Snapshots

Oh wow, that previous post isn’t my last post of the year…

So, I had a very interesting 2 minutes.

After coming home to get the pick up slip for my PS3, I drove to Sony Style (on Broadway), parked on Broadway and walked into the store at around 5:07.  The sales guy saw me, and said, “Ah, you’re lucky we’re still open…”  To which I asked, “Why?  I thought it opens until 5:30?”  Then he said, “No, actually at 5 today.”

Well, he was the same guy who said 5:30pm when I asked him on the phone earlier.  I think he knew he made a mistake, so he kept the store opened a little bit longer to wait for me in case I was coming.  So, no harm done.  He double checked the receipts and gave me the boxed PS3.

Sales rep: “I’m surprised it came so quickly.”
Me: “Yeah, me too.”
Sales rep: “Well, have a great new year!” *pat on my shoulder*
Me: “Yeah, you too!” *with a big smile on my face as I walked out of the door*

As I was walking out with my PS3 in hand, I saw a patrol standing by my car… holding a ticket printer thingie… printing a ticket as I stood beside her.

Patrol: “You know why you got ticketed?”
Me: “Um… no.” *I know there was money in the parking meter…*
Patrol: “See here.  No parking from 3pm to 6pm, Monday to Friday.”
Me: *a dumb look*

So, here’s what happened.  When I parked there, there was a car in front of me, just above to leave.  There was a car parked behind me.  I saw that of the two available spots I was going to park, one of them had money in it.  After getting out of the car to check, it said 20 minutes.  So, based on the observation that other cars were parked and there was money in this particular meter, I didn’t bother to check whether it was OK to park or not.  I got duped.  And now thinking back, she (the patrol) must have been within range, probably ticketing the car behind me.  No, she didn’t stop me.

So my lucky moment turned rather unlucky 2 minutes later.  And on New Year’s eve no less.  Who’s working so hard on New Year’s eve?

I checked the parking ticket.  $50 if paid by Feb 3rd.  $100 if paid afterwards.

$50.  $50.  $50 is the amount of the gift certificate that I was able to use to purchase from the Sony Store.  Yup, the only reason I bought it from the Sony Store was because it had a $50 off certificate, therefore making it cheaper than buying it tax-free from superstore.  So…

I think back…  If I had my pick up slip with me, I wouldn’t have had to go home first to pick it up, then the patrol wouldn’t be there in that 2 minute window.  If the Sony Store actually closed on me, then I wouldn’t have spent 2 minutes in there.  If the PS3 didn’t arrive today (I wouldn’t care), I would just pick it up a different day.  If I hadn’t had to remove the golf clubs from my car trunk in anticipation that I will need the room for stroller this weekend prior to coming home from work, I would’ve been to the Sony Store 4 minutes beforehand.  Ah… 2 minutes.

The universe is telling me something.  But what?

Yup, I got baited.  Parking meter with money + other parked cars.  Nope.  Still no parking…  Well, at least it didn’t get towed in 2 minutes…

So, this ends my PS3-getting tale.

Um, happy new year again!  (The $50 is sure a bucket of cold water over my lucky head)

Ok, I tell myself that I must do another post before the end of the year!

So, what’s been happening?  Perhaps I should do it in reverse chronological order…

Lots of get-togethers over the holidays.  Dinners with friends and family, and more friends and family.  I enjoy most (if not all) of them, but it is indeed draining especially when little Ben sucks up all the recovery time that we would’ve had.

Boxing day was a bust!  Nah, not really.  There was nothing much I really wanted to buy.  The one thing I really wanted to buy was the Sony MEX-BT2700 car deck that supports Bluetooth for wireless music streaming and handsfree talk, all for $120 + tax.  Oh, I also ordered a PS3 from Sony Style because of their $50 off certificate, which means I pay $280 including tax for a 120GB Blu Ray player / console.  I also have a $5 GT5:Prologue game, $20 Metal Gear Solid 4, $20 Street Fighter 4.

I will be upgrading Dez’s cousin’s PC (just a little bit).  And I already spent time moving my parents’ PC to Windows 7 Ultimate, which supports Chinese localization.  It was a lot of work to try to get video capture and audio drivers to work.

Did not go to the gym for nearly 2 weeks because of the busy schedule.  I will try before the 2 weeks is up.

After 2 months of stalling and 1 month of research, we’ve finally decided on which RESP companies to go with.  It was definitely a load off my back.

Benny had his first “mild fever” after his 2nd immunization shots.   We monitored and monitored and good thing it never went up too much.  In fact, after we turned down the temperature in our room at night so that he could cool down, he woke up chilly.  Turns out he got cold.  It took a day or two for his temperature to rise back up to typical range.

Benny has been rolling infrequently, back to front.  He’s also been “singing” all of a sudden.  He used to make bursts of consonants with different intonation, but now he has very long vowels.  Occasionally he would put the two skills together.  It’s very cute.

Anyway, happy new year!  I should make a goal of posting at least once a week next year…  Speaking of resolutions… uh oh, I don’t want to review my 2009 resolutions…

This past weekend was nice and relaxing for the most part.  I went to the gym a few times, watched some golf on TV, and spent quite a bit of time playing Professor Layton with Dez on the Nintendo DS.

The side story of the weekend was the computer upgrades and repairs that I did.

It has been over a year since I wanted to upgrade the storage capacity at home.  I kept waiting and waiting for the hard drive prices to keep falling, while keeping an eye on our decreasing capacity due to photos and videos and whatnot.  Finally, I decided it was time to jump in to get two WD 640 GB drives for $65 x 2 + tax.

