On the 18th of March a bunch of us crashed EK's house to throw him a bash :) Unfortunately it wasn't as much of a "SURPRISE!!!" as we had hoped, because he was playing online poker... and winning O.o
Uncle James and Ang tried to get him to "go outside and get the cats" but he was too involved with his game. We ended up just barging in single file... but his reaction was still priceless :D
The rest of the night was as every other party at EK's :p Music, Games & Drinking! That day was special... EK was out by 11:45pm :P Hmm... we got there @ 7:30pm... that would mean that he survived just over 4 hours of them funnelling Alcohol down his throat ;)
The other day Jacq and I were talking about McDonald's and the different menus that they have all around the world... It reminded me of that REALLY old commercial from when I was in elementary school :p I did a search on YouTube and someone actually posted it :D
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the Canadian version had some minor differences, but hehe, it doesn't matter :p it's such a great song :D
Big Mac, Mc DLT, a Quarter-Pounder with some cheese, Filet-O-Fish, a hamburger, a cheeseburger, a Happy Meal. McNuggets, tasty golden french fries, regular or larger size, and salads: chef salad or garden, or a chicken salad oriental. Big Big Breakfast, Egg McMuffin, hot hot cakes, and sausage. Maybe biscuits, bacon, egg and cheese, a sausage, danish, hash browns too. And for dessert hot apple pies, and sundaes three varieties, a soft-serve cone, three kinds of shakes, and chocolatey chip cookies. And to drink a Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, and orange drink, A Sprite and coffee, decaf too, A lowfat milk, also an orange juice. I love McDonald's, good time great taste, and I get this all at one place...
Today is mum's birthday :) Happy Birthday Mum!!! Ask for her age and she'll tell you she's 29 and holding :P hehe.
I'm not sure why, but Mum and Dad decided that they wanted to go out for dinner last night instead of tonight but it happened that way, and the pick was Aqua Riva, down by Vancouver's Waterfront, right next to our World Trade Center.
Aqua Riva is located right on the waters edge and offers a beautiful view of North Vancouver as well as the 5 Sails of Canada Place. For all of us it was the first time here so we weren't sure what to expect... I hung back outside to take a picture of the entrance, so I didn't get to see what their hostess is like. I'm sure they're nice.
After seating, in typical Chinese fashion my Mum pulled out a newspaper clipping :) It was an add that was advertising the Aqua Riva Best of B.C. Menu (which was included with the regular menu given to us when we were seated). For some reason I was feeling particularly lazy that night so I just stuck with the $29 set dinner which included your choice of (1 from each section):
Appetizer:
Chilliwack Corn & Seafood Chowder Vancouver Island Sidestripe Salt Prawns Local Baby Field Greens
Main Course:
Roasted Wild Skeena River Coho Salmon Roasted Fraser Valley Free Range Chicken Breast Wood Grilled Salt Spring Island Lamb Sirloin
Dessert:
Pitt Meadow Blueberry Cheese Cake Okanagan Apple and Cherry Bread Pudding
You can click on the picture below to see the dish details.
Below are the pages from the regular menu:
The prices are on par with most other 'up-scale' restaurants in Vancouver (~$10 for an appy and ~$25-$30 per entree.
I have to say that the service was impeccable. The waiters are all First Class, we didn't really get to test their knowledge as we all ordered from the set dinner (and no one ordered wine) but from what I've heard, they're also all very knowledgeable. The waitress also let me know that the Guinness that I ordered was coming in a can... I know, they're always supposed to tell you that, but I've come across places where they don't tell you...
Dad ordered: Chilliwack Corn & Seafood Chowder Wood Grilled Salt Spring Island Lamb Sirloin Okanagan Apple and Cherry Bread Pudding
Lamb Sirloin & Bread Pudding
Mum & I ordered: Local Baby Field Greens Roasted Fraser valley Free Range Chicken Breast Pitt Meadow Blueberry Cheese Cake
Grilled Free Range Chicken Breast Baby Greens & Cheese Cake
Dad said he liked the chowder (which I didn't get a snap of) but it was filling him so he pushed it over to me :P. I haven't ordered chowder in a dog's age but this one wasn't too bad :) It wasn't too creamy and it wasn't too runny either, just right. For some strange reason I don't recall there being big chunks of seafood. Everything seemed kinda mashed together o.O Maybe dad ate all the good stuff before passing to me.. hehe.
The baby greens were nice, all the leaves were fresh & very tasty :) It came with preserved peaches too... and what looked like melba toast with some sort of Garlic butter... sorry :p I suck when it comes to picking out ingredients :$.
