This post lists some articles about VPNs that can help in deciding which VPN to choose and which features to use. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is not your best friend. VPN is an acronym for Virtual Private Network.

A VPN can protect your online privacy. But there’s a catch: This article is about the US House of Representatives voting, in 1917, to kill Federal Communications Commission rules that kept Internet Service providers from selling user data. User data means where you went on the internet, what you did there and how long you were there. The “catch” they are referring to is whether the provider of the VPN is reputable.

What Your ISP Can Learn About You & How to Protect Yourself: Updated on 9th June 2020 by the author. Excellent Post. The very best way to keep your ISP from saving everything they can find out about you (a lot) is to do end-to-end encryption, a process that is also called tunneling. As of right now the best way to provide tunneling is to use a very reputable VPN. The post has a list of “reputable” VPNs. It also has a list of what information your ISP can store about you. A very scary list if your behavior is anything  less moral and ethical than the behavior of Jesus Christ and you know what they did to him. I currently qualify this as a must-read post.

Feelin’ good, feelin’ good
All the money in the world spent on feelin’ good

The above are a part of the chorus of the song Fool for a Cigarette/Feelin’ Good which was written by Sidney Bailey, a Memphis cab driver/songwriter and performed by Ry Cooder. I’m a fan of Cooder’s music. I first heard the song in 1974. When I first heard it I related to it right away. The song really is all about the phrase above. All the money in the world really is spent on feeling good. For years I’ve racked my brain trying to figure out what people spend money on other than something which makes them feel good and I haven’t had a lot of success coming up with alternatives.

I like reading lists. Especially reading lists from creative, thoughtful people. Especially successful,  creative, thoughtful people. I was looking at a recent post from Matt Mullenweg. I started going down the list and seeing if any of the the books made sense for me. I ran across one title, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, that might be for me. I looked in my local library online catalog and noticed that there were 45 people waiting on 6 copies. A light went off. Maybe I should read this book. I checked Audible. Yep, they had it and I have credits. However, I use my credits sparingly. I only get two a month. I now go to Amazon to see if they have a summary of the book on Kindle Unlimited. They did. Three of them. So Kindle Unlimited it will be.

There are actually several takeaways from the above segment of this post. I list them because that’s really what this post is all about.

• Reading lists are good. They help me find books that I might like. They’re like a filter. They give you more choices and save you time. If you find reading lists from other people that seem to make sense for you consult them periodically like you would the more popular lists such as the NY Times Bestsellers list.
• You need a variety of resources. I went to my public library first. It’s free. That’s always my first choice. When I saw overwhelming demand, I then went to Audible to see if they carry the book. It’s almost certain they would. Audible tends to be my last choice as I only get two books a month. Not all great reads come in audio format. A high percentage do, however. I went to Amazon to see if they had the summary in Kindle Unlimited as the above book is more of an educational as opposed to a purely entertainment choice. Summaries are great and Kindle Unlimited makes them a very, very viable choice for me.
• You do not have to pay a lot of money for books every month. My Audible and Kindle Unlimited subscriptions set me back about $33 a month, but I get the ability to consume an enormous amount of material when you combine that with my public library access. Hoopla and Overdrive are Godsends.
• Summaries work. The concept works for some books better than others but, essentially, it works for all books. Think Cliff’s Notes. Sometimes I check out the summaries before I actually get the book to see if I really want to invest the time into the material. Sometimes I get the summary after I listen to the book to see if the book was as good as I thought it was.

Hoopla gave me a lot of trouble in the beginning. The primary reason was that I had originally thought that I could download books off of Hoopla. I tried and tried. Well, I tried a few times. I even talked to my local librarian about it. No luck. Eventually, primarily because of the fact that Hoopla kept turning up all the time, I came to realize that the way to download Hoopla books was to download them on my cell phone. It was really easy. Perseverance – I love that word. Hope is the reason to keep trying. My next step for Hoopla is to use it more often. The books loan for 21 days and I can borrow as many as 6 at a time. Very nice. My next move is to read (listen to) some books that fall under the category of “Market Economics” or one of its may cousin terms.

This is a reference for Keto calories.

Primary:
Bacon  |  Breakfast Sausage  |  Butter  |  Cheese  |  Eggs  |  Hamburger Patty  |  Macadamia  |  Ranch Dressing  |  String Cheese  |

Secondary:
Avacado |

Today I needed some space on my MP3 player to download some new books that I got from the library. Now my MP3 player only holds about 8 Gigs total. Only??? Right, I absolutely do have some issues that I need to work out. But… Continue reading →

The more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn. Maybe that’s enlightenment enough — to know that there is no final resting place of the mind, no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom, at least for me, means realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go. Anthony Bourdain

This is a list of what I’ve been reading lately. Generally, the list is in chronological order. Continue reading →

This is a list of podcasts that have at least a tinge of success or self-help in the theme.

AgileLeanLife  |  Addicted to Success  |  The Meaningful Show  |

This is a list of book summary publishers. These are the shorter versions of longer works. They are much smaller and less expensive. Book summaries can be great way to find books that might interest you. Generally, books are not summarized by people or companies unless they are popular books. Summaries can also be a good way to find out whether the book is a book you might want to read. The best ways to find book summaries of a particular book is to Google the author or book title along with the terms “key takeaways”, “analysis” or something along that line. Note: These are not recommendations. It is simply a list of resources. Where I have some experience (good or bad) I document my personal experience below the list. Note that the experience is personal, which means you may or may not have the same opinion as I do after working with the site. Continue reading →