Wow... New PC :D...

Woo.. .sorry for the lack of updates, but I've been busy trying to get everything in working order over the last few days...

As you may have guessed I've acquired a new RIG :D Weeeeeeeeee!

What has transpired since the last post?... hmm.

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Let's see on Friday, the 21^st ASoo and I went out Downtown. That day I was looking to purchase a new Keyboard, I was planning on using my laptop as a closed PC so I needed a keyboard to plug in. I tried using the extra one that we had kicking around. Just a generic keyboard... not even a brand. Unfortunately, the connector was a PS/2 and not USB... most new laptops don't come with PS/2 ports.

We ended up eating in the Pacific Center Mall foodcourt. ASoo just grabbed a Julius and I ordered some Pho (IMO the best fastfood pho in Vancouver). While we were enjoying our food and chatting a couple came and sat beside us. They were both Asian but the girl was FREAKING tall. She was eating something strange out of a can... I managed to take a shot of her, but not a nice one :p I was talking to ASoo and just turned to camera in her general direction, tried to make it inconspicuous :D I still haven't figured out what was in that can... fruits perhaps?

After that we went for a walk down Robson to the Glico store :) I showed ASoo the CalorieMate hehe. Today was SL 500 / SLK / z4 day... there were so many we lost track. We also stumbled upon something very peculiar while in the Glico store... they were selling stuff off at rock bottom prices... reasoning, expiry date past. This is common in some stores... but... this one took the cake. You'd think that the items had only been expired by days, right? Wrong... Have a gander at these...

Expired: 6/25

you think that's bad? Check out this next picture...

wtf... that's more than 2 months ago!!!... Uh... someone call the health department? There has to be some law against that.

Anyway, we left the store and headed back towards the car. ASoo was amused at all the bums that we saw downtown. Vancouver is notorious for our less fortunate roaming the strip asking for cash. I was thinking of going on an outing just to take pictures of all the bums that we have down there... most of them are regulars that you will see EVERYDAY you're down there... and some of them pop up every-so-often. Seriously, there are enough of them down there that you could put together a bubblegum card collection.

There are regulars like the "please, sir, ma'am" guy, the crazy guy with the puppets... the not so regulars like the one-arm push-up guy, and the no-shoes guy... and the rares like harmonica guy, and even the guy that takes your money but makes it look like a charity... :P

That's just the tip of the iceberg too :/

Before I forget :) Here's an example of how our bums are getting lazier and lazier.


By Far, this one takes the cake :D it's not even a real person lmao. Classic.

ASoo and I stopped off at FutureShop.. That's where I was hoping to pick up the new Keyboard. We ended up purchasing a couple of spindles of dual layer DVD-R at one-day-sale price :) instead. They didn't really have what I was looking for (more-bang-for-my-buck keyboard). ASoo also mentioned that there is a decent Benq wireless keyboard & mouse combination that I could get at NCIX (roughly $25)... how could I go wrong with that? :D We should have gone to NCIX today instead :/ Haha... We also went to one of the arcades (MovieLand) and kicked his ass in some classic games :P. OkOk... ASoo beat me a couple of times too... in 1 particular game... I shall not reveal my weakness :D.

We left DownTown and headed back to my house... on the way out we saw a strange sight...

That was something new to me... I wasn't aware that there was yet another reality TV show in Vancouver... but I'm sure I'll be seeing lots more of it in the future (assuming it airs) because my mum is a Reality TV freak :/ As you can see the lineup is around the corner. They also blocked off the rest of the street as well. We eventually made it out of downtown and back on the way home.

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It was decided that we were going to head over to the Richmond Night Market this evening. That's right, we have a Pasar Malam here, Two in fact.

Vancouver Night Market began as a small affair in Vancouver's Historic Chinatown. That event occupied 2 streets last I went (probably over 5 years ago). The vendors sold the typical Night market goods... the most popular being pirated digital media, of course... wait, maybe it was the 'hawker' food :) you'll notice that I put quotes around the word 'hawker' ya? that's because IMO the food vendors here do not compare to those of S'pore / M'sia.

Richmond's Night Market came a few years after Chinatown's. It began in the parking lot of Lansdowne mall and from the get go was larger than the original. Eventually it outgrew that parking lot (amusement rides, and too many stalls) and moved over to a large lot by Bridgeport Rd. & 3 Rd. The new location allowed for about double the stalls that they had in the old location... and then it moved again. This time to the Industrial area just off the Knight St. / Bridgeport Rd. exit. The new locations provides more than just shopping. It has a stage setup for live entertainment as well :p I have yet to see a performance tho, I never go early enough... wait, I think I have seen ONE performance, some live band. Anyway, I'm sure you can do a search on Youtube / google video and find footage. In fact, I found footage of some Chinese Michael Jackson impersonator :D... and no, it's not the Malaysian Idol guy :D.

The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

In Vancouver, night markets take place on summer weekends in Chinatown and also in an industrial area near suburban Richmond's Golden Village; the latter attracts in excess of 12,000 people per night.

-Wikipedia (on: Night market)

On with the story. The main reasons that I wanted to go to Night Market was 1) I hadn't been there in awhile & 2) I NEEDED to find a keyboard for my laptop. Guess what? No Dice... the closest thing that they had was the Flexible USB keyboard. I wasn't about to pick that up... it's not like I'm going to be taking my laptop anywhere anytime soon... not with the busted monitor.

This year Night Market is full of garbage... it was quite a disappointment. Normally I'll come across something, anything that I'll pick up because it's useful / neat & cheap. Nope NADA. I even forgot to get my favorite Curried Fish Balls :o. By the end of the night, we left as we came, empty-handed. Grr... with the amount of people that we had wade through, I was almost willing to buy some random item... just to make it feel like it was worthwhile :@.

Here's a short clip of the crowd.. just to give you an idea:

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The next day ASoo called me in the afternoon. He was stranded at Costco and wanted to hook up and head over to NCIX in Richmond.

Finally, I had a chance to go w/ him to a comptuer store. ASoo is planning on setting up a new server so he wanted to go check parts. Me, I was only planning on getting a keyboard, and a quote no how much damage my wallet was going to take. The reason we were in Richmond NCIX is because ASoo is like a crack addict and Richmond NCIX is his dope dealer. Yup, it was pretty much first-name-basis for him. I was hoping that I could get him to help me pick components for my PC, I ended up telling the NCIX guy "What would you recommend?". I told him that I wanted a machine that was decent for gaming as well as working with graphics.

Here is the quote:

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Tonight I folded and ended up calling Microsoft Product Activation line so that I could activate my Windows XP (pro 32bit) on my new machine :( I didn't want to. I was actually trying to install Windows Vista Beta 2 64bit but the activation period of 14 days had already expired so I couln't login after installing... in short... I wasted over an hour of my time trying to install Windows Vista Beta 2. Ghey.

After that I tried to do an install of my Windows XP Pro... but for some reason I ended up getting some wierd error. I did some research and it looked like some people were getting this error as a result of HW failure (?) umm... I was not happy to hear that, but I was also pretty sure that that was not the case for me. This was a brand spanking new HD.

Eventually I had to startup in recovery mode and use the console to manually format the C Drive. Everytime I tried to format it using the Windows XP install process it wouldn't wipe out the old Windows (Vista) install.