Go to Taiwan! Your laptop won't work, among other mishaps! / Kellogg

Anthony Dru Ashford, Sofi Quemera, and Brian Pearce all added me to Facebook. I have no idea who any of these people are, so I'll just mark the requests as such!

Canada beat Russia 7-3 in men's hockey, got gold AND silver in women's bobsleigh, got bronze in 5k speed skating, and silver was 3k women's speed skating relay! SO GOOD! :D [watched the Slovakia-Sweden game later, and Slovakia pulled off an upset on the defending gold medal champs... Canada plays them at 6:30 on Friday!]

Corey doesn't seem to be having a trip where everything is good:

[22:23:53] Flami: I'm procrastinating on mailing your stuff - so fret not! :D
[22:24:21] Corey: well, I'm pissed off! my laptop won't work!
[22:24:56] Flami: well, NOW you can fret :P
[22:25:04] Flami: Canada won four medals today, and beat Russia :D
[22:25:18] Flami: what happened to the laptop, by the way?
[22:25:40] Corey: I haven't seen any Olympics... I don't know what channel it's on, and Jane just says "oh, I'm not too interested in that" if I say anything about it.........
[22:25:57] Corey: I guess I could flip through 9 billion channels until I find it
[22:26:06] Corey: I'm here by myself, and she's at work
[22:26:27] Corey: it looks like the video card died somehow
[22:28:26] Corey: it wasn't working at all.. it powered on, but nothing happened. then after a while, when I turned it on, it would give me a beep code, but no picture.... now, it seems like everything works.. I can hear it boot into Windows.. I get the startup sound and all that, but no picture whatsoever. it gives some type of error right as Windows loads, but I can't see it since there's no video
[22:44:06] Flami: well, I have no Facebook friends in Taiwan, so I can't help you with that...
[22:44:23] Flami: man, that sucks
[22:45:41] Corey: looks like I can get a new video card on eBay for like $40, but it's not nearly as good as the one I have now (but anything is better than a blank screen)
[22:46:34] Corey: Dell wants $190 for a new good one
[22:46:40] Flami: yeah, that's true... are you going to get it shipped to Taiwan or home? YIKES!
[22:57:35] Corey: I'd probably have to ship it home..
[22:58:13] Flami: make that 4-3.... and that makes more sense - just have 'em ship it to home
[22:59:35] Corey: I'd like to have it work here, though... 99% of the reason why I even brought it is because the fucking plane is supposed to have power plugs, and it's my entertainment on the super long trip. coming here, I got an old plane that didn't have anything at all. it's supposed to have power plugs and a screen in each seat, so you can watch movies and play games and stuff. I didn't have anything.
[23:00:03] Corey: it was horrible, and I think I'm going to call them before I go home to complain (maybe they'll bump me up to business class or something if I do)
[23:00:30] Corey: now that means I'll probably have a plane with power plugs so I can finally use my laptop on the way home, but the damn thing stopped working
[23:00:52] Corey: so I'll have ANOTHER super long flight with nothing to do
[23:22:33] Flami: man, that really does suck... (stupid lag)
[00:04:33] Corey: well, I haven't been able to get Dell support on the online chat thing.... it's looking like it's the video card, though
[00:16:23] Flami: of all the times for it to crap out :(
[00:17:12] Corey: well, a lot of this kind of stuff ships from Hong Kong or Asia anyway, so I'm hoping that I can find one here
[00:18:08] Corey: we were at a night market, and they had the same cases (in person) for sale as what I can order from Hong Kong at home, but they only had the soft type for my phone (don't want that anyway... I want hard, and they only had pink!)
[00:18:47] Corey: my phone's case also broke on the way here... and the new battery I put in it quit working on me on the plane after like 10 minutes, so I had to put the old one back in...
[00:19:22] Corey: I even lost the string that goes through the hood on my blue hooded sweatshirt after it went through the laundry here (we found that though, at least)... everything is breaking
[00:20:02] Corey: and I just remembered that I left $55 (Taiwan money :P, that's like $1.50) in my pants pocket that probably already went through the laundry
[00:21:21] Flami: EW, pink?! man! doesn't seem like a good trip if everything is breaking or being lost :(
[00:24:13] Corey: oh, my watch battery died too
[00:24:54] Corey: so about all that's left is for my phone to explode, or maybe I'll be walking around, and my pants just completely fall down suddenly or something, despite wearing a belt :P
