Internet Data Usage & Free Apps

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It's been about 6 weeks since I switched my home internet service from DSL Unlimited Internet to Exede Satellite Internet with a 15Gb per month package. I had also switched my cell phone service from AT&T to Verizon for various reasons already explained. This Verizon package gave me 10Gb of data per month, free calls and free texts for $60 per month.

That left me with a total of 25Gb's per month of data, single person household.

I never realized how much free internet data I was getting with my local provider's DSL service. They recently stopped supporting DSL thus passing it off to two other companies for connection issues. I am thrilled with all aspects of the Exede Satellite system. I guess to prepare me for internet service on the road I am now finding new things to do to reduce my data usage to keep under the monthly limit without having to pay more.

I am pretty computer knowledgeable. I am not a programmer, nor IT support but over the 20 years of using computers I know enough to be dangerous I guess. So what I found out recently as today, a few easy ways to decrease "wasted" usage that was easy to understand. I also found some surprises.

Hopefully some of this information will help those on the road having trouble keeping within their data limits. Also for any people at home that have a data limit, even your smart phones may find something here that can help you out.

I will try to explain this in basic terminology.

Facebook is the number one data sucker due to the way they cache all of the photos and videos from other Facebook users and advertising. This is even if you spend very little time on Facebook and don't watch any videos. After you log into your personal page, the data activity has started and a lot of it in the background that you are unaware of.

Watching videos, movies, or YouTube also is ranked high if not #2 in the data use business. I have learned to watch many of my music videos on YouTube after midnight because between midnight and 5am I get unlimited data. There are are just certain times I like to see my bands live on stage with loud volume coming though those computer external speakers. Now I have to do that after midnight or sacrifice during my other internet activity.

I don't watch movies on my computer nor do I download large files except those system updates. Yes, I had the box checked to not only check for updates daily but also download them automatically and let me give the permission for installing them. I kept the box checked that my system would check for updates daily but I un-checked automatic download. Now I will get a notification that an update is available and I can program that to download and install between my free data hours of midnight to 5am.

I've found some pretty good advice from computer geeks more knowledgeable than I am and have implemented most of what they said.

The first thing I did was go into my browser properties, found the apps page, searched for and installed 2 different apps that prevents all of the news, Facebook, ESPN and any other sites from automatically loading and playing videos at the time you go to their site. Yes you can click on those screens to shut off automatic play but they always seem to come back to auto play after a period of time.

So, I found and installed Flashblock and AdblockPro.  Both of these are free and you can find them as apps whether you use Safari, Google Chrome or Firefox. Since I don't use a PC nor IE I cannot speak for that browser.

Just to make sure Facebook was under control, I logged into my Facebook account, looked to the upper right corner and clicked that "down arrow" then highlighted "settings". On the left side of the screen after that page loaded, I clicked on the Videos icon and made sure that 'AutoPlay' was turned off.

Now with those 3 things you have prevented a lot of what I call "wasted data usage".

My problem was I was always use to having 15-20 tabs open on Google Chrome at times, that uses data. I can only read one screen at a time, so now I am starting a new habit of using one tab at a times. Those multiple tabs being hard to pass up because it's convenient. I also closed my 4-5 Excel spreadsheets I would always leave open....after all I am a known Excel spreadsheet junkie ... but those took up a little data just sitting open all the time. So now I only open them to update or read them.

For Mac users, I went into the Apps folder and clicked open the Utilities folder and brought "Activity Monitor" to my dock. This will do various things such as track all internet network usage since the last time you booted your computer to on. I then moved the columns to the way I wanted to see them such as Recvd Bytes first then Sent Bytes as the 2nd column. I also sorted that column by clicking the down arrow on the column, large to small so I can see what programs are running and using the most data by listing those on top if they are using the most data.

After closing tabs, closing files that were sitting open and not used, I saw that only the required system files were running in the background. I see now, that my two largest users are Google Chrome and my Mail program, just as it should be.

Apple has their own malware program installed where it will monitor your hard drive at all times. People that have PC's that I talked with today recommended two free programs to monitor for malware and delete it. Those were Malwarebytes and Spybot Search and Destroy. Neither of those programs were not for Apple computers.

If you have malware running in the background, it is using your data. A lot of the time you will not know it's even on your computer. Have someone with some knowledge run those malware programs because you have to be careful of not deleting programs by mistake that your computer or operating system needs to run.

The biggest spike in my usage in 6 weeks was the day I connected my TV through my wireless Directv modem to my Exede internet service. I did not even watch a movie on demand, no YouTube, I just made sure the connection worked. I was thrilled that I had connection. I could watch movies On Demand now, or YouTube on a larger TV screen. I then turned off the TV, put my computer in sleep mode and went to bed. The next day while working outside and not having either on, I burned 1.7-1.9Gbs.....I was shocked. I figured it was the constant updating of movies or system upgrades by Directv.

