All Guy wants for ChristHannaKwanzmas 2008! (A holiday rant!)

All Guy wants for ChristHannaKwanzmas 2008 (A Holiday Rant)

Another end of year is upon us. Funny, it only seemed like 11 months and some odd number of days since the year began and here it is almost over already. Being that it is the time of year that it is (brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department), it’s obviously time for my yearly ChristHannaKwanzmas rant. Can you believe I’ve been doing this for 40 years? No? Would you believe 20 years with time off for good behavior? Sorry, I’ve been watching a lot of old Get Smart episodes. Actually this is my 5th year in a row and so far Tim has been entirely unable to stop me! BWAHAHAHA!

I get asked all the time just what ChristHannaKwanzmas is and how can I help spread the faith amongst those unbelievers with excellent credit reports. So, perhaps a brief recap from last year is warranted (plus it helps pad this blog!).

ChristHannaKwanzmas was created as a tax shel’¦I mean divine belief that all men and women were created equal, That children should be known by sight, but held quiet as they pass by aisle after aisle of pre-manufactured Iron-Man and Dark Knight (updated from last years’s plastic crap for children) movie tie-in toys. That giving is the most blessed form of sharing good fortune (especially to my overseas PayPal account).

Like those other LESS important religions, this is a special time of year for ChristHannaKwanzmasians. This is when they max out those credit cards buying gifts for people to bribe’¦I mean to encourage them to join our most holiest of causes. Like those other religions, we also have a patron who visits the homes of those good little ChristHannaKwanzmas boys and girls on ChristHannaKwanzmas Eve. His name is Saint Santa Fredâ„¢ and he visits their homes on a sled powered by recalled Chrysler 300 sedans and gives vouchers for deep discounts at Best Buy and Circuit City and QuickTime exploits to all the bad children. We have special songs that we sing as the overdue bills come pouring in. Let me share some of the titles with you:

‘God rest ye debt collector’
‘Frosty the repo man’
‘We wish you a merry bankruptcy’
‘Saint Santa Fredâ„¢ is coming to town and is he pissed!’

I’ll end this part of my rant on a happy note. We are currently in deliberation to have our very own soon animated holiday classic tentatively titled, ‘What the hell were you thinking Charlie Brown©?’

There! Now we’re all caught up and can go on talking about the stuff that I usually do in these rants. Those that don’t want to go on are welcome to just re-read the beginning over and over again like some sort of Star Trekian time-loop, doomed to repeat the same mistake of thinking this was going to be insightful. The rest of us will read what I’ve thought about 2008.

2008 was a year in which many believed we were finally going to be rid of our Republican oppressors by replacing them with Democratic oppressors. It gave me a warm and tingly feeling just thinking about how very different the Democrats were from the corrupt and money hungry Republicans are. Just the other day I was talking to Illinios Governor Democrat Rod Blagojevich and he actually offered me a 10% discount on a Senate seat! Those nasty Republicans would have charged me full price! This is the kind of clear thinking and fiscal responsibility we need these days. The seat in question is one about to be abdicated by our President-to-be Barrack Obama. I must really question as to whether he is fit to serve since he apparently wanted nothing to do with profiting off his former job and other than some photo ops with the soon-to-be former Governor didn’t seem to have much to do with him. It will all be worked out I’m sure as we all know how squeaky clean and honest politics are in Chicago.

Wasn’t the election interesting this year? Apparently all the usual rhetoric with snippets about military and financial policies that fill the airwaves until we’re all ready to puke have been replaced with ‘Not enough Executive Experience’, ‘Change’, and my personal favorite, ‘Yes we can’. What apparently ‘Yes we can’ do is open for debate and I’m sure all the details will be filled in later.

Speaking of not-so-temporary insanity, there’s a group currently trying to block Obama’s inauguration by claiming that he actually isn’t a US citizen based on where he was born. Some claim he was born in Indonesia, others that he was born in Kenya. Now Mr. Obama’s father was a Kenyan national but my painstakingly done, very expensive fact-finding mission (Google) has discovered that Barrack Obama was born in Hawaii. While I have traveled all over the world, I don’t claim to be an expert on all things overseas, but the last time I looked Hawaii is actually a State (the 50th! The greatest of all numbers to be used by States!) within the US. The fact there are probably more Japanese vacationing in Hawaii at any given time than there are US Citizens in residence does not in any way shape or form make it less than any other State. If this were true, New York City would have annexed Florida a long time ago.

Moving on. The economy has certainly taken a slight turn for the worst this year. Add your own eye-rolling and angry comments here. Everyone would like to blame the President, but how much does any President really affect the economy. Heck, Congress doesn’t even trust these fellows with any real say beyond signing their name to the national budget. With a Democratic Congress and President for the first time since some guy went on David Letterman and blew into a saxophone, maybe they’ll finally give the Office of the Prez a line-item veto. Because I’m sure all those guys that Obama ran against in the primaries won’t hold a grudge. Certainly the Republicans should be able to see that eventually people will forget about ol what’s his name still in office and that it’s in their best interests to allow the President some say in matters of the national budget. Sure they will.

