Although there's nothing really productive to write about these days, I still to write about something.

For those who don't know, I treated myself after eight months of work with laptop. I thought this would definitely ring in the new school term with a bang.

Wow, I'm such a geek.

So I bought myself a Dell because at prices like their's, there's seriously no reason not too. Surely, they're not the sexiest laptops, though they're not nasty looking either. The best thing is that it does what it needs to do.

So after a few upgrades to the battery and the wireless card, and being $1000 in the Visa hole, I am a proud owner of a Dell Inspiron 640m (Intel Core Duo T2050). Because Shima named her laptop (Shifty?), I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon.

Everyone, meet Pickles. Pickles, meet everyone.

Days after I purchased it, Dell released the Core 2 Duos. Bastards. But I guess you can never keep up with technology, so why bother.

At that same time, Tiff tells me about her awful experiences with Dell. I know, me and my timing. Apparently she was a victim of the loss of computer files, after her laptop crashed on her. She had to re-write a paper if I recall correctly.

Touch digital-wood that what happened with Tiff doesn't happen to me. Ah.

So far, I'm enjoying the laptop experience. To be honest, I can't imagine not working on a laptop now. It has definitely become an extension of me, and I almost feel paralyzed without it. After three months, I am impressed with Dell. It's working wonderfully thus far, and their tech support is top notch.

... but if anything does happen, I'm am sure you'll hear about it here.

I have already managed to scratch the laptop surface like mad after just a month of use. So I forked out another $26 for a skin. Here's it is. It looks a bit cheesy-- looked more cool on the website-- but again, I hope will prevent Pickles from further scratches.

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Canada Computers is like Wal-Mart.

I hate the place, but I find myself continuing to go there just because their stuff is so darn cheap. Being the poor student that I am, I just cannot afford to support other stores 'for the greater good' or 'for the customer experience value'. I've essentially been priced out of other places.

Yep. Canada Computers and I have had a struggling relationship as long as I can remember, back when they only had one location at Pacific Mall. Pacific Mall's location is notorious for having bitchy sales reps. I have been to the others in Scarborough, North York, and Waterloo since their massive expansion within and outside the GTA in the recent years, and I will admit that these locations have much better customer service than at Pacific Mall. The dudes at the Pacific Mall location operate as if they they ruled the world of cheap computer goods, and that PC's everyhere would suffer had they not existed.

For sure, they do sell very cheap computer goods, but it's just good business sense not to be so 'inch'. Canada Computers could definitely be even much more successful if they just paid better attention to customer service. I am not a picky shopper. I don't care if you don't greet me and all that crap. Just give me the products that I want to buy without making me angry.

So yes. Canada Computers' pompous attitude has given me great passion to find other stores to support. I will desperate hunt to see if other stores are at least selling at about the same price as Canada Computers. I will only give in when the price isn't right.

Here's my list of alternatives.

PC Village, First Markham Place
This store rocks. Their prices are competitive as Canada Computers, and they actually provide awesome customer service. I always leave the store happy, confident, and satisified about my purchased. Highly recommended!

PC Gate Computers, Pacific Mall
They have awesome service, the dudes there are always helpful. Prices are usually more expensive however.

Premier Computer Canada, 3311 Lake Shore Blvd. West, Toronto
Never visited their Etobicoke location, but have purcahsed a few things over the web. Prices are a hit and miss. Selection is excellent.

Infonec, 351 Ferrier St, Markham
Prices are fairly competitive, but selection not as comprehensive as Canada Computers'.

ICCT, Splendid China Tower
Service is pretty good. Prices are a hit and miss, selection is limited.

Do you have any suggestions for cheap computer goods?

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My Paypal account was hacked a few weeks ago. I didn't want to actually talk about it until the issues have been resolved.

A few weeks ago, I was doing my work, my Outlook notified me that Paypal received payment from me to a Germany-based VOIP Company.

