“There’s a fine line between support and stalking, and let’s all stay on the right side of that.” – Joss Whedon
In my youth, I taught computer classes. My typical schedule was Monday – Thursday, 3 – 9. This afforded me the luxury of staying home in the morning which gave me time to exercise. Since riding an exercise bike or jumping on a rebounder is boring, I choose to pass the time by watching TV. Back in the day, the morning talk shows included Geraldo, Jenny Jones, Phil Donahue.
Exercise is supposed to make you feel better, but in my case, it wasn’t working. Every morning was a struggle to get out of bed. It wasn’t long until my exhaustion was so complete, that I was too tired to turn on the TV. After a week of no media, I was feeling better. I turned on the TV. My exhaustion returned, with a vengeance!
It was my first personal experience with what is known in the computer industry as “Garbage In, Garbage Out” or GIGO. Watching the morning talk shows exploit all things deviant was exhausting me.
I will admit, I am a sensitive person. I cried when I watched Pinocchio, and I cried every time Esmeralda sought sanctuary in the cathedral in Hunch Back of Notre Dame. And the kids watched Hunch Back many times when they were little.
To protect my emotional health, I’ve setup my computer to limit the uninvited news feeds. My big concern in doing so, was that I would never know what is going on in the world. But I found a solution to that as well. If you are interested in limiting the GIGO in your life, here is what I did:
1. Choose a browser that doesn’t track you and force feed ads to you. My favorites are Brave, available at https://brave.com, and DuckDuckGo, available at: https://duckduckgo.com. Both of these browsers will block ads and stop trackers. A friend was telling me she is inundated with ads for wedding planning. She is planning a wedding but the onslaught of ads is making her nuts. I can think of no good reason to allow anyone or anything to follow me around on the internet. If they were doing that in real life it would be called stalking. There are laws against stalking!
2. Set your browser homepage to something bland like the duckduckgo search engine. Open your browser of choice. Go to the browser control. This is always in the top right corner of the screen. Sometimes it looks like 3 vertical dots, sometimes it looks like 3 horizontal dots and sometimes it is 3 horizontal lines. Open the browser control and then click on settings. Somewhere in here there is a getting started option. All browsers have this feature. It will allow you to choose what you see when you open the browser. Scrolling news windows and eye candy with rabbit trials to follow on Microsoft’s default msn.com do not improve my productivity. I do a lot of research. I especially like the option to continue where you left off. I can have 20-30 tabs open and turn off the computer. Next time I open the browser, all of those tabs are still available to me. Alternatively, you can set it to always open to a blank page, or a set of pages of your choosing.
3. I want to limit the Garbage that comes in, but I still want to know what is going on the world. I do that by subscribing to a newsletter. The two I read daily are 1440 and Morning Brew.
4. Turn off the personalized ads in Windows 11. Find Settings. There are lots of ways to get here. Click on the start menu and look for it there. If it is MIA then Right click on the Start menu to find it there. If all else fails, search for settings by typing “settings” into the search bar at the bottom of the screen. Once successfully in the settings, look for privacy and security. I have turned off everything.
These small tweaks have improved my life. Hopefully, they will help you too.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Janet
Because It Made Me Laugh!
