Jason's Tech Musings

Background I regularly listen to several security podcasts, including Security Weekly. Recently, in the the tech segment they discussed Pi-hole, specifically for deployment in the cloud. There are many benefits to having a cloud-based Pi-hole, particularly if you use an OpenVPN server for your mobile devices to prevent carrier snooping and privacy when on public wireless networks. Using a cloud-based Pi-hole extends your ad-free (and tracker-free) experience on the web to your mobile device, which is extremely powerful. Side note: with Apple's new DNS proxy extension in iOS 11, maybe they'll allow modification of your DNS servers when on LTE, providing even more control without the requirement for VPN. Setup I chose DigitalOcean for my cloud provider, after looking at...

You likely don’t know this, and probably don’t care 😉 , but this blog is currently hosted on WordPress.com.  I’ve been very pleased with their hosting service (no monthly fee for one blog, but it is supported by WordPress ads), and have been delighted to participate in discussions over my Kiosk mode blog posts from 2013. I'm so happy to know that has been helpful to people over the years! The time has come for me to move my site from WordPress.com to a new host. I've tested out various platforms and hosts and have landed on Ghost. After several weeks of various tests, I've finally mostly completed my template and finally published the new version w/...

If you don’t care about reading my thoughts and just want to move your stuff from Yahoo! to Gmail – click here. Author’s note: this post was originally intended for family/friends, so my security/privacy preferences have been (somewhat) tamed for the audience. What?!?! This is a step-by-step guide to switch from Yahoo to Gmail. If you’re looking for how to transfer your email or contacts from Yahoo to Gmail, you’ve come to the right place! First, some background on why I think this is so necessary. Hopefully you have heard by now about Yahoo!’s massive data breach – an estimated 500 MILLION accounts!  This included significant pieces of data: “The account information may have included...

Hard to believe it’s been so long since my last post here.  Life with a little one goes by so fast!  I never realized how quickly time goes, and I also never believed anyone that told me time flies when you have kids 🙂 So, the past 8 months have been quite the journey.  When I was hired, I was hired to fulfill two roles – Technical Account Manager and Sales Engineer.  After looking at a lot of data around where my time was being spent in my first few months, it was clear that it was time to split the role in two. I’ve moved into the Sales Engineer role for our MSP Sales team at OpenDNS.  This has...

As you read in my last post, I’ve certainly moved out of nonprofit sector. In light of that, the naming convention of this blog is certainly not consistent with my role.  When I began this blog, the purpose was to provide opinions and (hopefully) useful technology information for those working in the nonprofit sector.  I definitely have a desire to see nonprofits succeed with technology and to use it to improve their work experience and their productivity. However, my primary role now will be working with for-profit companies (many of which support nonprofits), so I’m converting this blog to use my domain name, www.jpphelps.com.  The existing link will still work (nonprofitcio.wordpress.com) any will simply...