Installing Civilization 4 and Upgrading it

So I purchased Civilization Chronicles like over two years ago and finally decided to actually installed it. The initial install was fine, but I wanted to upgrade to the latest patch. Boy was that painful. First off, there was an option to "check for updates" in the game's advanced menu section. After clicking on this, it asked me whether I wanted to update. Of course I clicked "yes" and not surprisely it failed because I am running crapvista. So I decided to manually go and try to download the latest patch. Going to the official website of civilization IV doesn't actually give have the latest patch installed interestingly enough.

Knowing that the latest was 1.7.4 (because the in-game update said so) I searched and downloaded it. Went to install it and well it failed stating that I had version 1.0.9 installed and I needed to uninstall it. Yahhh...I figured it was because I had to apply an earlier patch. So I went and downloaded 1.6.1 and I got that installed. Whew. Then I tried the 1.7.4 patch it worked too. When I tried to start the game, it failed complaining that of this d3dx9_32.dll problem.

UGHHH. Googled and I found this forum post which solved the issue. Finally! But then it turns out my laptop can't run it because my video card sucks :(

Oh well hope this helps you though!

Thanks Toronto!

I just wanted to say a big thank you to my Toronto friends for making leg II of my undergraduate
graduation trip so MUCH FUN!

Highlights

1. Aaron's whole I can't multi-task thingy and can't hear when his glasses aren't on. I love you man!!!


2. Emily's innocent look at the 4 seasons building and how she just stood there and pretending nothing happened when she got rejected haha. Too cute!


3. Seeing Jimmy again!! And seeing him get so happy talking about his girlfriend hahah so cute!


4. The fact that milk comes in a bag in Toronto!!! I LOVE TORONTO!!


5. Fire hydrants are yellow here...I LOVE TORONTO!!!


6. They have taco bells here...I LOVE TORONTO!!!


7. Simon and the M.I.B crew baby!!! The secret crew that puts M.I.B for everyone hahah!!!


8. Our Toronto Raptors conversation and how Connie had to notify me that they raptors are extinct...LIAR! I know you guys have them in the zoo!


9. The fact I can't pronounce words with "th" in them, or "spadine", or "konacher", and how you guys love to mock me about it ^_^ SPAN-DI-NINE-A BABY!!!


10. How every door was closed to open doors Toronto...


11. How I thought Jennie's name was Jody even though it was so clear that Connie said Jennie...uhhh...my glasses weren't on...


12. How I got aviators for $5! I love KENSINGTON MARKET!


13. How I made buttons at kensington market!!!


14. How Enos and I pissed our pants in the haunted house after we said it's not going to be scary at all...uhhh...real men admit their fear!


15. Aaron stole all the beef at beef fondue...


16. Learning about darian's ping pong addiction and how he won't reschedule for it...haha emiily you got a winner!!


17. How I made cyclops glasses at challenge zone...yeah they were sad looking...


18. How I watched more movies in Toronto that I have in Vancouver this year


19. Riding in Jennie's mini-cooper!! SO COOL!!!


20. I forced everyone to have pizza pizza with me even though it's was pretty bad haha. What we don't have it in vancouver okay?


21. Seeing Christine Shao, Andrew U, and Desmond again even though it was brief!! Thanks for coming out!!


22. How I integrated into the LAM family instantly. I usually get up early, but staying with the LAM family I got up everyday at like 12pm :P And I love your MOM! She's so nice!!


23. Thinking simon's friends name was "LOSER" when it was actually "Louisa" (or however you spell it...)


24. Desmond and Aaron's air-fives and how to complement each other in so many ways :p


25. How I said out loud "HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT TO BET THAT GUY GOT STOOD UP?" And then he got up and left...poor guy =(


26. Getting to go to Niagara falls with the HO family haha. You guys are hilarious!


27. And countless other highlights that I can't recall right now!!!!!

I LOVE TORONTO BABY!! You guys ARE DA THE BEST!!!

PS. There was no more MILK IN A BAG yesterday morning. But I see some today. My day is complete. MILK IN A BAG!

Bell Receiver Volume

Recently my Bell Receiver broke down due, and I had to move my upstairs receiver downstairs. The upstairs receiver was an older model, 2700, but it was no problem installing it and it worked fine.

Only problem was the bloody volume was so slow regardless of how high I pressed it. I was literally at the max, yet I could barely hear a thing the people on the television were saying. So frustrated with this, I decided to do some digging and I found out in the System Setup Menu there was an option called volume control.

Once in that menu there were two more options:

1. TV remote volume control


2. Receiver remote volume control

It was originally on receiver remote volume control so I moved it to the TV remote volume control option and bam my TV volume literally blew my ears away. I don't really know what the difference is, but the whole time I was just adjusting the receiver's volume which was then translating it to TV volume. But now I just directly modifying the TV volume.

I lost the manual so I can't confirm this, but hey it works right?

