Google Music

 I've been ranting about this to anyone in ear shot for about a month now, so I figure I should take this global and post it on the net.  Maybe someone will find this post that actually cares.  So far my friends and family just give me funny looks and tell me something to the tune of, "too bad" or "that sucks."

In one of my recent posts I discussed feeling powerless.  Well, this is another instance of that, but at least this time I've got a work around that makes me feel a bit better.

I'm a bit of a tech enthusiast, and for years I've been a fan of Google.  I'm currently typing this on Blogger, which is a Google product.  I have multiple Google Home devices in my house, along with Nest products (though I purchased those before Google purchased Nest), and have had multiple Google phones.  I use Gmail and many other Google web applications to go along with my multiple Chromebooks.

I've known for years that Google is not the most customer friendly company.  Their design is good enough, but it's never great.  Their customer service team is friendly, but not always terribly helpful.  Most importantly, Google has a habit of killing products with little notice and little recourse for those who like those products.  Looking back, I've seen it happen plenty of times.  The RSS service was a big one, and I am sure if I did a quick search (using Google of course), I could find plenty more.

This has always been on my periphery, but I've never paid it much mind before because most of those products were things I didn't use or could replace easily.

That changed recently when Google killed Music, a product I've invested a lot in and relied on more than I realized.  In 2011 I uploaded all my music to Google's then fairly new service.  I was given a lot of free storage as I was an avid Google user at the time and the service was new so they were giving storage away to encourage people to join.  For a time I paid for their premium subscription so I could listen to more than just the music I had in my own storage without adds.  I stopped that after a year or two, but I kept all my music stored on that service, and purchased almost all my new music through that service for the past nine years.

Earlier this summer I received an email from Google saying that they were killing Music, and that I would have to move over to their new service, YouTube Music.  I was annoyed, but I was given a way to port my storage so I figured I'd give it a try at the very least.

First issue I discover: I can no longer listen to my music through my Google Home devices by asking the device to play a specific song or artist.  That's no longer supported now that I'm under YouTube Music unless I'm willing to pay for a premium account.  This is huge for me as, like I mentioned above, I have a few of these speakers throughout my house and I would regularly walk into a room and just ask Google to play me a song or a band or an album while I went about my business playing with the kid or doing chores.  Now, I can listen to a mix or a "channel", but I can't just listen to the album I like or the song I want to hear to get the kid hyped up.  Sure, I can find that song on my phone or other device and cast it to the speaker, but that's a much more manual task than just asking for the song to be played.

Second issue I discover: I can no longer listen to my music without ads.  I was playing an album on my phone, which I purchased, from Google, and after literally every song I was given an ad.  Four songs in and I was so frustrated I shut it off.  What is the point in my owning the music if I can't listen to it without ads?

Third issue: While I was listening to the above album on my phone, I also discovered that, since the album is playing from YouTube, I cannot close my phone's screen and continue listening.  I have to keep the screen on the entire time to listen to the music.  This is a problem if I want to put the phone in my pocket, or just not kill the phone's battery ridiculously fast.

But, hey, I can solve all of this by signing up for a YouTube Music premium subscription!  It's only $9.99 a month, and then I can listen to my own music that I already paid for in all the ways that I've been used to getting for free because I already paid for the music.

Livid does not begin to describe how I felt when I learned this.

At some point I learned an economic principal that basically said that a company cannot easily change a service from being a free service to a charge service without facing serious backlash.  I hope Google faces serious backlash for this.  I can't be the only person that's completely blown away by the lack of foresight about how this would piss off a ton of customers.  I honestly feel like the company doesn't care about me or users like me at all.  I recognize that there are more users who prefer to listen to lots of different music and not really own any of it, otherwise services like Pandora or Spotify wouldn't be as big as they are, but I can't rectify Google killing a service that people willing invested time and money into only to replace it with an inferior one that can only reach the same level of access if those people are willing to pay Google more money.

Long story short, I've completely stopped relying on Google for my music.  I've taken everything I owned and backed it up a few different places, including locally on my phone.  I found and paid for a good music playing app to listen to my music on my phone (because android phones don't come with a music player built in any longer due to Google's Music app, which comes built in but is now defunct).  I've also moved a lot of other things away from Google because I no longer consider any of their products a safe place to store my data.  All of my photos are backed up in multiple places now because I'm concerned at some point my Photos data will just vanish or get pushed behind a pay wall.  I'm looking for a new place to move my blog because Google might just kill Blogger.  I'm trying out new web browsers because Chrome might one day cost me money to use even though it's free for years.

What do you think?  I get why Google would want to monetize, but it feels really crappy to be a customer on the other end of that, and because of the way Google made me feel, I don't really want to invest in their products any longer.  Am I the only person that feels this way?

