Another week, another post.

I’m going to dedicate this post to saving money in Vegas, getting around and other tips.

Water. Bottled water is a rare commodity in the desert, more so than gasoline, which retails for $3 USD a gallon. How about $3.50 USD for a half-liter of bottled water? That wasn’t a typo. So, where to go? There’s a Walgreens conveniently located on the Strip, albeit closer to the southern end near the MGM Grand. Walgreens sells bottled water for about $1.50 USD a liter, plus plenty of other merchandise (including food) at a discounted price. Hey, it’s even open 24 hours.

Food. If you love food, there’s plenty of buffets to choose from at nearly every hotel. Expect to pay upwards of $18 USD per person. That said, you get nearly unlimited portions. Have some pasta, a salad, chow mein, some more pasta and follow-up with some dessert. We found that Treasure Island and the Monte Carlo had fairly decent buffets for the prices we paid. We weren’t impressed with the buffet at the MGM Grand, which was lacking in variety and was overpriced (nearly $32 USD per person) as well. There are plenty of fast food restaurants on the Strip as well, including McDonald’s and Subway. Our favorite restaurant for dinner was Tamba (Indian food).

Commuting. As indicated in my previous post, expect to do a lot of walking. A Vegas block is not the same as a typical city block. One way to save time and commute to other hotels quickly is to use the Las Vegas Monorail. We paid $8 USD for a day pass. It’s one of the best alternatives to a taxi — no extra surcharges and no traffic congestion. Hey, there’s no gratuity fee/tip either! Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

Shows. All of the Cirque Du Soleil shows are really good. Definitely check them out. We saw Mystere and O. I love how they entertain the audience before the show starts. Remember to wear a cap if you’re bald! Otherwise, someone might decide to come up and wax your bald spot. Watch out for flying popcorn, too. The Variety show at the V Theatre in the Miracle Mile Shops (Planet Hollywood) was entertaining as well. It’s got a bit of everything — comedy, talented performers and more. The theatre itself is a bit small compared to the other venues. If you purchase the Expedia Entertainment pack ($30) with your trip, there’s a buy-one-get-one-free coupon that will pay for one V ticket ($75).

Shopping. There are plenty of places to shop in Vegas: the Forum Shops in Caesar’s Palace, the Miracle Mile Shops (Planet Hollywood), the Fashion Show Mall, exclusive shops inside various hotels and a couple of Premium Outlets. The Forum Shops in Caesar’s Palace and the Las Vegas Premium Outlets were our favorite shopping experiences. At the Premium Outlets, designer fashions (eg. Armani Exchange, Banana Republic, etc) can be had for nearly 50% of their retail prices.

Earlier last month, Sukh and I went to Las Vegas. It was our first trip to Vegas, so I didn’t know what to expect aside from the dozens of reviews I read on TripAdvisor.

Upon our arrival in Las Vegas’s McCarran International Airport, I took a whiff of the air and smelled a combination of alcohol and vomit. My boss had warned me of this. It wasn’t a strong smell, but it wasn’t faint either. Thankfully, we didn’t experience much of the dreaded stench as we quickly gathered our luggage and headed towards the shuttle area outside. Our hotel shuttle (ShowTime) was waiting, and a couple of minutes later we were checked in and sitting in the air conditioned shuttle.

Our hotel, MGM Grand, was the first stop of many on the Strip. I thought people were exaggerating when they stated it took 20 minutes to get from the front lobby to their hotel room. They were. It takes ten minutes. I wasn’t speed walking either. On the other hand, walking from the overhead pedestrian walkways to your hotel room does take approximately 20 minutes.

If you go to Vegas, be prepared to do a lot of walking. On our third day there, we walked from the Stratosphere to the MGM Grand. Yeah, crazy. It was good exercise though. After eating a Vegas dinner buffet, walking should be mandatory. Of course, there’s a monorail that runs from the MGM Grand to the Sahara, but it’s another walking adventure just to reach the monorail stations. I quote the monorail station recording at the MGM Grand, “Using this monorail, you get access to the rear of the hotel that no one else usually gets to see.” Trust me, there’s nothing much back there to see.

Don’t quote me on this, but “drink lots of water!”. You might hear that from staff and other employees. Some people appeared to make a living selling bottled water sitting in the pedestrian walkways: “One dolla! Ice cold water!”

Don’t get me started on the Mexicans handing out stripclub cards along the Strip. I almost smacked one. They don’t appear to care if you are a guy or girl, but insist on making a ridiculous flapping noise and handing you a card. Some guy walking in front of us grabbed one from a guy and tried to hand it back to his friend a couple of meters away. The Mexican hid his hand and ignored him. We ignored them too, but they flapped the cards at us all the more. Thankfully, Las Vegas has crews that clean up the cards on the ground every evening. For the record, we didn’t grab any cards, but I’m sure we walked over quite a few.

