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.
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.
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).
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.
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:
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.
I started crocheting the blue green hat last month and finished it several days ago Then I crocheted a flower out of some leftover yarn and added it to the red hat that I crocheted a few years ago.
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.
As of February 9th, I am cancer free. A few days later I learned that the cancer had not progressed to my lymph nodes. Since I had the whole breast removed, there is no need for radiation therapy or chemotherapy. I will be on hormone therapy – a pill I take each day – for several years. And I will see my breast surgeon every 4 months for the next couple of years. This is the best case scenario for breast cancer.
But recovery & healing from the mastectomy has not been easy. In the last few weeks I’ve had another surgery to remove a hematoma in my chest, then the very next day a trip to the ER, another surgery to remove another hematoma and an overnight stay in observation. My doctors were baffled as to why I was bleeding the way I was bleeding, so now I am seeing a hematologist who has given me a tentative diagnosis of a rare genetic blood disease that I never knew I had. Nothing better than discovering my blood doesn’t clot normally when I am trying to recover from surgery.
So all that bleeding left me anemic and today I had the first of three iron infusions. The infusions involve a needle in my arm for 1-1/2 hours while iron is infused directly into my blood stream. My sister sat beside me the whole time and we had a great time talking about our childhood memories.
Recovery has been harder than the cancer treatment. I am thankful to be cancer free and I think when more time has passed and this thing is really truly in the rearview mirror, I will know in my heart that even though I lost a breast, I got out easy… that I had the best case of breast cancer .. One that was found early, that was very small, and had not spread to my lymph nodes. A lot of women don’t get out so easy.
