Food Poisoning

Frost Damage in AZ

Our Ficus tree after a weekend of below freezing weather. Typically they are green year round.

Water show at home?

We opened our bathroom door and noticed that there was water all over the place. There was probably half and inch of water on the floor. My first thought was "Did our pipes freeze and burst?" since there have been a lot of people with pipes bursting due to the cold weather we've had in AZ lately. But I soon discovered that there was a leak coming from the hot water valve under the sink. You can see the old valve in the picture with the plastic knob. The plastic had broken and water was leaking from there. Quick trip to Home depot and I came back with a much better quality ball valve that only needs a quarter turn to turn off the water. I'll be changing out all of our valves so that they don't break again. Good thing this didn't happen while we were on vacation etc. It could have caused some real damage and mold problems.

World's Largest Video Screen?

Picture of the water show at Bellagio over the holidays. Microsoft just used the water show to give further hints to their vanishingpointgame.com You can watch the show here. It's actually pretty cool. They use the water spray to serve as the screen for a projector. Definitely not HighDef but possibly the world's largest. You can also watch the youtube videos of Loki and the vanishing point game here.

Mahalo Roy

We got a coupon in the mail to eat at Roy's and receive a complimentary Santoku knives and a cutting board. Since I'm a sucker for a coupon, we made reservations at Roy's at Opentable.com. As a side note, we've found that only 1 restaurant has ever read the comments that you can leave for the Maitre d' and that was Ming Tsai's Blue Ginger in Wellseley, MA. Christy is deathly allergic to nuts and everytime we make a reservation, I put that in there. Only Blue Ginger has ever relayed that info to our server where she made sure we know which dishes had nuts in it. Sorry for the digression. So after spending a minimum of $75 in order to get the knives, our server tells us that we got the last one. Not sure that is true but as long as I get them, I don't really care.

The knives are okay. The quality isn't that good and steel is not that sharp. In the picture, I have our Wusthof Santoku knive (black) in there as well for comparison. I highly recommend that knife which costs more than the dinner. Funny thing is, we actually don't even need these knives. We could probably use the cutting board. Maybe I could sell these on ebay but a quick search shows you can buy them at HSN.com for $15. Maybe next year I'll use one knife as a white elephant Xmas gift.

New Toy

Our Xmas gift to ourselves was a new DSLR Camera -- The Nikon D40. We haven't really had much time to play with it. I'm sure we'll have lots of time to practice come June. Ken Rockwell has a pretty nice review on his site and a recommended user guide.

One thing this camera has as compared to the Canon's is Auto ISO. Auto ISO is where the camera will automatically increase the ISO value so that the camera can keep the programmed shutter or aperture. This way you don't have to keep setting and resetting your ISO values.

Dim Sum Vegas Style

Out of all the times I've had dim sum, I don't think I've ever paid more than $11 a person. And I was stuffed. Vegas casinos are now cashing in on dim sum with their all-you-can-eat buffet. Bellagio charges $49.88 for their buffet. Notice, it doesn't include a beverage. This is similar to spending $30K for a luxury car to only find out that the floor mats are extra. I'm sure the tea costs $5 a cup. Even their normal buffet is only $34.


Not to be out done, Wynn charges $48.88 for theirs. Might be worth it just for that extra lucky 8.

Private Helicopter for Xmas

Nothing like getting an RC Helicopter for Xmas. The Picco Z is the smallest and lightest with Auto-stable technology. Overall, it seems to work pretty well. The helicopter has 2 channels so you can only control up/down and left/right. Controlling it isn't as easy as it looks but overall still pretty easy. Our cats aren't even really spooked by it. I was expecting them to attack it as it flew by but nothing. They acted like they've seen miniature helicopters before. The helicopter is pretty resilient and holds up well to crashes. There's even a user group with modifications for this thing.