OK, you know that we just came back from a 5-day vacation in Portland and that we came back to find our PC would not start up. That was very strange because it was running fine before we left and we shut it down completely before we left. It just won’t start up again and it failed to recognize the hardisk.

This PC had a good run but had its fair share of problems. I had the CPU heat sink replaced once and two hard disks replaced too on the PC. So rather than monkeying around the machine, I decided enough is enough.

Actually, I took it as an excuse to get a replacement machine without Suanne grilling me about it. LOL! Oh … am loving this notebook. With 8GB of memory running on a 64-bit Windows 7 operating system on a Core i5 processor, this is very much faster. So editing images ran very fast … snap, snap, snap!

The problem with the notebook is that it only has 640GB of harddisk space. It does not have a SATA connection, nor does it have space to install another internal harddisk. At the rate that the files are growing, I need at least 1TB more on this notebook without sacrificing disk access time. Anyone has any suggestion over this problem? I already have a WD Book thingy with USB but it is just for local backup.

We are not quite back to action yet as we need to recover almost 1TB of files from the backup disk.

My world would be perfect if the Canon 40D start giving me problem …

Update on The Eight Great Traditions of Chinese Cuisine Project

I think we are pretty much set at this point. At this stage, I can report the following:

• The 1st cuisine had been selected, researched and write-up completed. It is undergoing final edits.
• The restaurant had been selected which we feel is the best for the cuisine concerned.
• The menu (a 10-course dinner) had been carefully identified and cost is much lower than we thought.
• The target date had been identified.

The team will be doing a final scoping on Monday next week and once we get the logistics finalized we can announce the plans in detail. The awesome project team is excited over this project. We hope you are too and will take the time come out to learn, eat and enjoy each other’s company.

Oh yeah, I think I mentioned this earlier too. If all things go well, we will also have a TV crew attending. They will be there as a part of the documentary they are doing regarding food blogging and chowtimes. Do you think I should perm my hair, get my teeth whitened or something?

At Home …

Poor Suanne is sick the moment she got home from Portland. She had been coughing and coughing a lot that it hurts. And she blames me for giving her the germs. *shrugs* What that means is we are homebound this weekend — no eating out. Since I can only make instant noodles and fry eggs (yeah, I can even crack an egg with one hand), I think I will just go out and get take-outs.

Nanzaro offered to make fried rice. I told him no thanks. Although he is quite adept to making his own fried rice, it is pretty much a hit and miss … mostly miss. Shhh … don’t tell him that.

That sucks … not being able to eat out on weekends.

Anyway, the weather looks great today isn’t it? Hope you have a great weekend … and as always … eat well!

An old YouTube video for your weekend enjoyment:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpWM0FNPZSs&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

And if you are interested to know how that video is made:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArJYvaCCB3c&hl=en_US&fs=1&]