Another Step Closer to the PhD

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It’s been a busy week thus far, but things have been going well. This week I passed my doctoral candidacy exam, which means I can now be called a PhD candidate instead of just a PhD student. Pretty cool, right :lol: ? The candidacy exam is just another hurdle to jump past in my quest to obtain the mystifying doctoral degree. Our candidacy exam involves presenting a proposal of my dissertation research to the doctoral committee, followed by some Q&A. The exam wasn’t too bad, but I was pretty tired afterwards. I’m just glad I passed.

After the candidacy exam, the next and final hurdle is dissertation defense, which I’m hoping to take next semester. I think I have a lot of presentable results already, but it’s probably a good idea to show some improvement between my candidacy report and the final dissertation. Still a lot of work ahead, but I’m taking this one step at a time.

Thanksgiving and Black Friday Ramblings and My New Monitor

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I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. I sure enjoyed my four-day Thanksgiving break. I didn’t travel anywhere, but I didn’t do any work on Thanksgiving and Black Friday and I enjoyed that a lot. Like previous years, I went to my aunt’s place for Thanksgiving dinner, and as always there was a mountain of delicious food that cannot be finished even though there were a lot of people. It was also nice to catch up with relative and acquaintances at the dinner. Unlike previous years though, I didn’t make the midnight trip to the clothing outlets. I didn’t have any clothing items I wanted to buy, and I find extra sleep very valuable these days. Instead, I spent mostly on electronic items these days, both for myself and for my parents. I bought most of the items online, but I did go out both on Thanksgiving night and Black Friday to shop.

The so-called Black Friday sales seem to start earlier every single year, and this year a bunch of the big name retailer opened their doors at 6 PM on Thanksgiving… the exact time when people usually start eating turkey. The online sales were even earlier and some started at midnight on Black Friday. I think they might as well call the whole thing the Thanksgiving sale from now on. Most of the really popular doorbuster items, like the iPads, were quickly sold out online or in store. I visited a Best Buy after Thanksgiving dinner at around 9:30 PM. The store was crowded, but there wasn’t a line up to get in because most of the really sought-after items were long gone. Luckily for me, there were still a couple of those $100 24″ Dell LCD monitors, so I quickly bought one. LCDs have really fallen in price over the years. I remember when I was in high school, my family bought a 17″ no-name LCD for $500 and it was considered cheap at the time. That LCD monitor actually broke and I had to fix it myself. Now 24″ 1080p screens from reputable brands can be found near $100 which I find amazing. It also makes me feel old :wink: . Anyways, below is a mini first-impressions on my new monitor.

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Fall Foliage Recap

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It’s November already, which means the 5 months of winter is about to begin here in the Northeast. In the last two months though, I have been using my weekends to enjoy the great outdoors during the autumn season. The temperature during the fall is perfect since it’s not too hot and cold, and more importantly the Northeast is known for its beautiful fall foliage. This post basically summarizes a bunch of my fall season outings with a good amount of photos. Most photo credits go to my various travel buddies, since they are the ones who have the nice DSLRs.

Mount Mansfield view
The expansive view from the top ridge of Mt. Mansfield to the east

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Replacing My Car’s Parking Light Bulb

TJ 1 Comment
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Every once in a while I have to do a small maintenance task on my car, and this time I had to replace the light bulb for my car’s parking light. It was a fairly easy job, and I managed to get it done without damaging anything or spending too much time wrangling with parts.

Parking light bulb
The old, burnt-out light bulb. It’s a type W 5 W halogen bulb.

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TonyJiang.com: Year 7

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It’s that time of the year again. No, I’m not talking about back to school, although I will address that topic later in this post. I’m referring to the anniversary of my personal domain at tonyjiang.com, which has been in existence for 7 years. This year I worked on my websites a bit more than previous years, but in honesty I didn’t do that much either. The biggest change was to give this blog a brand new theme, which I worked on during winter holidays last year. My websites are chugging along as usual, and I’m glad to say that my websites, particularly the good ol’ crabbing guide, are now more popular than ever. The increased traffic also means my ad-serving venture is going better than ever, although I don’t think I can live off of my websites quite just yet. As long as I’m alive and able, I’ll keep maintaining my websites and post some updates on this blog every so often. While I may not be as enthusiastic about playing around with web technologies as before, I still find joy in running some websites and I hope they’ll at least be a good read to some visitors.

Moving on to another topic, classes have started again at my university. However, unlike the previous three years, I don’t need to go to class anymore. I have fulfilled my coursework credits for my degree, and I will spend this final school year working on my PhD dissertation. Not having to attend class, study for exams and do homework feels very nice of course, but this is certainly not the time for me to slack off if I want to graduate sooner rather than later. If everything goes well I’ll graduate in May. There is still a lot of work to though to get to that point, but I’m motivated by the fact that the finish line is finally in sight. Wish me luck.

Summer Back Home, and Oregon-Washington Trip

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In the first time in three years I was able to go back home during the summer, and of course I was very happy about being to head home during the nice, sunny summer months. This year there was an important conference in Vancouver, and my boss was nice enough to let me stay with my family for a little longer. Vancouver was beautiful as expected during the summer, and my parents and I also took a trip down south to Portland Oregon and to Mount Saint Helens and Mount Rainier in southern Washington state. I had a great time of course, and here are the highlights.

Panaroma from Convention Centre West
Coal Harbor looking gorgeous on a beautiful sunny day. (Click to Enlarge)

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Finger Lakes Adventure

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I went on a short trip with a couple of friends to the Finger Lakes region of central New York State. We went to visit several beautiful state parks in the area, the scenic Cayuga Lake, a winery, and Ithaca/Cornell University. I had a great time on the trip and I think my friends would agree, although one or two of my friends may have preferred to have walked less. Here are the highlights with some photos. Most of the photo credits go to my friend KW as he is the guy with the DSLR.

Fillmore Glen State Park
The stream at Fillmore Glen State Park

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Going Places

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It’s summer time, which means I have more time on my hands both to work on my research and to have a little fun. The weather hasn’t been the best in the Northeast US of A as we had a more than usual share of thunderstorms and rain, but I managed to go out a few times when I had the chance. I did some hiking at some nearby trails, and also went to Cape Cod for two nights.

Plotter Kill Preserve
One of the waterfalls at Plotter Kill Nature Preserve. I think this was the upper falls.

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The End of Another Semester

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It’s late May, which means another semester and also school year is in the history books. This was my third school year and sixth academic semester (not counting summer sessions) as a grad student. I think I fulfilled the course credit requirements for my degree, which means I don’t have to take any more courses in the coming fall, and I’m pretty happy about that. I’ve been a PhD student for almost three years and it’s getting to the point where I have to really start working on my dissertation so I don’t take too long to graduate, and not having to take courses during the academic semesters will give me more time to work on research. I’m not ruling out taking one course in a semester, but I have the choice of taking only courses that I like. My course load over the previous semester wasn’t heavy, but the courses I took left some things to be desired. Anyways, I’m glad the semester is over. Hopefully I’ll make good progress on research in the summer. I’ll also try to travel around a bit. I don’t plan on going far, but there are some nice natural scenery and parks not too far from my university and I plan on enjoying the great outdoors a bit more.