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JAN

06

2016

SM videochatted me this morning at 8am, crying about her father yelling at her for talking too loudly in the house and then saying a few more hurtful things. i pride myself in living a drama-free life style, and here now was some unwanted drama. plus, i was still sleeping at the time. i suggested she should move out but there's probably no chance of that, even though she's already paying for her parents' second house and the one they're currently living in her parents will rent in a few weeks. her father has a terrible temper, which she's inherited as well. this could be a deal breaker as i can't imagine myself being with people who are always so negative and angry all the time.

once again there was no point in sleeping so i got up. it was about 20 degrees warmer this morning than it was yesterday, so the furnace wasn't working quite as hard, in which case the house was actually colder. the temperature in the main bedroom was only 62°F; i decided to camp out in the living room instead.

my mother called me late this morning, asking me to come down to the cafe to fix their internet. the problem wasn't with the wifi router, but rather the cable modem, which was blinking a distress code. so after finishing an egg tart for breakfast, i biked down to the cafe to see what the problem was.

earlier my father had replugged the cablemodem, which seemed to have brought it back to life, but it did lose connectivity one time. when i arrived though, it started running fine again. when it comes to the cable modem, nothing i can really do except call comcast and ask them if there were any service interruptions in the area. my phone rep said there were none, but from her record she could see that our motorola SB5101 cable modem has been getting frequent intermittent connections within the past few days, "the worst i've ever seen." she recommended upgrading the modem to something that supports DOCSIS 3.0 (like the motorola SB6141), since comcast is currently phasing out DOCSIS 2.0 modems. the old modem seemed to behave well the rest of the day though, but the first chance i get to score a cheap replacement cable modem i'll take it.

i went with my father on a grocery run to market basket. along the way we passed by my house i could gather up my things, including some egg tarts and the chinese calendars i bought yesterday. i also took the roku. we ran into liting's parents at the supermarket: her father was waiting in the car, her mother was just about to push out a cart.

when we came back to the cafe, my 2nd aunt was there, complaining about something wrong with her old android tablet (not sure why she cares, ever since she got her ipad air she's been using that instead). turns out she was just looking for a particular app (letv) that was on there before i wiped everything a few weeks back. we also taught her how to use the okay google function on android, and siri search on her ipad air.

i showed my mother the calendars i bought yesterday. she didn't tell me that she already got a pair when i bought them, so now we have extras.

while my parents were still getting ready to leave, i got on my bike and left for belmont.

there were no birds at the suet feeder, nor were there squirrels. could be my imagination, but the bottom of the slinky looked a little crumbled, like maybe something tried climbing on it a few times but gave up. the suet cake was about the same size as when i saw it a few days ago.

i set up the roku 3 in the living room. i'm hoping it can replace the chinese android tv box that my mother had been using to watch netflix. that box can get a little weird, and won't install certain apps, like HBO GO (not that they need it, since they can also watch HBO using the regular cable box through the on-demand feature). it has a slew of chinese tv and movie apps, but more and more we encounter broken or slow streams, and the quality seems like 480p at best. in fact, the highest resolution on the tv box seems to be 480p, which is a shame because apps like netflix can stream at 1080p. i also heard you can cast certain videos (like youtube) directly to the roku but i didn't try it out yet. my mother seemed to be excited about some of the asian tv/movie programs, but when she realized they also included commercials, she lost interest and went back to her commercial-free standby of netflix. the remote definitely makes it easier to use than chromecasting with a phone or tablet.

a few years back my grandmother gave my mother this massaging club, the kind that has these nubs and you sort of use it on your back. she originally bought it from a dollar store. anyway, my grandmother for some reason wants it back now, so my mother is sending it to her in california. but she asked me if i could find something similar on the internet. i tried using a google image search, but none of the results matched. i then tried searching for it, but didn't know what it was called: back massage stick? massage club? the one that finally did it was this: wooden back massager. i found it through an image search but then narrowed it down in ebay, where a few vendors were selling the exact item, at about $2.50 a pop directly from china. my mother asked me to buy 3.

my sister brought home hailey and left her here (earlier i saw hailey at the cafe). after dinner i biked back to cambridge with the temperature at 30°F. i prevented the nest thermostat from turning up the heat (on schedule), but by around 9pm i finally manually turn it up to 68° because it felt a little nippy. SM contacted me, said she was going to longgang for a few days, home of the world's longest glass skywalk.

earlier i'd bought a $2 powerball ticket. when the drawing finished at 11pm, i checked my numbers: i managed to get one number at least, but no prizes for just one number (you need at least 3 numbers to win anything, unless you get the powerball which is always a win).

i found a posting on craig's list for a motorola SB6141 cable modem. the seller was asking for $60 which also included a crappy router. i wrote the person back, asking if i could just buy the modem for $40; the person responded yes, said s/he would call me to tomorrow to met at the south bay shopping plaza (i've never been there before, only seen it on the highway when driving down route 93 south). the posting was a little weird, the seller said the items were for sale or trade. is that secret lingo meaning willing to trade for drugs?