Vancouver DotNet CODER

Nice hotel, nice conference, there were over 2000 attendees. Amazing.

(Vancouver, BC) – “We just wanted to do something to help,” says Wild Rice co-owner Andrew Wong of his and partner Tom Poirier’s decision to raise money for the Tsunami Relief Fund. “We decided that the easiest way for us to help was to donate a portion of our receipts to the Canadian Red Cross,” says Poirier. “From there it was a matter of ‘who else can we include?’ We called a few friends and colleagues and quickly came up with 11 other restaurants willing to participate. Everyone we called was enthusiastic about the idea and eager to get involved.”
-http://www.urbanvancouver.com/node/view/1470

from : http://www.wildricevancouver.com/TsunamiRelief2.pdf
Participants in Restaurants for Relief are:

Banana Leaf - 820 W. Broadway 604.731.6333

Banana Leaf on Denman - 1096 Denman Street 604.683.3333

Bistro Pastis - 2153 W.4th Avenue 604.731.5020

Elixir - 350 Davie St. 604.642.0557

Fiction - 3162 W. Broadway 604.736.7576

Lucy Mae Brown - 862 Richards St. 604.899.9199

Monsoon Restaurant - 2526 Main St. 604.879.4001

Montri’s Thai Restaurant - 3629 W. Broadway 604.738.9888

Rubina Tandoori - 1962 Kingsway Avenue 604.874.3621

Provence Marinaside - 1177 Marinaside Crescent 604.681.4144

Provence Mediterranean Grill - 4473 West 10th Avenue 604.222.1980

Tamarind - 1626 W. Broadway 604.733.5335

Tangerine - 1685 Yew St. 604.739.4677

Wild Rice - 117 W. Pender 604.642.2882

London Drugs

Good store, nice service, I bought a lot stuff from several branchs. Like fax machine, phone, my Canon Rebel camera. Price usually is good for promotion products, but a little high for computer related stuff.

Future Shop / Bestbuy

Interesting store, big franchise, promotion stuff sometimes is very cheap. I got my router there 25 bucks after rebate! But the service is very different between locations. The branch in Downtown Vancouver, Coquitlam Center, fine. But for the branch near North Road, poor service. If the sales find you can not make decision today, they just don't want to spend time on you any more. And I even came across that 2 sales give totally different story about one product. And many accesseries for computer is extreme expensive. Btw, sometime you may find you wonder around for 20 minutes but just can not find a sales can help you. So be careful about which branch to go and do research online before your walk in.

Lense and Shutter

One of my favorite camera store. Good service, price is not bad, film is cheap and quality is good. Sales know a lot about photograph.

Broadway Camera

The store actually is 3-4 independent stores, so quite comfusing. Price is not very high but service is not good. Sales like to play tricky stuff. I don't like them.

bhphotovideo.com

Nice online camera store, price is OK, and you can find almost anything here. Good reputation, ordered from them several times, no accident or suprice. Nice.

I begin to move my stuff to TDBank.

HSBC charge me 4 dollars per month for nothing, I got free service from TDBank. HSBC's access card is bad too, if you buy anything with the access card you will be charged 1.5 dollars. Other bank's card is free.

The people in HSBC is so busy, I tried to open a stock trading account, they can no find anyone to help me at first, and then some lady try to help me but she don't know how much the acount will cost me per year! And after I fill out the long long application form and waiting for many many day for nothing. I just walked out .

Maybe the tiny customers like me is never important for them. Even most of my $$$ was in the bank and some account managers were quite friendly, but the bank is just not good enough.

About 3-4 years ago, I even have a bad experinece with a casher in the bank (oh yes ,I still remember it, even years later. Bad experinece always stay in memory.). And I can not get a credit card from then in my first year in Vancouver, even some branchs of HSBC can do it but the branch my account sit in cannot! What is that! The bank is good at one thing better than other banks : international TT, looks it is a little cheaper, I will keep the account.

TDBank's people looks much more friendly, lasttime I just walked in and ask how I can open a stock account, they find someone to help me in 10 minutes, and open the account without asking me to fill in stupid long forms, even setup new credit lines for me cause I credit history looks good. Great! Why HSBC never offer me this!

I just can not blieve how many years I just stay with them even they are definitly do not worth it.

It is good.

Nice movie. Reasonable story, good sound effect, astonishing computer graphic, excellent.

"Vice-regal costs soar to $35M
The cost of maintaining the office of Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson grew to $35 million last year, a Commons committee learned yesterday, when it was revealed that other government departments kicked in $15 million to cover expenses last year. The Governor General's budget was thrust into the spotlight after reports of Madame Clarkson's $1-million circumpolar trip to Russia, Finland and Iceland."
http://www.canada.com/national/story.asp?id=F9DE521A-F52C-495F-AC50-B82A0433A61E

It's said MPS were "astonished", so what?

The provincial government has changed its mind about the Georgia Straight, and now says the Vancouver weekly is clearly a newspaper.

The province had stripped the Straight of its sales tax exemption and slapped it with a $1-million tax bill, claiming it contained too much advertising to qualify as a newspaper.

http://vancouver.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=bc_paper20031010

Title: An overview of IT job market in Vancouver and British Columbia - specifically the jobs outlook for .NET professionals
Date and Time: Monday 2003/10/06 6:30 PM
Location: BCIT Burnaby Campus, Building SW9, Room # 110
As usual, free pizza and pop will be served at 6:30 PM and the meeting will start at 7:00 PM. We thank CNC-Global for covering the cost of the pizza and pop. In addition, they will be giving out surprise door prizes.
netbc.ca


pizza....pizza....

"In handing down his verdict, the Provincial Court judge in Surrey said the 17-year-old driver made no attempt to stop, as he went through a stop sign and into the path of a truck on Delta port way.

The car was cut in half."

www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=cbc/vancouver_home&articleID=1425378

Dangerous........................