My Festivus Grievances

So what if Festivus is a silly cultish joke? I'm trying to be an equal opportunity holiday celebrant. My apologies for not wishing you a Happy Hanukkah sooner.

I will not get to spend time with my family this season. I regret that but my family doesn't make a big to-do about the holidays so I'm not missing much other than watching really bad comedies with my mom (like the travesty that was Boat Trip), making Ranger cookies for my brother-in-law, and gossiping with my sister about our crazy relatives.

Despite missing out on those beloved festivities, I am still feeling the holiday spirit. New York is beautiful (although soooooooo insanely cold) this time of year. It is my first Christmas in a proper winter. Plus, I'm excited for 2009 and heading to Las Vegas for CES in just a few weeks. Thank you to everyone who wrote me with encouraging words about 2008. In my last blog post, I mentioned that 2008 was hard. I moved away from my family and friends and had a rough time adjusting to New York. But as I look back, I have very few regrets. I'm glad I came here and I'm glad it was hard. Hard doesn't mean bad. It just means hard. I quote General David Petraeus on this one: "Hard is not hopeless."

Okay, enough optimism. It is Festivus after all. So here is my 2008 airing of grievances. I may add to this throughout the day. Feel free to add yours in the comment section.

• There is no native landscape keyboard, video capture, or MMS for my iPhone;


• There is no Mac version of Chrome;


• The person who found my iPhone in a cab and never returned it is hereby cursed to bad technology karma for the rest of his/her days;


• MobileMe never really does exactly what I want it to;


• Any and all browsers on my Curve behave like an absolute puta;


• The BlackBerry Storm was a big fat letdown;


• Nokia phones are too darn expensive;


• HP's press representative won't let me keep this Vivienne Tam netbook for one second longer than I need it for my TV segments;


• Every single pair of headphones or earbuds that come into my possession break within a fortnight - even the high-end ones;


• I never have a jump drive on my person when I need one but have about a dozen when I don't;


• Google's speech recognition search engine still can't understand me;


• Loaded takes so darn long to encode and upload to CNET TV;


• The Teleprompter software we use on the Loaded set was developed by demons;


• Growl likes to freeze my OS;


• Microsoft Entourage, I hate you more than I've ever hated anything in my entire life. You make my life miserable every single day. Whoever developed you, wrote the program as a big fat "Screw you!" to Mac users. Message communicated. Screw you too!


• New: Cab drivers who lecture me about paying with credit card.

Yes, they are all mostly tech related. I don't usually carry grievances for people. Except maybe for those responsible for the dismal performance of the San Francisco Giants this year! They know who they are!

Comments

[braveman7]

wink www.SacredWarrior.org

[mirthis]

Hi Natali, I wish you the best for 2009 and I hope is not going to be so hard. Although I firmly believe that "Ciò che non ti uccide ti fortifica", that I don't know how it's translated in english but it means something like "Everything which doesn't kill you, makes you stronger" and I'm glad you've no regret for what you've done!
About your list, well evn if I am a n95 owner I agree with you about Nokia's phone price although here in the tech third world (Italy ;D) every kind of gadgets is pretty expensive.
It made me smile to see some of Loaded-related things in your list. For me that I watch the show everything seems so simple but I can imagine it takes a lot of time to obtain such a great result!
Well, tanti auguri di nuovo per il prossimo anno^^

[Steve]

Hi Natali. I've actually never seen you before but I saw the today show this morning and I had to look up who the hot girl was talking about tech stuff. Looking at your site you seem normal and fun too. Who ever you're dating, I'm jealous!

I want to add to the list my soon to be ex-girlfriend who keeps watching non-high def TV channels and uses TV speakers when I have a really high end home theater system. How can she do that??? I even have a remote that makes it really simple. Things like "Watch TV" or "Watch a Movie" are some options and the remote does everything for you. Women!

Captain Janks from Howard Stern gets an honorable mention for making me think I won a normal digital camera for a trivia night prize. When I got it, it was a 0.3 megapixel camera with built-in only memory of 25 pictures. I gave it to my friend's 2 year old son. I don't remember cameras ever being less than 1 megapixel so I don't know where he dug that out from.

Have a great 2009!

[Simon]

I can only get google search to recognise one or two things :( oh well I thought it was just the English accent!

Have a better 2009

[JusJed]

Always enjoy your spot on the Today show. You are beautiful ray of sunshine and knowledge on their program. Thank you for that. Happy New Year Natali.

[Edwin Chua]

Just wanted to say you were awesome on the Today show this morning! That was very nice what you did for the lady's cubicle. That must have been a blast. Happy New Year and good luck in everything!

[Rose]

May the pain of 2008 be gone quickly for all of us!!! Life is too short!!

[Lew]

Be sure and see the Fark thread that tangentially references you...if you have not already...

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=4126705

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