I’m back in Canada for the winter holidays, and my family did a bit of Boxing Day shopping. Our big ticket item this year was a new TV for my parents, and we ended up getting a 50″ 4K Smart TV in the form of a Samsung UN50KU6270.
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Year: 2016
Autumn Adventures
It’s been a little while since my last travel and fun post, and during that time autumn has passed by and winter has taken over. I tried to have some fun during the cool and colorful autumn season though, and here are some highlights of what I’ve been up to.
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New Tablet: Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.1
Another item that I bought during Black Friday sales is a new tablet. I picked up a Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.1 for my parents, and here are some pictures and quick first impressions.
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New Laptop: Dell Latitude E7270
The Thanksgiving weekend has come and gone. I did a bit of everything: went to some dinners, traveled a little, and some Black Friday shopping this year as well. This was the probably the most I’ve spent on a Black Friday, because I picked up a new laptop. The Lenovo ThinkPad T410 I got when I started grad school is now over 6 years old and getting a little long in the tooth. I ended up getting a refurbished Dell Latitude E7270 from Dell Outlet, and this post is some first impressions of my new laptop… or should I say “ultrabook”.
Moved to a New Place, and Internet Woes
As the title says, I recently moved. I’m still in the same metro region, but just moved from one apartment to another. The new location is not quite as central as the old one, but it’s still convenient enough. I moved because the new place is newer construction, had slightly cheaper rent and a better layout.
The move itself was pretty smooth. I had about a week of overlap between the two apartments, so I slowly moved my belongings. I only needed the moving company to move the bigger furniture, and I really don’t have many big pieces of furniture anyways.
The trouble came after I moved though I wanted to get internet service, and here is the story. I was a cable internet customer, but then found out the new apartment complex can only get AT&T. They were running a promo on their fiber gigabit service, so I called them, and it took a week for them to schedule a technician to come out because apparently the address was initially not listed as serviceable… even though other units in the complex have internet. So the technician showed up a week later, tried and failed to install because there was an signal strength issue. So I called customer service, and a few days later, three technicians showed up and replaced the fiber from my apartment to the telco room on the same floor, and still the same problem. Then a day later, a construction technician shows up unannounced and fixed the signal issue, but he didn’t handle the actual installation of the modem/gateway, so it was a couple more days before a final technician shows up and completes the installation.
All in all, it took 2 weeks and 4 separate technician visits to get internet running at my apartment. Never in my life have I ever had so much trouble getting internet service. According to the final technician, my network issue actually got fixed pretty quickly all things considered. I guess I can’t really fault AT&T for bad customer service since they did send out technicians on 4 different trips within a week to get internet working in my apartment, but not having internet in my apartment was still a bit annoying.
So that’s it for my little story on internet woes. I have working gigabit fiber internet now, and it seems to be pretty fast. I haven’t gotten close to actual 1000 Mbps, but I can get about 300 Mbps, and that’s still a lot faster than the cable internet I’ve had before. Of course, this gigabit service is a bit more expensive than my previous cable internet too. Hopefully I won’t have to make any more service calls to AT&T about internet not working.
Aria the Avvenire: Farewell Again
I don’t follow manga and anime as much as I used to and I don’t planning on anime/manga blogging again, but there are certain things that I still want to write about. One of these things is Aria the Avvenire, a three-episode OVA series to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the first airing of the Aria anime. Aria is one of my favorite manga and anime series. Both the manga and anime adaptation ended in 2008, so I was really surprised that in 2015 they decided to come out with this OVA series, along with one special manga chapter to go along with it. I finished watching the last OVA episode recently, and I can’t help but feel a bit sad that the series is finished again. It is farewell once again to this beautiful series.
TonyJiang.com: Year 10!!!!!!!!!!
You read it right; my humble little domain has been online for a decade. A decade!!! That’s pretty unbelievable. I am very happy that I was able to maintain and keep this place running for so long. 10 years is not too shabby, if I may say so myself :wink: . I think the actual anniversary is sometime in late August, but better late than never, right?
I would like to say that it was a decade of excellence, but that’d be a stretch since hardly anyone visits. Even the traffic for the crabbing guide, which is the my most visited website, has been going down the last couple of years. Working full time now means I don’t have that much free time, and even I had free time I try to go outside and explore, so I don’t have a lot of time to spend on these websites. Still, I am proud that they lasted so long, and here is to another 10 years of TonyJiang.com! Thank you for everyone who visited, and especially to those who left feedback and comments.
More Summer Outings
It’s been about two months since my last outs and abouts post… and I started the previous one of these with the same phrase haha. Over the last two months, I tried some fun water activities, and even traveled outside of NC for a bit. Keep reading for photos and highlights.
The End of Bleach
I don’t blog manga and anime anymore, but here I am giving some quick final thoughts on Bleach, the popular and long-running Shounen Jump manga that ended this week. I’ve followed the Bleach manga since when I was still in college study in the late 2000s, and it’s sad to see the series, which in its heyday contended with Naruto and One Piece for popularity, go out with a whimper in such a half-ass hurried manner. Tite Kubo could always design his characters very well, but it looks like his creativity ran out when it came to the story. The whole Yhwach story arc at the end was pretty bad, as it consisted mostly of throwing out new characters and everybody getting random power-ups which somehow almost always disappointed. The hurried-up ending certainly didn’t help. I think many would agree that Bleach was dragging its feet ever since Aizen’s defeat, and the series probably should have ended at that point. At least the series up to the showdown with Aizen was pretty enjoyable though.
That’s just my two cents.
TJ’s Guide to RPI
It’s been two years since I’ve graduated with my PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY. When I graduated with my bachelors from the University of British Columbia, I wrote a little guide to the university just for fun, now I’m finally going to do the same for RPI. I enjoyed my four years as a graduate student. It was a very different experience than my undergrad due to the difference between the schools, between the cities they are located in, and the fact that I was a grad student instead of a naive undergrad. Like my “guide” to UBC, this post has some general info on RPI, but it’s mostly focused on things that I found relevant, interesting or fun during my time there. More information can be found in RPI’s website, Wikipedia, and the other links contained in this post.