Dear Santa: Not These Either

In further news of what is not on my wish list: no more gadgets! Please let me get control over what I already have. The pano below is my dusty desk, covered with computers and wires and external drives. (Not to mention a bunch of desk stuff, etc. I'm begging Santa for control over the gadgets I already have. (Many not pictured here.)

I fell out of love with that iMac. Actually, I never loved it. I ran Windows in VMware. But I did collect a bunch of tunes off the hundreds of CDs we still own in the iTunes on there. If I had any idea how to get them to another machine, I would. I did transfer most of them to an iPod. (Which is in another room connected to our AV system.) I'm afraid to connect that to the iMac because I've heard of newer versions of iTunes wiping out a gadget if tunes are from your own CDs and not purchased through them. Apple is full of surprises like that. Many I've experienced, most I just heard of online, so who knows??? The other two computers are working. One is WIN7. I'm trying to wean myself from it. The one on the left was in use by FFP until, a few weeks ago, I couldn't get it to boot and had to take it back to the beginning of its life as a WIN 7 machine, work half the night to get Microsoft to let me upgrade it to WIN 10 again, etc. I got him a new computer, reinstalled everything, set up his files from backups. Yeah, backups. I take them to the cloud. I take them to external disks that you see, to portable ones in the cabinet or safe. All I do I think, sometimes, is install software and make backups. That machine on the left taught me I should be making restore points, too. 

Last night I updated my current iPhone (a 6) with the software (ios 10 something) that it was incessantly bugging me to get. No great tragedies ensued although there are things I don't like. 

So no new gadgets! There are computers and our current iPhones (FFP's is a 5s I think). There are iPads. (I think there are four in the house? Two we use a lot.) We have three TVs. Satellite boxes, amps, DVD players, a gadget that gets one of the TVs some channels over the airwaves. 

If Santa brought a gadget, all I'd see would be maintenance, upgrades, etc. Enough is enough. Of course, upgrades will be necessary, things will break. But I'm not getting a gadget you talk to (I don't talk to Siri, I like communicating through words on screen) or a camera attached to a flying drone or a watch that lets you keep your phone in your pocket or a new game console (thankfully we've never had a game console). 

I know many of you will get a gadget for Christmas. Enjoy.