On to the Free Range Chicken. I am pleased to say that it was some of the best chicken that I have had. The Chicken was served on a bed of Mashed Potatoes and mixed vegetables topped in a gravy. Mmm.. I love mashed potatoes... AND I LOVE VEGGIES :D Can't go wrong :p. What made it even better is that the chicken was stuffed with Dungenous crab & sweet corn, resulting in a very subtle, unique flavor...
Mmmmm... Cheesecake! I was expecting the cheesecake to be REALLY rich, but instead it was nice and light. Not too much Blueberry, not too rich and cheesy... superb.
I didn't get a chance to try my dad's Bread Pudding but dad says that the texture was nice, it tasted sweet, and it was better than the Cheesecake :p
All-in-all, Aqua Riva was a very pleasant experience. I'm definitely going back, next time to try something off the regular menu! Some random shots outside of Aqua Riva:
Dad, Mum & 5 Sails of Canada Place Vancouver's World Trade Center & another one of those bears, this one's a Canuck Bear :) The Sears Tower and the Gate to Historic Gas Town For the dorks: EA's downtown campus & the old trainstation
A couple of nights ago I went to see Pulse with AK...
Synopsis:
Imagine our wireless technologies made a connection to a world beyond our own. Imagine that world used that technology as a doorway into ours. Now, imagine the connection we made can't be shut down. When you turn on your cell phone or log on to your e-mail, they'll get in, you'll be infected and they'll be able to take from you what they don't have anymore - life. Kristen Bell ("Veronica Mars"), Christina Milian ("Love Don't Cost A Thing") and Ian Somerhalder ("Lost") star in "Pulse," a bone-chilling thriller hitting theatres on July 14th.
I just recently found out that this movie is based on a Japanese original (Kairo) made in 2001. I haven't had the chance to watch the whole thing through yet, but I'm thinking that it's going to be the same deal as The Grudge (Ju On) and The Ring (Ringu). Anyway, back to my story.
This particular night was interesting because I had to get up and tell someone off. Now, it's been awhile since I last had to do that and I don't enjoy getting up and disrupting other people... but. From the beginning of the movie until about 20 minutes in, everything was alright... then out of the corner comes a sound... crinkle... crinkle... Everyone ignored it, we all thought it was going to be a one-time thing... nope. *crinkle crinkle CRINKLE CRINKLE* !!! Wtf?! So I tried to ignore it... but after 30 minutes, that's right... 30 frickin minutes he was still at it. By that time, our neighbors knew that I was extremely agitated because I had spent sometime leaning forward to get a good look at fatty sitting in the corner there. Finally I couldn't take it anymore :@ I got up and walked over to the corner, funny thing is, as soon as I got up my neighbors knew where I was going and had their legs outta my way :p.
I had to stand there for a few seconds before he noticed me staring at him, but he eventually turned his head towards me.
"Are you enjoying your food?" "Wha..?" "Are you enjoying your food?" "Yea... why?" "Cuz... I can hear you eating it FROM OVER THERE!!! :@ It's been a half-hour now!"
I wasn't planning on raising my voice quite that high, but uh... oops :p
"Why don't you just pour that shit out into your lap and quit playing with the bag?!"
The guy then proceeds to throw his food into the next seat at the same time screaming,
"Fine I've thrown it away now! Next time I'll throw it in your fucking face!"
At this time I have to stop myself from laughing because out from the other side I hear AK cracking up... I guess he heard everything I said :p I let him know that it wasn't just me that was annoyed as hell and I went back to my seat.
Just so you know I was sitting in the middle of the row and this guy was in the corner against the wall... That's how loud it was... frickin tool. I'm surprised no one else said anything to him earlier.
As you can imagine.. that didn't help make the movie a good experience for me. It was already slow going and the plot seemed pretty thin... honestly, I don't even feel like going into detail about it. Being from the IT industry... none of these things seem plausable... Ok, fine, it's just a horror movie... and if they kept it as just a horror movie then it would have been alright, I guess. Blah... I'd say wait until it comes out as a rental.
Tonight I watched a movie with AK... I'm pretty happy because it looks as though there is a string of horror movies coming out :D and I'm a horror movie buff :)
On with the story. Our movie was scheduled for 10:10 pm so we left my house at around 9:40pm (the theater is fairly close by). We arrived at roughly 9:50 and to our horror, the theatre was busy as hell. I was thinking that we'd have to refund our tickets and come see it another night. Then I thought... what movies have just been released? Pulse and World Trade center are the two that immediately came to mind. We were praying that everyone was going to see those ones. On the way up to the theatres there was a lineup that started going down the flight of stairs.
