When you log into the system for the first time, you are prompt for some information like your name and a password. After that, you’re greeted with a tabbed desktop. The tab sorts the shortcuts into six categories: Favourites, Internet, Work, Learn, Play, Settings. There’s nothing special about them. They’re just a way to keep things organized.

The Favourites tab contained a bunch of shortcut to programs that you frequently use. I’m not sure if those shortcuts are put there automatically or if there’s a way to put them there. I’m not too familiar with Linux so I wasn’t able to add any. The terminal would have been something that I’d use a lot but I don’t recall seeing a short cut for it anywhere.

The Internet tab appears to be the busiest of all the tabs. Since this laptop was made for surfing, I guess that would make sense. It had shortcuts to just about all of the popular resources that one would need to get started on surfing around. The nice thing about it is that Skype came installed which is good because I use it to make outbound internet-to-phone calls. It turns his laptop into a phone whenever I have an internet connection. Unfortunately, the built-in microphone wasn’t all that good. It picked up a hissing noise from somewhere. It’s a little odd that the microphone is located at the bottom of the laptop underneath the location where the touch pad is.

The wireless card works pretty well and I was connected within seconds after start-up. It did a pretty good job at locating the nearby wireless signals. It even found my friend’s wireless signal when my other laptop could barely pick it up. Once you’ve connected to an access point, it saves the settings and it’ll use it the next time it detects that signal.

Firefox comes installed and works fairly smoothly. I haven’t seen any issues with the memory leakage yet but then again, I’m not too familiar with Linux to see it. Since the screen is small (7″) you’re not able to see everything. Asus Eee PC’s website is small enough so that everything fits the width of the screen. My site on the other hand doesn’t fit the screen properly. I think part of the blog posts are cut off and the sidebar is not show. You have to scroll over to see everything else. Of course, you can use the shrink function to squeeze things in.

The instant messaging client works fine as well. It connects to chatting software such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo. I signed on with my MSN account and it listed my entire contact just fine. I didn’t get to test out the chat or the video features so I’m not sure if those are any good. Nonetheless, it connected to the MSN Messenger service without any issues.

The Work tab connected a whole bunch of software that you can use to do work. It has anything from a word processor to spreadsheets to power point. It uses Open Office which is similar to Microsoft Office and works just as good.

Anything that you can do in Microsoft Word, you can probably do in Open Office Writer. It’s probably not as sophisticated as Word but it’s close enough.

The file manager is similar to that in Windows. Actually, it looks almost identical. Navigating around is no problem at all and accessing files on a Windows machine is easy as well. You access network folders the same way as you would in Windows using UNC addressing.

The Learn tab contained some pretty cool learning tools. I had a chance to test out the “Go Chinese” software which teaches you to speak Mandarin. The software would teach you a phrase and then it would break down into a song and sing that phrase as the lyrics of the song. It was a little catchy and it did help with the word. I’m not sure if it’ll help with the tonation of the word.

The Play tab has a selection of things for you to choose from. You can play some games, listen to some music, watch some movies, records yourself with the webcam or just record your voice.

The Games shortcut goes down another level and offers a selection of games. I didn’t play any of them because I didn’t feel like it but if ever I am bored, these games will be here waiting for you.

Overall, the Asus Eee is easy to use but the OS that it comes with isn’t all that great. It has some nice software included but I guess I’m looking for a bit more. The webcam was a bit slower than I had expected. When I was testing the hardware, it seemed like it performed just fine but when I started recording, the video and the audio were out of sync. The keyboard was a little hard to you because it’s so small. I had to resort to one finger typing which was a little slow. And certain keys were moved around so I was hitting the wrong keys every now and then. But the laptop does what it’s supposed to do. It boots up and serves web pages fairly quickly. There were some delays when I went to launch some software but it was acceptable. The downside is that I had the machine freeze on me a few times when I went to launch more than one application. So until I upgrade the RAM, I think it’s best that I stick to running one or two applications at the same time.

I can remember Bob talking about retirement since the first day I started working. He told me the importance of saving up now because you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. The government will give you so much but they can’t be counted on. You have to put a little away now because pretty soon, “the light at the end of the tunnel will be right in your face.”

