Router

As the resident IT support at home (even though both parents work in IT....they refuse to do IT at home), I have the joy of installing routers. Now, our house has a perfectly functional wireless router downstairs, but they wanted another switch upstairs for their desktops (and dad's work laptop). The other weekend, my dad went and got another identical router, IDENTICAL to the one we have downstairs. Most routers can act as a switch as long as you plug in a lan line from the existing router into one of its lan ports (not the WAN port!). Well, except we have an identical router, which shares the same factory default IP, subnet mask...etc as the original. Joy to the world. Take a guess at how well the new router acting as a switch works.

Laughs out loud

Check out the latest episode of the Big Bang Theory (epi 415). Very funny. Cracked me up. I really do like Leonard.......and lmfao! This is a good episode. Kudos to the writers.

Blog Description

lol. I was just updating the blog description, and I misread the character limit as word limit. Thus, I now have a long-ass description that cannot be posted as a description. I left the first little part as the Blog Description, the rest are below:


I (Mar) hope the reviews on products I post are of help to potential shoppers. I try to be as picky and detailed as possible, to give the reader true idea of what to expect.

I aim for this blog to be an outlet for my thoughts (much like my diary), to act as a rough chronicle of my daily life. I will try to update frequently, so subscribe/bookmark and check back often if you're interested.

Review: Crabtree and Evelyn Lip Butter and Hand Cream

If you have ever looked to the blogs I follow, you'll notice I follow a fair bit of fashion blogs. So, with that inspiration in mind, I would like to offer my personal review of beauty products once in a while. I know I myself personally will google a beauty product before buying, because you (at least me) can never fully gauge how some products are at the store, especially when you're being pressured by sales associates, friends, or just time constraints. I'll often buy something, only to realize later its texture wasn't what I remember it to be or that it had a funky smell I couldn't smell fully at the store. So I will attempt to warn and give a review on products that I get or have. I am NOT being paid to do this. I bought everything with my own money and received no discounts or bonuses that is not given to every shopper. Now, onto the review!

Crabtree and Evelyn Hand Cream:

I've been using C&E's hand cream for a couple years now. I got my first tube as a gift from a family friend when she came over to stay in Toronto for a medical residence. I got the Rosewater Hand Therapy, which I continue to love and use to this day.

It's a rich hand cream that smells like roses, not the cheap sweet rose smell, but fresh and fragrant (it really does smell like real roses...just like the ones from my garden during late summer). Another plus for me at least is that it is actually made with rosewater. Using rosewater to wash your hands and such reminds me of a really really good spa or the extravagent and rich European kings and queens of the past. (You know, instead of using lemon water to clean their hands after meals, they use rosewater. Come to think of it, lemons were probably more precious than roses back then.) The shea butter is expected in a hand cream like this, so not much more to say about that. C&E has tons of different scents, and they usually all each have a unique ingredient in them (ie. Rosewater contains...rosewater. Lavender has Lavender oil..etc).

I find this hand cream less oily than other hand creams. It's still very thick and rich, but it's not oily per say. It is absorbed quickly and leaves your hand feeling super mositurized. One thing I did notice was that if I put too much on, it makes my palms kind of damp. It's not an oily feeling, but a slightly damp/moist one. It's nice though in the winter if you're not doing anything with your hands to just let them absorb and be surrounded by moisture.

Overall, this is a nice hand cream that's a nice treat for these harsh winter days. I just got 2 for $25 at Eatons last weekend, so they will cost you about $15 with tax a tube. They last a long time (at least for me), and a tube lasts all winter for me. I usually share the second tube with my best friend or mom....or save it to give away as a present later. The cream has a pretty long shelf life (I found my first tube a while back, and it's still good...and it's 2 years old now), so it can be stored for a while. I don't recommend 2 years though...but they'll easily last half a year or so I'm sure.

Crabtree and Evelyn Lip Butter:

Last weekend, I was at Eatons and I stopped by the store (2nd floor...on the south side (queen station) by the apple store) to pick up a gift for Ben's mom. I ended up getting a Hand Polish, two regular tubes of Hand Therapy (2 for $25....So I got two. They're $18 each normally), and a small travel sized Hand Therapy. They were giving a gift of 2 travel sized Hand Therapy (La Source and Rosewater...my two favourite ones!) and 2 Lip Butter (Vanilla Creme Brulee and the Mint one) for any purchase over $50, thus the extra travel sized hand cream.

I used the Mint one the day of since I'm usually not fond of vanilla or food favoured products. The mint one was really underwhelming. It really was not anything special and I would not spend $7.50 on it (and luckily I didn't). The Creme Brulee on the other hand smells divine. It doesn't have any taste, but it smells SOOOOO good. I feel like I'm eating dessert just by smelling it. YUM.

The texture of the Lip Butter is like....well....butter at room temperature. I honestly feel like I'm just putting butter on my lips. It's a little too liquid for my preference. However, it does leave your lips decently mositurized and shiny for a while. But once again, it's just like putting butter on my lips. It might be just the thing you like, I don't personally like it because I'm more of a lip balm and lipstick kind of girl. But that's my preference. If you're looking for a rich, creamy lip product that smells divine, this might be it for you. Shea butter is listed as its top ingredient, so it's a somewhat natural lip product.

