there's hasn't been a sunday where kevin's stayed home, so today was no difference, as he woke up by 9:30am and left for the office around 10am. the sound of backpack zippers closing gave me confidence that he would be gone soon. i went back to the bathroom to use the facility in peace before taking a shower. i walked to the supermarket to get a box of green mountain hazelnut coffee for my mother before biking to belmont by 11:30am.

after lunch my father did some antenna testing with the box of adapters i brought over from my house. around 1:45pm we left for binbin's place in burlington to pick up the mail and check to see everything was okay. we managed to coax my mother away from her netflix and come with us with promises of visiting the bedford OSJL.

with driving and holding a phone becoming illegal in massachusetts next week (not just texting), i bought a phone holder which arrived yesterday. my father installed it in the car attached to the windshield and was using the android auto app as an onboard gps. we also tested its ability to both receive calls and text. text was particularly special because it seemed to be able to read the text back to you. my father also made a phone call to me using voice command, but it wasn't able to recognize my mother's number. later on in bedford we saw a police office chase down a vehicle and pull it over. not sure exactly the reason (the car wasn't speeding and didn't seem to violate any traffic laws), but maybe it was for using the phone while driving.

the first thing we noticed when we got to binbin's place was how cold it was inside. that's always the case however, the lower floors are cold while the upper floors are warm. while my father went to go start up the car in the driveway, i checked the thermostat which was showing a low battery warning. i went through the house searching for AA batteries, opening a few electronic toys. all of them were either the wrong size or rusted/leaking. so i disassembled the electronic door lock i installed last month and took out those batteries to test. no matter what we did, it kept displaying the low battery warning and nothing else. maybe it needed better batteries. with a few very cold nights later in the week, we thought it'd be wiser to fix the thermostat before leaving. so we drove to the nearby gas station and i bought a package of duracell AA's (2) for $5.20.

back at the house, my mother sat in the car while my father and i went back inside the house. we figured all we had to do was replace the batteries, but our worst fear was realized when nothing happened, it still only showed the low battery warning. i popped out the fuse, thinking it might be broken, but the fuse was fine. i finally went online to download the instruction manual. i was looking for info on a tiny button i saw inside the thermostat that looked like a reset button but i just wanted to make sure. once i got confirmation, i hit the button, the LCD flashed, and the normal display started showing again. we set the thermostat to manual and put the house at 55°F. i also wanted to turn off the gas fireplaces after i realized they were still on (when we touched the fireplaces last time, they were slightly warm) but my father said to leave them on, so there'd still be a tiny amount of heat in case the thermostat malfunctioned again.

outside we bumped into tom's girlfriend frances. we chatted briefly before leaving, just to let her know everything was fine with the house.

from there it was a 10 minute drive to the bedford OSJL via route 95. we've never been here before: i thought it was smaller but my mother said it was bigger than the other two OSJL we occasionally visit (everett, waltham). at the very least they had more stuff, my mother said they carried things she never saw at the other stores. we left with $40 worth of merchandise, including a bag of bird seeds. we left by 3:40pm, took us 20 minutes to drive back to belmont.

after dinner i left for home by 7:15pm. i wanted to get back before kevin. i passed by his workplace and on the road back i didn't see him, so he was either still at work or already home. turns out he was still in the office. i used the bathroom and showered, turned on the tv by 8pm to watch the NBA all stars game. kevin didn't get back until 8:30pm, carrying with him a large onion and ham pizza. he'd already ate with coworkers, but bought a pizza as well, which was already cold. we both had a slice, i taught him how to warm up the pizza on the stovetop using a frying pan and some tinfoil.

i set the heat for 4:30am this morning, so kevin wouldn't wake up to a cold house. when i woke up at 6am he was already gone, but left the kitchen lights on, which i closed before going back to bed. my mother called me around 9:20am while i was still sleeping. i didn't realize what it was at first because i didn't recognize the default google pixel ringtone, it was pleasant. my mother asked if i needed a ride since it was so cold outside (14°F). rain and snow might be an issue, but cold temperature has never stopped me from biking, not even extreme cold. i take it as a personal challenge, a bad of honor.

