Today I received my Master of Science diploma in the mail. Officially, I completed my Master degree course work and thesis at the end of 2011, but it takes some time for the school to process the documents and mail out the diploma. I knew I had met the degree requirements, but it’s good to have the diploma to physically hold in my hands. I got my degree after three semesters, and I have to thank my adviser for letting me get my degree in this relatively short amount of time. Now that I’m officially done with my Master degree, I can focus on getting my PhD degree, and that’ll probably take at least two and half more years. Three semesters went by pretty quickly, but there is still a long way to go before I get out of school.
New Speakers: Corsair SP2500
One thing that I lugged back from home on my journey back to school was a set of new speakers. The model is a set of 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.
Jumping a Car Battery
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.
Vacation Over, Back to Work Once Again
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.
Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon – Final Thoughts
The Fall 2011 anime season has ended two or three weeks ago, and these days I usually do a round-up final thoughts post for all of the shows that I watched but didn’t blog weekly. However, the only show in my line-up that ended last season was Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon, so hence Horizon will get the final thoughts post all to itself. Horizon was a decent show that had some good elements, but after a season of the show I’m still not sure what the entire story is about.
Thoughts on Macross Frontier: The Wings of Goodbye
I got around to watching the 2nd Macross Frontier movie about a month or so ago. Given how I impressed I was by the anime series, I thought I would get around to writing down my thoughts sooner, but I was busy at the time with other things so I didn’t immediately start a post. After a few days I start to forget what I watched, and the post ended in the back burner (along with a post on Samurai Champloo; I finished that series several months ago). I finally got around to putting my thoughts down during winter vacation, so here are some my disorganized, random thoughts on Macross Frontier: The Wings of Goodbye. Don’t read this post if you don’t want to be spoiled.
Autel Maxiscan MS300 OBD-II Code Reader
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.
2011 Fall Term in Review
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.
Back Home for the Holidays Once Again
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 :grin: .
New GPS: Garmin nuvi 1490LMT
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.
