criminals. Start asking who is tracking your every move.

Privacy Surveillance Policy Analysis

Jan 28, 2026

15 min read

DOGE: The Data Consolidation Operation Disguised as Efficiency

DOGE wasn't an efficiency project. It was a power-and-data consolidation machine dressed up in budget cosplay. Federal spending barely moved, but a Social Security dataset on more than 300 million Americans was copied into a high-risk cloud environment, and the government now admits in court that DOGE staff sent private records outside the agency. Stop asking if DOGE saved money. Start asking who has your data.

Privacy Surveillance Policy Analysis

Jan 15, 2026

9 min read

When a Church Nails AI Ethics (From a Privacy Hawk Who's Agnostic)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints added AI guidance to its handbook, and this agnostic privacy hawk thinks it holds up. Strip out the theology and four rules remain: keep your integrity, do your own thinking, don't take high-stakes advice from a model, and keep sensitive data out of AI tools you don't control.

AI Privacy Technology

Jan 13, 2026

7 min read

Why is my favicon still the classic BigFix logo?

Because it's a badge of honor, a conversation starter, and a nod to one of the best chapters of my career. The story behind a BigFix tattoo that started as a joke, the community that showed up after my first spinal surgery, and the thread BigFix still runs from Kroger to HCL Software to 3D Nomadic.

BigFix Personal Story Tech Community

Dec 22, 2025

10 min read

When Trump 2.0 Goes Cyber: Why We Need a New CISA and a Bigger Cyber Playbook

Brian Krebs's year-in-review shows America's cyber defenders dismantled from the inside: a third of CISA gone, the Cyber Safety Review Board dismissed mid-investigation, specialists reassigned to deportations, and states cut off from shared protection. A nearly 30-year security veteran on what that means on the ground, and the six fixes that would put it back.

Cybersecurity Policy Analysis Technology

Dec 08, 2025

14 min read

Goodbye Price Tags, Hello Dynamic Gouging: How Grocers and Algorithms Are Quietly Taxing Your Life

The classic price tag is dying, replaced by data-driven algorithmic price steering. As someone who worked on early digital shelf tags at America's largest grocery chain, I can tell you: it was scary then, it's much scarier now.

Privacy Surveillance Technology

Nov 29, 2025

11 min read

When "AI Safety" Becomes a Weapon: Lessons from Anthropic's Claude Hack Story

A Chinese state-sponsored group used Claude Code to run an espionage campaign against about 30 organizations, with the AI doing most of the work, after lying its way past the guardrails. The bigger story is how 'AI safety' is becoming a narrative that centralizes control while the models stay fundamentally exploitable. Vendor safety is not your safety.

AI Cybersecurity Technology