Huh? What Happened to 2017?

Oops. It appears I forgot to offer up a 2017 post hereabouts. So be it.

So, a year late and at the very end of the eighth month of 2018, here's an update. I reread that 2016 post. Picking up from there: I did finally get over that stomach malady. What was it? No-one knows, no doctor.  Not my PCP, not the gastric specialist, not a soul.

BUT: a good many friends told me that they, or someone from all of  they knew or were related to, had suffered the same exact symptoms. For one the cause was white wine. Another, Cilantro. But for most: no clue, no definitive tests, same deal with all sorts of meds that did nothing.

And then it just vanished, went away, as if nothing had happened.

That might seem like the good news.  But no, that isn't.  The good news from all of that, months that it took, losing my voice due to one (or more?) of the meds (voice came back, thanks to excellent medical care here in NYC) as I reported in 2016, my PCP referred me to an endocrinologist.

He put me on a plan, on meds, an A to Z program.  I've shed loads and loads of weight.  My appetite is way down.  My desire for food is way down. I'm 5 belt loops down from when I started.

A good thing.

There's more, but that's enough for now.

OH! ONE MORE THING. In May of this year a set of regulations went into effect, known at the GDPR. That's in effect throughout the European Union, and it effects all businesses that touch individuals living in the EU, even if those businesses are outside of the EU.  Like here in the USA.  Non-compliance with the GDPR can be very costly. The GDPR is all about personal data, protecting it, putting it back in the hands of the individual, and giving the value of personal media back to the owners of that data.  Your personal data belongs to you.  So when it gets aggregated, stored, analyzed, ad used in various ways --at you, about you, toward you-- or sold to others for analysis or for further marketing or contact purposes -- is to lessen that. To make it that you have control over such activity.













This is very good. I've done a great deal of work in this arena. It is very rewarding. Is the GDPR perfect? No, far from.  But it is a superb and wonderful first step forward. It will mature, undergo revision, and become stronger and better. It works across all the EU countries, and all of them have input on how it will grow, transform, transition, and help the process and transformation of personal data in the emerging, burgeoning Personal Information Economy (PIE).

You've probably seen all those emails asking for permission to keep sending you emails. And those terribly annoying horizontal (usually) rectangles across websites telling about collecting cookies and in unreadable or gobbledygook language that is as vague as vague can be that, yeah, more stuff other than those cookies but we're nice people so just check here or you're stuck and can go no further.

What's the scoop with that?  Here's what it is, almost all the time: they've cajoled you into giving away your rights regarding how they can use the data they gather about you. Your personal data.

Here with this blog --- a blog I update very rarely --- Google, owner of blogger.com, letting me know it has my best interests in mind (read that as it has Google's best interests in mind) tells me it has the GDPR "yes, this blog is GDPR Kosher" statement for the blog, in fact it is automatically attached, I just have to employ some digital magic to agree to it.

But they do it in warning color yellow, as though the world will fall apart if I don't agree.  Here's what  it looked like:






And for  some reason I can't get that image to be centered. Or enlarged. That is clearly a sign from all greater powers to close this, the 2018 entry.

See you next year.