The days leading up to Bob’s retirement, my coworker and I decide to play little tricks on him. My coworker would run a little program on Bob’s computer that would white out his screen. When Bob starts to complain about his screen going white, my coworker would kill the program and it’ll go back to normal. He’ll call us over and we see nothing on the screen. What’s funny is that Bob would try to get an eye witness but when anyone comes over to his desk, everything appears to be fine. I think people were starting to think he’s crazy.

I on the other hand would start ejecting his CD drive every so often. Once he closes it, I would eject it again. And again he’ll try to find some eye witnesses but nothing would ever happen when they’re around. We started saying that he was going crazy or that he was trying to stir things up before he goes. Fun was had my all.

For two months, we made sure that something went awry on his computer and for two months he would complain that his computer was acting up. We didn’t tell him that we were the ones behind it until the dinner. By then, he was relieved to find out that he wasn’t going mad. He knew that somebody was up to no good but we couldn’t put his finger on who the culprit was.

I had to get him back for something. During my first week at work, he would walk over to my desk with a cup of water in his hand and asked if I knew John. I knew a lot of Johns so I asked him, “John who?” Then he’ll dip his finger into his cup and say “John the Baptist” and flick water at me as if he was baptizing me. Every month or so he would come up and ask me if I knew John but I knew better.

After today, there will be no more jokes played on his machine. There will be no two o’clock apples. No more Jean the Baptist. I think it’s going to get a little quieter around here without Bob. He’s usually the guy that causes the most around of noise around here.

Luckily, I turned into the parking lot as he was driving out and asked him where he thought he was going (just to be a smart alec). Bob was done for the day but I told him that I’d carry on the legacy of make sure that people know of John the Baptist. To that he replied, “Make sure you stir things up a little on the floor. Don’t let those people go crazy. You need to keep the laughter alive.” I’ll have to try my best to keep things going up here because I don’t think it’ll be the same without him.

It’s always sad to see someone leave the company because it’s almost like they’re leaving your life. Everyone is in your life for a reason and they add that much value to your life by being in it. From day one Bob has given me advice on life and retirement, cracked a few pun jokes and slap me upside the head a few times. He’s been working at this company for 42 years. 42 year! You don’t see that anymore. People are coming and going but he stuck around for that long. I can’t even see myself working at a company for anything longer than five years let alone forty two years. But now that Bob is retired, he’ll be join the other retirees at Tim Horton’s for their monthly coffee meeting. They’ve been calling him to join them for a long time and now he’s finally going to do it. They even bought him a Tim Horton’s coffee mug and you know what? The first coffee is free!

My friend, Kevin called a bunch of us out one night to hand out wedding invitations. We were a little surprised by it because the last time we saw him, I’m sure he was single. He went from being single, to finding a girlfriend and then getting himself hitched. And I think he managed to do all of that within a year or so. But you know what? Good for him.

The wedding was scheduled for 6:00pm but I arrived around 6:30pm so I thought I was a little late. I should have known that parties don’t always start on time. People were coming and things didn’t get started until close to 8:00pm. By that time, I was starting to get a little hungry because I hadn’t eaten all day. I was so busy with assignments that I missed out on lunch.

When the wedding go started, the host (and wedding singer) introduced the parents, maid of honour and groomsman and the bride and groom. When the host introduced herself, I thought she said her name was Suzy but she clarified and said it was Sushi. Her partner’s name was Wasabi. Sushi and Wasabi, get it? Yeah…

The parents of the bride and groom gave their speeches and then the bride and groom gave their speeches. Actually, the groom gave the speech because the bride was a little shy. He said some kind words and thanked everyone for their attendance. After all these years that I’ve known him, he still has a pretty strong fob accent.

The party went until close to midnight. I had a couple of beers to drink but surprisingly, I wasn’t affected at all. Usually, after one or two beers, I’d start to get a little headache which is my queue to stop drinking but this time I didn’t feel anything. Since the party was coming to an end we all wanted a group picture commemorating the special night. We took a few shots but I haven’t seen the other pictures yet. I’ll have to ask him to see some more.

I called them up to ask if I was eligible for the promotion. The CSR said that I was and all that I had to do was pay for the addition monthly charges. After I signed on, he told me that I’d have to wait a few days and someone will call me to tell me what to do next. That didn’t sound too promising because whenever you have to rely on someone else, there’s a chance that there will be some delays. In this case, there was a delay and I had to call back to follow up.

