Man to Man with Greg

Men Talking

Hello and Welcome. Let me introduce myself.

My name is Greg. My wife and I have 3 adult children, one of whom was severely disabled.  Among other things, we have lived with and suffered from Tourette’s Syndrome, OCD, and Depression. Either directly, or indirectly, we have all been touched by the trauma of childhood sexual abuse, and we have lots of experience in working through trauma and its aftermath. We have also all been traumatically impacted by the Watchtower Organization, its teachings, and it’s members.

 

Accompanied by my wife and daughter, I have been privileged to work with parents and families and to help them learn and develop skills in Compassionate Parenting. It has also been my privilege to work with the Faculty Staff at the Local Waldorf School to help them learn how to more compassionately interact with parents, children, and other staff members using empathy, compassion, and Nonviolent Communication.

 

For the past 10 years, I have also been active as a Peer Support worker and am very busy helping support, encourage, and mentor other men to heal from their childhood sexual abuses. I specialize in Active Listening using compassion, empathy, and Nonviolent Communication.

 

And for the last couple of years, I’ve been using my skills and experience to actively help and support persons who have been deeply hurt and traumatized by the Watchtower Organization and other religious organizations.

 

Most importantly, I’m here because I care very deeply about people.

 

26 Responses to Man to Man with Greg

  1. Greg says:

    I’ve been on a journey this week. I learned a bit about the familar phrase “son of man” in a couple most unexpected of places: the Wayback Machine and Amazon customer reviews.

    In short: Jesus constantly referred to himself using the phrase “the son of man”. There’s been a lot of mystery and confusion and mis-interpretation surrounding this phrase. This phrase was a reflection of a Hebrew idiom, and NOT a title. “Jesus, the son of man” simply means: Jesus, the human being (or ben-Adam = son of Adam) Nothing more. Nothing less. Jesus used it to focus attention on his human-ness, and to show each of us WHAT it means to be human, and HOW to be human.
    Jesus was the model example of what each of us human beings are capable of, but which many of us fail to achieve in our short life-times.

  2. Greg says:

    Hi Jacqueline; Hi Nubby.
    Regarding the BBB problems: I’ve been doing A LOT of research and I even joined a BBB user forum and asked there about issues we’re having. I believe the problem is NO FAULT of any of us as users or admins. As far as I have been able to determine, the issue stems from the age (and inherent insecurity) of the technology that our (rather outdated–about 8 or 10 years now–in computer time that’s older than the pyramids) version of BBB utilizes (such as Adobe Flash).

    (The rest of my post is an attempt to explain my understanding of it in words that strive for a balance between simple and accurate. Feel free to ignore or debate the rest of the comment. I don’t consider myself an authority on the subject. I’m just passing along a “simplified” snapshot of my ever-developing understanding.)

    Flash is notorious for being “insecure”. That’s why youtube has shifted to HTML5. That’s also why one needs to grant permission for flash to run, and for websites to use flash to access your microphone and camera.
    There has been an increasing trend towards shifting away from insecure http and towards https (<-- note the added "S") and this involves setting up security measures and expensive certificates on servers (like Banks have been using for years). Because of this, Firefox, and Chrome (and probably all the other web browsers) have been gradually "encouraging" (hopefully seamlessly and inconspicuously) a shift towards a safer internet. Cell phones and mobile devices (Android OS or iOS) are also (arguably) improving things like privacy, and requiring the user to allow permissions, etc. All of this "good" growth comes with a price tag: Older stuff is being impacted because the higher security demands of such things (like webRTC) are no longer being met if the hosting server doesn't have an expensive and up-to-date security certificate. And if there's no certificate, webRTC and up-to-date browsers, among other things, will "protect you from danger" by not allowing you to do something potentially dangerous, (such as using your microphone or camera). You can read more about the issue here: https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/install/install.html
    (Begin Page Snippet)
    Have a Hostname and SSL certificate
    (If you are a developer setting up BigBlueButton on a local VM for yourself only and can use FireFox to access it, then you can likely skip this section.)
    We recommend assigning your BigBlueButton server a fully qualified domain name (FQDN), such as bigbluebutton.example.com, and configuring the server with secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate. Doing this will enable nginx, the web server that gets installed with BigBlueButton, to serve content via secure hypertext transfer protocol (HTTPS). Without HTTPS enabled some browsers (such as Chrome) will not let the use share their web cam or microphone. Also, without HTTPS enabled, some browsers will complain about insecure content.
    In short, on any server used in production, setup of a domain name and valid SSL certificate is a must.
    For obtaining a domain name, there are many good domain name registrars such as GoDadday and Network Solutions.
    For obtaining a SSL certificate there are many options, see obtain an SSL certificate.
    (End page snippet)
    So even updating BBB software might not fix the problem if we need to go through an “insecure” site on the way to loading BBB.
    In non-techno-babble end-user words this means that even if one “link” in the chain isn’t secure, the whole chain is rendered insecure and we’re going to have problems just like we’re seeing now.

    Sadness.

    • jacqueline says:

      Greg, thanks so much for that involved explanation.
      I paid for the “S” certificate from a company Go Daddy provided on our end but like it says it has to go all the way.
      Going through the site seems to work best for me rather than going thru Mconf directly as it won’t let me type, talk, or hear.
      Thursday we had no problems at all but everyone was on a computer, not cell phones.
      Last night I got on with my pad and phone and could hear and talk to myself.
      So what are the suggestions for Saturday night? Anybody want Skype or something?

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