Siemen's SE567 is the worst gateway

So I've been using this POS gateway for over half a year and I am fed up with it. I originally got this router when I signed up for the Telus Enhanced Internet (or something like that). Sign-up isn't really correct actually because I was already with Telus, but they were having a promotion and I wanted in because it was so cheap. Anyways, at the time I was already using a gateway from 2wire. A good gateway with no real problems.

So when I get my internet upgraded I was told I didn't have to do anything because I already had a gateway and I should just keep using the internet. So when it was upgraded the day they said it would be, my internet connection became SUPER SLOW. WTF? You call this enhanced speed? So I figured it might a gateway problem so I decided to switch to the SE567 POS gateway. Instantly, things went really quick and I was like good solved that problem.

Only a few days later, I suddenly became unable to connect to the wireless internet. It appeared once the wireless internet was encrypted, my vista laptop would no longer be able to connect. No other computers had problems. All my XPs, and Linux machines no problems. Only vista computers had problem.

So I literally resorted to using cable and stealing...no wait...borrowing wireless from my neighbours. This worked for a bit until my neighbours wireless started disappearing or I was just wasn't able to connect to it. So I finally decided to stop procasinating with the issue and try to tackle the problem once and for all.

I read article after article about trying to solve this problem and then tried solution after solution...none of which worked. Pissed off I just decided to switch back to my old router in hopes that the old speed problem wouldn't suffice. And once I did, the internet speed was fine and more importantly I could connect to the internet!!!!

So just some conclusions:

1. I really don't know what caused the problem. Could be Vista, the router itself, the encryption (no encryption lead to no problem with access), ethernet hardware which in term means DELL because all the vista laptops were Dell...too many factors


2. Siemen's SE567 gateway is a POS

Sharing a folder between Vista Host and a Ubuntu Guest

So to share a folder between the two OS (note the OS host and guest), first go to Devices->Share folders and then share the folder you want from your windows system. And then give it a name. Note the name that you give it as this becomes your sharing_name.

Next thing you do is go back to your Ubuntu guest OS, and then open a terminal. Then make a directory somewhere to share as your mounting point. With a command like this:

mkdir /mount_point_name

Then go into the folder and then type this command:

mount -t vboxsf sharing_name .

The sharing_name is simply the name of the sharing folder you specified earlier when you were in Devices->Share Folders

VirtualBox

I've been recently getting into virtual machines for work and for school. Mainly because I needed a solution to the problem that a lot of Bioinformatic (what I study for those who don't know) programs run on linux machines. I've grown up using windows and still quite a novice at linux as I only really started using it a year ago. Previously, I had a setup a dual boot on my PC running Vista and Ubuntu. However that didn't work so well because I always had to restart my machine just to get into Ubuntu or vice versa.

And thanks to a client who requested I test out some webpages in IE6 which I couldn't because I had Vista which comes with IE7 pre-installed (for those who don't know, you can't downgrade IE7 to IE6). I had to resort to a virtual machine to install windows XP just so I could test out the site in IE6. Frustrating!

Anyways, most virtual wares are quite expensive except for one: Virtualbox which is free! And it is a great piece of software too supporting many host OS and guest OS. I got it installed and setting up my guest OS was a breeze thanks to a very simple wizard.

When installing the Ubuntu guest OS, I took a Ubuntu LiveCD (I had previously burned this) and popped it in and followed the wizard. During the installation it got stuck at 82% saying it was configuring apts for a good like 15 minutes. I thought it had hanged on me, but it finally it got passed it. I noticed the network adapter was running so it was using the internet to search for applications? Not sure what would happen if the network adaptor was disconnected. In any case, it took a while so you should be prepared to wait a while too when installing.

A better idea is to actually download the latest version of Ubuntu as an iso onto your host machine. And then when you first start your guest os it will ask how you want to install it. You can then choose the CD-ROM and mount an image onto and install from there.

After installing, it would be wise to get the "guest additions" as this improves like mouse handling and the resolution. You can this by going to:

Devices ->Install Guest Additions

And then you should use an image on the desktop which means it has been mounted into the CD rom. And then open up a terminal and type:

sudo /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

It will do some setup and then once it is done restart the virtual machine and you'll use the changes instantly!

Thank you Virtualbox!

Update:

I've found that when you run the ubuntu update, it will end up nullifying the guest additions. And then when you try to re-install the guest additions, it will complain about linux-headers build-essentials needing to be updated.

The way to solve this: sudo aptitude install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

Where `-uname -r` is the version of the linux kernel. Apparently, you can just enter uname -r and it will enter the linux kernel version number for you. But I couldn't get it to work. So I ended up using entering uname -r in the terminal to get the version number displayed and then manually entering that into the command. So it ended up being something like this:

sudo aptitude install build-essential linux-headers-2.6.11-generic (something like that). And should install everything you need. And then try to re-install your guest additions and it should work.

NTLDR is missing error

Just when I thought the worst of my PC problems has passed, I recently had to deal with this "NTLDR is missing" error. This stands for New Techology Loader. What the problem is it is unable to find the master boot record to figure out which partition has the operating system. Apparently a very common error though I've never faced it in my life.