I think I will be using the mint one to treat my cubicles...><" since I'm not super fond of it and I don't really need another lip product. The consistancy and such makes it a good candidate for the cubicles I think. I will continue to use the Creme Brulee one since it just smells so good and is a nice treat for the senses.

Overall, I would not pay $7.50 for a Lip Butter. However, I do recommend you to stop by the Crabtree and Evelyn store and buy some hand cream, soap....etc and get the freebie gift (it's worth $25 if you bought the stuff in it separately). Shelf life wise for the Lip Butter, it doesn't look like it's going to have a long one. So share it if you got two and you're not fond of one, or find some other purpose for it. The tube is 14g, so there's quite a bit of product there to use.

UPDATE: The lip butters go bad after about 10 months to a year. Their consistency changes and you get grain-like particles (size of loose flowing salt) in them (I believe it's the fat in the shea butter). So don't buy a bunch of these thinking they'll last. They won't.

lazy day...

i just spent all day watching tv shows.....grey's anatomy, house, bones, big bang theory. I did absolutely NOTHING today, and it feels sooooooo good! I think it was a pretty prefect winter sunday. =)

Dear Sony pt 2

Alright, so I've been using the laptop for a while, and I noticed another design fault. The power button, is too soft and located at the edge of the computer. now, the light makes a nice addition, especially as it allows a user to know the status of the computer when the lid is closed, but the button is in the way and wayyy too sensitive. I will accidently push the button about once an hour, if not more. It's not a big big deal since i can just wake the computer up again within a few seconds, but it still is rather annoying.

however, I will give credit where credit is due, and the new computer IS quite nice. the fan is quieter and it's a lot cooler than the CR computer (even after i got the cooling unit changed). The web quick access key is nice, it launches your default browser. Not much else to say so far.

on a completely side note, I got a nail polish yesterday that completely matched my EA laptop. lol.

Freedom of Speech vs Verbal Harassment

I was on the subway today, coming back from lunch, when i encountered a scene that irrates and upsets me to no end. A man was in the middle of the car, loudly proclaiming his belief that immigrants and their children should all learn to speak english, and that allowing multiculturalism was ruining the canadian culture.

Now, I fully support the freedom of speech. This man had absolute right to proclaim his opinion on his thoughts and opinions on this matter, however, he apparently started this rant (and i say apparently because I finally started listening to what he was saying about half way thru when he started speaking directly at me and my friend. I'm chinese and she's indian fyi.) he apparently started this rant because a mother was speaking or maybe teaching her young daughter in a foreign language. The part I find most upsetting was the fact he directed a good half to a quarter of it to said mother and child, which I find utter upsetting. While the mother may have shrugged it off, I wonder how the child felt. I wonder how much of it she understood, because she was relatively young, but I am sure she understood the meaning and intent of the speech.

This grown man had just verbally assulted a small child because of her country of origin, her race, her culture, her extra knowledge of a language, and her hertiage. Now, I admit I did absolutely nothing about it except say loudly to my friend, so what level of education do you think he has? as a response to when he started talking about how education and intellectural communication. This is partially because of my own cowardice, my stop was the next stop, my suspicion the man himself had a mental problem, and because I didn't know what to do. However, in retrospect, I wish I had stepped in and asked the man if he can refrain from speaking so loudly, or even asking the mother and child if they were alright.

During the attack, and I do call that since he attacked me verbally as well, all I could feel was rage, hatred, and hurt. I thought the days of attacking people publicly because of their cultural differences were over, especially since this was Toronto, one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. However, this man proved me wrong and I didn't even have to guts to help the victims. I know what it is like to be bullied because of being foreign, and I hope no body has to feel that ever here in Toronto.

Since I have left the scene already and will probably never encounter the mother and daughter or the man again, I can only leave behind my wishes. I wish that the mother and child can forget about the attack and keep embracing their culture and language, for that is what makes Canada's, especially Toronto's, culture. The mish-mash of unique and 'foreign' cultures IS canada's culture. Sure, we archtype canada as the land of the beaver, beer, caribou, seal hunts..etc, but we are also where millions of people have a second or third language, where we celebrate chinese new year, Diwali, hanukkah, Eid, and countless other culturally diverse holidays. I hope the man gets a chance to learn the beauty of other cultures, get help if he is mentally ill, and learn what it really means to be canadian.

EA is a slight improvement

alright, so i went ahead and started using my EA laptop today. Overall, the feel of the laptop is better. it's more balanced and works better as a LAPtop because of it. the trackpad on this one seems to be more responsive and slightly smoother. (sony, are you loosing your consistent quality? i thought you'd make each and everyone the same.)

however, i would like to note the differences. the EA came as a home premium, complete with sony's collection of bloatware, whereas the for the EB, i paid extra for it to have a 'fresh start'. Now, there are a LOT of application differences between the two. I'm going to have to spend some time figureing out which to keep on the EA and which to uninstall from the system. The extra applications seriously put a damper on the startup speed though. the two cpu's differ by 0.3ghz, which isn't that big of a deal, yet the EB has a MUCH faster load time. Time to get out the pruners and do some snipping on the background applications.

Right, that's all i have to say about the laptop. I'm glad I got a EA for myself. the EB was driving me bonkers.