i left by 11:30am, gave the weather a chance to warm up. by then temperature was in the mid 20's under a bright sun. the body experiences new sensations when riding in the extreme cold. i was bundled up but i felt it in my legs first, a slight chill (i just wore my flannel khakis, no thermal underwear layer). i was unfazed, knowing after a few minutes of pedalling they would warm up. i had on my wool mittens which kept my fingers warm but my thumbs starting to hurt towards the end, all by themselves. i don't think my eyeballs were freezing but the cold had crept behind my eye sockets and gave me a touch of ice cream headache. i could feel the area between my nose and mouth starting to freeze up, bits of stubbles turning to ice, along with the hairs inside my nostrils. i took it slow, the cold already takes a toll, no need to further exert myself.

i was late arriving in belmont because i was trying to log into my QQ account on my new phone. QQ wanted to verify who i was but the only way to do that was by sending a text message to my old china number from 2016, a number i've long since abandoned. to login with a different number i had go through a more thorough security check, one that involves giving them my US number (which they didn't accept) and providing my chinese identification number which i don't have because i'm not a chinese citizen. all of this was in very technical chinese writing which i had to decipher using google translate. finally i gave up. it still works on my oneplus one (OPO) phone, and i can also access it through a mac os app, but it requires the OPO to verify. so much for handing down the OPO to my mother. i'll tackle the problem again some other time, maybe get my roommate kevin to help. i don't use my QQ very much anymore, but i still have it for purely sentimental reasons, and it's my only connection to a large group of people i befrieded when i worked in china.

good news though: the nest app on my pixel phone finally worked. this after i spent over an hour last night texting with the nest technical support department. i was just glad there was somebody there i could chat with, and they even escalated me to someone higher up, who wasn't able to fix my either. they finally told me they'd hand it off to an engineer who would get back to me next week with an answer. i wasn't hopeful it'd work, so i was happy the problem just sort of fixed itself this morning. unfortunately, while trying to figure out a fix, i accidentally broke the "works with google" link so i can no longer control the thermostat using the google home mini speaker. i think i have a fix but i'm in no hurry.

it's been so cold there's still a little bit of snow on the roof, though nothing on the panels (i made sure of that on thursday). there was just a small piece of suet in the feeder so i dumped it out for the squirrels and put in a new one. with the suet feeder situated in such a way that it's pretty much squirrel-proof, the only critters that feed on the suet are birds (primarily woodpeckers) and they're light eater so i single block can last a month or two.

it's been nearly 24 hours since i've had the google pixel 3XL, i've played with it enough to get a feel for it. here are my observations and gripes:

• i had a chance to listen to the audio this morning, i wasn't impressed. maybe the sound has too much bass, for me it didn't seem very clear. could just be i'm so used to the sound on my oneplus one, the sound on every other phone seems weird to me.
• the screen using P-OLED. are they supposed to be better? because when i view it from an angle, it loses its brightness. compared that with the IPS screen on the moto G7, which is bright uniformly regardless of the viewing angle, likewise with the oneplus one, which also uses IPS. so because of that, i run the pixel with a screen brightness around 85%. it probably drains the battery, but anything less looks too dim.
• i like the nearly all-screen design of the pixel (if you can disregard the big notch), but the edge is so thin, i often accidentally open an app along the edges when i grab the phone. it's a little annoying, and something i've tried to counter by increasing the icon layout margin using the nova launcher settings. i think it'll be better once the protective case for the phone arrives, which will add more padding along the edges.
• even though the screen is bigger (6.3" versus the 5.5" of my oneplus one [OPO]), the pixel is about the same size as my OPO, just a few millimeters longer. i got used to the longer screen right away, but was startled to discover just how long it really was when i was setting up the phone and rearranging the app icons on the home screen. including the dock at the bottom of the screen, my OPO could fit 6 rows of icons; on the pixel 3XL i can fit 7 rows. the extra 7th row i didn't know what to do with so i temporarily put a search bar there.
• i like the thinness of the pixel 3XL. it may just be because it currently doesn't have a case yet. it's the same thickness as the moto G7 (0.31 inches) but when i hold the G7 in my hand it feels much thicker (it also has a case). when my case arrives next week i'll be able to see if it adds any considerable thickness to the phone. the 3XL also weighs more than the G7 (6.49 oz. vs 6.07 oz.) but the G7 felt heavier.
• battery life on the pixel 3XL isn't so great, even though it's listed as a 3430 mAh Li-Po battery. i wonder since the phone is an "amazon renewed" if maybe the battery is just old so it doesn't hold as much charge anymore. but if you ask me, i couldn't tell the difference between a new pixel and a renewed pixel, it looks completely brand new, not a scratch, not a dead pixel. the only way i could tell is because it simply came in a cardboard box and didn't include a lot of the google accessories that'd come with a brand new phone, just a knockoff amazon charger and USB-C cable. anyway, started using it this morning for 9:20am onwards, by 7:30pm it was down to 13% and was already giving me the low battery warning. so not even 12 hours. maybe i'm doing stuff that's draining the battery so i got rid of the animated background (even though it looked cool) and chose a darker wallpaper. it'll take some more time to figure out if anything else is draining too much juice.
• i'm too used to the customization options on lineageOS, like changing the placement of the menubar clock and choose a different battery status icon, things i can't do with the default google android ROM, not even with nova launcher as the user interface. it's not a big deal but makes me better appreciate how much better (at least in terms of customizations) lineageOS is.
• i don't like the placement of the volume and power buttons: power above the volume rocker all on the right side. every phone places their buttons differently. on my old oneplus one, the power was on the right, the volume rocker on the left. there must be some theory behind why they put the buttons where they did. maybe easier for predominant right-handed users? i'll learn to adjust eventually.
• the pixel is faster than my OPO, but it's not something i can really sense since i thought my OPO was already fast enough. the one thing i noticed though is when i browse the reddit app, videos and gifs always play now. on the OPO, after a period of surfing, videos and gifs will partially play or stop altogether.
• the pixel 3XL has a large notch on the top of the screen to make room for the phone speaker and 2 selfie cameras. because of the notch, there's very little menubar real estate, so at most it can only display 3 notification icons. i hardly notice the notch but most phones these days do away with it, or get creative by having a small teardrop notch (like the moto G7) or just a small round cutout for the camera.
• something that's very simple and useful and cheap to add but is somehow missing on the pixel is any indicator LED light. on my oneplus one, the indicator would glow or flash different colors depending on different notifications. it was just a small thing but one that's very useful and i kind of that on the pixel. i did however set my mi band 4 to vibrate whenever i get certain notifications (like calls or text) so that's my new way of receiving notifications. i do miss the glowing led light though.
• the main reason why anyone would choose this phone over something else that's just as comparable and cheaper (like the moto G7) is because of the camera. not so much the hardware (though the optical stabilizer definitely helps) but rather the software intelligence that goes into improving each and every photo. i'm just constantly floored by how clear and sharp and colorful the photos are. night sight is amazing, i imagine every phone will have something similar in the near future, unless google opens up its camera app magic, despite the fact that the app itself has already been ported to many other phones. it definitely makes me reconsider whether or not to take my dSLR with me everywhere, when the pixel camera works perfectly well, and sometimes even better. the one thing i don't like about the pixel camera is the image is flipped in selfie mode. i think they do it because it feels more natural to the phototaker, but i actually hate it for many reasons. for instance, if you have any words in the photos, they appear reversed. not sure if it's something i can change in the settings, but i can easily fix it in photoshop.
• another reason for updating my phone (besides just replacing some outdated equipment) is finally consolidating my phone's call and texting capability with my online experiences. i didn't start using a smart phone until 2014. yes, i was a late adopter, and probably the impetus to get me to upgrade was because my sister had a spare iphone 5s. that year i spent in chongqing though, i did buy a simple smart phone (ZTE V975); just because everybody had one (i was using a nokia candybar phone up to that point) and i got it mainly to qq chat with a girl there. but i had a simple data plan and only used the phone sparingly, connecting onto wifi whenever possible.

  when i came back home to the states, i did my research and bought a oneplus one phone; i knew it wouldn't work with verizon, but i was hopeful i could get my family to switch our phone service to t-mobile. fast forward 6 years later, we're still on verizon (my sister is the lone holdout, threatening to remain on verizon on her own even though her single verizon plan bill would be nearly equal to our group family plan bill if we switched to t-mobile).

  but ever since i had a smart phone starting in 2014, i've always had 2 phones: the iphone 5s for calling/texting/gps and also photography (once i discovered how good the camera was) and the oneplus one for web surfing. the fact that i'm at home most of the time meant i always had wifi access so it wasn't difficult to live with 2 phones. but if i was going out, couldn't i just leave the oneplus one at home? i tried that a few times but discovered it'd mess up my gps tracking history because google thought i was at two places at once. so for the sake of gps accuracy, i always have to carry both phones no matter where i went.