I spoke with a lady who looked over my profile and told me that she had to get back to me about the promotion. As far as I know, there was no need to check for anything since the first representative already did all that. The lady called me back a couple of hours later and told me that I wasn’t qualified for the promotion because it was only opened to customers who upgraded from the Day-to-Day banking package. I didn’t fight with her because I was at work and didn’t have time to argue.

A few weeks later, I get a message on my cell phone from RBC saying that they’re still looking into the matter. I’m not sure why they’d still be looking into it if I wasn’t qualified so I just brushed it off and carried on with life.

The following week, I get a letter in the mail telling me that I was qualified for the laptop and all that I had to do was enter in the promotion code on the website and verify my information before they sent out the laptop. I was so excited at it that I called to my parent’s house and asked my little brother to enter the information for me, because I didn’t have internet at the time. He typed in what I told him to type but when he finished, there wasn’t any confirmation or anything. I had to double check to make sure he did it right so I waited until I found a stable wireless signal and re-entered my information. At the end of it, it confirmed my information and said that the laptop will be here within six to eight weeks. Since it has been confirmed, I was willing to be patient and wait.

I can’t believe that after making a few phone calls, it turns out that I am qualified to get a free Asus EEE PC from Royal Bank. The first person I spoke with said that I would be eligible if I upgraded but when I called back, they had to do an investigated to see if I was qualified. The person who called me back said that I didn’t qualify which made me a little disappointed.

Now that I have the laptop in my hands, I plan on doing a little review on it. Initially, I was supposed to get the 2gb version but when I opened the box, I noticed that it was the 8gb version so I lucked out. I have an upcoming “debate” with a colleague of Jenn regarding Mac and PC and I can probably test out the webcam on this little thing and at the same time use it to debate the guy about it. So we’ll see how that turns out. Asus Eee 701SD review, coming up!

I’m not sure exactly why I decided to get myself a dot com. The dot com boom has long gone but something made me decide to register. I think at first, it was due to the promotion that 1and1 had which was to get free hosting for a year. All that I was responsible for was to pay for the domain main. At the time, the cost for a domain was $5.99 for the year. I didn’t see any reason not to get it so I signed up.

My friends and I signed up together so they become the first outgoing link from my site. I found it to be cool that I had a small little community going where my outbound links would be going to my friend’s website and their sites were linked to me. For a little while, I was hooked on the link that we built and I found myself going to check their site, only to find that they weren’t updating as often as I was.

After a while I stopped checking their site and concentrated on my own site. I started to become more and more interested with web design and Photoshop and the next thing I knew, I was working with Photoshop just about every day. I just loved the fact that I was able to create different designs using one software. Day and night, I would be on Photoshop, running tutorials and playing around with images. It didn’t take long before I tampered with Photoshop and used it to create web site layouts. The site that you see today is an amalgamation (pretty big word) of everything that I’ve learned throughout the years.

The last five years seems to have flown by very quickly. I can’t believe that I have over 800 blog posts already and I can probably get a whole bunch more if I had the time. If I keep writing the way that I have, there’s a good chance that I’ll have more blog posts than I do comments. So either I write a lot or I wrote a lot of useless entries that aren’t really thought provoking. I’m not going to let that stop me though. I’ll continue to post as many blog entries as I can until one day, I’ve said all that I needed to say.

I am a patient person but I prefer not to have to wait for people after I’ve given them a deadline. If a task takes twenty minutes to perform, I’d assume that I’d be performing that task twenty minutes before I leave. If I say that I’m leaving at 5:30, then I’d assume that they’d bring their laptops to my desk twenty minutes before 5:30. But unfortunately, that’s not the case here.

I’ve spoken with two managers and I’ve told them that I’ll be at my desk until 5:30. It’s about ten minutes to half past the hour and still nobody. I guess they like to put things off until the very last month. This is okay for them because they’re not the one that’s going to be stuck at work later than they should be. I have to sit around and get things done while they’re in their car driving home.

I’m not sure what it is about people and time. When you tell someone that you’ll be there in fifteen minutes, I would assume that you’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Otherwise, why tell them that you’re going to be fifteen minutes? Usually, if you make an appointment to be somewhere at a certain time, you should be there but it seems like time doesn’t matter.