Of course, I freaked out and checked my Paypal to see if anything was tampered with. And of course, it was not just some phishing thing-- someone actually withdrew money from my bank account and used the money to pay for their VOIP service.

Anyways, I called my bank to see if I can block the transaction, and they said that they could, as long as the transcation hasn't already gone through. Since my Online Banking numbers are not updated in real time, it's hard to say it actually went through.

Then I frankically changed my passwords. This process was so damn annoying because even when you have a password in mind, different sites have different pasword rules, which means you end up having so many different variations of the password.

An hour after, Paypal's bots recognized some suspicious activity with my account and froze it. While I guess this is impressive, they did not make retroactive my account to what it was before the unauthorized transactation. I was still required that I go through the 'Resolution Centre' process.

It turns out that my bank was able to block the transaction, so actually I don't really give Paypal any credit. I know this because Paypal notified me that my bank declined the fund transfer, and that my Paypal account will be charged as a result.

Luckily, a few days later, the whole dispute was resolved, and by account was back to the expected amount.

Wow. Online security concerns are quite serious. Maybe I'll return to making transactions the old-fashioned way. Geez.

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So it's official, my external hard drive is officially fried, and the contents have been completely corrupted according to the folks at Waterloo Networks.

I bought an external hard drive in January, and while I was attempting to backup my files this week, I accidentially tripped the A/C power cable, which caused the enclosure to fall to the ground. To make matters worse, the hard drive fell as it was spinning away.

Anyway, I was pretty positive that the hard drive was a goner, but I still had hope that at least some of the data could be recovered, especially as there was no horrible screeching sound when I re-ran the drive. While most of the work had been backed up, I did lose the work I did last term, and a couple dozen gigs of multimedia files. The bright side of it is that I still have hard copies of last term's files, so I'll take a day to just run it though a document scanner.

Of course, my multimedia files are gone for good. Luckily, no precious pictures were on there.

So a few words of advice:

• Do not drop hard drives


• Do not drop hard drives when it's still running


• Establish a routine to backup your files

By the way, I like the Waterloo Networks' philosophy, and I recommend giving them a shot if you have any computer technical issues. They charge a flat fee of $55, so the price is small and predictible. Plus, there is no bitchy impatient tech people, only the best and positive people who are really willing to help. They said that if they aren't able to recover any data, I won't be charged. So what do I have to lose? Awesome.

Now that my hard drive is deemed useless, I think I might put it in the freezer.

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After being on hiatus for more than six months, I'm back in the blogging world.

For those who don't know, I had an incredibly difficult time dealing with my previous web hosting service, Siteflip.com. They terminated my service aburptly because of a huge misunderstanding with another web site I created for someone at school.

After some investigation, these characters at Siteflip were in the business of deception and I have learned my lesson to not just go for affordable web hosting services.

Now that it's all behind me, I'm looking forward to leap to a new page in my blogging, with a new web hosting service, a new subdomain and a new name, Green Beam City.

The name 'Green Beam City' actually originated from a paper I wrote in my Sustainable Cities course. Green Beam City was a vision I developed that attempted to shed some light on how I'd like cities to be shaped in the future. It was not a particularly a groundbreaking paper, and it was certainly not out-of-this-world, but I really enjoyed writing it.

I chose this name because I think it's neat, symbolic, and makes for better marketing-- as the string "Green Beam City" was very unique on Google Search.

You will notice that I have uploaded most of the blog entries from the days of Mattism. The most recent entries and comments have disappeared because those were not backed up prior to the termination of my previous web hosting account. As for the recovered entries, the images that were associated with the entries were unfortunately not backed up. Consequently, you will find dozens of broken image links.

Also, there were many entries that I was not necessarily proud of, so took the time to "sanitize" some of my previous entries from Mattism.

I tried to continue to link to my previous RSS feed links, but I seem to be unsuccessful. Sorry for creating work those loyal readers.

Green Beam City is a working progress, but I look forward to being further distracted once again!

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