  it'd always been a dream - 6 years dream - to consolidate my phone devices. what if i could have just one phone that could do everything? and i wouldn't have to carry 2 phones all the time? i probably would've stayed with the status quo for a few more years, but when i switched our family plan to unlimited last month, that got me thinking about a phone upgrade. plus my father's moto G4 plus started malfunctioning, so i had to shop for a new phone for him anyway.

  i wasn't going to get myself the latest flagship; upgrading from a 2014 iphone and android phone, anything made within the last 1-2 years would be a far superior upgrade. my one criteria is that the phone needed to have a good camera. i'd heard good things about samsung phones in terms of photo quality, and i briefly checked them out, but i didn't like the fact that i couldn't unlock the phone if i ever wanted to change the ROM at some future date.

  that left just the google pixel phones, which from reviews was touted to have one of the best camera phones if not the best. i knew they could be expensive, with the latest pixel 4 iteration starting from $530/$610 (depending on if you want the regular or XL version). but they also had the more wallet friendly 3a series, with a brand new unocked pixel 3a 64GB selling for $320. in the end i decided on the amazon renewed pixel 3 64GB for $260, risking buying a refurbished phone just to save a few extra bucks. phone was great, looked brand new, but the screen was too small, so i replace it with a piel 3XL for $280, just $20 more but with a larger eye-friendly screen.

  anyway, long story short, i'm still getting used to having just one phone that does everything. when i carrying the pixel 3XL around, i keep on thinking, where's my other phone? but i like the simplicity now, and having an unlimited plan means i never have to worry about data ever again, i can go online whenever and where ever i want.

if i was excited about yesterday's record production then today i'm doubly excited. yet again we had another day of record production, this time a perfect bell curve under a cold crystal clear sky. the sky did get a little milky in the late afternoon, but by then the panels had already done most of the work. we also reached a new milestone, something i could see was about to happen since yesterday: we broke the 40kWh mark with a final production of 40.49kWh.

my father sent me a photo of the solar panel conditions, after some early morning pre-dawn snow followed by rain that would last until the late afternoon. more than half of the panels were exposed, but there was still some snow coverage. i decided later in the afternoon - after the rain stops - to ride down to belmont and quickly clean off the snow.

the biggest problem with kevin is i tell him something but he never listens. like the peeing on the bathroom situation, i must've spoken to him 5-6 times before he finally got it, and even now there are occasional accidents. so it's with that in mind that this morning i discovered more shit-stained toilet paper in the trash. they were folded discreetly, but when i looked inside, they were toilet-paper wrapped pieces of turd. it's already gotten to the point where every morning i'm afraid to go into the bathroom for fear of what i might find. i had to fish the toilet paper out of the trash and flush them. i ended up moving the garbage bin to the other side of the bathroom, to make it harder for him to literally throw his shit into the trash.

while i was at it, i also rebleached the toilet area (starting to smell of urine again) and scrubbed the tub with some expired baking soda.

i had an english muffin sandwich for lunch. checking the solar panel production timeline, i could still see that certain panels had low production, meaning they were still partially snow-covered. once the rain started to look like it might be stopping, i left the house around 2:45pm for my parents' place to clean the panels.

first thing i did was to check that the bird feeder wasn't clogged. i also refilled it. after a storm, birds are always hungry for food, and i could see chickadees flitting around in the evergreens, waiting for me to leave so they can eat.

4 panels on the main room were partially covered in slush, while nearly all the panels on the sunroom roof were partially covered. compared that to our opposite door neighbors with their more angled roof and perfectly clear panels. i made quick work of the cleanup, first starting with the main roof panels on the left side of the house, then from there pushing off whatever amount of slush i could reach on the sunroom panels. i then moved the ladder and cleared the remaining slush off of the sunroom panels. in all it took about 20 minutes.

afterwards i did an inspection of the backyard, trying to see if there was anything worth photographing. i was shooting photos of the emerging flower buds on our redbud/cherry/plum trees, when i noticed the strings tying the protective trunk cloth was girdling the cherry and plum trees. i quickly ran inside to get a pair of pruning shearers to snip the strings. there was no damage on the plum, but the flowering cherry - because it's a fast grower - had some girdling marks on the trunk. hopefully when the tree grows it'll fill those out. glad i was able to catch the girdling in time, otherwise the trees would've been strangled to death.

i left around 4pm. back at the house, i made a quick stop to star market to stock up on some movie theater popcorn, the last day it was on sale (BOGO deal).

