Trick of the trade

Freelancing at ad agencies, or anyplace for that matter, there are commonplace, everyday things I, like most people, have to tend to.

Check email. Answer said email. Check bank balances. Go on Facebook, Twitter and Instgram and tell people I'm working on a social assignment (I kid because I love). Perhaps, hypothetically, respond to a request for other freelance.

The problem is to do those things, I have to go through the agency server to connect to the interwebs. And then, the agency has the password to my bank account, and can read that email I got from the Head Of The China Treasury, who has a charitable donation of $35,000,000 only I can be trusted with (it was easy - all they wanted was my bank account and social security number. The transfer will be here any day now).

Many people far less paranoid than I am just shrug their shoulders, use the servers and surrender a certain amount of privacy for a nice day rate.

So what's a guy who loves his day rate and his privacy to do? Glad you asked.

You pick up one of these little gizmos.

This is my own personal wi-fi hotspot. About the size of a credit card, half as thick as an iPad and password protected, I connect to it and suddenly I can do all my personal business from my computer without the prying eyes of the IT guy, who really should be more worried about getting me that mouse I asked for three weeks ago.

Now, I could've used my smartphone as a hotspot, but then I'd have had to change my plan. And since I've been on AT&T with unlimited data plan since my first iPhone, I wasn't going to do anything to jeopardize that deal.

This device, cleverly called My Go Phone, lets me buy either 2G, 5G or 8G of data a month. I chose the 8G - it's seventy-five tax deductible dollars a month and worth every penny.

So if you have a personal email, a financial matter, or—hypothetically—a job offer you'd like to discuss with me, feel free to email me. Thanks to this snappy bit of technology, it'll just be between us.

Until Mike in Digital Experience hacks it.

Stuck with acupuncture

I know people who always turn to alternative medicine as a first resort. They have all sorts of theories why western medicine is out to kill us with all the toxic, synthetic chemicals that go into them. I keep reminding them penicillin is a natural drug made from bread mold, but for some reason they don't appreciate hearing it.

Barring the terminally broken healthcare system - which is another post entirely - I've always been fairly satisfied with my doctors and western medicine.

For example, I'm a big fan of antibiotics. Sign me up. As I've said here before, if I have a sinus infection, the last thing I'm doing is running to Whole Foods' vitamin section to speak with their granola-eating, patchouli-wreaking, vegan-vitamin-nutritarian to see what combination of herbs and homeopathic whammy-jammy I should take. No thanks.

Instead, I'll have my doctor phone in a Z-Pak to CVS, take the first dose when I go to bed and wake up feeling a hundred per cent better.

Drug resistant strains? Over prescribing? Patients abusing them? What. Ever.

I'm not one to wallow in, court or prolong my misery. If there's a pill, ointment, syrup or vaccine that makes it better, I'm in. Having said that, sometimes there just isn't.

I have a little neuropathy in my feet, so occasionally they feel numb and cold. Something to do with the nerves not communicating with the brain. By the way, if you ask people I work with they'll tell you I haven't had any communication with my brain in years.

Anyway, it's usually caused by diabetes, which I don't have. Sometimes it's just another item on the list of fun things to look forward to as we get older. It's not hurting anything, and is really more of an annoyance than anything else. There's nothing to be done about it.

Or is there?

In researching options for those times it does bother me, I came across study after study that said acupuncture is an effective way to greatly reduce or cure neuropathy. So I'm giving it a try. It's done at a wellness practice near where I live. The doctor takes a health history, asks what the problem is and then starts sticking me with needles in my hands and toes.

There are three good things about the needles: they're sterile, one-use only. They're less than the thickness of one hair. And they don't hurt going in or out. In fact during my session, the doctor asks if I can feel the needles, and the answer is always no.

Of course, my feet are numb so I wouldn't feel them anyway, but still, you know what I mean.

My first rodeo with non-traditional medicine was when I started having arthritis in my wrist that was moving up my arm years ago. I went to a rheumatologist, who prescribed this horse pill called Daypro for the pain. I asked how long I'd have to be on it, and he said the rest of my life. No bueno.

Then my trainer at Gold's Gym - I know what you're thinking, "Jeff, you're such a perfect physical specimen why do you need to go to a gym?" - introduced me to Francois, a practitioner of a healing form of shiatsu. Not the massage kind, the kind where he presses his fingers knuckle-deep into pressure points on my back and neck and I scream bloody murder.

Here's the thing: after five sessions, the arthritis was gone and has never come back. Since then, I've reconsidered my position on alternative medicine.

The acupuncturist said she's had great success with neuropathy like mine. I'll report back in a few weeks and let you know.

I know some of you reading this will dismiss acupuncture outright. Others might even make jokes about it. That's fine, doesn't bother me at all.

If I've learned anything from these treatments, it's that I can take a little needling.

Snow job

This is not going to play well with many of my friends. But here goes: Edward Snowden is not a hero, despite how desperately he wants you to think he is.

It's easy to see how he might've been mistaken for one. After all, he single-handedly blew the lid off the government's PRISM program to spy on all our phone calls and internet communications.

Except that he didn't.

The not so clandestine anymore PRISM surveillance program has been operating since at least 2007 with the passage of the Protect America Act under George Bush. What Edward Snowden brought to light was the scope of the operation. But, contrary to his story, he didn't stumble onto it once he had the job at NSA. His motivation wasn't pure. His aim wasn't true.

Snowden at minimum is a vulgar opportunist. He intentionally set out to get his job and top-level clearance at the NSA specifically so he could steal - and steal is the correct word - the top-secret, classified information, which by the way is a federal offense. He also stole very specific information, most of it not dealing with our phone calls being monitored, but information that would be particularly useful to foreign governments. There was nothing random in his approach. It was a systematic search of the data. Opportunist may be the nicer name for him.

Not long ago I wrote a post that talked about the balancing act between the public's right to know and the governments need for secrecy in order to do the job we ask it to do. I'm really at a loss as to why it's so shocking to some that our government would do the things Snowden suggests. The only thing I can say is have you read the papers lately?

This is the world we live in. And it has been for a long time now.

If Snowden was in fact a patriotic whistleblower, he could've done many things differently. He could have collected the information then brought it to any members of Congress not on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or Senate Intelligence Committee (both of which have known about the program, its capabilities and its targets since the beginning) for investigation. Instead what he chose to do was flee to first China then Russia, guaranteeing that they now have a treasure trove of information regarding our surveillance of their countries. Foreign surveillance that does not impact American liberties. Snowden has said that they have not seen any of the stolen data, but that simply doesn't stand up to reason. It's the only chip he has to play.

I don't know if that makes him a traitor. At the very least it makes him a coward.

Am I comfortable with the degree of latitude the NSA has? Of course not. It definitely needs to be investigated and changes need to be made in the program. But seriously, when the Norwegian government starts talking about nominating Snowden for a Nobel Prize, something is terribly wrong.

Only one person knows what Snowden's true motivations were. And despite everything he's saying, he's not talking.