Archive for March, 2009

Just Another Day…

Mar
24
2009

Happy BirthdayWell today I hit the 2-8 mark. I usually love celebrating my birthday, planning and organizing entertaining games and activities, preparing tasty food, or just going out with friends. But this year it’s different–my birthday actually snuck up on me. Probably due to the fact that funds are rather limited right now and I’m focused on school.

So I’m this much closer to 30, and as frightening as it may seem I’m glad to have a lot of perspective in my life. I am thankful for wonderful friends (one in particular ;) ) and family, and that I’m able to start another year in my life, looking forward to a bright future.

The weather is nice outside. Thank goodness all the snow has melted. I should do some spring cleaning later on. And I’ll be sure to bake myself a chocolate birthday cake tonight.

Hmm… hopefully the tax-man got me something nice… like a big refund. :)

Norton Knows Customer Service

Mar
16
2009

Norton from SymantecI turned on my computer this morning only to find out that my Norton 360 All-In-One Security software didn’t load up. When I tried manually to start the program, I got a message telling me that my trial has expired and that I needed to activate it. Trial? Excuse me? I purchased the software from Future Shop last September and still have over 5 months of subscription coverage. So I’m thinking, what’s going on? I even tried clicking the “activate” button on the program, but after it was authorizing for a couple of seconds the window just closed. So I decided to visit Norton’s support website for answers.

I noticed a prompt to connect to a live chat with a technician. I figured that I didn’t want to be stuck on the phone for hours like I have been with other company’s customer service departments. I was connected with a technician within 5 minutes. After explaining the problem he suggested opening a remote connection so that he can try to figure out the issue and solution first hand. After assuring me that none of my personal files would be tampered with, I gave him the a-okay and he took control of my computer.

Now I knew that this type of technology was available, but I didn’t realize that consumer software companies were actually making use of it. So I quickly went to the kitchen, got a snack and sat back while “Selvakumar” tried to find the glitch in my Norton software (seeing my computer have a “mind of its own” was cool). After getting the same error message I did, and trying to repair the 2.0 version of Norton 360 that I had, he offered to install Norton 360 3.0 for free for me, since it would most likely solve the weird issue I was having with my version.

Of course I said yes, and he even restarted my computer and installed the program for me.  After re-opening the chat window,  he gave me a “welcome back” message, asked if there was anything else, that I’d probably be contacted by email in regards to completing a survey about the support I just had and bid me a good day.  Now Norton is working perfectly (well for now at least) and I couldn’t be more grateful for the help of the technician.

Kudos to Symantec! You have one happy customer right here. :)

Valentine Sweets

Mar
05
2009

Yes, I know I’m a couple of weeks off (school leaves little time for blogging), but here are some photos of some yummy treats I made for Valentine’s Day weekend.  I’ve been on a baking frenzy as of late. I need to replenish my butter…

Cream-Filled Chocolate Cupcakes with Strawberry Icing
To make this yummy icing simply blend 2 or 3 fresh strawberries in a blender, mix with some confectioner’s sugar and a drop of red food colouring.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Strawberry Icing

Shortbread Cookies
A very basic recipe: Flour, butter, confectioner’s sugar and cornstarch. I added some vanilla extract in my version for a little extra flavour.

Shortbread Cookies

Mousse-Filled Chocolate Cups with Berry Coulis
After taking a culinary workshop run by Tatiana (a classmate at school), I just had to try this at home. It came out delicious. I used a mixture of strawberries and raspberries for the coulis.

Mousse-Filled Chocolate Cups with Berry Coulis