Meteorological spring has begun, so it’s time to put winter behind us. It’s a winter that I’m sure many of us would want to forget, since it was dominated by the pandemic. The shutdowns and fears of getting Covid limited what I could do and where I could go during the winter of 2020/2021, so this is going to be a short update of what’s been going on with me. Here is a video of me enjoying a day on the ski slopes.
Autumn Activity Recap
It’s the end of November after Thanksgiving in the US, which means autumn is over and winter is taking its grip. Also means it’s time for me the post about what I’ve been up to in the last 3 or so months. We are still in the middle of the COVID pandemic which hasn’t gotten any better in the US, so most of my activities have been outdoors and away from the crowds. Here are the highlights:
TonyJiang.com Year 14!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That’s right. My little domain TonyJiang.com is 14 years old! Can’t say I have done much work on my websites in the past few years, but they are still online and I write blog posts here once a while. Not going to check how many visitors or how little money I made off of Google Adsense, since I’m sure those have been down year-over-year over the last few years. It’s a good thing that my employment income trended in the opposite direction as my web advertising income hahaha. As I grew older, my interests and priorities shifted from tinkering with websites, but I still plan on keeping my websites running as long as I can. 2020 has been a strange year to say the least, and hopefully we’ll still be around for this anniversary post next year.
Spring & Summer in the Bizarre Year
It’s been a while since my last post here. Usually I try to make a post once a season (or quarter) about what I’ve been up to, but I didn’t have much to write about in spring thanks to the ongoing pandemic and other things happening. I managed to get outside a bit once summer and good weather finally rolled around, so here are the usual photo highlights.
Winter Wrap-up
It’s officially spring, and so it’s time for me to recap what I’ve been up to during the winter. My notable activities this winter mostly consisted of the holidays and skiing. Here is a video of me skiing at Park City Mountain, Utah. Read on for more highlights.
Rolling Up a Memory Foam Mattress
Over the holidays I bought a new mattress. I suffer from sciatica and needed a mattress with more support and firmness. However, I didn’t want to throw away my old mattress just yet because it’ll be useful for guests once I move to a larger place. Since the old mattress is a memory foam mattress, it could be compressed and rolled up for storage.
Extending the Life of an Old Laptop with Linux
My parents have a number of computers at their place, the oldest of which is an 11-year old Compaq laptop. The laptop still works fine, but it’s not really usable anymore mostly because of software. Yes, all of our smartphones and tablets that we bought within the last 5 years probably has more compute power than this laptop, but the main reason it can’t be used is because it has Windows Vista. Windows Vista is so old that even Chrome or Firefox don’t support it anymore. Running a Windows machines without updated software is a bad idea. My parents still wanted to keep the laptop around just in case, so I turned to Linux to extend the life of this old laptop.
New Monitor: HP Pavilion 32″ Display (4WH45AA)
Black Friday was the biggest shopping day of the year in the US, and this year I bought a few things for myself. One of my purchases was a new 32-inch LCD Monitor to replace the 24-inch one that I currently have at home. My old Dell 24″ monitor still works fine, but I got used to having two 30″ monitors at work so I wanted a larger monitor at home as well. I ended up getting a 32″ unit from HP (model no. 4WH45AA). Here are my first impressions of my big new monitor.
New Tablet: Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.1 (2019)
Thanksgiving and Black Friday are just around the corner, which means it’s time to spend that hard-earned cash. While I’m still waiting to see if there is some deals to be had on the days of Thanksgiving and Black Friday, I picked up a Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.1 tablet for my parents, and here are just some quick initial thoughts.
Fun in the Fall
Fall is coming to a close now, and it’s time to recap all the new and fun experiences of the past season. In addition to the small outings in this post, I went on a family trip through Yellowstone. I don’t know when the meteorological season ends exactly, but most of the fall foliage is gone and we are getting to the grey and dreary weather that is typical of the Pacific Northwest winter. Here are the highlights of what I’ve been up to in the past three months.