I had a twelve o’clock appointment with my account manager at the bank and I arrived at the bank at twelve o’clock. When I took the receptionist that I had a twelve o’clock appointment she told me to have a seat and she’ll let the account manager know. I ended up sitting there for twenty minutes. At first I thought that he was with another client and it took a lot longer than expected but when he came out to get me, he told me he was on the phone. WTF! You don’t keep client waiting just so you can talk on the phone. I really didn’t want to talk to the guy about my account but I was only there to sign a few papers so I didn’t care.

I don’t think anyone should be sitting around waiting these days. There’s no reason to be late for anything. I went to a wedding recently that started at 6:00pm. It wasn’t a big wedding so things should have gotten started quite early but it didn’t start until 8:00pm. I had to sit around for a couple of hours as people started coming in. To me, that sounds a little disrespectful to the bride and groom. If the wedding started at 6:00pm and people were in line, waiting to go, I’d understand. But there was no line and people were coming in late. That’s just unacceptable.

I am late for appointments here and there but I’m learning to be on time. I don’t like to keep people waiting but it looks like I’m the one waiting by going there early. What’s the point of booking an appointment when the appointment isn’t right on time? I should probably book an earlier time and then go in late since that’s probably how it works these days.

My friend gave me the number to her cousin who is an insurance broker. I gave her a call and asked for a quote. I figured that it’ll be something high but I had to start somewhere. I gave her my driver’s license number and she told me that she’ll call me back with more information. And when she did call back, I was expecting to hear what she told me.

Maria: I hope you’re sitting down for this.
Me: Oh, I’m sure it’s not that high.
Maria: It’s not the price that I’m going to tell you.
Me: Oh, then what is it?
Maria: Apparently, our system is showing you as being unlicensed.
Me: Uhh.. wh.. wha.. what do you mean?
Maria: I can’t give you a quote because it’s showing here that you don’t have a driver’s license.
Me: But I just gave you my driver’s license number and I’m holding my driver’s license.
Maria: I think you’re going to have to get this straightened out with the ministry. Just give them a call and ask them what’s going on. I’m sorry but without it, I can’t do anything on my end.
Me: Okay, I’ll give them a call and see what the deal is.

I dialed the number for the Ministry of Transportation (MOT) and after punching a few buttons, I was connected to an actual person. I inquired about the status of my driver’s license and the guy on the other line told me that my licensed was canceled for a year now. He recommended that I go into the office and get it reinstated. I didn’t ask any questions as to why it was canceled.

The last time I was pulled over for making an illegal right hand turn during rush hour, I was given a ticket. The officer at the time did not question the fact that my license was canceled. That incident occurred in the summer which clearly isn’t a year ago. Obviously, the Police Department’s database doesn’t not coincide with the ministry’s database because if it was, I would have received another ticket for not have a valid and up-to-date driver’s license. I think at the time, because the officer didn’t mention anything, I was in the clear with my driver’s license. If my license had been suspended in any way, I assume that he would have notified me but he didn’t so off I went on my merry way.

Fast forward to a few months down the road and I find out that I shouldn’t even be driving because I don’t have the proper documentation. In order to get reinstated, I had to go down to the MOT and pay a fee of $150. It’s a pretty heft price to pay to get my license reinstated given the fact that I had to do more work than the lady behind the counter. She swiped a few cards, hit a few keys and printed out a few papers. The transaction between her and I took less than five minutes and I was out of there. I can’t believe it cost $150 to have all of that done. It’s crazy. Someone must be making a lot of money from this.

I didn’t expect much from Bell because usually things aren’t as they say. The internet connection was supposed to be ready as of November 11, 2008 but that wasn’t the case. I waited until after work to test it out so I gave it plenty of time to activate but when I got home that night, the connection was still down. I didn’t want to call up Sympatico after business hours because I knew that I would get someone in India but nonetheless, I wanted to know what was wrong.

When I called the Tech Support number, I spoke with Raj who sounded like he was from India so I assumed that he was Indian. I told him what was wrong with the line and he went go to check some stuff in the system. When he returned, he asked me some simple questions and I gave him some simple answers. After that, he told me that my internet connection should be ready between 11:00pm to 12:00am. That didn’t make too much sense to me since those hours would sort of make the activation date November 12, 2008. When I questioned Raj about it, he didn’t have an answer and told me to just wait for a while. I waited and then went to bed.