Reflections on Childhood

 If I have any longtime readers (and I hardly have any so I doubt it), they might recall that something like two years ago my wife and I gave birth to our firstborn son.

Lately, I've been spending lots and lots of time playing with him.  I mean, I've always tried to spend time with him and play with him, but he's finally in that toddler stage where play actually is starting to have some structure and meaning and not just "peek-a-boo" and the like.  He loves being outside, which is wonderful because I do, too, and we've been spending a ton of time outdoors together.

When I was a kid, I grew up on College Hill in Beaver Falls.  The house was fairly sized, if a little small for a family of six, but the yard was the real problem.  The lot was mostly taken up by the house, and the spit of yard we had was only about ten feet across and not really any longer than the house.  There wasn't really room for things like a swing set; in fact, the baby pool we had was about as wide as the yard.  Even though our yard was terribly small, all of my fondest memories from childhood were formed in that yard.

I've written about that yard many times, but I haven't thought about it for years.  Yesterday, I saw my son running around our backyard and wished that he had more space to enjoy himself.  Then, completely unexpectedly, images of my own childhood flashed before my mind's eye and I knew that he could enjoy himself in his yard so long as we let him.  I mean, he's got way more space than I ever had.

Then my mind wandered down memory lane, and melded those memories with dreams and images I have in my mind about what I hope my son's childhood will be like.  I saw myself running around playing with sticks, slaying monsters and battling off hoards of enemies.  That slipped into images of my son running around with a sword in his hand beating back the tides of evil now that I've grown too old to do so myself.  I saw images of my sisters and I pushing each other around in our Little Tykes car as I pushed him around in his own, and dreamed of the day when he'd have siblings of his own to push around in that car.

Then I started to think about all the things he has that I never had, and wondered how that would make him different.  He's already got a swing and a slide and a power wheels tractor.  I never had any of those things growing up.  He's got a couple of dogs to run around with him and keep him company, which was another thing I never had as a kid.  My wife and I have plans to make our backyard a fun play area, and already are looking for the next thing to add out there.

Sometimes I'm concerned I'm spoiling him.  I mean, I did buy him a slide, and though I didn't buy the swing or the power wheels, I did put them together and let him use them whenever he wants.  I do plan on adding to the fun area out back to keep him playing outdoors as much as possible.  My wife's concern is more that she worries over the idea that someone might snatch him up.

What does childhood look like these days?  I guess we'll work on figuring that out together.

Why is This News - A New Segment

 In an effort to produce more content, I'd like to start a new segment called Why is This News.  Thus anytime I hear about something that doesn't deserve media coverage, I have a place to go and add to that white noise, even if it's only to express how nonplussed I am that the topic is even worthy of news coverage.

Today on Why is This New: Nancy Pelosi and the mask debacle.  I recognize that her position in Congress makes her a national public figure, but I fail to see the reason that a local newspaper in Western Pennsylvania thinks it's worth their time to post an article about the congresswoman from California not wearing a mask while visiting a salon in California.  Honestly, I barely get why anyone cares, but I certainly don't understand why anyone outside of California would care.

Here in Western PA, I can't vote for her.  There's a chance that someone I vote for will lead to the Democrats losing the house, and thus Pelosi losing her spot as Speaker, but she'll still be the minority leader unless people in California vote her out.

Mask mandates are not national.  PA has a mask mandate, but I have literally no idea what the regulations are in CA.  I haven't been there in years, and I don't talk to anyone who lives there on a regular enough basis to know what the rules are these days in regards to masks.  Thus, what right do I have to be outraged over something that I know nothing about, and doesn't affect me?

Finally, and most importantly in my opinion, if Congresswoman Pelosi is adult enough to make a decision about whether she wants to wear a mask while getting a haircut (which I've done, and it's actually a giant pain to deal with and one of the reasons I've been avoiding getting another one), and the salon owner is adult enough to decide whether she wants to accept patrons who are not wearing masks, I don't understand how this is anybody else's business.  It's certainly not my business.  If a mask was not worn in California in a salon, the odds of my getting COVID due to that one encounter are zero.  Thus this event has zero bearing on my life, and I'm guessing it has zero bearing on the lives of just about everyone.  So why is this national news?

And, worst of all, why are so many people clicking the articles and paying these so called "news" organizations to read this garbage.  There are more important things we should be focusing on, but we're all so busy being outraged that Nancy Pelosi didn't wear a mask to get her hair cut that we're ignoring everything else.

End rant.

Culture Wars

 In my last post I attempted to come to terms with my frustrations with the seemingly inane culture wars going on currently.  I mentioned I hadn't quite made the point in the way I had intended and that I would return to the topic, and I've spent the past few days continuing to brood over it.  This is a second attempt.