I was also in a predicament since I was in Hong Kong at that time and had none of my recovery disk CDs (why on earth would I bring them anyways?). With another laptop on hand to help me (thank goodness) So I did some searching on the internet and found a helpful site:

Windows Vista Recovery Disc Download

I could download just the recovery portion of the Vista Operating system disk and use that recovery portion. I went ahead with this, and then followed this tutorial to fix the problem.

Only problem was when I got to the part where it says:

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
x:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force

The second command using bootsect.exe is NOT found on the recovery disk!!! I don't understand why they would tell us to use a command on the disk and not have the command in the ISO. I then tried to do some troubleshooting and download the bootsect.exe file itself, and then attempted to modify the ISO image to add this bootsect.exe. Tutorial on how to do this can be found here. To no avail, I ended up corrupting the ISO and never getting it to work. In the end, all the solutions the tutorial provided failed.

What happened in the end was I just waited until I got back to Canada. Then I called Dell to explain the situation. After some lengthly and pointless troubleshooting questions and steps, I just ended up reinstalling the whole operating system again.

UGHHH!!! I am starting to hate Dell and PCs. The case of getting a MAC as my next laptop is growing stronger.

Setting up my Dell Inspiron 1420

Update Nov 28th: So finally done the whole works of reformating my laptop and installing all the drivers. I then proceeded to do all the recommended updates for my windows OS. After that was done, my sister rebooted and then I got this constant BLUESCREEN OF DEATH. Like I couldn't get back into windows. One of the stupid windows updates was causing my laptop to fail to boot. UGH!!!!! I hate computers!!! Anyways to solve this, I turned off automatic download and install of window updates, and chose to select which updates to install. So far I've chosen all the important ones aside from the odd windows mail security updates which I didn't bother because I don't use windows mail. I am not sure exactly what is causing this bluescreen of death. But I am installing the updates in separate groups so if one group fails, then the OS can be restored to the last system restore point which can be done by popping in the OS cd and choosing "repair system"

This latest experience with PCs has actually got me contemplating whether I should be getting a "crapintosh." I hate them...but I can't stand this downtime. It's killing me. I have so much work to do.

Getting my replacement hard drive for my Dell has been a complete pain the butt, but I finally got it done. Now the next ignoring part is to reinstall all the drivers/programs. For the first time, I decided to call Dell to get the "correct" way to install everything. So here is a documentation of the steps that I took:

Assuming that the hard drive has been wiped clean of data and we are starting a completely new install of the OS

• Pop in the Dell Media Direct CD and let the computer boot from it. When prompt on the selection, choose the 1st option which is to partition everything to the C: drive and then let it do this. This will create a partition D: which has about 3 GB for the Dell Media Direct which allows you to play movies and DVDs. (Don't really have to do this, but apparently if I don't I won't be able to play DVDs unless I find a decoder.


• After the Dell Media Direct has been installed, pop in the OS and let the system boot from that CD. Follow the instructions until you reach the partition screen. You should see two partitions. One with the Media Direct, and another containing everything else. You delete the one partition that is NOT media direct. You can then choose to re-setup a partition and extend from it. And then choose to have the OS installed at one of the new partitions.
  
  

  The technician told me to delete and then re-setup a partition. I have no idea why we have to do this, but I just followed his advice.



• After the OS is installed, then let the system boot up and pop in the drivers CD.
  Now install these drivers in this order:
  
  

  Always choose to restart later unless specified.

  
  
  
  
  1. Notebook system (under Utilities)
  
  
  2. Intel Chipset Driver
  
  
  3. Rioch
  
  
  4. Video (should be at the bottom)
  
  
  5. Restart the computer now
  
  
  6. Audio
  
  
  7. Webcam
  
  
  8. Touchpad
  
  
  9. Broadcom (Network)
  
  
  10. Dell wireless - except in US, Japan (Network)
  
  
  11. Quickset
  
  
  12. Dell wireless bluetooh
  
  
  
  


• After all these drivers have been installed, restart the system again.


• After the system has been rebooted, put into the media direct CD and then follow the instructions to let it install. It will take awhile depending on the size of te hard drive. But once you are done installing that, your system is ready to go!

"A 5400 RPM hard drive is no different from a 7200 RPM hard drive"

Update Nov 27th: So I called in to ask for exact instructions on how to properly install all the drivers on my computer. Usually I do this myself, but I want to see if there was some faster automatic way to install the drivers. Upon installing the OS, I told them I wanted to setup to partitions, and the technician told me that DELL doesn't support this. WOW...what a bunch of crap!

Update Nov 27th: Today I finally got my 7200 RPM hard drive from Dell and I guess they really did run out of parts. Because the hard drive they sent me has a capacity of 300GB which is 160GB more than my old hard drive. About time something went my way!!!