By the time morning came, you can imagine my surprise when the connection was still down. The DSL light was still blinking which meant that the modem wasn’t picking up a DSL signal on my phone line. I can only assume that my line wasn’t activated on the DSL network or something. The lady that I spoke with to get the service didn’t say anything have sending someone over to get that turned on so it’s probably still off. So once again, I had to wait until after work to test the connection.

When I got home from night class, I checked the DSL light and it’s still blinking. So once again I call up Tech Support to find out what’s going on. This time I spoke with Ram. He went through the same questions that the previous rep asked and by the end of the call, my DSL light was still blinking and I still had no access to the internet. I had to resort to speaking with a Level 2 Support which was of no help at all. All she said was that they’ll have to send someone out to my house and get my line looked at which was what I was thinking the first time.

I have no idea how long it’ll take before someone decides to show up at my house to check the line. It’s raining today so whoever being sent to my house is probably going to be too lazy to do any work so I might be without internet access until next week. So much for service. I hope that they don’t charge me for internet service from the date of activation because clearly my service was not activated on that date.

Same-sex marriage has been a battle that is long fought by the gays. I don’t understand why they even have to fight for this right. I don’t know why there even a need to make a law on the matter. If two people want to get married, let them get married. Who are we to say that they can’t marry? The matters should be left in their hands because it’s their decision. If you don’t want them to get married, you stay out of their way.

Melissa Etheridge wrote a blog saying that the government can forget about her taxes. There’s no reason for her to pay taxes that will support other people’s children going to school when she doesn’t have any rights to have a child. And she’s right. Every year, it seems like tax payers are paying for something that doesn’t benefit them in anyway. So why pay taxes if it’s only help other people and we get nothing in return?

The gay people believed that the Mormon Church has something to do with their rights being taken away. They are protesting and boycotting the church and giving them a bad PR rep right now. The Mormons should just worry about the people in their group and not worry about everyone else.

Marriage is a union between two people. Man or woman, gay or straight. If a man wants to marry another man, let him. The way I see it, they’ll be more woman left over for the rest of you. But if a woman wants to marry another woman, I guess that’ll even things out. Anyway, I guess some people are still old fashion when it comes to marriage and seeing it as a union between man and woman. I know that you can’t make babies without the other but the option to adopt is still there. In a world like ours, I would feel sorry for the kids that the gay people adopt because they would be picked on for having two dads or two moms.

The way I see it, people should mind their own business. There’s nothing wrong with being gay and it’s not like it’s affecting you in anyway. If I had a gay uncle then I have a gay uncle. It’s not like him being gay will turn me gay by association. Gay people are people too so give them the rights to do what they want. Let them get married if they want because that’s what people do when they love each other. We are not the ones who are getting married to the gay person so we shouldn’t have any say in the matter.

The package that I went with allowed me to download and upload up to 500 Kbps. There’s a good chance that I won’t see those speeds but it’s not a big deal. They gave me a 2GB bandwidth which should be good enough. I surf around a lot but it’s not like I stream movies all the time. I’ll get ten hours of dial-up usage when I need it and I’ve got a 5MB online storage for whatever.

The plan comes with a whole bunch of security and pop-up blockers and stuff but I don’t need those. They probably added those extras in to get people to order more so they can get more money. I already have the necessary protection on my computer so I don’t need to pay for any extra ones.

They said that they’ll be sending me a wireless home networking kit so I can allow more than one computer to be online at a time. The lady on the phone mentioned something like a maximum of four computers connected to the network. Unless that value is hard coded into the router, I’m sure it can be exceeded. There was a $20 activation fee with it but it was waived. I’m not sure exactly why there needs to be an activation fee for the wireless but I’m not paying for it so I’m happy.

If you checked on Bell’s website, this package is about $17.95 but you only get that price if you bundle it with something. That price will last for about twelve months and after that it goes up to $22.95 but what they don’t tell you is that the regular price is actually $29.95. There are a bunch of fees for modem rental and what not. I received a $5 credit which brought down my month charge to $24.95.

This plan isn’t too bad. I was looking to pay about $20 a month and I ended up paying about $10 more but it’s acceptable. Once I get everything up and running, I’ll be online a lot more than before. Lately, I’ve been offline since I can hardly get a decent signal at home. No more free internet for me.