Highlights

Cytoplasmic Writings - Month Year Archives

Spring is always a good time. The weather gets better, the clothing skimpier and there's more daylight. All in all, May was a pretty decent month. Got some things done and starting to really settle down back in Toronto.

Sunday, May 31st 2009

So I somehow forgot that May has 31 days and not 30. I just realized that today is May 31st and not June 1st. Doh. At least there wasn't anything too important that needed the correct date. Jenn and I are heading out tonight to watch Terminator Salvation. It's got mixed reviews; some people think it sucks and others like it. I'm going go into the movie like I did with Star Trek and not think about continuity and stuff like that. Instead I'll just try to enjoy the movie.

I'm getting tired of posting stuff on Ebay to sell. The fees are absolutely killer nowadays. Adding in posting and final value fees and then Paypal, the costs are 10-15% of your sale value. That's ridiculous. I found this other auction site that seems to be pretty decent. Ebid looks promising but it definitely has less traffic than Ebay. However, with a total of only 2% in fees, and 5 included stores, you can't beat the $50 lifetime seller account price. I signed up for it yesterday and I'm going to get a banner ready for my first store. I'll try to see what I'd like to post on that site. Any sales on the site will be awesome.

I went through certain parts of the website and noticed that things haven't been updated since 2007. Wow. I sucked that badly eh? I guess I'll try to update as much as possible in June. Still trying to learn this time management thing though. Let's see how well I do for June.

DRAGONCRYPT 5/31/2009 2:59:07 PM

Saturday, May 30th 2009

Going to try to update a few sections of the website today. I have about 1000 comic books to scan so I can do that while doing work on the computer. I'm also looking to re-install one of my gaming computers with Ubuntu. It's about time that I learned some Linux. Ubuntu looks like the easiest and prettiest of the bunch to load. I'll see if I can download it these next few weeks and install on the gaming machine.

Just a quick post here to end the last day of May. June looks to be more promising in terms of time so I'll try to post a slew of case breakdowns in the non-sports section.

DRAGONCRYPT 5/30/2009 3:09:02 PM

Thursday, May 28th 2009

Today was a pretty exhausting day at work. It was one of those days where you do not get a chance to sit at your desk to do the paper work that you need to do. I spent a lot of time running from one place to another. This type of day makes the day go by but it really feels like you have not been productive at all. I hope tomorrow will be much better in terms of completing my paper work.

Oh yeah, so last Sunday was Harvey's Free Hamburger Day. From 10:30 am to 3:00 pm, participating Harvey's restaurants were giving out free original hamburgers. That's an awesome deal as Harvey's burgers are pretty good for a fast food chain. Jenn wanted her parents to try the burgers too so we all lined up at around 10:15 and there was already a substantial line up. We didn't mind the line as we figured it would be quick (Jenn and I went for the same promotion last year in Waterloo). We were right and the line was going pretty fast. I felt bad when we were putting the toppings on as the people ahead of us were letting their kids customize the burgers...which took a long time. I wanted to make it simple and asked for all the toppings. When I realized afterwards that it took a long time for the server to put all the toppings on...oops.

These free promotion events always bring out the worst in some people. While I was waiting in line for the burgers, this family ordered theirs and barged in front of us and this other guy. I'm not sure if they noticed us but we were both like WTF? Well, the mother and son moved out of the line and the mother came back and went ahead of us again and blocked us completely. They clearly didn't think about the other customers and it didn't occur to them that there were other receipts ahead of them. Just plain rude.

I think the worst example was when we were leaving the restaurant. We decided we were going to eat the burgers at Jenn's parents so we went to the car. The drive-through was right near where I parked so all the cars were blocking my car. As I was trying to back out one card didn't let me back out...wtf? It's a drive through and they need to WAIT for the order! The car pulled up right behind me and just sat there for five minutes when he could have let me through so I could exit. So the next car let me through and I was able to back out. Another car had the same issue and he was backing out in front of me. Then I realized what was happening. This car that was backing out...wasn't exiting after they got their burgers inside. They were actually tryin to "bud" the drive-through line! WTF?! You already have a free burger and now your blocking all traffic to get another? You're also budding the line and the good will of the other cars in the drive-through. When assholes like this get into some bad accident, no sympathy from me. Karma will get you!