Usually when we purchse our tickets we just go to the machines and debit, there's almost never a line-up... tonight there was, and AK was lucky enough to have two chimps ahead of him :D We got our tickets and made our way over towards our theatre. Crap, there was a line-up there too, fortunately it looked longer than it actually was. We managed to get seats at the back of the room, right in the middle :) I'm not sure what I was expecting out of this movie... but, I'm still also not sure what I got out of it either :P. Here's the synopsis:
One year after a tragic accident, six girlfriends meet in a remote part of the Appalachians for their annual caving trip. Deep below the surface of the earth, disaster strikes when a rock falls and blocks their route back to the surface. The girls soon learn that Juno, the thrill-seeking leader of the expedition, has brought them to an unexplored cave and that as a result no one knows where they are to come rescue them. The group splinters and each push on, praying for another exit. But there is something else lurking under the earth - a race of monstrous humanoid creatures that are adapted perfectly to life in the dark. As the friends realize they are now prey, they are forced to unleash their most primal instincts in an all-out war against an unspeakable horror - one that attacks without warning, again and again and again.
The way the movie started out mislead me a little. I was pretty stoked because something major happens within the first 10 minutes. Then for the next 20-30 minutes, the pace slows drastically... essentially just showing the party of girls spelunking/caving. The cast is essentially a bunch of actors that no one in N. America have heard of... well... I haven't heard of any of them. There was only one that was really worth looking at (IMO) and I couldn't figure out if she was Hispanic, Asian, or a mix of some sort.
In the movie they claim that the predators (and that's what they actually sound like :P) have 'adpated perfectly to life in the dark'. I think not. They can hear people moving from far away.. but they can't feel/hear someone breathing inches away from their face? They can't feel heat, or tell the difference between stone and hair? I don't want to give anything away... but I'm sure you get the idea. Furthermore, they offer no explanation as to where they come from, what their purpose is (aside from hunting, consuming & surviving)... really, they make absolutely noooo attempt to fill in that gap. We're just supposed to accept it. t('.'t) C'mon... you've got to give us something with a little more substance. Yes, even if it's fiction... I was chuckling to myself when I first caught a glimpse of one... I was waiting for it to start whispering, "My Precious..." :p
Even the special effects were sub-par. There was a scene that had bats flying out of a tunnel in the cave... it looked like they took those bats from another movie and tried to super-impose them in... One thing that I (as well as my neighbors) enjoyed were some of the gory parts :p not so realistic, but still entertaining non-the-less :D Would I recommend this movie? That's a tough one... I've definitely seen worse, but I've also seen much better... if you're looking for something with more substance and purpose then this is not for you. If you're looking for a random, REALLY RANDOM horror movie that's just there and doesn't give you any explanation for what's going on :p this is it! :D
Yes, yes, it's a little late, but I'm posting the celebration of light video for Mexico and the Finale :) I've already encoded and uploaded to Google, now it's just a matter of waiting until they verify and make it live ;)
ok... so it says that it's live now.. but when I click on the link it says that the vid is not available :@... grrr.
Ok.. the video is available now. Actually, it was probably available the whole time, but for some reason it's listing the wrong link. I clicked around, went to reports and found the right link. Here it is. You can hear the Chinese lady next to me (as well as others) screaming at a couple that came just before the start of the show, and stood in front of all of us. You can also hear someone else yelling at his gf to turn of 'that idiot hat' :p
The Vid is a little crooked... I didn't bother to look at my level before proceeding to film hehe.
Today is Wednesday and therefore Celebration of lights day :). X and I had planned to go together again, but due to last-minutes changes to his job schedule, and people not responding to their MSN, I ended up attending this event on my own. Meh... it wasn't all that bad.
I didn't have to worry about losing someone in the crowd and I didn't have to wait around for people to catch up. The down-side? Well, if I wanted a REALLY nice spot, then I'd have had to go early and sit alone like a loser O.o I opted to go just before the start of the show and shove my way to the front of the standing crowd :p
On the way down to the beach I stumbled upon one of the Capoeira Schools doing a street exhibition :) These guys are great... I'd attend Capoeira lessons, but it's pretty steep, who knows, maybe in the future :p
I pushed my way down to the section in front of the speakers, same place as last time. This time I made sure that I was at the front of the standers :p well, almost in front anyway. It was a nice change to be able to setup the tripod and shoot instead of standing there holding my arms out for 25 minutes :) The resulting video is much better than the previous shaky cam ones although since it was a windless night, the smoke ended up lingering and obstructing some of the fireworks. You'll see... I'm encoding / uploading the videos, so you'll have to bear with me ;)
The aftermath:
On the way back to the car (I took Davie St) I noticed that there was a group of people causing a rukus. Naturally, I followed hoping that I would get some good footage that I could post on the net curious to see if anything would happen. Lo-and-behold...
