The personal blog of a regular guy

One thing that I lugged back from home on my journey back to school was a set of new speakers. The model is Corsair’s Gaming Audio Series SP2500 2.1 speakers. From what I’ve read online, these are very nice as far as 2.1 computer speaker sets go, and with a price tag of around $200, they’d better be. Luckily for me, I didn’t pay for the speakers; I won these speakers from a contest, which is of course awesome. My parents had no use for it, so I decided to lug it all the way from Vancouver to my rented apartment… to connect them to the TV and use them as “home theater” speakers instead. I have a laptop and I don’t really play games these days, so the speakers are only probably going to be used for watching movies, and I like to watch movies with the larger screen of the TV. This is not the SP2500′s intended purpose, but you make do with what you have.

Anyways, this is a post just to show some photos of my new speakers and write some initial thoughts. I don’t think I’m qualified to write a actual review for these speakers or any sort of audio equipment. As always, please excuse my crummy photos. I only have a not very new cellphone as my camera.

The SP2500 came in quite a large box.

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In places that have cold winters (such as the place I’m in right now), cars that haven’t been driven in a while sometimes won’t start because of a dead or low battery. It didn’t happen to my car, but it did happen to a friend’s VW Jetta and I was asked to help jump start the car. I’ve never done a jump start before and also haven’t touched the battery of my car before, so this was a new experience for me. The friend had jumper cables, and connecting the cables is pretty easy and there are plenty of online guides (such as this one) on the topic. Basically, you hook up the positive terminal of the dead battery with one end of the red cable and then the positive terminal of the good battery with the other end of the red cable. Then you connect the black cable to the negative terminal of the good battery and then connect the other end of the black cable to an exposed metal part of the dead car’s engine bay. Once that is done, start the good car, and then try to start the dead car while the good car is running. Once dead car has started, keep it running and disconnect the jumper cable in reverse order of connection.

Although the process itself is simple, it took us a hour or so to finally get success. The main reason is because I’ve never messed with the battery of my own car and because my car is designed differently than most cars. Unlike most cars where the battery is under the hood, the battery of the Mercedes ML 350 is in the floor behind the front passenger seat. There are leads for the battery accessible in the engine compartment, but they have plastic covers and it took me forever to remove those covers. I guess the original owner never touched those leads and that might be why they were so hard to pull off. When we finally got everything hooked up and tried the jump start, it didn’t quite work. The Jetta made the cranking noise instead of the clicking noise when it wasn’t connected to my car, but it couldn’t start. Thankfully, another friend returned and offered up his VW Golf, and with the Golf we were finally able to jump start the Jetta. I guess it takes one VW to jump start another VW.

Anyways, this was a good learning experience. I’m not sure why we couldn’t jump start with my car, but it might have something to do with the design of the car. Perhaps Mercedes cars aren’t built for jumping other vehicles. If my car ever gets a low or dead battery, hopefully my friends’ cars can jump start mine. I’ll make sure to take my car for a spin every few days to make sure the battery doesn’t drain though.

My four week long winter vacation back home has come to end, and so I flew back to the small town where I am pursuing graduate studies. Obviously, I wish I could stay home longer, but I have work to do and classes to attend. It’s the life of a graduate student. I am already fortunate that my adviser was nice enough to let me return home for so long, so I can’t complain too much. My time at home wasn’t quite as productive as last year’s winter vacation, and so I’m sure I have plenty of work to do.

So what have I been up to during my time back in Vancouver? Not much as usual. In terms of research related things, I had some assigned reading to go through, but I don’t think I really understood anything I read. I don’t think I was that productive with my projects either. I mostly just stayed home and relaxed, and I didn’t go anywhere far. I went shopping a few times, and also hung out with some friends from college. Since I was back in Vancouver with its excellent selection of Chinese restaurants, I couldn’t resist eating out. The area that my grad school is in has some Chinese food places and they aren’t horrible, but they are not comparable to what Vancouver has. The fact that I ate more while at home in combination with less exercise meant that I gained around 10lbs during the break. It’s not that I didn’t exercise, but I didn’t exercise as often or as hard as when I am at school. I did play more badminton while I’m back, but that wasn’t quite enough to make up for extra intake. I don’t think my badminton skills has gotten any better or worse than before, and I probably need to train a bit to become better.

In terms of things that I actually accomplished while back at home, I helped my father replace a heating element on my family’s flat top stove. The element burnt out some time during the year and my father didn’t get around to fixing it. I am no handyman, but in this age of the internet it’s easy to find information online on how to fix stuff, and replacing the element wasn’t a particularly difficult task. I also helped my dad’s trusty but aging Toyota Echo pass its emissions inspection. I bought a car diagnostic trouble code scanner back from the States to investigate the check engine light on the Echo. The Echo is getting a bit old and has high mileage, so it’s not really worth it to spend hundreds of dollars to fix anything. The check engine light was a persistent problem though, and I thought the car would have trouble passing even if we turned off the check engine light with the scanner. However, by some stroke of luck, our trusty little Echo managed to pass its emission check against all odds, and now my dad can keep on driving it for two more years.