kevin came home by 5:40pm. another package came for him, heavy, and sounded like sifting. i figured it was another exercise equipment (sand-filled weights was one of my theories) but turns out it was a large bag of brown rice he bought online. just like yesterday and the day before, he microwaved something for dinner and went to his bedroom to eat. unlike the previous days however, he didn't come out to make a 2nd dinner, his lunch for tomorrow. that makes me think that maybe he's going out to lunch tomorrow, so he doesn't have to prepare it tonight.

production was garbage today, the least amount this month. it wasn't because of the snow-covered panels; i think even if we'd managed to clear them early this morning, it was so overcast today due to the rain that we wouldn't have made very much anyway. tomorrow looks to be a good day: cold and clear, looking to hit at least 30kWh.

as for my own dinner, i had some really old small pita bread that i bought from haymarket that time i took kevin, so more than a month ago. i wanted to use them up before they went bad (though they were already hardened on one side where i accidentally left the bag open). last week i thought about making my own gyros, but i found a simple recipe for making oven-baked pizza using pita bread. the only other ingredients were tomato sauce and pizza cheese, both of which i had. i also opened up a can of anchovies; for somebody who doesn't like seafood very much, i love anchovies on my pizza. i made 3 small pizzas and put them in the oven on broil. they only needed to be in the oven for 2-3 minutes. the sound of the cheap cooking sheet bending from the intense heat caught my attention. when i opened the oven, the smell of burnt bread filled the kitchen, as i quickly turned off the oven. half the crusts on each pizza were charred to black, but the pizza themselves look edible otherwise. the heat seemed to have softened the pita breads, and i ate my homemade mini pizzas by folding them in half. it was actually really good, i seemed to have stumbled across a new pizza recipe (the only other pizza recipe i know of is the french bread pizza recipe and i haven't made that in ages). if i used a large pita bread and better toppings (bacon, fancy cheeses, hot pepper rings, onions), i could have a really nice pizza.

i watched an amazing clippers-celtics game tonight, the last game before all-star weekend. it felt more like a playoff game than a regular season game. both teams were equally matched, and the game went into double overtime, with boston finally winning.

my mother scared me this morning, i thought something was wrong when she called me so early. she just wanted to wish me a happy birthday on the time i was born, 8:40am, and to remind me to cook two soft-boiled eggs, a birthday tradition. i did as she asked, but i cooked it wrong, overcooked the eggs so they were more hard-boiled than soft-boiled, and i added sugar to the boiling water instead of later to the bowl, so it wasn't that sweet.

in the late morning i went down to the cafe to deliver the xiaomi mi band 4 that arrived yesterday. i gave the new band 4 to my mother while my father inherited her old but trusty mi band 2, even though my father could've taken advantage more of the new features, like text receiving and caller id display. i'll just get another mi band whenever there's a sale (though i'll probably have to wait a while, since china has basically shut down due to the coronavirus outbreak). my mother didn't really notice any difference with her new mi band 4, other than a weather forecast display. she didn't have enough space on her phone to download the watch face replacement app, so she just got the default face, which is boring and lacking in vital info.

i biked down to harvard square to get some bonchon korean spicy fried chicken, which is my new birthday tradition (in the past it used to be just fried chicken). i got 2 orders of their half & half (soy garlic and spicy, $8.95), 8 wings a piece. last year i got the combo but the drumsticks just weren't satisfying enough, too much meat, not enough of that crispy flavorful skin. i biked back to the cafe via brattle street to drop off the chicken, before returning home to feast.

the wings themselves were tiny, but bonchon sort of makes up for it with a choice of 2 sides (i picked radish and coleslaw). just 8 wasn't enough, i could've easily had 2x or 3x as much. the bonchon spicy is really spicy, if you have the least bit problem with spicy food, i'd recommend the soy garlic instead. after finishing the chicken, i stayed in a warm and fuzzy food coma while watching the first episode of the witcher on netflix.

i left the house again at 2pm, to return some seltzer cans and get some groceries. it's a short rest of the week, i just need to get enough to make dinner for 2 more nights. i left with mostly snacks. i wanted to get some more tony's chocolonely (it was really good) but they were all sold out! actually, there was a single bar of dark chocolate, but that's my least favorite chocolate flavor. i came home and carefully stashed the bike underneath the tarp, with a snow then rain storm arriving for much of tomorrow.

