back online

I was offline for a couple of days there starting new years eve. The display on my monitor wouldn't come up.

The display has been flaky for some time. Last summer the white plug stopped working so I switched to the blue VGA cable. That worked for a few months then it failed a couple of days ago. I bought a 6 foot HDMI cable at walmart for $10 as my video card also has HDMI. Alas HDMI also didn't work.

As a check on the monitor I ran my DVD player into the monitor using the HDMI cable and that worked. I also tried running the PC output both blue VGA and HDMI into the second TV I have next to the computer. Again no display signal. I could see the lights coming on the PC and the keyboard and mouse were lit up so I was pretty sure it was the video card on the PC, especially given that the white DVI had already failed last summer.

I checked the papers and luckily the computer was still under Dell 1 year warranty. I called the number and had my service code ready. The tech was in India it was slightly hard to hear her at times but she was ok. We went through the procedures to confirm yes the monitor is turned on, yes I tried VGA and HDMI, yes I tried again plugging into the tv instead of the monitor.

Then her supervisor had a pretty good idea. She told me to check under the power cable for a connector behind the PC. There was a covered connector and after popping off the plastic cover there it was a VGA connector. I guess that's the one that ships with the PC, I had added a custom graphics card when I bought this PC. I attempted plugging that in and was a bit surprised it worked, I had a display again.

I was a bit worried they would then brush me off with the problem solved. However the Dell support was good. She agreed there is a problem with either the graphics card or the motherboard. They are actually sending a tech to replace both under warranty. She said it should happen this week and gave me a tracking number.

So far so good then. I'll be glad to get the replacement parts I don't want to be down to one display. Hopefully the repair will go smoothly and the system will be back to health. If it goes well I'll check the price and may purchase one more year of warranty coverage.

Merry Christmas

In the spirit of NBC that time they showed Conan the Barbarian as the Sunday night movie after football on Christmas Sunday back around 1985. Here's my favorite scene from Bad Santa, the reindeer fight.

club z

Haven't posted much lately. Been busy, hanging out. You know how it is.

I was at the Bay last Saturday getting some Christmas stuff. There were some sales and I got some stuff. At the cash I put in my HBC rewards card - the successor to zellers club z. I was surprised the clerk said I had enough for a $10 gift card. I immediately cashed in 80,000 points ($800 of spending) for the gift card. So that works out to 1.25% cashback as a gift card. Not a bad deal. It's good at zellers, the bay and home outfitters. The gift card didn't last long. I crossed micmac mall to zellers and bought some stuff there and got my $10 off right away. That was my first cash in for club z. I can't remember when I joined, somewhere around 1993.

Speaking of Home Outfitters here's a tip if you're going to get a big ticket item there. Each month you get something at the home-o they give you a 10% off coupon with your receipt good for the next calendar month. So near the end of the month make a small token purchase, say $5 popcorn, and get your 10% off. Then the next month go in with your coupon and get the $400 food processor or whatever big thing you want. So for the $5 purchase you get a discount coupon worth $40 in this case, an excellent deal.

Marco Di Quinzio real estate agent

I'll use this space to put in a good word for Marco Di Quinzio the friendly agent. My parents just completed the sale of their house with Marco. It was a good experience. Marco knows Fairview and has a keen pulse on the market. He was able to have a full price offer on the day it went for sale. That's outstanding in today's market. The process went very smoothly and we were all pleased with the price we got.

I knew of Marco from back in school. He was from the younger group, my younger sister knows him from being in class with him. It was an easy choice to list with Marco and it turned out really well.

Kill Bill

I caught the Kill Bill movies this week. I got them at the library on the weekend and watched them.

It was a pretty good movie. Tarantino has a unique style and Kill Bill is as good as anything else he has done. I've seen some of his other films and I liked them too. For a double movie the story was good it held my attention all through. The soundtrack added a lot to the film.

I think that's just about it for catching up on movies from the past I'd meant to watch. It was a pretty good project the last few weeks working through them. If I see any more I should try to watch them sooner.

KFC double down

The KFC double down is now finally in Canada. I had one over the weekend. It was pretty tasty. The chicken was a bit spicier than I expected. It was pretty filling.

[x] would get it again

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I caught a tv show over the weekend. I watched an episode of desperate housewives.

[ ] would watch again

I watched it somewhat regularly for about a season maybe back around 2004. I recognized the 4 original principals. There were some new characters. I was a bit surprised the show is still pretty consistent to its original form after all these years.

The weekend episode though, I didn't see it through to the end. I turned it off after around 40 minutes. It was painful to watch. It just seemed like "a very special housewives", jump the shark style. They explored one character's elderly mom is realized to have dementia, that was of course emotional.

They did explore the issue of the sexless contemporary marriage quite well in the other JTS subplot. It was presumably an allegory on contemporary married life. A woman had married a man while he was in jail. On his apparent unexpected release the husband was after his wife to act like, well, his wife. Alas wifey had a different view of it and felt it was her entitlement to refuse, while continuing to live off his paycheques of course.

After wasting time and money on expensive modern Dr Phil/Oprah style counselling "wife" continues to refuse action. Husband quickly cuts his losses and throws her out in an uplifting scene. Good riddance to her! I hope that doesn't give anyone any ideas.