This was what the Dell hardware department manager told me tonight. All I can say is...wow. This past week I've been dealing with Dell's utter bullcrap. My laptop hard drive mysterious died on me out of no where last week. No warning whatsoever. Just died on me. I was pretty devastated, but I figured with Dell's spectacular customer service and support I would resolve this problem with breeze.

So I called them Tuesday night and proceeded to wait a good 15-20 minutes. And finally I got to speak to a representative and proceeded to give them my laptop's service tag. Here was the response I got:

Sorry sir. But your service tag is not showing up on our systems. It appears that you haven't purchased a laptop from us.

I was like WTF? What do you mean I haven't bought a laptop from you? I am looking at a receipt that says I spent nearly two grand for this Dell laptop and you are telling me I didn't buy it from you? The representative told me I had to talk to the customer service department to fix this. Unfortunately, they were open only from 8 am to 8 pm. So I was basically out of luck tonight.

Frustrated I had to basically wait until tomorrow morning to get any help. So the following morning, I called in and explain my situation. Turns out because my original laptop had a problem and I had to get an exchange, the exchanged laptop's service tag never got registered with my account and thus it wasn't showing up. They explain to me that this would be fix within 24 hours. 48 hours at most. And they said they would call me back as soon as this has been fixed. 48 hours no call back. So I called back to get an update. And this time I wait over an hour to get any reasonable help. I got transferred from one department to another department and finally ended up in the customer service department who simply told me that I had to wait longer for the service tag to be registered.

GRRR! This was starting to piss me off. It's been over 3 days and I still haven't started to fix my laptop hard drive problem yet. I am still working on getting them to recognize the fact that I bought a laptop from them. The worst part was that the weekend was coming and the customer service department is closed on the weekends. So basically, I had to get this service tag issue solved today or else I would get no support till monday. So I ended up calling on Saturday and this time the service tag got registered. Yeah!

And after some chatting and testing, they acknowledge that the hard drive has indeed died and they would send me a new hard drive. I give them my shipping address and then proceed to wait for the new hard drive. When my new hard drive arrives I am pretty excited and pop it in and start doing all the drive installation and application installing.

However, there was one big problem. I noticed the system's installation was slower than pre-hard drive failure. I only noticed this because I use my laptop everyday with lots of computer intensive stuff. So I look into the model number of my hard drive and it turns out that the hard drive actually has a lower RPM. It is only 5400 RPM while the original one I had ordered was 7200 RPM!!! Ridiculous!!!

So I called Dell again and complained to them the situation and they tried to basically talk me out of it by saying that there was no difference between a 5400 and 7200 RPM hard drive. It all depends on the processor and memory of the laptop to make a difference. Well HELLO!?!?! My processor and memory is making a difference!! And even if it made no difference, I feel ripped off Dell. Because basically I paid more for this 7200 RPM and they are telling me it is the same now??!?! After some more arguing and scolding of Dell, they finally decided to send me a new hard drive with the 7200 RPM. Something they should have done in the beginning. And I told them that I found it absurd that they could even suggest to customers that there was no difference and hence that is why they sent me a lower quality hard drive.

After mentioning and scolding them on this issue, the technician looked into the issue and told me that the reason I got a 5400 RPM hard drive was because they ran out of 7200 RPM hard drives. What a bunch of crap!! You run of out of the equipment so you start sending lower quality equipment to make up for it? That's pathetic. Stupid Dell. Has really made me think twice about buying a computer from them again.

Plugged in powerchord turns on my laptop by itself!!

Ok I am officially going insane...or maybe my mom's Asus laptop really just turning on by itself. Recently my Dell laptop went down which has really gotten me pissed because this is a pretty critical time in my school semester for it to go down. But that issue deserves its own blog post. But anyways, in the mean time I've been using my mother's Asus laptop.

It is a huge downgrade from my supremely powerful Dell laptop. It has only 1 GB of RAM, compared to the 4 GB I have on my dell. Suffice to say, it is as slow as a sloth. But I have no choice as I need to do my school work and keep programming to keep food on my table. It does the job, except it has one very strange habit...it turns on by ITSELF. Seriously. I tell it to shutoff and then just turns on by itself a few seconds after. The first few times I didn't watch it turn off, and then I would come back like the following morning and it would be on...display the windows vista login menu screen...starring at me.

At first, I just thought I had mistaken pressed the restart button instead of the shut down button. But tonight, I pressed the shut down button and then was cleaning up and then it turned back on itself!! I tried it again and lo and behold, it turned on AGAIN!!!! WTF!!!! I was so freaked out. I did some googling online and to no avail there was nothing concrete that could help me with the situation. Not knowing what was going on, I unplugged all the peripherals which included:

1. The ethernet cable


2. The receiver for my wireless mouse and keyboard


3. The VGA cable for my monitor


4. The power chord

And then tried to shut it off, and it worked! It didn't turn on itself after that...so it appeared that one of the peripherals was turning the laptop on?!?! I've honestly never heard of a situation like this ever. But I really wanted to see what was causing this. So I plugged the power chord back in, then turned on the machine and shut it down and it actually TURNED BACK ON!!!!

