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this morning i lightly washed the motorcycle with a wet sponge and a towel since it was covered in the sticky sap droplets of leafing trees. later it looked like it might rain so i covered up the bike. after lunch i went to the post office to mail off a shipment for frances. coming back, it began to rain lightly so i put the bike away in the basement.

i found myself back at the medford OSJL with my parents, for one more round of senior citizen discounting. tomato cages, blinds, and a whole bunch of canned foods were purchased.

in belmont, my father helped me plant my cucamelons. the rain had started back up by that point, what i was still in the backyard tying up strings for the peas and cucamelons to climb on. i moved in the remaining seedlings indoors so they wouldn't drown from the deluge of overnight rain.

after some zongzi for dinner, i got a ride back to cambridge.

irregardless of what happens next month, i still need to make travel preparations. a part of that is gathering the necessary equipment. one important item is getting a larger hard drive for whichever laptop i end up bringing with me. when i went to southeast asia, i only carried 80GB (used only 30GB). then when i went on my extended china trip, i doubled down and carried 160GB (2x80gb hard drives).

this time around i'll be carrying 1TB, 6x more than what i had before (not to mention an additional 2TB if i decide to bring my external drive as a backup, especially if i'm interested in shooting any videos). i thought about getting a 1TB external storage and then removing the hard drive to upgrade the laptop so i could have a spare case. but external storages are either difficult to open and/or the hard disk itself doesn't work in a laptop. i ended up getting a WD 1TB 2.5" 5400 RPM SATA II internal drive ($78.52).

i don't follow apple news as much as i used to, but there was a big apple developer's conference today and a whole bunch of new software and hardware were revealed. i like the new streamline user interface in the new iOS. i hope more of it will fast trickle into OS X as well. i really like the parallax view, which gives the background a 3D effect. that alone makes me wish i had an iphone/ipad to play around with! on the hardware side, there finally was a major update to the formerly flagship desktop machines. a cylinder? that acts like a heat sink chimney? talk about different. it's innovative enough that maybe future pc desktops will follow apple's lead.

i stayed up late to watch martha marcy may marlene (2011). i'd heard about this movie before but never had a chance to watch it. besides, it sounded depressing, about a girl escaping from a cult. it was actually pretty good in a creepy sort of way. i'd never seen elizabeth olsen, she has a good screen presence.