What I got myself for Christmas
A vain, vapid topic that's sure to sink like a stone by tomorrow morning. Still, I spent too much of the day working on this not to record it for posterity.
Having decided to tune up this creaky old laptop as well as I could to stave off its imminent passing, I jumped in with all four feet. Added Opera to the other two browsers, Chrome and FireFox which I updated. Then I got snookered into an unreasonable number of delightful extensions and add-ons. In fact I even succumbed to a couple new freeware programs from CNET, the most trustworthy provider along with MajorGeeks.
Well, somewhere along the way I noticed that I couldn't turn on Windows Defender anymore, so I resumed sincere cleaning efforts. Usually around this time of year my favorite all purpose suite, Advanced System Care, puts the Pro version on sale so I bought that for very little. It helped with the registry but still not enough. Eventually I stumbled upon Glary Utility Systems 4 which also had Pro on sale, so I bought that. Between the two I got most of the computer problems worked out and the sneaky junk dumped. During all this I ordered a Coby 7" tv/dvd/radio/mp3 player on sale and decided it could use more antenna power. After hours sifting through those options, I found what seemed to be the most bang for the buck and bought that because it focuses mainly on UHF and I miss my PBS shows. I also looked at a lot of wireless wi fi repeaters, but I think I might wait for next month and buy the one at a local computer store that just opened up. It costs more than the stuff on eBay but I need to ask the local store owner if his was made in America, because that's how I'd rather go when possible. Last month I bought a dishwasher in anticipation of Christmas. Won't have to pay for it until January anyway. And I've made some of the online catalog stores very happy lately. Enough of that for a long time now, however.
You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find people who can tell me the db gain of their antenna. I blame it on the marketing department, which should know that some customers won't be wowed with meaningless ad copy such as "powerful". Powerful as compared to what???? I want the db gain or at least the average range in miles.
Well, I couldn't buy myself a pony, so I had to make do. Did you know they make special spaghetti forks? And I needed more long iced tea spoons. No more cookware, though. I've sworn that off.
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Well, I stopped short of the pony, at least! It's funny, after raising Egptian Arabians for so many years, though certainly not here, I still find myself wishing for a pony. Maybe it's my 2nd (3rd, 4th) childhood.
I do most of my 'major' purchases during sale seasons. I've already talked myself out of a new electric kitchen range. What I'd love better than anything is one of those antique electric reproduction 'wood' kitchen ranges from Elmira Stove Works in Canada. They're huge, ornate, and hideously expensive in my view since they start around $7-8K. I love old or old-looking stuff. But I can't spend $ quite so lavishly. If $ were no object, I could drop $50K in that place w/o blinking an eye.
I say "mind your own business" to anyone who complains too much about how someone else spends their holiday cheer 
Be a little vain if you feel like it, just be happy 
Course, perhaps I'm a little biassed as someone who LOVES his consumer electronics, gadgets and toys
BTW what version of Windows are you running?
From the number of clean up tools you were mentioning I thought maybe you were using something older and buggier. But the age of the computer explains that. 8 years really is ancient by tech standards I'm using Win 8 now, it takes some getting used to and does seem a little buggier but stability is largely fine. When I was running Win 7 I could keep my computer on for weeks without rebooting. I rarely ever ran much beyond a good virus scanner and firewall. That and I'm very careful about what I install, where and how.
I've been running Linux now for the past several months as my primary OS, dual booting with Win8.
I'll say Merry Christmas to you anyway, IrishAyes.