The plugged in powerchord when shutting off the machine was causing the laptop to turn itself back on!!! I couldn't believe this...I still don't really know how to fix this. I'll try to look for a fix, but as of right now the only solution I have is to unplug the powerchord when shutting off and then plugging it back it once it has turned off.

This is absolutely absurd. I hate technology sometimes!!

Why do people still use IE6 seriously?

As a web developer, I am so frustrated when I hear complaints from people when they say "Oh...it looks funny in IE." People...Internet Explorer SUCKS. Seriously. It's the worst browser in the world. It can't render anything properly. It's slow. It's has a stupid terrible interface.

And the thing that pisses me off is people who not only use IE, but they use old versions of IE!!! Like IE6! WHY WHY?!?!?! Why would you use an old version of IE. There is something called UPGRADE. And it's FREE.

Here is news for all you people who use IE6. It's annoying for us web developers, not only because IE sucks and renders crappy, but because most likely we have IE7 on our own machines to test how it acts in IE7. But once we installed IE7, we CAN'T install IE6!! We have to go through all the trouble downloading a virtual machine running windows XP just so we can get a version of IE6 on it. Like for goodness. Either stop using IE, or at least upgrade to the latest version of it...

www.webserve.ca = world's worst webhost.webserve.ca

I can't even begin to express my frustration at Webserve. Two years ago, I purchased a domain and a webhosting package from Webserve thinking it was a real deal. I was only paying a little over $200 for 2 years of service with included a lot of great stuff in the package.

First started out good, but then I began to notice the website was consistently down. It seem every week there was a least a period where the website was slow or completely unreachable. Fed up, I called their supposedly great technical support to ask them what was going on. They of course, offered next to no advice other than the fact that their system was undergoing upgrades. After about a year of putting up with this garbage, I pretty much gave up on the host. And basically didn't use it anymore.

I can't exactly remember the details of the package, but I got an email the following year requesting that I pay an invoice to renew my domain. I didn't want to, so I just emailed them back saying I didn't want to renew. They redirected me to this online form which I had to fill to cancel. Which I did, and apparently my domain was canceled. I still had my hosting package for an entire year though so I just figured I would cancel that when the time came.

So a year goes by, and then I start getting these invoice requests for my domain name renewal. And I am thinking...what the heck? I already CANCELLED my domain. WHY ARE YOU REQUESTING FOR A DOMAIN RENEWAL? I tried to email to the helpdesk to get some answers, and they just kept redirecting me to that same online form to cancel the domain. But I ALREADY cancelled it, how do I cancel something that is already cancelled??!?!

And a few weeks later, I start getting invoice to renew my hosting package. At this point, I am totally baffled. I don't want my hosting package. I just want to cancel everything and not get ANYMORE invoices. How hard is that to ask? I email them again, and I get no responses. I call them to ask for support, and end up waiting in the phone queue for a good 30 mins, and then I am told to leave a voice message. Which I do explaining my current situation. Again NO REPLY.

How the heck does this company do business? Why does it take so LONG just to cancel a service at this company? Customer support/releations is NON-EXISTENT. I haven't spoken to anyone who has been remotely helpful. All I keep getting is redirection to other people who just redirect me again. I am going around in circles.

Today, I've spent over an hour on the phone just waiting. Still NO REPONSE.

DON'T USE WEBSERVE.

Totally awesome new Roger's Plan

Ok so it's been insanely long since I last posted on this blog, but I felt it was appropriate to share my latest excitement on my new phone plan.

So I've been using rogers for over the past 3 years and I hated my plan so much. It was absolutely terrible! I had a family plan with my mom and this was what we had:

1. 150 shared minutes


2. Unlimited weekends starting at 9pm on Friday


3. Unlimited calling between each other

That was it...for a whooping like $55 after everything a month! Like that is ridiculous for like basically nothing. Wow unlimited calling to my mom. I am going to call my mom so much now. And I was locked down in a 3 year contract!

Anyways, I was pretty fed up and I went to Roger's dealerships to ask if they could provide me with a better plan when my contract expired. And they said they had no power to authorize better deals and that I would have to call Rogers directly. I even went to one Roger's dealership and told the lady I wanted to cancel and her attitude quickly turned sour and treated me very badly. I wanted to slap her because they had such poor customer skills.