I struggled to think of how to best use it.  In the end I decided to upgrade the 250 GB hard drive on the iMac as well as the 500 GB Time Machine backup drive.  This would free up the 500 GB for other back up purposes.

So I Googled “iMac hard drive upgrade” and found some very nice posts about how to do it.  I never would have imagined I would need to get suction cups in order to remove the glass on the monitor.  And I had to get torx screw drivers.

All went very well, actually.  Almost too well.  Despite my initial expectation that opening an iMac would be as hard as a laptop, it was actually easier.  And I was very impressed by the Time Machine feature of OSX Leopard.  I basically swapped out the drive, turned on the iMac, chose “restore backup from Time Machine”, and waited for 3 hours and voila, it’s as if the computer was never down.  Time Machine worked as well as it said it would.  It was one of the most, if not the most, important reason I decided to get us a Mac back in 2007.  I certainly can’t vouch for any Windows’ back up systems.  It had always been a struggle trying to get all my preferences back, removing programs that I no longer used, etc.  I actually wanted a cleaner, leaner Windows when I did my re-installations, whereas I wanted the Mac exactly as it was before I did the upgrade.

Anyway, Dez took a nap and woke up seeing that all was done, as if the Mac had never gone through the surgery.  Very impressive.

After the success, I decided to deal with my PC to try to set up some RAID system, or at least put the extra hard drives to some use.  As I fiddled around the innards of the PC, I found that I couldn’t readily add more hard drives to it.  So I decided to leave it be.  But guess what, the computer could no longer be powered on.

I had this “computer-can’t-be-powered-on” issue last year.  I bought the Antec Sonata II quiet case back in the December of 2006, and it was a terrific case.  But only until a while later I read on the forums that there was a known power supply issue.  More info can be found by Googling “Antec Sonata SmartPower PSU problem”.  Basically, you can’t turn on the computer anymore, even though it seems like it’s still working.  i.e. the light on the motherboard is still on.  I even called Antec last year, and left a message.  But in the end I did not pursue the problem, because it miraculously worked again.  And it continued to work until this weekend.

I don’t know what triggered it.  But anyway, it just wouldn’t turn on anymore, and I had enough of it.  I did not have the patience to wait for it to be resurrected like last year.  My QuickTax installation was on the PC, and I still needed it to file our taxes.  So it was time to get rid of the power supply once and for all.  I went out and bit the bullet and bought a $80+tax Seasonic power supply.  I always knew of Seasonic’s reputation, and it was always slightly more than I was willing to pay.  But it was known to be quiet, and reliable.  So after putting up with this power issue for the 2nd time, I decided not to cheap out on the power supply.  Yup, after taking a bunch of stuff out and putting a bunch of stuff back in, the PC is now working fine.

The total electronics upgrade and repair bill for this weekend was $340.  :-\

OK, this is going to be a long story, but I will condense it as much as I can.  The beginning to now:

1. Bought new laptop back in 2003.  In Japan.  Centrino.  Model: Asus M3N.
2. Used laptop until spring of 2006, when I finished undergrad thesis.
3. Laptop went into hibernation until the spring/summer of 2007, when we retired Dez’s old desktop.  Dez then inherited it.
4. LCD screen became looser and looser, and eventually both hinges broke off in the spring of 2008.  Dez needed to use the iMac for the time being, since the laptop was out of service.
5. Found Asus eStore online that sold parts.  Bought 2 hinges and a new US keyboard to replace the Japanese keyboard layout that we had before.
6. Found online instruction on disassembling a similar Asus model, and finally figured out how to replace the laptop hinges.  Laptop found a new life.
7. In the summer/fall of 2008, Dez started to complain about the laptop shutting down suddenly.  Took a long time to find the cause, which turned out to be bad power connection.  Culprit was either a bad DC power jack, or a bad AC adapter.  To compound the problem, the battery was near the end of its life, so it no longer charged well.
8. Bought a new battery and a DC power jack from Asus eStore, and bought a new AC adapter off eBay.  Laptop lived for a very short time before no longer charging (no power).  Wiggling the adapter cord no longer worked.
9. I gave up (for the time being), and bought Dez a new netbook.  Asus eee PC.  Dez loved it, since she liked a lighter, smaller laptop, but disliked it after realizing small laptops = low resolution (1024 x 600 in 10″ compared to the old 1400 x 1050 in 14.1″).
10. Laptop sat untouched for nearly 2 months, when I finally decided it was time to visit RP Electronics to get what all SFU engineering grads should have at home: soldering iron, desoldering pump, pliers, wire strippers, digital multimeter.
11. Summoned enough courage to take apart the entire laptop.  Turned it inside out, and found that one of the solder joints of the DC power jack was gone (due to lots of wiggling).  This was a best-case scenario.  Simply reinforce the solder joint and then put everything back.
12. The laptop lives again.  Battery was low on power for a month or so… Hopefully I am not too late in charging it.  That was the key reason why I forced myself to repair the power jack.

This is a pretty big deal.  I’ve spent quite a bit of “maintenance” money on this laptop.  Hinges, new keyboard, external CD/DVD combo drive (my 2nd internal one died long ago), power jack, new battery, adapter, and now tools to fix it.  I simply didn’t want to see it die.  It’s still a really good laptop.  So now in our little household, we have a desktop PC, iMac, netbook, and laptop.

Hm, if I had known it wasn’t so bad to fix it (hey, disassembling a laptop is no piece of cake), I could’ve saved $550 by not buying the netbook…

Anyway, here are some more photos of the operation.

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