we had good production today, 31.93kWh, just the second time we managed to break the 30kWh+ barrier (the other time being my father/aunt's birthday when we 33.89kWh). i'm actually sort of surprised because it got a little overcast and hazy by the afternoon, but by that point we'd already made most of our electricity.

kevin came home at 5pm, another early return for him. he must've had another errand, otherwise he wouldn't be home so early. the neck scarf he ordered off of amazon arrived. he microwaved something for dinner as soon as he got back, but later around 8pm he was cooking again, making his lunch for tomorrow. with the amount of disposable income that he has, i'm surprised he doesn't eat out more, although there isn't a lot of dining options around his workplace.

as for me, i heated up the combo dish my mother had prepared for me when i was at the cafe. kevin was using the microwave at the time, steaming some vegetables, but said i could take out his bowl first. he had everything covered in a glass lid until i warned him that the lid actually has a metal wash and screw where the knob attached; i told him to use a plate instead. he must've of done this before, but glad i found out before the microwave suffered any catastrophic failure due to arcing. later kevin was in his room exercising, moaning and panting and knocking his weights into the door and furniture. i yelled at him to please be careful and not destroy the house.

my father called to ask me to tune in to the waltham hill repeater, where somebody was selling some used ham radio equipment. i could receive the net on the baofeng with the stock antenna but it was a little staticky, so i ended up turning on the power supply and the VHF amplifier along with the external antenna to get better reception. by that point the seller was starting to wind down his sale. all i heard was "ICOM" and "extra power supply." later i heard a talk between the moderator and a natick high school kid who just get his license (technician but upgraded to general) and was using a baofeng to connect to the repeater. the moderator was saying how natick is normally a dead zone and the kid admitted his house is situated on a hill with good line of sight.

kevin woke up early again - around 8am - and left early as well, around 8:30am. the heat hadn't even kicked in yet, but i'm tired of adjusting the schedule for him until he can show me that he can wake up at the same time every morning. while i was using the bathroom, i noticed something shocking: there was shit on the toilet paper in the trash. maybe i've always suspected but never bothered checking for sure because 1) i never noticed any smells and 2) the ramification was simply too gross to entertain, better to not know. but every morning i see a stack of toilet paper in the trash. i just assumed kevin was wiping up whatever pee mess he made, but turns out he was throwing his shit away instead of flushing it like a civilized person. how come i never noticed any smells though? maybe because kevin eats a primarily vegetarian diet, or my nose has gone noseblind from all the urine. regardless, it was my worst fear realized. never mind that he occasionally pees all over the floor (that hasn't happened in a while though, maybe he finally learned how to pee correctly); i simply can not have a roommate throw his shit in the trash like it's some third world country. i dreaded the conversation i would have with him later tonight.

i went to go return the pixel 3 phone this morning. i originally thought about putting it in a small box but it arrived in a large padded envelope, so i went to the dollar store in search of something similar (i couldn't reuse the original envelope because i'd torn it up). i found something similar but slightly smaller, though i was happy to learn that the phone box was just barely able to fit. i taped up the envelope (noticing that my packaging tape was much smaller than before, as if somebody had used it) and rode to the post office, carrying the package in my blue grocery tote bag. the cheapest it'd cost to ship to texas was $8.75 but i decided to add some insurance just in case ($4.70 for $260) and the final cost came out to $13.45.

when i returned home i realized i no longer had my tote bag; i'd bunched it up and stuffed it in my jacket pocket while at the post office, it must've fallen out. at first i was just going to forget about it, but i'm sentimental even when it comes to a dirty old grocery bag, so went back out and retraced my steps, hoping to see it. i made it all the way to the post office without seeing it. i didn't bother going inside and asking ("did anybody seem my beat up grocery bag?"), figured it'd fallen out in the road and somebody had picked it up already. it was a good bag, had it for many years, it wasn't mine to begin with, i found it one time on beacon street just outside the whole foods.

my mother called me to complain that the cafe wifi was down. however she was able to call me from the internet phone, which meant the internet was still working. the lights on the cablemodem was also normal, so it must've been the router. i asked her to unplug it but she didn't know what it looked like but fortunately my father came back from a supply run and was able to fix the wifi.

the sky grew dark and it'd be drizzling and fogging the rest of the afternoon, so i was stuck at home. i made an english muffin sandwich for lunch.

