It’s mid June, so it’s time again for my spring time activity update on this blog. During this time, I transitioned from winter activities to summer activities. I skied in April, and started hiking in June, and collected and ate more shellfish in between. Here are the photo and video highlights.
New GPS Watch: Garmin Fenix 6X Sapphire
I recently upgraded my fitness tracker. I’ve used my Garmin Vivosmart HR for 5+ years. It works fine for tracking heartrate, steps, sleeps etc., but it doesn’t have a GPS and do activity tracking that well. So I ended up ponying up the cash for a Garmin Fenix 6X Sapphire GPS watch, and here’s what I think about it so far.
Winter Wanders
Spring is finally here although sometimes the weather still doesn’t quite feel like it. It’s been a while since my last update post, so here is a summary of what I’ve been up to during the winter. Like the last couple of winters, I mostly just skied during my time off. Also went razor clamming for the first time. Here are the photo (and video) highlights.
New Network Attached Storage: Synology DiskStation DS220+
Another tech item I purchased this year during Black Friday sales is a network attached storage (NAS). I want to setup a personal cloud where I can back up data over the internet and share photos and music, but don’t want to store my data with an online cloud provider like AWS or Google Cloud. I ended up getting a Synology DS220+, and here are my impressions unboxing and setting up my new NAS.
New WiFi Router: TP-Link Deco X55 Mesh System
I bought a bunch of stuff for myself this Black Friday. One of these is a new wireless router system. I’ve been using a Netgear Wireless N150 router from more grad school days, and I get spotty connections from my bedroom and bathroom in a small 620 sqft apartment, so it’s time to upgrade. I decided to get the TP-Link Deco X55 Mesh WiFi two unit kit, and here are my first impressions.
Fast Fall Follow-up
It’s almost US Thanksgiving, and it feels like winter in the Pacific Northwest, so it’s time to do my seasonal out-and-about update. My main outing during autumn was the family road trip down to Southern California, and that was a lot of fun. Other than that, didn’t do much during the fall other than some late season foliage hikes. Here are the photo highlights.
Oregon-California Road Trip 2022
I recently went on a family road trip through Oregon and California, all the way down to San Diego. It’s been a long time since we have been in Southern California. We saw some friends and family, and visited a number of national parks along the way. It was a fun trip and here are the highlights:
Summer Saunters
It’s mid-September and I can already feel the crisp autumn chill in the air at where I live. This means it’s time again to post some highlights and photos of what I’ve been up to during the past season. Summer is a good time in the Pacific Northwest as weather is nice and it’s usually not super hot. We didn’t get a record-setting heat wave like 2021, but there were plenty of hot (by PNW standards) days. I didn’t take a long vacation or travel far during the summer, so pretty much all of the highlights are hiking and outdoorsy stuff in the PNW. Without further ado here are the photos
TonyJiang.com Year 16!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
TonyJiang.com hits its sweet 16! Don’t really have any celebration planned other than this post, but happy that I’m still keeping my websites alive. As usual, not much in terms of updates. Mostly I just write some travel posts or the occasional gadget post here on my personal blog. The Google Adsense revenue has declined to a point that it no longer covers the hosting and domain name costs, but that’s not a problem since my personal income has grown a lot more during these years than the decrease in ad revenue. Anyways, onto Year 17!
Now a Patent Holder
Was looking through my Google Scholar’s profile, and realized that the patent application that I was a part of at my former employer (years ago) has become an actual US patent this year. Of course, my former employer holds the all the rights of use, so it’s of no financial benefit to me, but it’s cool to have my name on a patent. Nobody can say that I didn’t help invent anything in my career. Some details of the patent and link to the full document below for those interested.
Read More