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my mother made some lunch (croissants, buffalo sausages, eggs). afterwards i went out into the backyard with hailey. when the snow stopped in the afternoon, we all went out and shoveled the sidewalk and driveway. i managed to get a few more snowflake photos. the cold metal surfaces of cars make a great canvas, as well as the bottom of a large pan. when it started snowing again, puffy snowflakes fell from the sky.
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all this weekend i've been researching mp3 players. my father wanted one that could display his chinese history books on tape. that got my mother interested when she said she'd always wanted an mp3 player as well. i recommended the sandisk sansa express, which is the one that i use. although not the most elegant of players, it has an attractive OLED screen, does require a cable for sync'ing, can easily double as a flash drive, and has chinese language support. the operating system however is a nightmare and not very well designed. my mother wanted an ipod nano, and then later upgraded her selection to an ipod touch when i told her she could surf the web and watch her korean soap operas. unfortunately i was wrong about the soap opera (not flash-based like youtube, it requires a proprietary streaming video codec) so my mother decided to get the nano instead (in green). at the same time i managed to show my sister how she can display photos on her 2nd generation nano.
for dinner we had some teriyaki-marinated steak tips. the second wave of snow really started to fall by the time my father drove me back to cambridge. 8" had already fallen earlier, and this one would add another 1-3". i was worried that a snow pile would be waiting for me when i got back but my upstair neighbor had shoveled the sidewalk already. the house was just the way i left it, minus some dirty dishes in the sink and the two cases of empty beer bottles waiting to be recycled. i didn't see my roommate the rest of the night; the less i see him the more i can pretend he's already moved out.
disaster finally struck: i knocked over a glass of water onto my computer table. fortunately it spilled mostly to the floor. what the carpet didn't soak up i managed to dry with a towel. and it was also just water, no sticky stains to worry about. i've always wondered when something like this would happen. i'm happy to know that i survived the mishap with no damaged hardware.
approaching midnight i got a strange phone call. after filtering out the initial torrent of swear words, i managed to figure out it was one of the hardware installers calling me from the museum. with the exhibit opening tomorrow and all those guys still in crunch mode, one of the interactives had bugged out and they wanted to know how to solve it. after a 10 minute timeout to get my bearings, i found the source of the bug and fixed it, uploading a new version and calling them back to confirm. i also answered a few other hardware-related questions. when i gave them my phone number and told them they could call if they had any questions, i didn't think it'd mean late at night on a sunday. i'm happy to help but i think a line has been breached.