Moving away from Google

I’ve used an Android phone for several years and over time the number of files and photos that were synced from my phone(s) to Google became quite large. I’ve never been a big proponent of Google services and try to limit my exposure to Google to a palatable level, and I was astounded to find out just how many of my personal files were stored in the Google cloud.

Since I wanted to get a better handle on my files and photos, I decided to move most of them off Google so here’s what I did:

I logged on to Google from my desktop computer, then I went to Google Takeout, scrolled through the long list of items that vould be stored on Google and selected the items I wanted to download to my computer.

 

Google provides a lot of services I never used and the Google takeout list is enormous, but I scrolled through the list and only selected Drive and Google Photo. Then I clicked on the blue “Next step” button found on the bottom of the screen.

I selected my preferences on the next screen and then selected the “create export” button.

 

Since I had a lot of photos and files stored in the Google cloud, about an hour later I received an email from Google that indicated my files were ready to download to my computer with a link for me to click to retrieve my files.

There were a couple of zip files that I downloaded to my computer. I unzipped the files to some folders I created on my computer and reviewed them to confirm all my documents and photos were there. Then I went back to my Google account via my desktop browser and deleted the files that were stored on the cloud.

Managing Google Cloud Services

Since I use an Android phone, I still use some Google services, but I won’t allow my files and photos to sync willy nilly to Google any more. I disabled the backup option in the Google Photos app on my phone. (open app on phone, tap the gear icon in top right corner)

 

I also don’t share many documents to Google Drive via the app on my phone. If I create or download a file or photo I want to keep, I’ll selectively choose the file and upload it to Google Drive or to one of my other cloud-based storage accounts.

I installed the Google Drive app on my Windows desktop computer, so I can view and manage any files or photos that I choose to keep on Google Drive. Since the files are now also on my computer, it’s easy to move them away from the Google cloud and back them up to my external hard drive.

My Favorite Podcasts

When I had long commutes to work, I often listened to podcasts on my phone. Now that I mostly work from home, I listen to them during my daily walks. 

Here’s a list of the podcasts that I enjoy:

Breakdown, Atlanta Journal Constitution

This is Criminal, VoxMedia Podcast Network

Everything Happens with Kate Bowler, Lemonada

In the Dark, The New Yorker

Invisibilia, NPR

Life, Craig Harper (inactive)

On Being with Krista Tippett

Poetry Unbound, On Being Studios

Serial, The New York Times

The Clark Howard Podcast

The Matt Walker Podcast

The You Project, Craig Harper

This American Life

This is Love, VoxMedia Podcast Network

I created an OPML file that includes subscription information for all of these podcasts and have uploaded the file to Dropbox to share with my friends. You can download the file and then use it to add the feeds for these podcasts to whatever podcast app you use.

Download Julie’s favorite podcasts RSS feed (OPML file) from Dropbox

#podcasts #RSS

Breathing new life into an old stereo system

My Pioneer stereo system lives in an antique wardrobe that dominates a wall in my living room. It consists of a receiver, a 100 CD changer, and an old turntable (we still have some vinyl records).

I replaced the speakers about 20 years ago with what was, at the time, top of the line Bose speakers.

Over the years, I ripped all my CDs to MP3 files so I could sync my music to my Zunes and my Pocket PCs and so I could carry my music with me wherever I went.

Eventually I stopped turning on my stereo.

For a few years I subscribed to music streaming services but was never satisfied with any I tried. Turns out I like owning the music I play and I find streaming music all the time to be expensive (paying for a subscription and a data connection). Wearing headsets get tiresome and the quality of the streamed music is subpar and inconsistent. I’m no audiophile but I know poor quality when I hear it.

I modernized my old stereo system by buying a couple of bluetooth devices and I’m enjoying listening to my music collection through my stereo system more than ever.

My music collection lives on a barebones desktop computer that runs Windows 10 and doesn’t  have any native bluetooth functionality, so I bought a TP-Link USB adapter ($11.23) for the PC to give it bluetooth functionality.

I also bought an Arus bluMe Long Range Bluetooth Music Receiver Hi-Fi Audio Adapter with Audiophile DAC & AptX HD ($79) for my stereo receiver.

Setting these devices up was easy:

Computer Connection: I plugged the tp-link USB adapter into an open USB port on my computer – the computer recognized the new device and I didn’t have to install any software

Stereo Receiver: The Arus bluMe bluetooth receiver includes both analog and digital outputs and I already had an RCA Analog Output cable as well as an Optical Output cable so I didn’t need to buy a cable to connect the adapter to the stereo receiver. I used an analog cable to connect the receiver to an unused port on the back of the receiver – the one I used was originally designated to be used for a DVD/LD.

I paired the computer usb bluetooth adapter with the stereo system bluetooth receiver and I’m listening to the music that is stored on my computer on my stereo system.