I called Directv and explained my problem, they had no answer. I couldn't find anything on the Exede forums either. So I unplugged the TV modem. I track my usage on a spreadsheet that feeds a graph so I was able to see by day what was happening. After unhooking the Directv modem I was back to normal usage of .4-.6 Gb of use. .5 is right on target for 15Gb's in a month.

I can honestly say with a family of 4 or even just a couple using the internet for normal use, I don't see anyway at all you can stay within a 15Gb to 20Gb monthly limit. That leaves you with 3 options ... control  and watch usage like I am doing, pay more money for more Gbs or shutdown during prime time hours and do your major downloads during your free data periods IF you have one.

Hopefully this rambling has not confused or scared you and there is something here that can help you. Feel free to email me with any questions you may have and I'll try my best to answer them or post them on a forum to get an answer from the experts.

Thoughts In General

There is not much going on after a great weekend. I must admit that I forget what day it is at times and have to look at the iPhone calendar to tell me. That is how nice it is being retired. I had a long time friend stop by yesterday and we had a rather interesting discussion. Some of that pertains to traveling, rving, hiking etc.....old activities.

As you see from the blog I have done a little 'cleaning and rearranging'. I was listing too many blogs on the sidebar, so I moved a lot of them over to my feedly account where I can read all of their updates along with my other stuff listed there. I also came close to deleting my Google+ account this weekend and I still might. I rather doubt it will take the place of the information I follow and read on Facebook. Also, what I think is concerning, is the same as Facebook, if you don't keep a close eye on your account and privacy settings ... they seem to change without anyone letting you know. Then you have less privacy than you thought you did.

One thing that got me thinking about deleting Google+ was, of all things, taking a picture on my iPhone. It was just a photo of Heidi's bad back legs. They were not photos I was going to put on a blog or pass out to anyone. They were just for me so I can see later if there is any improvement using the Dinovite food supplement. Soon after I took that photo, I get an email from Google+ asking if I wanted to share the photos? That ticked me off. I couldn't believe Google+ had moved their way into my iPhone. Isn't there any privacy anymore?

After doing some research on how that happened, I found out I now have to go into my iPhone settings and make some changes to prevent that and later I did.

I've never liked Google+ even when it started. I was hesitant in starting an account but I did because people were using their Google+ accounts to follow the blog. If I find out that anyone can follow my blog without the requirement of me having a Google+ account, then I'll get rid of if and go back to my blogger profile.

I found out this morning just how good of a watch dog Sadie is. You know, the mild mannered bloodhound, where tv commercials show the mild mannered bloodhounds laying on the porch in the sleep mode and never moving. Well the man from the electric company that rang the doorbell found out otherwise. She scared him enough that he had backed away from the door by the time I answered it. She went sprinting to the door with a very loud aggressive bark. He asked me if she would come through the door after him. It was surprising how vicious she sounded when that doorbell rang. In some cases that might be a good thing.

My long time friend and a college roommate stopped by yesterday on his way home. He is semi-retired at 62, does some part-time dentistry, but would prefer to be full-time retired. We were always biking or hiking the USA 40 years ago while in college. We have discussed many times as we got older how our attitudes were changing about the activities we use to really enjoy and did on a regular basis. In my case that was bicycling and his was backpacking and hiking all of the USA.

When he told me of his recent solo hiking/backpacking trip the Colorado last month, I could relate some of that to my thoughts of traveling cross-country in a trailer. It was interesting because over the years he had told me he had a burning desire to get back into hiking and backpacking like he use to, and planned to once he retired full-time. His desire to travel was the same as mine was when I first discovered the RV full-time lifestyle.

The interesting part of the conversation was that he acted on his burning desire to go out west and hiked. He thought it would be like he remembered hiking his 20's, but the trip had surprising results. Those results are the same kind of things I have thought when deciding to travel or not.

He was planning to be gone for at least a month maybe more depending on his desire to travel. He called a couple of days before he left and was really excited about the plans. He said it was something he had been wanting to do for years!! Yet, something happened that he hadn't planned on.

After he arrived in Colorado, he made various short hikes but nothing like he had planned. He said each time he felt like turning back and did. Instead of camping out every night like he had planned, he would return to his car and then stay at a motel. For two weeks he only camped in his tent one night up at Alpine Lake in Colorado. He said that burning desire wasn't there once he started hiking.

