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!