i started cleaning my aquarium around 4pm, only to have kevin come home soon afterwards, another early day for him. he often comes home early if he's running errands, like getting money from the bank, or grocery shopping. today it was visiting the porter square target to look for a neck warmer for his weekend ski trip (not a scarf, a neck warmer) and then get a haircut at floyd's 99 barbershop. he had to wait 20 minutes (surprised it was busy that time of day) and ended up getting a haircut and a hairwash, total cost $35 including tip.

while i was cleaning the tank, i casually asked him, "hey, do you throw away your toilet paper in the trash after you use the bathroom?" he said yes in a way that implied he didn't think it was anything wrong. i told him to flush his toilet paper in the future. he said he only did it because he saw i'd done it. i shook my head and told him the only time toilet paper is in the trash is because i had to wipe something down or i had to blow my nose, never because of shit.

today was the first time cleaning the aquarium with a magic sponge, which i cut into quarters to make it easier to use. i was cleaning the algae off of the glass, typically the most tedious and hardest part of fish tank maintenance. in the past i used an algae scouring pad, but it took a lot of elbow grease, and even though it was near impossible to remove all the algae unless i did it batches over the course of several days. but with the magic sponge, i had the aquarium sparkling clean in matter of minutes. the next time i clean i'll need to remove the driftwood and plants, they made a more thorough cleanup in the sink, too much thread algae.

kevin went out to get groceries around 6pm while i throw a frozen brick of lasagna in the oven. he came back laden with supplies, then spent the next 1-1/2 hours in the kitchen cooking. i didn't dare look, but trusted him that he wouldn't make a mess. saying all you want about his lack of bathroom etiquette, but his cooking is relatively tame, no stirfry, no frying, no stinky meats, a lot of stewing, a lot of microwave, either rice or pasta with vegetables, simple stuff.

while i was waiting for my lasagna to cook, i was busy scanning the stack of tax documents my father gave me yesterday. i think his accountant must have electronic copies, maybe he can ask for them next year. in the meantime, i scanned a set so we could have copies should we ever need to send them out electronically. i had to manually scan 114 pages using my old canon LiDE 70 scanner (circa 2006), something i've been meaning to upgrade since canon had long since stopped updating the software and it's not compatible with any modern scan drivers.

the new hampshire primary was tonight, polling stations closed at 8pm. bernie sanders won but only by a narrow margin, with pete buttigieg right behind him by less than 2 percentage points. amy klobuchar was at a near distant third. joe biden realized he was going to lose big and decided to cut his loses and get a head start in south carolina, abandoning his new hampshire supporters. out of all the candidates, i'm leaning towards buttigieg, more so after his close iowa victory, and even more after new hampshire. if sanders represents the hard liberal wing of the democratic party, buttigieg is the more moderate. if klobuchar didn't get a boost from performing well in the last debate, she wouldn't have funneled away moderate voters from buttigieg and he might've won new hampshire. even with all the votes going to other moderate candidates, buttigieg still narrowly beat sanders.

i didn't really have a chance to play with the pixel 3 before i wiped the data and reset it to factory default. but before i did that, i took some comparison photos using my different phones to see which was came out on top. the pixel 3 photo was sharper and brighter. the iphone 5s - which up until tonight i thought took the best photos - seemed hazy. the oneplus one was grainy and dark. once the pixel 3 XL arrives, i'll definitely do more comparison photos, but in the meantime i like what i've seen with the google photo camera. the phone specs itself is not that impressive, and there's things to gripe about (like not having expanded storage, which seems to be common with all google phones), but i'm really getting it because it has the best camera on an android phone.

i received an e-mail from DNCL_techzone later in the evening to let me know they accepted my return request. unfortunately because they're a third party amazon vendor, i have to pay for the return shipping. i took a closer look at the fine print, and they said they reserved the right to charge a 20% restocking fee if you simply return the phone because you made a mistake ordering it. i hoping because i ordered the replacement pixel 3 XL with them as well, they will be lenient and simply issue a full refund.

i heard kevin in the kitchen around 8:30am, about the same time the scheduled heat started to kick in. would he be going to the office like he did yesterday? he was gone when i finally got out of bed around 9:30am, but according to the router client list, only his phone was missing, his computer was still at home. regardless, i took the opportunity to use the bathroom, but just like every other time, my moment of peace was disturbed when i heard him returning home. most likely he went to the supermarket again, that's his favorite place, he goes at least a few times a week. i quickly finished up, took a shower, and vacated the bathroom.

