Take Care of Yourself

So my school day ended on a very interesting note this morning. While walking back to the parking lot off Cooper Street I apparently passed out. The scary part is that I was on the staircase of the bridge that crosses over Mitchell. Three very kind people stopped to help me out.

Two of the guys were students and the third guy was a member of UTA’s wonderful landscaping/maintenance team. They stayed with me and called for help. I wish I knew who they were or how I could reach out to them to give them my heartfelt thanks. Sometimes it is easier to keep walking than it is to stop and help a complete stranger. Random acts of kindness are what truly make this world worth its while.

Anyways, I was apparently severely dehydrated. I had to ask myself how that can happen. I like to think I am a fairly healthy person. This whole event made me step back and think. I attend classes full-time. Since I only have seven classes left until I graduate it would be foolish to do anything less than 12 hours. I work damn near full-time hours in a retail location. I have 3 children one of which is slightly older than a month. To say life is stressful right now is putting it mildly. In all of the confusion I forgot one very important thing. I forgot to take care of myself. Drinking plenty of water and eating right are evidently important.

With all that being said, let this be a warning to everyone else. Take care of yourself. No matter how hard life gets or how big your responsibilities are you have to look out for yourself. If not then none of the rest of it matters.

Google and Big Brother Hand in Hand?

The big question in my English 3372 class was whether or not big brother is alive and well and living on the internet. The boogey man here was not any of the usual suspects though. No, the fingers were all being pointed at the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and just about any other large internet presence.

Why exactly are these various corporations being found guilty of all sorts of random crimes against humanity? Basically it all boiled down to three words that most of us gloss over when signing up for services or installing software: Terms of Service. Unlike most folks, I have actually read many, many terms of services (not sure how to pluralize that one). Trust me when I say there is always something in them that would give most people pause. The big one though is a clause that is almost always worded like this “we have the right to alter or change this agreement at anytime, with or without notification”.

Think about that for a minute. No, keep thinking, that was only 20 seconds. It’s okay, I will wait. Good. Now, what that means is huge. They can literally change their agreement to screw you over any legal way possible and there is very little you can do about it.

So what’s my point? My point is this: know what you are getting in to. Once you are in it; keep up with it. If or when a company or piece of software makes changes to their terms that you disagree with stop using them. It really is that simple. Alternatives exist. Are the alternatives better? Maybe, maybe not. You won’t know until you move on. The simple fact is that corporations have every right to censor their products. They have every right to give or take away free services as they see fit. As long as that censorship is not government sanctioned, you have no real recourse save for one: move on and try something else.