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Missing the Matcha

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Looking at my pictures from Japan is making me miss the matcha-infused drinks and snacks. Of course, my surprising highlight was the Chocolate Cake Frappuccino with Matcha Shot. While I’m not a fan of the Frap, I ordered two of these while touring Japan.

starbucks-cake-matcha-shot

Other matcha items I should have tried…

Ah heck, I wish I tried these non-matcha goodies as well…

Missing the different items available in Starbucks Japan…

 

Ross Ala Moana Grand Opening

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Short story. I missed the grand opening of the new Ross at Ala Moana.

ross-ala-moana-signage

Downstairs by Old Navy, I got to the store at 7:30 hoping it would be open according to the posted store hours. But grand openings being grand openings, this event’s timeline superceded regular store hours. So although patrons were waiting for the store to open at 7:30, the Ross management informed us that the store would open around 9am after the opening celebration.

ross-ala-moana-line

Not wanting to wait 90 minutes to return items, I left the now-open-but-not-yet-opened Ross.

 

Vestiges of Kailua Past

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Over the weekend, I saw vestiges of Kailua’s past. The last existence of Quiznos was being erased as the former sub sandwich shop’s sign was painted over.

quizno-subs-kailua

As the renovation of Macy’s is still underway, part of the renovation uncovered its older past when Macy’s was Liberty House.

liberty-house-kailua

Dew Crazy

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On my last day in Japan, I saw a vending machine that sold Mountain Dew. This was the first appearance of Dew that I came across after two weeks traveling the cities of Nippon. This was surely a sign of what was to come.

Back in Hawaii while stopping by a Walmart, I went a little Mountain Dew crazy after discovering five new flavors! I think the Dew-S-A flavor that combines Code Red, White Out, and Voltage has been out for a bit, but I only found a bottle today. Sweet as expected, but I think I like the original better.

Dew-S-A

I had seen and tried the Black Label before, but I hadn’t seen the Green or White Label Dews.

Green Apple Kiwi
Tropical Citrus

These Spiked drinks are totally new to me. The red can features raspberry lemonade spiked with prickly pear cactus juice. The yellow can is lemonade with prickly pear cactus juice, and both are non-alcoholic beverages.

I’m definitely doing the Dew!!

Shutterfly Unlimited Pages Offer?!

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Say what?! For the first time ever, Shutterfly offered unlimited pages for a photobook at no additional charge. The typical 8×11 photobook does have a limit of 110 pages, but if free, might as well load up the book! And that’s what I did for all the ohayo2017 adventures.

Oh and an one-day promo for a free reusable shopping bag and a free deck of cards? Yes, please. Oh wait, don’t forget that free shipping code if the order is over $49. So the total comes to…

DisplayPort 1.2, MacBook Pro 2016, Dell Ultrasharp U2515H, MST

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So it looks like my “new” MacBook Pro 2016 with TouchBar and Radeon Pro 460 with 4 MB does not support DisplayPort Multi-Stream Transport (MST).  MST allows the daisy chaining of supported monitors.

I got a USB-C to DisplayPort cable from Amazon and connected it to my first Dell UltraSharp U2515H.

The display finally mirrored my MBP, but I had to move USB-C ports seemingly to “wake up” the monitor or MBP. Then I activated the DP1.2 mode on the U2515H since by default DP1.1a is the factory setting.

Then I connnected the video out of the first UltraSharp to the video in of the second UltraSharp. For this, I used the Dell-provided DisplayPort to mini-Display Port cable. I then activated DP1.2 on the mDP port on the second monitor (not sure if I had to do this but thought it made sense).

The second UltraSharp came to life and displayed a mirror of the first UltraSharp. My laptop screen showed one desktop while both UltraSharps displayed a second (mirrored) desktop. The MBP recognized one external monitor, not both.

I also tried using a DP-to-DP cable to interconnect the two DP1.2-compatible monitors together, but that didn’t change the results (yes, I activated DP1.2 for the monitor’s DisplayPort). My MBP is running macOS Sierra 10.12.5.

Now the Dell manual states that only a single external display with resolution of 2560×1440/60Hz is supported by MST, and that’s the native resolution of the Delll UltraSharp U2515H. So there’s that. I tried reducing the resolution of the Ultrasharps seeing if that had any effect, but nope.

So either MST isn’t supported/implemented in the Mac OS X software or Mac hardware or I need to try this again using monitors with lower resolutions. Or most likely, I need to forget MST and go the old fashion route of using two video connections to two monitors.

Coffee Day 16

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All good things must come to an end, and Day 16 marks the end of this memorable, caffeinated voyage to Japan.

My canned coffee drink was sadly dumped at Haneda Airport when we had to go through security for a second time. Having gone through security at Hiroshima, I figured it was safe to buy bottled drinks. But when changing to international travel at Haneda, there was another screening with typical restrictions. So there it went. Instead, I conclude this series with a playful artistic cup of my Starbucks Chocolate Cake Frappuccino with Matcha Shot.

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