Kishu Island

Kishu Island
(Broadway & Main St, Vancouver)
About 12$ if you choose the right items for dinner

This is my ideal choice for a japanese dinner, being the broke deadbeat I am. There are actually two locations, the other being downtown Vancouver on a street close to and parallel to Granville St.

Both restaurants offer a very authentic experiene, more so than TopGun. Additionally, after 7pm several items on the menu go 40% off. These entrees include tempura, yakisoba, udon, donburi, and california rolls. Yum yum!

TopGun Sushi

TopGun Sushi
(New Westminster Quay, New Westminster-5 min walk from New West Skytrain Station)
12$ for lunch, 30$ for dinner

This is a beautiful japanese restaurant. It is a chain, but I have only eaten at the all-you-can-eat option in New Westminster.

There is a small salad buffet, and a decent menu that you order from. There is salmon and tuna sushi available wrapped in rolls, or for 3$ more for everyone at the table people can order sashimi. Personall I just order the sushi (raw fish on top of a rice ball), and don't eat the rice ball.

Items from the lunch menu include veggie tempura, calamari, udon soup, california & alaska rolls, and a house roll filled with salmon & tuna. I've only eaten the dinner menu twice, and do not believe it's worth the double-price, although there are more options to choose from.

All the staff have an authentic japanese ethnicity (no round eyes here), and type your order into their wireless palm pilots which are immediately seen by the cooks in the back. I'd recommend ordering a variety of types of food immediately, hedging your bets against any backlogs in the kitchen.

Windows Vista

Windows Vista
(microsoft)
$$alot$$

Windows Vista is nothing to scream about, but it has some nifty features. I haven't had to use any software when installing USB devices. Being a bit of a gommer, I struggled to install my printer's driver repeatedly unsuccessfully, until I realized that I only needed to plug it in. Unfortunately I had some poor luck with one printer, and was unable to turn it back online after repeated attempts (it was unplugged). Probably a unique experience.

There are lots of gadgets you can display on the desktop, like weather, time/date, CPU usage, and stocks. However with the stocks I could only get the DOW & NYSE etc, not individual mutual funds or stock prices. It was provided through MSN.

A nifty feature I liked was by pressing the windows key then tab, you can bring up a cascading display of all the windows opened, lined up fading into the background, and then point and click on the one you like. There's a quicktab button for this on the lower bar as well.

One last thing, you can now open multiple images using the windows viewer, and make minor edits (cropping/red eye) with the built-in software.

Casio Exilim

Casio® Exilim® EX-S770 Blue 7.2 MP Digital Camera (costco.ca)
320$+tax

This damn thing chipped after two months of use. Not just a scratch-a chip exposing the interior. Wasn't from a drop, either. Metal/plastic fatigue. Avoid this one.

Navy Poseidon Backpack

Navy Poseidon Backpack
(costco.ca)
57$+tax

A decent backpack-stylish and a back-support structure common to backpacks these days. The main compartment is too small for large textbooks, so forget using this for studying purposes. Keeping a spare change of cloths is possible, but not much beyond that (it's a small backpack). The side pockets aren't practical for stashing waterbottles-maybe a can of pop, but even that's a bit of a stretch.

Acer Aspire

Acer® Aspire™ AS5100-5540 English TL-50, 15.4-in. WXGA, 2GB, 120GB

(costo.ca)
1100$+tax

Good laptop overall. Comes with a built-in camera, which I recommend swivelling away from the user when not in use (I wouldn't chance it if someone manages to get a trojan onto your computer). Acer has a widget display, which allows you to check out battery life, cpu usage, etc. I never bothered with it, but some might get a kick out of it.

There's a built-in SD card reader, and three USB ports (which doesn't quite cut it in today's world). I typically always have a mouse, printer, and external memory (hard drive) that need full time affection and attention. Throw in a MP3 player or zip drive, and now you're compromising. No big worries. The speakers are adequate for listening to music while cleaning your room, but nothing beyond that.

Motorola 5.8GHz Cordless

Motorola E52 Series MD7251-3 5.8 GHz Cordless

(costo.ca)
120$+tax

Junk. Total junk. The signal could not penetrate more than two stories of wooden housing floor (I'm not talking about apartment concrete, I'm talking about a typical wood-based single family dwelling. Bah!

Daytek Portable DVD Player

Daytek PD-950 9-in. Portable DVD Player
(costco.ca)
160$+tax

I really like this DVD player. Very easy interface, although for some reason it automatically turned on Chinese subtitles when I played my boot-legged Little Britain DVDs. Less technology inclined peoples may not have been able to figure out how to turn off the closed captioning (it took a bit of trial-and-error and educated guessing to adjust the closed captioning).

The battery sticks out and is rather cumbersome, but once you get going the unit balances nicely. It includes a video output adaptor, AC and car adaptor, and two headphone outs (in case two people want to use headphones at once). Nice touch!

Uniden Cordless Phone System

Uniden® 5.8 GHz Corded/Cordless Phone System with Digital Answering System

(costco.ca)
192$

This package includes a cord-full base and three cordless phones with base chargers, and one of them waterproof (for all those bathtub conversations?). I haven't put the water-proof one to test yet, but perhaps boredom will prevail one day and we'll have some funny stories to tell.

This cordless set was a little more pricey (192$), but it includes an answering machine that picks up calls unanswered by call waiting. It also managed to show me the name of the person I didn't bother picking up with call waiting (sorry Jeremy), but this could simply be a feature of my telephone service, and have nothing to do with the cordless phone unit itself. The range trumps the last cordless phone I reviewed (not saying much). I confess I haven't tested the max range yet. I still have difficulty with the answering machine, as I have been given the personal recording, the default robo-voice recording, and static-screaching of a fax machine all within one minute of repeatedly redialing my number.

The ergodyamics of the phone gets three thumbs up. Once again however, I must rant at my disappointment for Uniden to include a built-in signal router so multiple units can all join the conversation.

SanDisk Sansa

SanDisk® Sansa™ 6 GB e270 MP3 Player
(costco.ca)
185$+tax

The next generation of Sansa's, this one boasts basically all the features of it's older brother. Unfortuantely it does not come with the protective pseudo leather jacket of it's predessor, so watch out!! Those LCD displays scratch like a cat in heat. Once again, the video playback is tilted 90 degrees out of sync with typical use.

One thing I neglected to mention last time is how awkward it is navigating around and opening up folders while viewing through windows, and it isn't straight forward naming albums and artists while accessing it through /My Computer/Removable Storage/ Sansa etc. I found it more convienent to download albums using bittorents, start playing the entire album with Windows Media Player, click 'Sync', and drag and drop the entire album. You can always delete the unwanted songs afterwards, as opposed to trying to add a single song and then adjust it's details. There is also a FM tuner and a voice recorder on it, but I am yet to test those features out.

Pentax Optio

Pentax® Optio L30 7.1 MP Digital Camera
(costco.ca)
294$

This is a very clever little camera that fits right into your hand. A very simple design, a quickly chargable lithium ion battery that lasted me for about 83 pictures and some videos. It's a 7.1 MP with 3X optical zoom, and a high sensitivity of ISO 3200, whatever the fuck that means. It creates quick time videos that go indefinetely, limited only by your memory chip. A drawback is you are unable to scroll through the pictures you've taken already, unless you completely turn the power on. All this does is pushes the lens out, which unnessarily sucks up a bit of battery energy, and there's always the slight risk of damaging the lens whenever it's open and erect.