Tony Du’s Blog

Nov 30

Thanksgiving

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holiday |

11 30th, 2006| icon3

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It has been a while since i update this website and my girlfriend is nagging at me for paying useless hosting money. I keep on telling myself to blog more frequently but i couldn’t find the time to do so. Hopefully this will get better from now on. I’m planning to write at least one blog a week (keeping my fingers crossed )
Anyway, thanksgiving this year was great for me. Chrissy came here visit from Thursday (thanksgiving) to monday. It was very eventful. I was planning to order food for thanksgiving dinner but i couldn’t find any place so i decided to cook ( >.< ) I also decided to surprise her by lighting up my apartment with 50 candles along with a full thanksgiving dinner (roasted turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, bake potatoes, corn, biscuit, and veggies). Everything was very yummy. We were both stuffed just like the turkey :). After the dinner, we decided to go shopping at 12 am but didn't get to the outlet center until 1am. I thought there would be plenty of parking space but dang, i was soo wrong. It took us a while before we (luckily) found spot. It was very cold as well but we bought a decent amount of clothes. By 4am we were soo tired and hungry so we decide to go back to the circuit city near my apartment. We stood inline but wasn't able to buy much because there was soooo many people before us. By the time we got inside, most of the good deals were gone. The rest of the day (friday) was just resting, sleeping and roasting in bed :).
The next day (saturday), i took her to little saigon in seattle. We went to dinner at the melting pot restaurant. It was great and yummy. See for yourself
Fondue Dinner
We had Quattro Formaggio Cheese Fondue and Chopped Ceasar Salad as appetizer. The entry was Fondue Fusion included: lobster tail, filet mignon medallion, porcini-rubbed strip sirloin, breast of chicken, tuscan herb breast of chicken, black tiger shrimp, sun-dried tomato and mascarpone cheese ravioli with Court Bouillon cooking style. Our dessert was Torino Hazelnut Chocolate fondue.
Before the dinner, Chrissy was depressed because she thought that she lost the first bracelet i gave her. The food definitely cheered her up. On the way home, we found the bracelet which was dropped in the my apartment garage. One of the link on the bracelet was broken and it fell off chrissy’s hand. We were definitely lucky that night
On sunday, we went to pottery painting. We paint the pottery for each other. It was very long and very fun as well. After that we did a little shopping since we were around the shopping area anyway. Then we went home and cooked dinner together. We also baked cake. The only problem that created is now i have sooooooooooooo much left over to finish. This will probably take me a week :(.
Monday morning, i took Chrissy to see around Microsoft campus and my little office. She wrote all the crazy stuff on my white board. I hope my mentor (officemate) doesn’t mind that. In the afternoon, we packed up and then went to Seattle Center. The weather wasn’t helping though. It was very cold and snowing. We then go to have dinner Cheesecake factory. I loved the firecracker salmon rolls there. It was sooooooooo yummy.
Cheesecake factory's Firecracker Salmon Rolls
After that we drove the the airport. The traffic was horrible because of the snow storm. The highway was very icy and i saw at least 15 cars in accidents. It took us 2.5 hours to get to the airport which normally take me 20 minutes. So Chrissy was late for her flight. However, she got booked on another flight which supposedly get her to Boston about the same time as the original flight. But the pilot got stuck in bad traffic on the highway to the airport so her flight was delayed 1 hour causing her to miss the connection. Chrissy ended up waiting 6 hours at Cleveland airport. It was a horrible experience. As for me, the ride back wasn’t as bad but i saw a huge accident on the other side of the highway. There was a truck and around 10 cars involved so they had to close the highway. I had never seen so many accident and cars involved in one night before. It was crazy.
That was my thanksgiving. It was great, fun, eventful and very crazy

Nov 30

The first computer that i build for myself (part 1)

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Tech |

11 30th, 2006| icon3

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After i started to work at Microsoft, i really want a decent desktop so i can use at home and bring my laptop to work. Of course, i would still use my laptop for personal purpose but will not be as much as my desktop. So i decided to build for myself a decently powerful computer. I dont need a super gaming machine but something that would be able to play game with ok experience. I was thinking about getting an intel system with core 2 duo processor but the motherboards for these chips are still pretty expensive. I only want to spend around 1 thousand for this computer.
Here are the parts for my computer (mostly from newegg)

The Case
Coolermaster CAC-T05-UW Centurion 5 Mid Tower Case (Silver) ($56)
Case