Food in thought: Strawberry Crema Ice Cream
What did you do?: Vacation <3

Hi hi! Its been a while! Lazy and Productive Vacation last week. Here are my Highlights:

 

Temporary Driver’s Permit – oops its been a year since I applied for it. Apparently, when i took the test, I passed with full marks – only to find out that the expiration date of the permit is in the same day i took the written test. So I had to wait for a half-hour in line to pay and renew my permit. I have another year to practice. I’m hoping I will finally learn how to drive better and pass the Driver’s Exam.

 

AOD – Anime on Display 2010 – Its my first time checking out AOD and it so begins at the beginning of my vacation from work. I hung out most of the time at the BAAU Table supporting my fellow BAAU members in selling out yearly published comic, BAAUDown, and also their own artworks, particularly Yaki-Ika, Driftjunky13 and Pineapple-Pocky. I joined the Karaoke contest out of sheer craziness and fun and shopped around SF Japantown with the most of the gang. Quite an excuse to eat sushi, nearly the entire 2 days <3 I stayed over at Hotel Tomo, quite an interesting hotel, its commonly known as the Anime Hotel to some.

 

Speaking of BAAUDown, some members of BAAAU did insist that I make a comic contribution this year, instead of just pin-ups. My current progress is that I need 13 pages for inking, and they’ll be ready to scan and formatted for printing size. Talk about rush jobs, took most of my vacation time doing this :( I should have prioritized other things that should have been done by now but…yeah…laziness happens too.

 

Mangaka 1-2-B Atsumare – I’ve always wanted to check out what Hojo and Huangy posted about the art lessons this group gets to experience, and I didn't get the chance last year, well Huangy gave me a free ride last Sunday because he was pretty excited to teach us how to draw the human features…or drawing ugly men hehehe… check their meet schedules thru this link

 

Laptop – well, at first I wanted a Toshiba laptop because it was cheap and has all the features I wanted (can play Ragnarok Online, Browse Online, Photoshop 7) apparently at the office store, they did not have the model I wanted. So it was suggested that I get an HP Pavilion dv6-2180us.

 

This HP Pavilion dv6-2180us, is a high-performance type of laptop and probably a little more expensive then what I was expecting, however its 1GB graphics card memory, its awesome speaker scroll and wi-fi button looked sooo coool :O

And so it was purchased new right then and there with at 50$ Mail-In Rebate (which i need to remind myself to mail later…) It has the latest Windows 7 Home Premium software and a couple of trial products like the Norton Internet Security and Microsoft Office. The first thing I tried was to connect to the internet through our home wifi router. Sadly I had a hard time figuring it out how to get it connected. It seems easy to set it up manually, or to have my wireless to scan open networks. A person from JustAnswer.Com was able to diagnose my wifi adapter software to be corrupted and gave specific instructions on uninstalling its driver and restart. As soon as Win 7 noticed upon restart that there’s a hardware without a driver, it reinstalled its proper driver and I was up and surfing on the internet in mere seconds. Amazing.

 

Other features I liked were Gadgets, they’re like the Microsoft version of Apple’s Widgets which are pretty nifty when using in the office. The Hulu beta player that streams hulu videos to my enjoyment and convenience. I customized my wallpaper to Ragnarok Online. Sadly I can’t find some sort of copy for the RO sound effects to perfectly blend it into a Ragnarok-ish theme. Windows Live Writer’s also nifty :D I’m using it to upload to my blogger account without having to login through the website, I likey. Now if only they can make templates, i like set text templates, the one that blogger provides and loads every time i want to post something.

 

Sadly with all these features there are also cons to all the pros. Since I’m not used to having a laptop since its my first, i kinda learned that there are such things as ‘bad posture’ when using a laptop, and boy its hurt the first few days. Now I know that i should prop pillows in my back and sit straight while typing with an occasional breather. Another sad part of my laptop is that its battery can only survive by itself for 2 hours unplugged, less if using wi-fi, the dvd drive to watch media, and other activities. I’ve learned how to used such things as Power Plans to reduce brightness, sleep, idle and other such power-saving plans.

 

Ragnarok Online – Same old it seems. the never-ending Ice Dungeon Quest seems to have already worn itself out. These past 3 weeks Saturday WoE in Loki is at complete chaos (no pun intended over the Chaos Server), servers dying, characters not being able to log in, main web page not loading, so is the official forums. All seems to be in utter chaos, and same occurred last Wednesday, causing the full shut-down of the servers for an hour or so, details can be found here. On a side note, the Valentines Quest is up and getting a random pet egg seems cute. Time to hunt more then 60 Well-Baked Cookies for the Quest!

 

Pokemon- Pikachu colored Pichu- I was able to catch up, as today’s the last time I’ll be able to acquire them from Gamestop into my Diamond and Platinum. I await for the Ragnarok Online DS game to come out the following week.

 

That’s it for now, keep smiling!