After that night of camping and a great day of hiking, he said that when he woke up the next morning he knew that was it ... he was finished. Here he had spent years talking about getting back out into the wilderness and then not having the urge, need or motivation to do it as much as he planned on. He was satisfied with the one day and night instead of months. He had at least done what he wanted to do.

We have always wondered if we would ever have the same past desire to get back into activities we use to live by and enjoy. So far neither of us has stayed with anything consistently over the years. Him with competitive swimming (masters division) and backpacking, me with bicycling and working out.

Had age taken away that desire to compete or remain active with hobbies we once loved?

That lack of consistency has always made me wonder about the "what ifs ....". Such as, what if I buy a RV or trailer, take off and then two weeks later you find out that is not what you want to do ... after years of indecision, research, etc ... it's over just like that. Then you have a trailer you don't want to use.

He said he had a great trip but he was somewhat disappointed that he only needed 1 day/night of camping out in the boonies after years of wanting to do nothing but this. He said he didn't think he would be taking any more trips like that .... it was over.

Is that a factor in why I never make a commitment to buy something ... anything ... and try it?

The Daily Dog Walk

I initially took my iPhone in hopes of getting photos of the fawn or deer today on our walk. Neither showed up, so I took photos of the daily walk we do. We do this in snow but usually call it off due to rain or wet grounds.

Normally I will have Sadie on a 25' retractable leash, Heidi gets to run free and Winston is a little different. Once he gets to the edge of the backyard without a leash or collar attached, he will refuse to go on the walk. He will sit there as we walk away, then I will hear him barking in the distance. Eventually he will take off without a leash or collar but will be only a 1/4 of the way by the time we get back.

So to combat that act of stubbornness that comes with the hound breed, I will slide a collar on Winston with an act of hooking him to the leash. That's good enough for him and he takes off to join the others on our walk.

Today just as we were getting ready to leave I heard the local microlight flying. It's the first time I have seen him this summer. Normally he will fly over the field we walk in but today it made a reverse turn as he approached the house. By the time I had ran in the house to get my iPhone, he was leaving. You can barely see him in the center of the photograph.

Motorized Glider straight ahead

Sadie is ready to get on with it

It's good to get back into the field of smells

The daily tracking pose 

It's Winston's distractions that make his walks slow and long

Starting the walk as Winston drops off the back.

It was at this corner we saw the fawn last week

The owner of the field has mowed a path for his grandson's ATV

Both Bassets Dropping Back Further Behind

Do We Have to Wait on Those Bassets?

Both Bassets Like to Sniff as They Go

Winston is Right on Schedule ... Hold on a 'Sec

Winston's Pace Includes Time to Sniff

Wait!!  I'm Almost Caught Up

Heidi is The Leader on the Way Home

Starting the Return Trip Home

Ah .. Something else to check out along the way

Close to the end ... where are those crazy basset hounds?

Close to the End of the Walk

The end

Response From Kickstarter

I received good news today, at least as a start on Kickstarter. I've read good stories about this site so last Tuesday I went over to the site to find out what I could and if I had a "project" that would fit their requirements.

I had a little different project from their norm, so I emailed them for clarification and received their reply today, confirming that my project would fit in their project model and that I could moved forward with my idea.

I had an idea that I have had set up for a years and in the past I had emailed these out to family, friends and co-workers when they requested them. The word got out what I had or did for my own personal enjoyment and/or analysis, so more and more of the information I had was passed out for free.

Recently I had been thinking of ideas that would generate online income. I was looking at ideas I could sell online, electronically and not dependent on me being in a certain location or even have internet connection. From 2005 - 2008 my fulltime job was at home, selling autographed sports memorabilia online via Amazon, eBay and my website. I had 4-5 blogs that tied into these websites to generate traffic. I didn't ship anything from my house since all of my inventory was at the authenticator's location. They would drop ship the order as I received a sale.

Sounds pretty simple and it was great between those years but it also amounted to 7 days a week and long hours. I was making enough income to live on and work from home. Due to the economy change in 2008, plus a change in policies from my suppliers, business decreased rapidly. After going back to a 40 hour a week job in 2008, I ran my online business part time until 2011. Those part time hours still amounted to over 20 hours per week in addition to my 40 hour per week job. When I was doing the business full time I was working 7 days per week and anywhere from 6-16 hour days.

I loved it though, sports is my thing, so the hours added up and it didn't matter. I loved all the work I was doing and it never seemed like a job.

With the urge to travel and with an expectation of not being able to be connected to the internet all of the time I began to look at other options in generating income this past month. I am not sure if this idea will work but I'm going to try it and find out.

I have most of the set up work completed and will only have to write a project description to add on Kickstarter. Once I get things set up on Kickstarter, I'll post the link and go into more detail what my project consist of here in a blog post.