Save money with BC Ferries Experience card

it's a stored-value card;
if you purchase ticket with this card, you save $12.25/Vehicle and 3.45/person 12 years or older.
as far as I know there is no expiry date, it's cash card.
you need to load minimum amount for being eligible to the discount:
Passenger only, new minimum of $65 - to receive access to Passenger-Only reduced fares on participating routes; and/or
Vehicle and Passenger, new minimum of $115 to receive access to Vehicle and Passenger reduced fares on participating routes.
a little secret: from Greater Vancouver to Sunshine Coast, you only need to pay one way ticket, you do not need to pay your way back to Greater Vancouver no matter how long you stay in Sunshine Coast. http://www.bcferries.com/experience_and_coast_card/what_it_is/

Steps, tricks, tips of shopping online

1. Google make model year, get an idea of price range, or
2. if you are shopping on Ebay or Amazon or like websites, search the item, then order by price+shipping, find the most economic one, then
3. take a look at the rate/ranking of the seller, the review of the products to make decision
4. search online to see if there is any free promotion code or coupon code for the website you are shopping
5. once you find the ideal item to buy, login to the website, put it to your cart. then logout
6. go to greatcanadianrebates.ca or ebates.ca or ebates.com depending on which website you are shopping, go to the shopping website by clicking from these websites, this way you will get some rebates usually 2-5%.
7. shopping from US websites? try the Canada shipping address first, if shipping is too expensive or they do not ship to Canada? register a border receiving service here: 5dpackages.com no monthly or annual fee but with the best price best service!

How to install Ubuntu with USB stick/USB key/USB device/USB drive

1. download Ubuntu here: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop, it's an ISO file
2. download dd for windows if you are working on Windows: http://www.chrysocome.net/dd
3. put the above files in a same folder
4. if the image size > 4G, you need to format the USB with NTFS format; insert USB to PC,open command window, go to that folder, run:
dd --list and look carefully at the list of NT Block Device Objects and use the one that looks like in my case:
\\?\Device\Harddisk2\Partition0 where the description is something like Removable media other than floppy. Block size = 512.
5. run: dd bs=512K if=ubuntu-14.04.2-desktop-i386.iso of=\\?\Device\Harddisk2\Partition0 --progress
this bs parameter(bs=512K) is thousands faster than default parameter