Just goes to show what people do to get a free burger. It's just amazing how low people can sink. So damn frustrating.

DRAGONCRYPT 5/28/2009 10:58:46 PM

Wednesday, May 27th 2009

Test drove the Hyundai Elantra GL yesterday. not a bad car at all. It's really spacious inside and the ride is nice and smooth. Then again, the ride is smoother than my current car. We'll be making a decision soon regarding a purchase soon. Woot!

Man, I can't believe the CAD dollar is going up now after our vacation in April. Talk about bad timing. It really does want me to go do some online shopping but I've got to refrain. I think the next purchase we're making is going to be a digital camera. My Canon Powershot just died on us. It keeps saying there's a CF card error but the cards themselves are fine. I've convinced Jenn that it's time to get a digital SLR. Not one of the crazy expensive ones where the body is more than my monthly salary but a mid-range one. I don't know much about photographer so I'm not going to kid myself. I'm not going to take amazing shots and stuff like that but I would like to do more with the camera than with the regular point and shoots. Right now it's between Canon and Nikon. I'm gonna have to reserach more on the different models within this range.

All my old electronic stuff keeps breaking. I guess it's good though. I've really used them to their end-of-life. My personal computer was six years running before retirement and my camera is a good 6-7 years I think before its mandatory retirement. That's decades in the age of switch-your-model-each-year mentality that's becoming more and more prevalent nowadays. Having no money during those years really did turn out to be a good thing!

DRAGONCRYPT 5/27/2009 10:47:38 PM

Monday, May 25th 2009

No excuse for not posting. I'm trying to adjust my daily schedule to include a whole bunch of regular activities but it's tough. I've never been good at time management and but I'm willing to give it a try. Imagine when I have kids *shudder*. I'm learning Mandarin right now. Just a few words a week. Trying to get the pronounciation right and also try to learn to read and write the characters as well. The program I'm learning from is from China (courtesy of Jenn's parents) and it's pretty good! I knew I sucked at Mandarin but man, the tones are really killing me at times.

The wife and I also have decided to jump on the bandwagon and try to get a decent deal on a new car. My protege isn't the greatest and probably needs to be replaced in a few years. Rather than pumping more money into repairs and maintenance we though spending the cash on the 0% financing at some companies would be better. I like the Mazda3 and Jenn likes the Corolla. But I think we've both decided for something a little more frugal, the Hyundai Elantra. It's got decent reviews and the price is really good compared with the Mazda3 and Corolla. We're gonna go try to test drive one later this week and then decide if we want it.

Geez, out of time already...maybe I should take a time management course...

DRAGONCRYPT 5/25/2009 10:56:37 PM

Wednesday, May 6th 2009

Vegas Baby!

Okay, okay. It didn't take me 3 weeks to rest from my trip to Las Vegas but it definitely was a trip that required some rest! Las Vegas was absolutely amazing! There was so much to do there and I was floored by the extravagance that Las Vegas has become. Wow. The crazy thing is that Jenn and I didn't gamble at all. We spent most of our time walking around, eating and enjoying the sights. The eating was awesome. Six buffets in five days. I'll give a breakdown of the different buffets below.

Cravings (Mirage)

The first buffet was at the Mirage. It was actually a breakfast buffet. We figured we'd eat two meals a day and skip lunch hehehe. There was a lot of your typical breakfast items but you could immediately tell that this was good quality food and not the standard powdered eggs and potatoes you might see at diner, etc. Lots of fruit, custom made omelettes, sausages, hams and a Mexican station gave an interesting twist. One thing I loved was that the drinks were free. I was able to have coffee and orange juice which definitely made it worthwhile. This was the only buffet where I think I over-ate. It was an uncomfortable full but I think I needed it to gauge how much I could eat at the rest of the buffets.