So I called Rogers directly and told them I was thinking of switching and wanted to see what they could offer and no one offered anything. One lady said they don't match offers. Frustrated and fed up. I had had enough with Rogers. I hated them and wanted to switch to another wireless provider. I did some research and I decided that koodo offered the most appealing package:

1. 100 Anytime minutes


2. 50 text messages


3. Unlimited evenings and weekends starting at 7pm


4. Per second billing


5. No system access fee


6. No contract and free phone

And after taxes it costs me a whooping 22.40. I should make note that Koodo says no contract, but it does technically have a contract. They work on a "tab" system in which they give you a free phone which costs a certain amount of money. What happens if Koodo will take 10% of whatever your phone bill is every month (before taxes) and use that 10% to pay it towards your cellphone. When I say take 10%, they aren't literally discounting anything, they are just treated 10% of that money to be used to pay your cellphone. Here's an example of how it works:

Say your new cellphone costs $75. And your monthly phone bill is $20 (before taxes). This means that $2 which is 10% of your monthly phone bill is used to pay towards your cellphone. Note that your phone bill is STILL $20. So technically, to pay off your cellphone it would take 75/2 = 32.5 months or almost 3 years to pay off your cellphone. Should you decide to cancel your Koodo service, then you just pay off whatever you still owe on the cellphone. So it's a "soft contract" as they like to call it.

I wanted to switch right away, but of course I had to wait until my contact completely expired. And then I would have to give my 30 days cancellation notice, and then after that I would be able to switch. And to add to the complication, I wanted to keep my cell phone number because there is "phone number portability" now. But I had to make sure I was still with Rogers, since they "owned" my number, when I ask Koodo to take that number from Rogers.

So after much thinking the plan was to give Rogers my 30 days cancellation notice like after my contract expires, and then approach Koodo like 3 days before the cancellation is official and have them then take the number away. This is technically start my Koodo plan right away and thus for like 3 days I would be paying two wireless phone bills. This was the best way to approach the problem.

So a few days ago, my contract ended and it was finally time to give Roger's my 30 days notice. I was actually hoping they would try to persuade me with a new plan considering how I'd actually reached the stage where my contract expired and I was literally giving them my 30 day's notice. But part of me was doubting that it was going to happen. To be honest, I didn't really want to leave rogers. I wanted to stick with a gcms phone since that technology was better, and also change service providers is a fricking pain in the butt.

Anyways, I called them and I was first put on hold a like 5 minutes and I finally I got to talked to someone. However, it turns out I was talking to the cable department (no idea how I reached there). The representative transfered me to wireless saying they could handle my cancellation. Waited in line for another like 5-10 minutes. Only to find out, I had to talk to the cancellation department to complete cancellation. Now I was getting frustrated. Was this some kind of stupid Roger's ploy to get me to wait in line so long that I would just get frustrated and impatient and just give up on canceling since it took so long.

After waiting in line for another 5-10 minutes I finally got to talk to a representative. I told her I wanted to cancel. And then she actually tried to OFFER me something! The first time someone from Rogers tried to offer me anything. I was open ears, but at the same time pretty sure I was going to just reject the offer and cancel. But as it turns out she offered me a pretty damn good deal:

1. 200 anytime minutes


2. Unlimited evenings and weekends starting at 8pm


3. Call display


4. Free rogers to rogers (with two year contract)

For only $25.14 after everything! Sure it was a little more expensive than the Koodo plan, but I got free rogers to rogers and call display. It's not per second billing, but the extra 100 minutes (or should I say like extra like 200 minutes since my mom never uses her mom anyways) will cover that. And yeah I am locked down for 2 years, but I needed that Rogers to Rogers since it technically keeps my family plan with my mom (she got the same package). And best of all, I don't have to switch providers allowing me to stick with my gcms phone.

So I learned a big lesson. When you want to get a deal, talk to the fricking "cancellation" department. All the other departments and dealerships are $^%&(*)_+ useless!

Stop spreading us your lies Translink!

On a bus ride to work, I requested a stop and started walking towards the exit. A passenger in front of me was allowed off first as I was still making my way to the exit. The bus driver then closed the door and was about to drive away from the stop just as I reached the exit. I asked politely to be let off, the bus driver refused claiming I was “walking too slow.” He then said I could get off the next stop, and started driving away from the stop. I was completely applauded. I asked for his name, and was met with the response that "I have no right to ask for his name." When I claimed I had every right because I was a customer, he said I was nothing more than a "passenger." Is that what users of your service are called? And Translink claims the fare hike was to improve the service for “customers”? Who are the customers? Stop spreading us your lies Translink.

Update on Dell Laptop External Sleep Problem

So I did some more testing, and I found out my theory about the laptop going into "unfriendly sleep mode" only happens the second time was false. I can't produce a reliable pattern, it just seems to sometimes go into a sleep mode, and then sometimes the display just turns off yet everything is still functionally.

I spent almost 3 hours on the phone with Dell technical support in hopes they could help me. Trying to explain to them the phenomenon of the laptop going into this mysterious "sleep" mode and avoiding it when music is playing was longest part. Over and over again I had to explain to them my situation. In any case, nothing worked. The technician even tried to flash my BIOS, and the scariest part was I was supposed to wait for my laptop to shut down and this would flash it...but it never shut down. When I told the technician I think he was worried out of his mind that he was screwed up my laptop. Flashing your bios is something dangerous and can really screw things up. So I had to manually turn my laptop off...for like the 500th time. And it booted up fine (whew), but when I tried to shut down it THEN tried to flash my bios only it failed with this message about how it couldn't update because it couldn't find the ROM file???

