A year in review

I skipped over doing this last year, so sadly there isn't a '2016 year in review).  But this is something I've done for 2013, 2014, and 2015 and will hopefully continue on with in the future.  If for no other reason than it will be fun to look back and see what I was going through at these times.

Anywho, this is an idea I got from Joanna on her Happiness blog.  I hate to say that I haven't visited her blog in a long long time.  It's one of the things that I've just given up on... keeping up with all my blogging friends.  Anyway, on to the year.

Where I look back at most years (since 2013) as good, I can't say the same about 2017.  It started off on the wrong foot.... I was sick.  I mean damn, I was sick from late December 2016 until around March of 2017.  I finally went to the doctor, got some antibiotics and some allergy pills and kicked it but three months of sickness really gets to you.

I traveled.  I visited Detroit for the car show in January.  I drove down to Dallas to visit my friends there.  I flew down to New Orleans in September to hang with my friends.  I made some cool purchases from a new 55 inch OLED television, a new refrigerator, a new grill, a new computer, and a new car.  But that traveling and those purchases put a big stress on my finances.  For the past few years I found it easy to keep around $2000 in my savings.  That was without trying to do so... I'd buy what I want, when I want, and I'd still find myself with an extra two grand to blow on something.  Well... this year I didn't have that.  One of the first decisions I made in 2017 was to go down to Mardi Gras with a friend in 2018.  He booked us a hotel and a train ride down and I owed him $1000.  Oops.  It took me most of the year to pay him off.  Everything else just kept getting in the way.  And now, almost a year later, it looks like I might not have much cash to go down with.

Music Conversion

I've gone and done it... I'm changing the way I listen to music.

This actually started a couple years ago.  In 2015 I wrote about me dipping my toes into the streaming music system.  A quick summary of that post is that I had heard a podcast with some techy guys talking about streaming music services... specifically spotify.  I mused a bit about some of the services I knew and even mentioned the new elephant in the room; Apple Music.

My conclusion was that I couldn't justify the cost.  Most of those services go for $10 a month and I don't spend $10 a month on new music.  Fast forward to about a year go (late 2016) and I bought my Google Pixel XL.  Google in it's infinite AI wisdom included a 3 month subscription to Google Music.  I am quite the sucker for free trials and I signed up for it.  It only took me a few days to realize I don't like it.  For one, on the computer Google Music only plays through a web browser.  I actually like things being more portable like that, but not my music.  I'm so accustomed to having iTunes be my music world that the replacement would have to at least START with a stand alone desktop app.   Plus iTunes integrates well within windows.  I had it set so that whenever I minimized it, it wouldn't go down to the task bar like any other program.  Instead, it would minimize as a toolbar with the play/fast-forward/rewind/ect buttons.