no matter what i do. in fact in china there's a cottage industry of experts who you can pay to put on screen protectors for you. they actually do this by custom cutting a protector using an x-acto knife, it's a pretty amazing thing to see. so it was with some hesitation that i went about putting on the protector for the OPO. i made sure i was working at the sunniest part of the house (kitchen table), so i examine the surface of the phone and make sure there was no dust. i followed the steps including one step i never tried before: taping the positioned protector to the phone before applying it. that actually makes it easier in leveling the protector once it goes on. i did a pretty amazing job, and even a spot in the corner where i had a bit of dust, i removed it with the dust removing sticker.
for lunch i ate some of the bread i made yesterday with a butter spread. it was old butter so it had a bit of fridge taste to it.
around 1:00 i biked down to the galleria mall, to exchange my htc re camera for a new one. i haven't been down to east cambridge in a long time, and was surprised by some new office buildings. 
i wouldn't mind working in the kendall square area again, it'd be an easy commute for one thing. the exchange was effortless, that's one of the perks of dealing with a big box store like best buy. i was briefly tempted to go inside the mall (which i haven't visited in a long time as well) but there was nothing else i wanted to get. besides, it's been a few years since the border bookstore disappeared, so i have even less reason to visit the galleria.
back at home, i pulled my bike into the backyard to adjust the rear brake. i noticed it wasn't catching anymore, 
figured it was a simple matter of adjusting the tension on the cable. turns out the tension spring in the left v-brake brake arm had snapped at some point, so it would never spring back to its original position. i tried looking for spare parts in the house but didn't find any, nor did any of the old bikes in my basement use mountain bike style v-brakes. i thought about going to the somerville bike works to buy a brand new set, but decided to order it online (cheaper) since i wasn't in any hurry because i had a fleet of other bikes i could use. i pulled out the other trek MTB and stashed my regular bike in the basement.
i tried connecting my OPO with the new HTC re camera. to my surprise it connected! but after playing with it for a little bit, it lost the connection, and i wasn't able to reconnect with it no matter what i tried. i really want to love the HTC re camera but it's really making it hard with an app that doesn't work!
for dinner i had more bread, this time with an olive oil-garlic-salt dipping sauce. really quite delicious and filling! paired that with a mug of apple cider, some clementine oranges, and some defrosted cream puffs.
it was finally cold enough today for me to turn on the thermostat. at 6:00 i turned it up from 60° to 68°. after it finished heating up the house, here's what i got for temperatures: bionaire electric space heater BCH3620 68°, acu-rite 66°, brookstone desktop clock 67°, timex travel clock 68°, infrared thermometer measured area around the thermostat 68°, and finally the nest thermostat itself read 69°. so it's really all over the place, but within a degree or two of each other, not enough to make me want to return it again. i can live within this margin of error.
i kept trying to connect to the HTC re camera. the OPO can see it, but it just won't connect. but finally, through some miracle, i did get it to connect one more time. the trick? turn off both the bluetooth and wifi. the re uses bluetooth to make the initial connection, but afterwards it creates a private wifi network to communicate between the phone and the camera. i noticed it the first time i connected, that my wifi got turned off. it's currently filming a 1:30 time lapse movie (which will create just an 18 second clip)...