If the Mexicans weren’t enough, there are plenty of agents trying to sell timeshares. Agents from various timeshare companies are everywhere. Memorize the following line, you’ll need it if you go to Vegas: “We are leaving tomorrow!” Agents will try various lines from, “Are you married?” to “How long are you in Vegas for?” to “I have a free gift for you, follow me!”. They will promise you free shows and dinners, but you have to attend a high pressure timeshare presentation. Of course, if you walk out of the presentation, you get nothing (well, maybe a drink and a cookie).

Come back soon for some more tips!

I finally decided to upgrade my Ubuntu Server 6.10 install to the latest version, 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). Out of habit, I now wait a few weeks before upgrading to the latest version of anything to ensure any last minute bugs get worked out.

Best of all, I upgraded the entire OS remotely using SSH. Upgrading your OS remotely is usually not a good idea, but if you know what you’re doing, go for it! Ensure you backup any custom/modified configuration files just in case you press a wrong key during the upgrade! The upgrade worked well, with the exception of recompiling eAccelerator (to work with PHP 5.2.2) and updating a line (see below) of code in WordPress to make everything work smoothly.

Immediately following the upgrade, I noticed that my WordPress blog was loading very slowly and I also noticed random strings of hexadecimal characters at the top of the main blog page.

If you upgrade your server to Ubuntu Server 7.04 and run WordPress 2.1.x, ensure that you change line 832 in wp-includes/functions.php to the following (all on one line):

@header($_SERVER["SERVER_PROTOCOL"].” “.$header.” “.$text, true, $header);

Once you make the above change, your blog should load normally.

Update (5.15.2007):

With WordPress 2.2 (released today), the aforementioned WordPress fix is now irrelevant.

Opps. I just checked a few of my older blog posts and quickly realized I neglected to post part 2 of my ‘Configuring Ubuntu – Part 1′ guide.

Well, here it is!

By default, Ubuntu Server installs MySQL and PHP. However, it doesn’t tweak the system for performance. If you run a WordPress blog on your server, you may not realize that your blog could run more efficiently. WordPress relies on both PHP and MySQL. PHP scripts need to be read from a server’s hard drive, parsed by the web server software and then executed. Wouldn’t it be nice if the server could just skip the first two steps and just execute PHP scripts as quickly as plain HTML?

That’s where eAccelerator comes in. eAccelerator is a free, open-source PHP accelerator and cache. I’ve been using it for nearly seven years on personal and commercial servers. In other words, it’s very stable for a free product.

Let’s get started.
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Sukh and I are glad to be back from our yearly trip to Whistler.

To make the most of our time, we head up during the latter part of the Telus Ski and Snowboard Festival. We were up in Whistler for about five days, coming back this afternoon. There were a number of free concerts (that we never attended — too many drunk people), lots of freebies (got plenty of those) being given out by sponsors and attendees, and literally thousands of people (well, mostly skiers and snowboarders) all crowded in Whistler Village.

We tried the usual activities for the Winter season, including snowmobiling and zipping down the Skyline. As for the Skyline, we were one of the first individuals to use one of their newer lines, reaching almost 100 km/hr (not officially clocked yet) over a span of 1600 feet. It was truly an exhilarating experience, especially if you are not scared of heights. If you are, well, try it anyway!

If you are in Whistler, be sure to check out the above. Also, if you’re hungry, try these three restaurants/cafes: Tandoori Grill, Mongolie Grill and The Beet Root Cafe. All three have vegetarian food, and are very good

If you’re a regular visitor to this blog, you’ve probably noticed I haven’t updated it in 3 months.

Why? Well, I’ve been busy and < insert various excuses here >.

However, I was thoughtful and created the following list of updates. I hope they suffice for my lack of posts

1. A happy, belated New Year to everyone.
2. I bought a new cell phone, a black Sony Ericsson W810i. I got tired of flipping open the RAZR V3 while driving, so I unlocked it and sold it on eBay.
3. My wife bought me an iPod Nano for Christmas. I still haven’t used it (told ya I was busy). I hope she doesn’t read this
4. Windows Vista was released on January 30. I still haven’t upgraded to it and don’t plan to until SP1. Windows XP does everything I need it to.
5. Computer memory prices are back down to their August pricing (or better). Buy now!

That’s all for now, folks.

It’s that special time of year again.

Colorful lights and decorations are plentiful.? Malls are packed with no parking.

With everyone in a rush to pick up last minute gifts, please remember to drive carefully.? Speaking of giving, remember to support your favorite charities.? There’s no better time to give than now.? When you have more donation receipts than bills, that’s always a good thing!

Happy Holidays to everyone!