[00:25:08] Corey: Dell support is SLOW AS HELL
[00:25:15] Corey: they must have literally one person doing it
[00:26:27] Corey: I was number 3 in line for a long long time and I gave up... it said I needed Quicktime for this window so I thought it just didn't work. I tried in IE, but that 404's on me for some reason... now I'm back to Firefox, and I was 3 in line again... while waiting, I Googled the Quicktime thing and apparently you don't really need that. as I was again wondering if it was even working, it suddenly changed to 2 in line
[00:26:43] Corey: and there it sits... 2 :P
[00:27:15] Corey: so they must have one person manning the help lines... that, or the average help session is hours in length
[00:28:16] Corey: I'd call them instead, but I don't have a phone :P Jane's house does, of course, but I don't know how to call internationally on it.. she has a phone card thing I could probably use, if they don't put me on hold for three hours to waste it. maybe they have an international line.. I don't know
[00:28:24] Corey: I don't know how to ask to use the phone anyway :P
[00:31:40] Flami: yeah, that's not good
[00:34:38] Corey: oh, help me with my homework :P
[00:37:08] Corey: I have to ask 10 questions in English to some people tomorrow
[00:37:09] Corey: just questions.......... anything, I guess :P probably very simple things since I think most of them barely understand English. since Jane's working, her aunt is taking me to English class (I thought I was observing a foreign person teaching English, like how I'm possibly going to be doing, thinking her aunt ran the school or something... but she's TAKING an English class... .with a Chinese teacher
[00:37:10] Corey: she took me there today
[00:37:38] Corey: everyone was nice, but it's kind of weird since I'm the center of attention, and they all want to talk to me and ask me lots of questions to practice English... they wanted me to ask them questions in English, but I said I don't really know what to ask :P nobody had any suggestions for me, either (the teacher and Jane's aunt and another guy, who wanted me to ask things, speak enough English to throw out some suggestions :P)
[00:38:01] Corey: so my "homework" is to prepare questions to ask them tomorrow.......
[00:40:38] Flami: well, here's a personal question, NOT related to your homework: should I have a pot pie at 12:40 AM if I got up at 4:10 PM?
[00:45:23] Flami: as for the homework... "what kind of food do you like?" "what do you like about Taiwan?" "how are you?" "what do you do after class?"
[00:52:48] Corey: how are you is probably too basic... and they're all adults
[00:54:51] Corey: the work they were doing was reading simple conversations (a few sentences long, some slang involved) and answering a question about the conversation.. like one was about someone trying to lose weight by dieting, but it was worded something like "I've been eating less," then they have to choose "dieting" as the method of weight loss to answer the question
[00:55:19] Corey: so that seems somewhat advanced, but everyone had a lot of trouble understanding me, even the best of them :P
[01:03:35] Flami: could they understand the slang?
[01:04:30] Corey: I don't really know... the teacher explained that stuff to them, but she's doing that in Chinese, so I have no idea :P
[01:05:19] Corey: the correct answer is printed in a different color in the books, so they always know the right one (not quite sure what the point of that is when they give you the answer...........)
[01:05:48] Flami: HA. yeah, I don't know either
[01:13:47] Corey: well, I'm pretty introverted and don't really ever ask people things unless it's something related to what we're talking about or I really want to know something.. or if they ask me maybe I'll ask them the same thing back or something.... so I don't know what to ask :P
[01:16:30] Flami: you're asking the wrong person then, because I don't really ask people questions, either... other than the usual "how's it going?" or related to our ongoing conversation
[01:31:15] Corey: well be more outgoing for a few minutes, dammit :P
[01:31:21] Corey: STILL NUMBER 2 ON DELL
[01:31:46] Corey: by the time I get some help, I'll forget that the window is there, and they'll give up on me and move on
[01:35:06] Flami: dang... at least you have the whole day?
[01:46:01] Corey: I guess

Trivia fact for Thursday, Feb. 25: In medieval England, what was the occupation of someone named Kellogg? A pork butcher. The name is derived from kellen ("to kill" in Old English) plus "hog."