The guy that's facing me was screaming something to his buddy, "hey *friend's name*! Make sure you get this shit and send it to me!"... then there was his friend, "This is illegal! It's against our rights!" Rights? What rights? :P The only right that was violated was your right-to-not-be-a-moron-in-a-place-crawling-with-5-0, & you gave that one up the moment you stepped out your house, dumbass.
I'm really not sure what posessed me to look this video up, but here it is. Maybe it was the reminiscing of those days... back in the early 90s when life was so much simpler. We had great hits like Run DMC - Down With the King, Naughty By Nature - Uptown Anthem, Public Enemy - 911's a joke... the list goes on.
I remember going out to the video store with my cousins... we had all our clothes backwards and wacked out hair as well... we put a little balloon hat on our baby cousin :D good stuff :P. I also remember having my hair in braids at one point... wth, eh? This coming froma Chinaman O.o
Today wasn't such a great day for me. I woke up feeling not-so-good. Chatted w/ Jacq for a bit, then had to go back to bed because I felt like crap :( sorry Jacq <3 One thing that was worrying me was whether I would be well enough to make it downtown for the fireworks tonight!
Thankfully, I did! (tho, again, things didn't all pan out)
I managed to acquire my tripod from my buddy KL... he lives on Burrard near Nelson and my tripod was at his place. I grabbed it and then started making my way down to the beach to catch up with x. Before I got there he had called and let me know where they were located. 'By the Mens washroom' Simple enough :) because I knew exactly where that was... what I wasn't expecting was the even bigger crowd that was there today. I neglected to factor in the weekend and the fact that people don't have to go to work the next day.
I slowly made my way down to the men's washroom and started rubbernecking to try to find x and his group of friends. By that time it was already dark so it wasn't an easy task... apart from that, there was a wall of people in front of me. I tried calling his phone... and someone from his house answered (?)... nice... good job, x... :p nedless to say, I ended up watching the show by myself... probably within 10 meters of him... AND I didn't get to setup the tripod because I was with the standing crowd.
I am working on compressing / uploading the footage at the moment :) be patient! it's worth the wait ;) China's show is going to be hard to beat!
Video has been compressed and uploaded. Pending verification :)
*** UPDATE ***
Google is pissing me off as their verification process take sooo long... I've uploaded chunks to YouTube again:
X decided that he wanted to play pool w/ me today :) yeee haw! For those of you who don't know, I used to work @ Starlite Billiards recently reopened as Cue Club.
I've been playing pool since I was about 8 yrs old, but only began playing seriously in my late teens. When I was on top of my game I was playing on average 5 hrs a day, about 5 days a week. That was when I could run roughly 5/9 racks. Now, I'm not so good :p I have some good days, and some not-so-good days :)
X and I decided to film some footage, here's our final game :P the sound seems to be out of synch... and ignore our commenets ^o)
That horrendous noise in the background is the huge fan that was blowing beside us :(
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. Let's see on Friday, the 21st 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. 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:
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:
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.
Some of you already know that my trusty laptop's monitor decided to crap out on me not long ago. I'm not sure how... but I seem to have a gift for destroying electronics (that I own). When I was in the British Columbia Institue of Technology (BCIT) I was in the laptop program. This required that we lease an IBM Thinkpad from the school. Apparently, we all got a bad bunch of laptops so there were 10/13 (if memory serves me correctly) that were sent back for servicing... as if that's not bad enough. My laptop happened to be the LEMON of the whole bunch... hehe, I just remembered that I wrote about it earlier... read about it here.
So anyway... I was came into my room one day and had the laptop on my bed when I accidentally knocked the screen forward. Those of you who have owned a Toshiba Satellite can attest that the monitor's hinges are pretty flimsy. If you get the monitor at a 90 degree angle you can rock it back-and-forth. My hinge (over 3 years old now) is loose as hell so when I bumped it and caused it to shift more than 35-40 degrees it slammed shut :( I opened up the laptop thinking all was well. No... all was not well. The screen was flickering and occassionally it would jump. fek.
I rode it out hoping that this was just some freak thing and that it would go away... surprise, surprise... nope. Eventually, the next day, I got to witness the screen flicker out. I wasn't even using the laptop at that time, I was using my dad's as he's out of town for the week.
