Are there ads on Netflix? I'm serious, because I might be blocking them and not have noticed.

I'm not particularly good at choosing where I should post in this topic. However, I do have a story relating to the unnecessary involvement of CPS, so this might be the correct location. In this case, it led to my closest friend spending a few years in prison. It did involve a few other agencies, but the end result is still something that haunts me.

I'm not completely certain how my friend's wife managed to have her fourth child without realizing she was pregnant until the "surprise delivery" one day in the kitchen. After three daughters before the birth of their son, I imagined there were signs of impending parenthood with which they should have had a more than passing familiarity. In any case, this fact led to the immediate involvement of agencies evaluating their ability to function as parents.

For every drug addict with kids making due with what trickles down after mommy has taken care of her "needs" that never sees CPS, I know a person that had CPS called by a bitter ex, or somebody taking a shortcut in "keeping up with the Joneses." Given the stories surrounding my post, isn't it effective? It's evil, but a lie is "probable cause," and you're most certainly "innocent until proven guilty."

Back to the story!

My friend, Aardvark (name changed to... whatever), was thrilled. He was a good-old Texas boy, and the birth of daughters had done nothing to carry his family name into eternity. Genetic legacy be damned, this child would accomplish what their daughters could never could! Their ability to produce eggs and possibly fertilize them without their maiden name was nothing compared to the ability to indiscriminately spill seed with wild abandon until his surname spread to another generation. Anyway, Aardvark was pleased. I, as his best friend, shared in some of that feeling, despite my obvious confusion about why this was a superior accomplishment.

In the interest of full disclosure, and because it plays a part in the story, Aardvark's wife was my high school sweetheart. Yes, it's weird they were my best friends. As I later told the NCIS investigator, in language that made sense to a superbly-trained investigative mind, "I was 'hitting it' before she had many children. I 'got it' while 'it was good.'"

Aardvark's son passed away one evening. It's an abrupt segue, but his jaundice and the continued involvement of CPS in the intervening months because of the irregularities of his birth aren't interesting. Relevant, but boring.

My friends immediately spent over twenty-four hours in interrogation, after their son passed away in their bedroom. Thankfully, that's a healthy and productive place to be after your child dies. They were in great shape when they did speak with friends and family afterwards, and the inconsistencies in that questioning were later used in Aardvark's trial. Duress? No such thing in pursuit of justice! The fact that he repeatedly used a pronoun to denote his child's gender during questioning was viewed as "distancing language," instead of the extension of his pride at producing a "heir" that it was.

Eventually, because Aardvark had been logged into ""Hello Kitty: Island Adventure" when their son passed away, due to "unspecified cause" according to the medical examiner, and it was determined to be impossible for a child of eight months to roll over and suffocate in a short period of time, or SIDS, Aardvark spent a few years in prison for neglecting his child to play a game. He had apparently been looking forward to his fix, watching a female night elf dance for the millionth time, placed his child face down on his bed, covered him in pillows and blankets (per the trial narrative), and allowed him to suffocate.

In this case, CPS was probably secondary, as the local investigation eventually found no wrong-doing and closed their case. NCIS pressed. It had been a while since they had a headline about the dangers of online gaming addiction.

At the time, I was the hardcore raider, and couldn't even run casual dungeons with Aardvark, because he was woefully undergeared/underleveled. Most of the time his wife played his characters.

I have all of the detail in between, and perhaps my post has emphasis on the wrong parts, but the gentle and supposedly benign involvement of CPS eventually put a good man in prison for the "accidental" death of a child he had doted on, destroyed his marriage (the death would have been statistically likely to accomplish this anyway), taken the primary income away from his family (their house is available if anybody is looking), and... torn a man, and his life, to shreds.

Before the trial, he couldn't go out in public, because there were cries of, "baby killer!" Thankfully, prison remedied this. I knew this man, and I watched all of it happen. I watched the farce of a trial. I watched my best friend experience the trauma of the death of a child, and then watched him be sentenced to have everything remaining taken from him.

Over the course of the investigation, I got to be interviewed by the local police, NCIS, and CPS. I had stayed with Aardvark and his wife for a short period after I left the service, and they were curious if I had taken that opportunity to continue where we had left off after high school. It would have been a sensible motive for baby murder, and they needed motive for that conclusion to the witch hunt. Unfortunately, for them, I was able to provide proof that the time frame was wrong, and my crude statements about the negative effects of child-rearing on her body were acceptable reasons to for my penis to remain outside of her. In an amusing turn of events, an analysis of hard drives I had given to Aardvark so he could store pictures of his kids recovered fragments of my own data (parts of a striped array) and I was questioned about the contents of his computer. I'm pleased the authorities were otherwise occupied, otherwise I'm certain the DCMA could have been used as probable cause to find a reason to throw me in prison as well.

Anyway, it was nice that CPS was there to repeatedly investigate nothing, involving NCIS (Aardvark was active-duty), so after the unfortunate death of his child, there was somebody to punish.

On both PrivateInternetAccess and VyprVPN connections, either of which COULD handle my unthrottled connection at my maximum advertised download rate until the middle of this year, my 100Mbps connection is down to ~8-15Mbps while on either VPN. The VPN or overhead aren't the limiting factor. I see better speeds on McDonalds hotspots or mobile data through either VPN. I'd imagine, if they're doing it, it's a nice way of lying about data limit enforcement (I'm far over the throttling threshold any given month, but their site says data caps aren't currently enforced). Last time I spoke with support about it and tried to get an admission of culpability for my subpar encrypted internets, I told the "tech" that his request to move the modem to an outlet in another room would take a bit longer while I found an extension cord. He transferred me to sales, where I was asked if I would like to purchase an extension cord.