One of the things I've noticed now that I've started paying attention, is that the issue of culture has pervaded more levels of our society than I had originally realized.  I've had a fairly rough year so far, as I'm sure many people have.  My wife and I suffered a heartbreaking setback in mid-March, then literally the very next week the lock downs started.  With the lock downs came the economic consequences, and suddenly I was being required to take mandatory unpaid leave from work multiple times in the second quarter.  Opportunities that I had presented themselves to me fell away, and my attitude at work seemed to fall with them.

It was around this time that I started to notice that my attitude was not the only one adversely affected by recent events.  In fact, I have been taking notes on a series of sweeping culture changes at my place of employment, and none of them have been positive.

I've been listening a lot lately, trying to figure out what the overarching problem(s) is/are.  I've listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts since March, outlining as many different perspectives on the issue of the pandemic as I can bare to listen to.  I've talked to dozens of employees of different levels across my organization.  I've spoken with friends and family.  What I've found is that the culture war going on in the political landscape currently, which I expressed such distaste for in my last post, is likely just a symptom of a much larger culture shift taking place in our society right now.  At the very least, it is interlinked with other concerns that are outside the traditional political landscape.

Life this year has been radically altered by a pandemic.  I am of the belief that many of the changes were long in the making, and that the pandemic has only accelerated them.  Few of them have been positive changes for the vast majority of the people I've listened to.  The biggest change appears to be a gigantic shift in perceived power.  Let me explain the best way I know how: anecdote.

I work for a company that employs roughly three hundred fifty persons at our facility at any time.  The vast majority of these, generally around three hundred, are production employees who work for an hourly wage.  They are represented by a union, and, while this is not the first union shop I've worked for, this is the first time I've paid enough attention to see the animosity that exists between the union employees and the salary employees.  Honestly, it feels as if those who are a part of the union have a different employer than those who are not, even though the same company appears on all the pay stubs.

Now, don't get me wrong, I expect a certain level of adversarial attitudes between employees and their supervisors.  Even I cannot help but disagree with my superiors from time to time and feel put off when I essentially have to do as I'm told even though I don't agree with a particular course of action.  However, this divide goes beyond that.  I am a salary employee, but I have no authority over any of the hourly employees.  There are more salary employees like me who are just there to help facilitate production than there are managers and supervisors, but the hourly employees have a tendency to treat all salary employees as overseers and look upon us with distaste.  It's an attitude I have yet to fully flesh out because I've never been one to look for reasons to hate someone before I even know them.

Lately, though, I've noticed a return of the animosity from the salary employees toward the hourly employees.  You see, as those of us who take a salary were required to take time off without pay, the decision was made to bring hour employees in for overtime and double time to increase production, which only made the jobs of those of us who facilitate that production more difficult.  Blame has not always been placed where it belongs, and I find that many of the support staff like myself are angry with the hourly employees for making extra money while we are making less, all while making extra work for us.

Where does this bring me?  Well, after another opportunity appears to be drying up, I find myself in a position where I, like probably many of the people I work with, feel completely powerless.  This has lead me to complain.  A lot.  I actually hate myself sometimes for how much complaining I do.  I really dislike listening to people complain, but some days literally the only interaction I have with my coworkers is a mutual session of vitriolic bitching.  We're all tired.  We're all overworked.  Most importantly, we're all feeling completely powerless.

Honestly, it's been so negative and my mood has been so adversely effected that I've had to start avoiding people I know are going to complain to me about work.  I've also started trying to avoid conversations that I know will lead to me complaining.  Most importantly, I've tried to start focusing on the things I can control, and forgoing the things I can't as much as possible.

This is the real shift I want to talk about.  I think our entire culture wars are about people who don't feel like they have any control looking for something to make a stand on or complain about.  We're all searching for something we think we have some level of control over, or searching for some feeling of control that we get when we complain or take a side on some political matter or other.  We feel better about ourselves when we can put others down because it feels like we have power over them, and we don't feel like we have power over much these days.

Somewhere in the past week I heard or read "focus on solution, not on the problem."  When people are focusing on the negative and can't see anything but problems, we have a tendency to cast blame and ignore the things we can actually do to solve the problems.  I'm sure everyone here has some experience where all it felt like everyone in a situation was so busy pointing fingers at who was wrong that no one took any time to address how to correct the issue.  It happens every day where I work, and was a regular occurrence at my last company as well.

So, what's the solution? Well, let's stop blaming someone else.  Let's stop worrying about blame at all.  Let's actually look at our lives and find the things in them that we can fix, and start fixing them.  Let's work with others instead of screaming at them.  Pass on best practices so others can learn from what we've already done.  Listen to others when they suggest best practices for something we have no experience with.  Most importantly, we need to stop paying so much attention to the things we have no control over.