Playing music on my Android phone

I keep a fair bit of music loaded onto my phone, specifically so that I can plug in headphones when I’m on my lunch break at work. I didn’t used to use headphones in the break room, but I have several co-workers who not only seem to enjoy loud and annoying TV shows (why is pranking people on TV such a big thing? And even if I didn’t mind that the hosts have especially annoying laughs), but who’ll walk into the break room and turn up the volume on the TV, and then hold loud and obnoxious conversations over the top of the TV. So, noise canceling headphones for the win!

With my newest phone I was just using Google Music. It came preinstalled, and since I don’t need anything fancy, or anything streaming, I didn’t care about any other features. The last couple weeks its been prompting me to “upload your music to Youtube for streaming anywhere!”, which I ignored. I don’t want streaming, I don’t want to use signal, I want to play the music already on the damn phone.

Yesterday I plugged in my headphones, tapped the music player, and got a message “Google Music is no longer available for streaming services, upload your music to Youtube to continue!”. And wouldn’t let me just play the music on my phone.

So I’m sitting there swearing at my phone (to the shock and amusement of my coworkers who are regularly shocked at the language that I know, why I don’t know), and scrolling through the Google Play Store trying to find a music player that didn’t cost anything, didn’t have ads, and just played MY MUSIC ALREADY ON MY PHONE DAMYOU. After thinking about it a minute longer, I disabled the Google Music app, and then went into the file manager, found my music, and tapped…..and it played! No special app required! Woot! No ads, no annoying “upload your music for streaming!!”, nothing! Just played.

So, lesson learned. If you have a reasonably recent model Android phone (and possibly older ones too, since I don’t have the newest and fanciest) you may not need a special app to play music!


Hairsticks

I’ve always loved hair decor. Decorative clips, barrets, hairsticks and so on. Unfortunately they don’t tend to love me, or at least my hair type. I have slippery fine hair, and unless I pin and hairspray the hell out of them they don’t stay in my hair. I’d long since given up on wearing anything of the sort except for very dress-up occasions because of it.

Then I ran across these:

The hairsticks are made from G10 laminate, the same stuff often used on knife handles. Its NOT slippery, infact has a fair bit of texture to it, which in turn means that they actually stay in my hair! The only hair elastic in that picture is at the base of the pony tail before I twisted it into a bun, and those sticks stayed in my hair for a good shake and another couple hours after the photo before I had to take them out to change clothes.

The hairsticks can be found here on Instagram or here on Facebook. If you’re on neither let me know and I’ll get the maker’s email to send you. He charges $30 a pair for single color sets like the ones pictured above, more for bicolor depending on the number of layers involved.

The chainmaille dragons come from here. And you totally need to check out Cedar’s stuff. After getting my dragons in the mail I was suddenly taken with a mad desire to make more decorative pendants for my hairsticks, and Cedar was wonderful about answering my questions about the hobby. Cause I TOTALLY needed a new hobby to add to my list don’t-cha-know.

For additional thoughts and pictures of the hairsticks see LawDog’s take on them here.

I have to add, I’ve now worn a pair of these hairsticks at work, all day, for the last week. They’ve actually STAYED in my hair for an 8hr day running around the sales floor and doing all sorts of physical labor. They’re awesome. I’ll also note that the black ones pictured are 7.5″ long, the others are 6.5″. If you have especially thick hair, or a longer neck, you may want them to be longer rather than shorter, but he makes them to order, so he can make them whatever length you want.


Tell me again

Tell me again, how lockdowns were the only option for handling this virus.

Tell me again, how lockdowns were the only way to keep the public safe.

Tell me again, how forcing those already confined into total solitude was the only way to save their lives.

Tell me again, how its all for the children.

There were and are absolutely intermediate steps that can and should be done to protect the vulnerable. The expansion of shopping services, and other hands off services. The expansion of sick days and the ability to work from home from businesses. The recognition that some people have fucked immune systems and need additional protection. I’d certainly like to see these things continued and expanded.

But the assumption that we, as a national and international community, needed to shut down everything in order to save lives?

No.

The long term health damage from these shutdowns is going to be astronomical, just in the first world countries involved. Physical health, mental health, and emotional health. And not just to the adults. Children NEED the social interactions we just forced them to miss, they NEED it in order to learn to be better adults. We just fucked the hell out of the next generation, and that sort of thing has the ability to snowball into additional generations as those kids grow up and have kids of their own.

The long term health damage done to non-first world countries due to the shutdown? Programs to alleviate starvation had to shut down. Programs to alleviate various major diseases had to shut down. Shutdowns that mean that their efforts could be set back years due to having to start over in some areas. Shutdowns that mean that they now have to start over at gaining local trust.

And the economic, world wide, damage done by the shut down and the following various health issues? Yah.

So tell me again…..