i left by around 11am, told kevin i wouldn't be back until later in the evening. when i arrived in belmont, i saw that kevin had left for work. i was going to turn down the heat but noticed it was already on the low setting, the nest thermostat probably did it on its own when it sensed nobody was home.

i applied the screen protector on my father's moto G7. that's when i noticed it wasn't the right size, slightly smaller along the left and right edges so that the screen pokes out from the glass protector by a few millimeters. i ended up ordering better (bigger) screen protectors off of amazon, figured if those weren't the right size i could simply return them (the ones that i'd gotten were from ebay, harder to return).

i screened some academy nominated movies for my mother, in anticipation for the oscars later tonight: parasite, 1917, ford vs. ferrari.

i went to the grow room and did another Bti soil drench. i'd been soaking some mosquito bits in two buckets since monday, they were starting to stink from being covered up, the water cloudy with bacteria. i also changed out a few yellow sticky traps that had accumulated a lot of dead fungus gnats.

kevin was trying to ping me on wechat while i was having dinner. it's never good news when he contacts me, i braced myself for disaster before i answered the phone. apparently he ran the electric kettle and the microwave at the same time again (how many times have i warned him about this?) and the electricity in the kitchen kicked off. i told him i was coming home soon, he said no hurries.

i returned home after dinner, so i'd have time to shower and watch the academy awards afterwards. i made a beeline to the basement first, to reset the breaker. even though kevin told me not to hurry, there was a bowl of cold vegetables waiting to be heated inside the microwave. i'm not so sure he learned his lesson, since he obviously didn't learn it all the other times i warned him about the kitchen breaker. let's see how long this will last before he pops the breaker again.

as for the oscars, big surprise was parasite winning best screenplay, best foreign picture, best director, and best picture. i've seen parasite and i don't know what all the hype is about. it's an interesting film, but it's not 1917, which i was sure would win.

it was my sister who asked me why our phone bill for february was so high, after i made the switch to the unlimited plan a week and a half ago. under the new plan we should only be paying $175/month, but this month's bill was $264. it took me a while to find the breakdown and for some reason they added $20 per person per line, and started our unlimited service from january 7th when it should've been the 29th. i'm going to have to call them up tomorrow and contest the bill, one of the great pleasures of modern life.

i woke up to an empty house, as kevin left for work this saturday morning. i left for belmont a bit before 11am. the temperature was in the mid-20's but a strong wind made it feel colder. about a few blocks away i started wondering whether i should've brought my wool mittens instead, but my cheap double-layered dollar store gloves worked well enough. i rode in a headwind most of the time, made going uphill even more difficult.

i had some meatball soup for lunch. i help my father with some more phone configuration, like logging into the nest and smart life accounts. i also turned on the chinese input options on his gboard keyboard. finally, i called verizon to fix a peculiar problem he's always had with his phone, that his voicemail never worked. unlike my phone, where my voicemail is integrated into with phone app, on my father's phone he has to manually dial into verizon's voicemail phone service and punch in his pin number and then go through the phone tree to retrieve his messages. originally we thought it was just a bug with his moto G4 plus phone, even though voicemail works perfectly well on my 2nd aunt's moto G4 play. however, once he upgraded to the G7, the problem was still there, so it had something to do with his account. a helpful error message popped up in his voicemail tab: "visual voicemail is disabled" with a verizon customer service number to call to activate this service. so that's what i did. most of the call was just trying to verify i was the rightful owner of the account. it took a text message to my own phone with a security code to finally gain access. from there it was a simple matter of activating visual voicemail on my father's account for everything to work.

i gave my mother the book safe i'd been working on the past 2 days, i figured she had more of a use for it than i do. besides, i have plenty more books to convert into hiding places. i think this one is my best one yet, completely camouflaged when placed on the bookshelf.

i refilled the bird feeder, even though two of the columns were still full, because larger dried berries and peanut pieces had blocked the openings again. i need to get better quality seeds instead of this mixed bag.

i never know this about white-throated sparrows - frequent visitors to the feeder - but they come in two forms: tan-striped and white-striped. that would explain why the first time i saw them i had a hard time with identification, because i was probably looking at tan-striped versions. equal numbers exist within the population, and the more interesting thing is that typically tan-striped will only mate with white-striped, and vice versa. behaviors are also different, with white-striped more aggressive and dominant, while tan-striped more nurturing and submissive.