Of course as I write this (I actually started writing it a few days ago before the big announcement) it has been proclaimed that this will be the LAST San Francisco Macworld convention that Apple is attending. Huge news of course but they already pulled out of the Paris Mac Expo AND NAB not to mention they pulled out of the east coast Macworld when it was moved to Boston from New York. What does this mean for the Mac faithful? At best a much smaller Macworld next year and at worst no more Macworlds at all. The gnashing of teeth and howls of protest from the Mac fans everywhere will probably not make that much of a difference. The reasons behind Apple dropping out range from ‘It’s too expensive’ to ‘Steve is dying RIGHT NOW!’ and Apple’s stock has reacted accordingly by dropping about 6-7 bucks. IDG who are the movers and shakers behind Macworld have vowed to continue even without Apple’s presence, but I seem to recall a similar vow when Apple pulled out of the east coast show. I didn’t go to the last one as Boston is not really a one-day trip like the New York show was, but from all accounts it was pretty sad. They held it in a smaller venue and choked off a good portion of that as well to make it look busier. Who knows what will happen, but Macworld won’t be the same without Apple. Maybe some of the bigger companies that announced they weren’t attending knew about Apple’s plans and jumped ship early.

So what else happened in technology this year? New Linux releases, and’¦um’¦new’¦other stuff. Well how about those ads? New Apple ads with the ‘¦Mac and PC guy’¦that pretty much follow the same format as last year. HEY! Microsoft actually took some interesting turns with ads like those REALLY successful Seinfeld and Bill Gates ads’¦where he shook’¦his ass. Then they dropped them after giving Jerry what’¦10 million? Hey why not because those ‘I’m a PC’ ads were HUGE I tell you’¦huge. Alright, I give up. The iPhone that I still don’t own was really the top story for the year. The App Store and new 2.0 software really opened the platform up for all kinds of things that even Apple probably never would have thought of.

Windows 7 was announced and may actually be released next year. Vista/Mojave has not exactly been a stellar success even though it doesn’t seem so bad to me on my 24-inch iMac running through Bootcamp. Maybe people read too much into the initial negative reviews and have never really given it much of a chance. If you’re a Windows user, give it a try. I found it to be kinda neat to play with. Certainly as much eye candy as OS X and with DirectX10 in a lot of newer games, you aren’t given too much choice about it. Enough of that. Time for my yearly letter to Steve Jobs.

Dear Steve,
Wowsee wow wow, you really know how to end the year with a bang. No keynote speech at what is probably the last Macworld EVER? C’mon! C’mon c’mon! You gotta make an appearance at least. Phil is a real nice guy and all that, but he doesn’t exactly make the room shake rattle and roll. OK, I won’t harp on this except to say’¦last Macworld EVER!

Alright, sure the whole big conference thing has been on its last legs throughout the industry for awhile, but this is MACWORLD! Remember all the good times? Having Billy on the big screen? Introducing the iMac? OS X? iPhones and iPods? Let it go out with a bang and not a whimper. OK nuff said.

What am I looking for under the ChristHannaKwanzmas leg warmers this year? How about a better AppleTV. Make it a real media center and not just an extension of iTunes. A 32GB of RAM iPhone so I can finally buy one. A mid-tower Core2Duo/Quad Mac. I’m not looking for 2-4 PCI card slots and mega storage, just the possibility of upgrading a graphics card if ATI or NVidia ever get off their asses and make drivers for OS X beyond what you ask them to make for iMacs. These are simple things that Ives could crank out in-between coffee breaks.

I hope all is well with you and wish you the best this holiday season Steve.
Guy

Now to everyone else!

To my family and friends. Yes I cut my hair. It’s no longer a ponytail running down my back with a big expanse of nothing on the top of my head. This does not mean I’m getting any wiser and those of you who think this might mean I’m growing up should know better by now.

To Tracey my wife of 16 years, I’m sorry for all the stupid things I’ve done and as you well know that list is just too long to go through. Thanks for loving me in spite of all my faults.

To my boys Guy Jr and Peter. I love you too but just stop this teenage hormone angst thing. You’re making me nuts. My only hope is that I will live long enough to see your kids drive you bats while I sit in the corner drool and laugh.

To all my friends. Just what the heck is it about me that makes you think I’m worth knowing? I make MYSELF crazy just thinking about all the stupid crap I do on a daily basis. Well whatever it is, thanks. It means a lot to me and I hope my shenanigans don’t put you off. Just remember the source and that I usually don’t plan on things working out as badly as they do’¦they just sometimes do.

To everybody else’¦have a happy and safe ChristHannaKwanzmas and keep those cards, letters, and untraceable cash coming my way!