So that’s all for my boring little winter vacation. Staying at home over the break has been very nice, but I still have a Ph.D degree I need to finish. It’s time to get back to class, get some research work done, and also to work off the pounds that I’ve gained during this vacation.

One thing that I brought back home was an Autel Maxiscan MS300 OBD-II Code Reader that is used to read diagnostic trouble codes from cars. My father’s aging 2000 Toyota Echo had its check engine light on and bringing it to a mechanic to read the code costs >$70, so we decided to try an inexpensive code reader instead and at around $20 on Amazon, the Autel reader fit the bill. This post contains some pictures of the code reader and how well or not well it worked for us.

The Autel Maxiscan MS300 OBD reader with manual and CD

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I am at home now waiting for Christmas, and that means another semester of graduate school had come and gone. This was my third term as a grad student and also my final term as a Masters student. Because I had to take my doctoral qualifying exams and finish my Master’s thesis, I only took two courses in the past semester rather than three for my previous two semesters. As always, here are my thoughts on the courses.

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It’s the holiday season once again, and like millions around the world I traveled back home to spend my winter vacation with my parents. I managed to get off my exams slightly earlier than last year so I was able to travel yesterday (Dec 20) versus last year where I flew back on Dec 22. Since the place I study at is rather far from Vancouver, traveling back will always be a bit of a pain, but the prospect of spending almost a month at home is well worth the effort.

I don’t have any big plans for my winter break. My adviser expects me to do work, so I can’t just bum around and do nothing. I’ll probably just stay around Vancouver/Richmond. I’ll likely be eating out a lot given that the town I go to school at can’t compare with Vancouver in terms of the Chinese food. On the other hand, it means I’ll probably gain a few pounds during my vacation. I’ll have to make sure that I get enough exercise even when I’m at home.

I wish all of you a Happy Holidays .

I bought an automotive GPS online on during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and this week I finally received my purchase. This post is just my first impressions on my new GPS and to post some (badly taken) pictures of my brand new gadget.

The front of the nuvi 1490LMT

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My second Thanksgiving holiday weekend in the States has arrived. Before the holiday weekend, I finished up my Master’s thesis and handed it in to my university. Before handing the thesis in, I did a presentation on my research for my adviser and a small number of professors and colleagues in the department, and I think that went pretty well. Unlike a PhD dissertation defense, I’m not being evaluated on my presentation, so there wasn’t much pressure. My thesis went through a couple of revisions to make sure that the content, spelling/grammar and formatting were correct, so hopefully the university won’t reject it because the margins are 0.1 inch off or something. If the thesis is accepted, then all I have to do is to pass my two courses for the semester and I shall receive my Master’s degree diploma in the mail in January. Even though my thesis is done, I’ll probably still continue to work on the project to add features and fix bugs.

I was pretty happy to finish my thesis before Thanksgiving, because it meant I had more free time to enjoy the holiday and go shopping for Black Friday deals. I went to the nearby outlet stores on Black Friday midnight to buy some clothing, and I bought a couple of t-shirts, two pair of jeans and a pair of runners for about $100 which is pretty good considering that they are all from decent brands. There were a fair number of people braving the winter chills at the outlets, but it’s not really crowded or crazy like some Wal-Marts and big box store that sell electronics. I don’t think I’m ever going to those places to line up for Black Friday sale. On the downside for shopping in the wee hours of the morning, I was pretty much half-asleep during the day time on Friday because I didn’t get enough sleep. Besides clothing, I also picked up a vehicle GPS from an online retailer because my car doesn’t have navigation. I’ll probably write a post on my new gadget once I receive it in the mail.

I hope all of you had an enjoyable Thanksgiving weekend as well.

I haven’t posted for a while. One reason was that there really wasn’t anything too interesting to write about in the last months or so, and the other reason was that I have been really busy studying and then taking my doctoral qualifying exams. I’m currently still working on my Master’s, but I plan to do my Ph.D at the same school and thus had to take my qualifiers this semester. My department has a pretty tough exam format which involves multiple oral exams on a bunch of different focus areas. We can choose the focus areas, but there is a ton of stuff that can be asked on each area so there is a lot to study for. I studied for at least two months prior to my exams, and thankfully the effort did pay off and I managed to pass. I didn’t do well in every subject, but I did well enough in my main area (electrical power systems) to pass and now I am officially a doctoral student.

The qualifying exams were one of the bigger obstacles in my pursuit of a doctoral degree and it’s a big weight off my shoulders now that I’ve passed, but there is still plenty more to do. Now that the qualifiers over and done with, I need to focus on writing my Master’s thesis and making sure I get my degree on time.

It’s been a year since I’ve left home and started pursuing graduate studies in the United States. It seems like the older I get, the faster time passes. This one year anniversary is the perfect occasion to write my yearly reflections article. Since I had to relocate and settle down in a new place, my first year in graduate school has been quite eventful… when you compare to my years as an undergrad student at least. The article actually starts from the summer of 2010 after I graduated with my bachelor’s. Keep on reading if you want to find out what I’ve been up to in the past year.

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