The Buffet at Bellagio (Bellagio)

Both Jenn and I heard that The Buffet at Bellagio was one of the better buffets in Las Vegas. It was more expensive than most but the quality of food was worth it. It was at this buffet we decided on our plan to attack the other buffets. Rather than getting our own individual plates with duplicate food and stuffing ourselves quickly, we both went around together and got things to share. This method allowed us to eat more varieties of food. It was awesome! The Bellagio buffet had lots of fish and meat dishes (I think it was around 12?), snow crab legs, a sushi station, pasta station, salad station etc. We avoided the carbs as much as possible and concentrated on the yummy meats hehehe. Each of the entrees could have been something that was ordered at a decent restaurant. I was quite surprised at the quality of the food there. There was even this raw salmon spicy salad, which was awesome! Jenn loved the desserts that were there as well. Overall, this buffet was more than satisfying and I recommend it to anyone who's visiting Vegas.

Circus Circus Buffet (Circus Circus)

We decided to visit Circus Circus which was further up the strip and then have breakfast/lunch at the buffet there. The distance to the Circus Circus (from The Venetian) was much further than anticipated, which only made us more hungry. It was at Circus Circus where we discovered that if you pay for the breakfast buffet (which is usually cheaper) and sit past the lunch buffet, you can have the lunch food as well. So you essentially pay less for the lunch buffet. When we were in line we asked the cashier if we could pay for the lunch buffet and she just told us that we can pay and wait at our table. She then charged us only the breakfast price. Cool. So the Circus Circus buffet is what your typical low cost buffet would have. The food wasn't very impressive and there was approximately 5-10 different main dishes. We didn't mind as it was low cost and we expected that. They did have some tapas that I really enjoyed but other than that, a very typical western-style buffet.

Flavors, The Buffet (Harrah's)

We had the dinner's buffet at Flavors, located inside Harrah's. It also had snow crab legs, roast, fish, pasta, etc. The selection wasn't as large as the Bellagio's but it was still a pretty decent menu. There was an asian station and I tried a few of the "Chinese" items and I definitely missed Toronto's Chinese cuisine. With our plan of not too many of the carb items, it actually reduced the number of dishes we could try. Then again, I didn't want to fill myself up with pasta or mashed potatoes. I'd say that Harrah's food was decent and for the price of a regular dinner, it was worth it.

Le Village Buffet (Paris Las Vegas)

We had the lunch buffet at Le Village. I didn't know what to expect and Le Village actually themed all their food. It was essentially all French-style food which was really good! I got to try a lot of things I normally would not have (coq-au-vin, different cheeses). The was plenty of variety and lots of meat and seafood dishes. There was this sausage dish that was absolutely amazing. I had to refrain from getting more of it. The only downside was that I had too much cheese (which was heavy) and that limited my food intake (hehehe). Le Village is another one of the buffets I would recommend to anyone visiting Vegas. It's food that's different from the rest of the buffet and it's also tasty! That's always a good combination.

The Buffet at TI (Treasure Island)

The last buffet was a the buffet at Treasure Island. We weren't planning to go eat there but there wasn't much around so we decided to go. The salad bar there was interesting. You didn't make your own salad. Instead you would ask the server to choose what you wanted on your salad and they would make it. It was kind of odd and the portions were large. Although the salad we got was really good and I'm glad we shared it. There were ribs, some brisket, roasted chicken and turkey and some japanese food. I think it was later in the night so the place was kinda empty. The ribs were a little dry and the sushi was just okay. Comparing this buffet with the other ones we had gone to, I would have expected more from it. There wasn't that much of a variety of food. Although when I think about what type of food was available, it was very "kid-friendly", which may have been the intention for a place like Treasure Island. Perhaps go to this buffet for lunch where it's a littel cheaper and there's still a variety of food.

Well, that's it! All six buffets! We actually took pictures of most of our dishes. The only exception was Circus Circus (since the food wasn't very impressive). Man, now I'm hungry just thinking about all that food. The buffets in general are really worth it since a meal in Vegas will probably cost 15-20 dollars anyways, why not go to a buffet and get filled. I think the only thing was that we were pretty full for all those days. Just before the trip I had food poisoning so I definitely made up my weight loss with these buffets! Thanks Vegas!

DRAGONCRYPT 5/6/2009 8:51:36 PM