MacGyver

A lot of you know @bersaguy. He’s had some incidents over the last week that are going to require surgical intervention tomorrow. I got to go by and see him this afternoon. He’s in great spirits, but the triple bypass surgery he’s having tomorrow afternoon is serious. He could use your prayers over the coming days. I’ll update as soon as I hear tomorrow, but in the meantime, keep him in your thoughts.

MAC address filtering on the router is good. If the device isn’t approved by you - it doesn’t connect to the network. We have a rule in our house. No devices in bedrooms. Period. All phones (my wife and mine included) get charged in the main area of the house. That makes it convenient to check it. I sat with a parent of a 13 year old a couple of weeks ago - trying to find her after she had gone missing. We were looking at her Instagram account from a forensic perspective - a secondary account she had opened after her parents found her previous one and shut it down. This one had been open for just over 24 hours. There were 11 people she knew following this account. There were 1089 anonymous followers - in under 24 hours - many of whom turned out to be sex offenders - including the person we eventually found her with. We’re not going to put the internet back in the box. It’s here to stay - yet it is still remarkably immature. You’ve got to find a framework where you help your kids figure out that consumption - what’s okay, what we need to limit, and what we need to avoid at large. Theres something else that I find myself saying with parents a lot when I lecture on this topic. “Our kids may or may not listen to us, but they never fail to emulate us.”

I’m going to say this as someone who has worked more assault cases than I can remember. Snapchat does not belong on a 14 year old’s phone. Full stop. You’ve got someone else delivering her a device, she’s googling how to get a SIM card and lying to you and your wife about it. There’s more going on than you know - and she’s in over her head. Our kids are always going to be smarter than us about technology. You’re not going to get out in front of that. But, we’re smarter than them about life. You’ve got to come to some type of understanding. It’s possible to recover some Snapchat data depending on the version and the particulars of the device, but it’s unlikely. You should consider blocking access to the camera, uninstalling any social apps and then locking the device so that she can’t install new apps. I’d make sure you have geolocation turned on as well. We’ve used it to find more than one teen - most of them before it was too late. If you do find out that this is an adult, you should consider getting law enforcement involved.

They’ve got an app for the phone as well. Seriously, if you’ve not enabled parental restrictions on the device, you should. IOS has great controls that can really lock it down. As a forensic investigator, I can tell you that you should really think long and hard before enabling a camera on a 14 year old’s device. We took part in a research project not too long ago that found that over 60 percent of eighth graders we surveyed had already been asked for nude pictures. Have you considered a flip phone?

I would also suggest a device like Circle to limit internet at home and monitor access: https://meetcircle.com/ They were bought by Disney, but they’re great devices - especially for the sub-$100 price point. You can get them at Target

I know, right? I spent the last half of the 90s in Seattle. It’s like a whole decade wouldn’t even have happened.

And if that wasn’t enough - try Losing my Religion as a pop song:

I love this - and feel somehow betrayed at the same time. How different the 90s might have been had Nirvana simply chosen a major chord.

Got a member with some serious health issues going on today - y'all's prayers would be greatly appreciated.

I’ve had a decent year - as have most of my friends here in middle Tennessee. I’ve not been left wanting. Hopefully my luck will hold with hogs down in Alabama.

That was a heck of a game.

I’ve got a few 45-70s including a handi-rifle. I don’t find the recoil to bad out of the H&R even with full house loads. Seems like mine has a decent recoil pad. Seems like you could get a soft shooting 300gr. load without much problem.

Temperatures this cold can make any moisture accumulate in trouble spots laying down black ice that can be quite dangerous. The general consensus at TDOT is that brine is cheap and it’s better to have it down than wish you had it down.

Interested in what you find out.

Those look really great!

Merry Christmas, y’all. I hope each of you finds this season filled with kindness and happiness, and that you get to spend time with the people you love.

My oldest daughter loved their cover of Bad Company when she was little.

Oh man. Thanks.

You know what else is more than $475? Divorce lawyers.

There's no safe way to get a real safe down a flight of stairs without the right tools. I'm going to want someone with those tools and insurance to move my safe.

It was the Safe House.

I think I paid $200 to move my last safe. It was worth it.

The moment Greg drills a classic pistol to feed some flavor of the week we'll know that it's time to start worrying about him... I'll call his wife and kids to get them to secure the rest of the collection before he can harm himself or any of the guns.

I got to shoot a $150,000 Imperiale Montecarlo one time. It didn’t break 100 times as many birds as a $1500 Silver Pigeon, but man it sure was pretty.