God...the technician then said he would go to bring this to Microsoft because it was clearly a Vista operating system problem. I don't know what is going on anymore. All I fricking want is for my laptop to go into this nice like energy saving mode when I don't use it for awhile. Back in the XP days, I think my laptop always went into this standby mode which was nice and all I had to do was press the power button once and everything came back. But after reading this article
it appears that Microsoft has replaced this with their new feature "sleep" (the same bloody feature I am pulling my hair out about).

Apparently sleep is a combination of standby and hibernate. The computer will go into standby for the first while, and then after awhile it goes into hibernate. Sounds good. Except it DOESN'T WORK.

I hate computers!!!

Dell laptop in eternal sleep

For those who don't know, I just got a new totally wicked Dell Laptop Inspiron 1420. It's totally awesome because it has a Intel Duo Core 2 with 2.2 ghz, 4mb cache, and 800 FSB. And coupled with 4GB of ram. This is one beast. Yeah I am nerd...shut up.

Anyways, I ran into this seriously most frustrating bug or maybe it's a technical hardware problem. Who knows, but the problem is my Dell laptop will go into Sleep mode, no surprise there, after awhile of inactivity. The thing is once it enters "sleep" mode I can't bring the laptop display back! I should make a note that this sleep mode really isn't sleep mode...allow me to explain.

To get an idea of what was exactly going on (I am using Windows Vista by the way, which really isn't that bad...I guess all the talk about how it really sucked got me all scared, but to honest, I kinda like it), I went to the power management options and set my laptop to go into sleep mode after 1 minute. So waited one minute, and the laptop went into sleep mode. And when I say sleep mode what actually happened:

1. The display went black


2. The front 5 lights all turned off


3. The only light doing anything was the power light which was blinking

This should technically be the sleep mode. And so, I just pressed the power button and volia the laptop display came back and all the lights (well just the ones needed become solid again) and everything was fine and dandy.

So I am crazy right? What am I talking about? Now I waited one more minute so the laptop would go into sleep mode and I could really convince myself I was going crazy. Except this time after one minute, the display disappeared, but the lights remained solid. No power light blinking...nothing just like it was normally operating..only the display was black...Okay....?? Pressed power nothing...press the enter button nothing...press the media control buttons (ie. play, stop, etc) and the lights came on, and then disappeared. So it appeared my laptop was still running just the display is not visible. So I called Dell technical support hoping I could get some answers and after some lengthly describing of the problem, the guy suggested that run music and let the computer go into sleep mode. This will confirm that the problem is not the computer going into sleep mode, but rather the display or video card driver has a bug or whatever.

So I restarted my computer (doing the manual hold power button down for 10 secs...not good for the computer) and yeah yeah, got back into windows vista. And then I opened itunes and started playing a song and waited...and waited...and waiting...the laptop wasn't going into sleep mode!!! So I stopped the music and then waited 1 minute and sure enough, the laptop went into sleep mode! This was so weird...so according to this...the laptop will not going into sleep mode if music is playing on your lapotop??? But this was the actually friendly sleep mode. So I was able to turn it back on and then I waited another minute and the laptop went into the "unfriendly sleep mode." The funny thing was I left my mouse cursor on the play button of itunes before it actually went into the "unfriendly sleep mode" and so even though the display was gone, when I left-clicked (note: I didn't move my mouse after the display disappeared) the music started again! And I could stop and start it anything. So this proved that the laptop was still running only that the display was gone. So to summarize this:

1. Appears that the dell laptop goes into "friendly sleep mode" the first time and you can get out of the it by pressing the power button once


2. The second time, however, results in an "unfriendly sleep mode" which there is no way to get out of. In fact, I wouldn't even call it sleep mode. It's more like display just goes away, everything still works, but you can't get the display to come back. Not really a sleep mode.


3. Having music running will cause the laptop to NOT go into sleep mode. I found this to be most interesting of them all.

So how I do I solve this? The honest answer, I HAVE NO IDEA. I am still waiting for the Dell support guy to call me back and help me. But he suggested that we should try upgraded our video card driver (which I already think is upgraded, but we'll see what happens). And as a last resort, I can just set the power settings to NEVER go into sleep mode which would solve everything. But this would pretty stupid, and not to mention energy sucker. Come on, I am want to be environmental...

Crap like this makes me hate computers.

Blocked by one website!

Ack! I had the most frustrating problem ever today and it took me almost two hours to figure out how to fix it. I was trying to access the website http://www.data-face.com only to have my connection time out all the time. I figured the problem might just be the server so I decided to just leave it alone. A few hours later, I tried and still connection time out. Flabbergasted, I email the site owner (who is also my boss) and told him the site is down...only to find out how he was having no problems, and then I asked around and NO ONE ELSE was having problems.

