For the New Year (2025), I am going to try the idea of collecting happy weekly notes in a jar. Failures and disappointments affect me more than they should, I think having happy notes will balance things out.
I consider Sunday January 5 to be the end of the first week of 2025. The happy note will be about the re-discovery of my iPod Classic music player. I love listening to music but haven't done much of it lately. Sure, I have a sizeable collection of music files on my cell phone, but with all its notifications the listening experience can be interrupted. My first music player was actually one of those iPod with FireWire connection. It served me well but one day a leftover dish of spaghetti meatballs spilled and killed it. It was not that healthy at that point anyway, the battery didn't hold well. Plus, I think I already had an iPod touch. The iPod touch was basically an iPhone without the phone functions. It too eventually wouldn't boot up any more, I still have it somewhere around the house. One holiday season, I decided to treat myself to an iPod Classic, bought it in person at the late TekServe on 23rd Street near Sixth Avenue. Used it for a while then somehow I decided to just use my phone instead. Many years later, the current phone's Lightnight connection is finicky and I can no longer easily sync with a computer. I think it may be possible to sync wirelessly but I don't remember what needs to be done for that to happen. It doesn't help that my Mac is old, too. What got me really interested in the iPod Classic is that through my work with running a local Buy Nothing group that has a regular in-person meeting, I end up with an expanded collection of music CDs. I also have some music CDs from my sister and brother.
The first thing I tried to do was to connect the iPod Classic to my Windows 11 Lenovo laptop. It has plenty of room and is newer than the poor Mac. Installed iTune sometime ago, now is the time to put it to work. Nope, it didn't happen. Either the iPod Classic need to be updated, something or other, it seemed to be too much work. Back to the Mac, luckily it recognized the iPod easily. Hooked up an external disc drive and away I went. I already imported a few CDs via iTune on the Mac and enjoy them on the go. One minor issue is the iPod has no built-in speaker so I need to have a headphone handy, or an auxiliary cable to connect to the car stereo or external speaker.
I shall title the first Happy Jar 2025 note "Re-acquainting iPod Classic". Happy New Year!