I figured that the rest of the laptop was in perfect order cuz I pressed the cPad button to light it up... and the power button to light up the top console, they both worked. Then I plugged the Toshiba into my TV and switched it. It came on with no issue. No flickering, no jumping. So it appears that the back lighting for the screen has decided to give out. Upon closer inspection I confirmed my suspicions. You can see the crystals changing to draw the screen, but there is no lighting from behind. I just looks like a ghost of an image.
Now I use this laptop as my primary computer so it looks like I'll have to purchase a new one. This time I think I'll go for my first PC. Suggestions anyone? It's as if I have a PC but no monitor, wtf. Seeing as I'm going to need a monitor for my fancy new PC I went online and researched as well as got some advice from AS then headed out with AK in search of a new monitor. Futureshop was useless, they had one 20" monitor on display and the one time that I wanted a rep to help me, they were nowhere to be found. NCIX had what I was looking for... but not in stock at the location that we were at. grrr. I paid for the product at that location and AK taxied us over to their other location, in rush hour, none-the-less. Here's the route we took: gmaps. If you're wondering, gmaps lies... it took far more than 23 minutes to get there :P
After finally acquiring the package I went home but didn't have a chance to get it working until after I came back from my jog w/ my cousin.
Even while trying to get things working between the laptop and the monitor, the laptop put up a fight :@. I tried plugging the monitor in and switching the output. No luck. I tried installing the driver and switching the output. No luck. Then I tested it with my dad's laptop... wth, that was fine. I tried again and again until I finally got fed up and rammed the connector into the socket as far as it could go... OMG!!! The angels in Heav'n did sing! The monitor flickered to life... and with the image from my laptop :'( *sniff*. I felt like an addict suffering from withdrawal about to take a dose... wooo, liberation!
Excuse the ghetto setup :p see? it works! :D and 0 (zero) dead pixels!
My parents had wanted to take me out for dinner during the week but we decided to move the dinner to Saturday so that's when we went out. Bird Day outing #3 was at Coast restaurant in YaleTown (Hamilton St).
I've been to Coast Restaurant a couple of times before and each time was a great experience. One of the things that drew me back was their attention to detail. I filled out one of the surveys after a meal and within a week I received a card thanking me for taking the time to fill out the survey. The card was written and signed by our waiter :p. On my Birthday I recieved another letter from Coast, this time offering Birthday wishes and inviting us to enjoy a complimentary dessert for 2 upon presentation of said letter :) They know how to make you feel special :p
Coast restaurant is a loft setup with a patio outside, Communal table in the middle tables all around and more seating upstairs. Unfortunately for us, this time we were seated in the booth right next to the stairs... which is not such a bad thing, save for the A/C blowing down on us.
For dinner my Dad ordered the Australian Lamb Rack and Baja Scallops, Mum ordered the Grilled Seafood Brochette (?) and I had the Carpaccio of Beef Tenderloin followed by the Alaskan King Crab Gnocchi.
Dad's Lamb was very nice, not too strong, and very tender. The scallops... mmm. Mum's I couldn't really tell what it tasted like O.O she ruined all the flavor by dumping tabasco all over it :P. My carpaccio was delicious, thinly sliced, served with Head Cheese, figs and some greens. The Alaskan King Crab Gnocchi was very nice as well. I'm a big fan of gnocchi and crab so the combination intrigued me :) It was very nice. The gnocci was prepared nicely not too soft, not too hard, and the King Crab was full of flavor, very juicy.
For Dessert we shared the dessert for two :p We didn't order anything else because we had to meet up with my cousin that night (True confections). It's her BirdDay too ;) The Dessert for two was a little dinky but still... wow. I was surprised. There were two items: Coast's version of an Oreo cookie (outstanding) and Coast's version of a Reese's Peanutbutter cup (also nice) tho I'm not a big fan of Peanutbutter.
After dinner we walked on down to the car and headed down to Denman street and True Confections!
When we arrived My cousins and friend were already there. They were waiting for us and two more. Wow... I hadn't been there in awile... mainly because I'm not too much of a desert person and alternatively because the portions are huge and not cheap :P shh.
I ordered a RootBeer Float to drink and everyone else ordered their own.. some water, and some coffee. When everyone else arrived they ordered their dessert: I have pictures but don't know what they are :D sorry... all I can say is that those wedges are freakin' HUGE!!! O.O They couldn't finish the layered one and ended up taking half of it home :D
Our night ended at the Cue Club, a poolhall that just opened nearby my house. It was formerly another poolhall ,Starlite Billiards, where I worked before. We all shot a couple of games of pool and then went home... another nice BirdDay outing!