I then tried to use all the computers in my house to access the website and none of them worked. I figured it must have to do with something with my home network and perhaps the firewall was screwing things up. So I went into the settings tried to screw around it and nothing worked. Went ahead to call the Telus support hoping they could figure out what was going on. Went through this lengthly process:

1. Turned off my firewall


2. Turned off my anti-virus software


3. Screwed around with my webbrowser privacy settings

Frustrated because I thought we would never solve the problem, the technical support suggested that maybe it was the webserver blocking my router's ip address! Never thought of that...and he suggested that I grab a new router ip address by turning off my router, unplugging the phone jack, etc. Of course by doing this, I totally forgot that I would lose my phone connection because I was using VoIP, which by the way is the most frustrating thing in the world...I just hate it because it is so unreliable and as soon as the internet is dead so is your phone. Anyways, I told him I would call him back and try the steps.

And to my surprise it solved the problem!!! The website was actually blocking me!! First time something like this has ever happened to me.

I hate computers so much some times...

Destiny vs Freedom of Choice

I've always been a destiny type of guy. That whatever we do as already been pre-determined by God...that everything happens for a reason and everything that has happened has happened for a reason. Of course this raises the question: Then what is the point of making choices, or even living if everything is already determined. My theory was always that while everything has been pre-determined, the choices we make give us different interpretations of the end result.

For example, say our end result was that an uncle was supposed to past away later next year. The common thing to think is that a relative uncle will past away, but perhaps the choices we make in life will allow us to meet someone who becomes really close to you that you actually call them "Uncle"...and they are the ones who end up pasting away.

Sounds like a silly theory, but I honestly always thought that was the way things were. Until tonight. I had a very intriguing discussion with the pastor of my church regarding his view on destiny. One of the main reasons I was so interested in this discussion was because the last two months have been really tough on me. There has been many issues on my mind that have mentally, emotionally, and physically drained me...that I just didn't want to have to deal with...and what I really wanted to know was whether I had the choice in what I was doing in life. Was all this dwelling and frustration I was dealing with something I had no control over or what?

After talking with my pastor, things really seemed to clear up. Here is what he thought of destiny:

No, I don't believe in destiny. I believe that humans have the freedom of choice, but God knows of all the choices we will make.

Sounds like a paradox...if we have the freedom of choice, but God already knows of all our choices...isn't that just the same as saying God knows exactly what we will end up doing? Not exactly:

Knowing does not entail determining

Just because God knows of the choices we will make, it does NOT mean that God has determined them for us...only we can do that. I still find it hard to comprehend, but my pastor presented an example that helped bit. Imagine a graph that contains space and time. All the choices we make in life will be plotted on this graph at a given space and time. God already KNOWS of all these choices. But are the ones who determined these choices, not him.

This has really put a whole new perspective on my life and my current state in life. Currently, I've been dwelling on some matters that have just been tearing me apart...matters that I continued to dwell on because I honestly thought that this was destiny...something I couldn't avoid. But I really shouldn't...I control my own fate...I don't have to put myself through this ordeal. And I am not anymore. My pastor said it best:

Just let go. Cut the thread that is clinging to your heart that is hurting you emotionally, mentally, and physically. Do it for your good.

And he is right...I've been allowing this thread to torture me for the past two months...trying to hang onto something because I still hope to turn something good out of it. But by doing so, I've only dug myself a deeper hole. I am going to do what my pastor said, just let go and concentrate on myself. Maybe down the road in my life, there will be a fork in the road for me to make a choice to perhaps try to deal with this thread/issue again...or maybe not...sometimes that's how life goes and I can do nothing but accept it.

I am thankful for tonight and the discussion I've had with my pastor. I truly hope this will stop all the dwelling, frustration, and pain I've had to endure for the last two months.

2nd place for being superman

Got second place for best individual Halloween costume!!!

I AM SUPERMAN

I am so pumped for halloween!!! My plan is to dress up as superman and be all ripped and stuff. The following is my attire for superman:

Superman underwear: I've grabbed an old pair of tightly whiteys that I plan to spray paint red. They are apparently going to be hard and crusty. Perfect :p

Superman belt: Hmmm, I might take my superman underwear and paint the strap part yellow.

Superman pants + upper body covering: Planning on going to American Apparel and buying matching light blue tights for my upper and lower body. They got to be tight...like super tight to show my huge body :P (or lack of huge body)

Superman emblem: I got a superman shirt that I am going to cut out the emblem from. And then I am going to do a crappy sewing job to sew it onto my upper body tights.

Superman cape: A nice red silk cape will do just fine.

Superman boots: Got a pair of old shoving snow boots which I am going to spray paint red. They don't look the best, but neither is the rest of me :p

Superman hair: Not sure what I am going to do about this...maybe I'll just use my normal ugly hair...my friend was talking how it was possible to get a hair extension...so maybe I'll do that? It's a shame that I cut my hair or else I could have moosed it up with curls and stuff.

Superman dress-shirt: What I really want to be able to do is wear a white dress-shirt over top of my superman costume (well obviously it only covers the upper body). And then I want to rip off my dress-shirt and show my superman emblem :p

Hopefully this will all work. I will look like the biggest dork in the world!!!