I love this setup even more because I’m using the Zune desktop software on my computer to organize my music and podcast subscriptions. This makes it really easy to queue up the music I want to hear into playlists or on the fly. 

NOTE: YES I still use my Zune HDs and I sync music,  podcasts and audio books to my Zunes via the Zune desktop software – you can see one of my Zune HDs in the photo above.

The Zune desktop software works fine on Windows 10, although I do miss wireless syncing to my Zune HD. I’m not sure if it works on Windows 11. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it (for future reference).

Sewing for Mastectomy

On December 21, 2023 I found out I had breast cancer. At first, I was facing a lumpectomy, but after more diagnostic tests, my breast surgeon recommended a mastectomy of my left breast and on February 9, 2024, my left breast was removed. (I had a skin/nipple sparing mastectomy with tissue spreader – a replacement left breast is under construction).

I sewed several things that I thought I’d need to have on hand. I created an album on Flickr that includes photos of the items I sewed

You can tap the image to view each photo individually. In each photo’s description, I included information about the pattern and the fabric I used.

Vogue 2074 Wrap Blouse in Burgundy

Remove CoPilot from Android Phone

Microsoft’s Copilot showed up on the app search bar on my Android phone. I don’t want to use it and never installed it. When I reviewed the apps that were installed on my phone, Copilot wasn’t in the list.

I have a personal outlook.com account that I use on the phone via the Outlook and OneDrive apps and I’ve installed the Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote apps on my phone, but I don’t subscribe to Office 365 and I don’t have a work or school acount set up on the phone. I checked and Copilot pro is not activated within any of those apps.

I was baffled for a minute as to how Copilot got on my phone. . . Then I remembered that I also use the Microsoft Launcher app. When I opened up Microsoft Launcher and looked through its settings, I found the answer:

I disabled Copilot by taping the Copilot option and then tapping the on/off toggles beside “Your feed” and “Search bar” on the next screen:

 

When I was a child, growing up in Alaska, my mom was a prolific painter

My mom loved the Eskimo people and became close friends with an older Eskimo woman named Mary who shared her family photo album with my mother. Many of the portraits my mother painted were from Mary’s photo album.

My mother passed away more than 30 years ago. Several years ago I created a page here that is devoted to my mother’s art. Several people who were lucky enough to have one of my mother’s pieces have reached out to me after googling my mother’s name and finding that web page. Many of them have shared photos of their art with me and today I spent quite a lot of time organizing my mother’s artwork into this album on flickr.

Click to view Mom’s Art Gallery.

Click here to view Flickr album of artwork

Today I went to see the plastic surgeon who is working on my breast reconstruction

Today I went to see the plastic surgeon who is working on my breast reconstruction. As I sat in the waiting room, I looked at each of the other people who were waiting in the room with me. Most of them were women, some had a friend, child, spouse sitting with them.

A nurse would come to the door and call out a name. Patients who had finished with their appointments walked through the waiting room on their way out the door. I saw a few patients who had drains, a few patients stopped at the front desk to make their next appointment. A few stopped to purchase the small, expensive tube of scar cream that I purchased several weeks ago.

It occurred to me that I had been all of these women during all the stages of my diagnosis, treatment and after care. I am almost at the end of breast reconstruction – the tissue spreader that was placed in my chest during mastectomy in February is filled and I’m ready for a final surgery that will replace the tissue spreader with a permanent boob.

For several minutes a woman was standing in front of me. Her two teenaged daughters were waiting across the room. I could see that the left side of her chest was flat just like mine had been right after mastectomy. She was walking down the same path as I had (I was several steps ahead of her). I thought about the terror I felt in the beginning, right at the time I heard the words, You have breast cancer. I thought about the insurmountable and continuous stress I suffered as I walked into my diagnosis, the MRI, the ultrasounds, the numerous doctor visits that lead to a mastectomy. And I thought about coming home from surgery with drainage tubes hanging out my chest, my left hand and arm useless after sentinel node extraction. Going home to bed where I spent the next couple of weeks propped up with too many pillows as I drifted into sleep, waiting for pathology to tell me what came next.

I was overcome with love, compassion, empathy for the woman who stood before me, I felt connected to all of the women I’d seen in the waiting room. We were all sisters, connected by our diagnoses, walking similar paths – at least in the beginning. I’m lucky. My breast cancer was removed by mastectomy, no cancer in my lymph nodes means no radiation, no chemotherapy. I have climbed to the top of my mountain and am now descending down to a normal, if things go well, life. I know many women’s cancer will take them down paths I hope to never walk, but all these women are my sisters. I have lived their fear, shared their pain, suffered through their stress.

There are other countless unknown women who have walked the path before me, shared the path alongside me, and who will walk the path behind me. The future before me has been reset to a future with many unknowns along the way, but it is comforting to know that I really am not alone in all of this.