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i slept restlessly last night, even saw the sunrise. it had nothing to do with the heat, as it was pleasantly cool in my bedroom with the window open. my nasal cavity seemed clogged even though i was able to breath, like i had something caught in the back of my throat. the obstruction caused me to snore badly enough that i actually heard myself doing it right when i was about to fall asleep and right before i woke up. the snoring sounded like voices, and i thought i was going crazy. i finally got out of bed by 11am.

i installed pokemon go today. i was going to do it last week and i almost did but changed my mind the last minute because it seemed like a silly game. but now that it's at an all-time hype, i wanted to see for myself what all the talk is about. i managed to catch a charmander while using the bathroom. i don't know if i have unlimited pokemon balls because it took a lot of tries before i caught it. i noticed some pokestops nearby, and a few pokemon gyms (weirdly enough, at a fire station).

after a shower, i walked to star market to get a few things for my mother (cherries, corn, crescent roll), before taking the motorcycle to belmont a bit after noontime. my mother was watching the sniffer (russian: nyukhach) on amazon prime, a 2013 ukrainian police procedural about a detective with the superhuman ability to literally sniff out clues. she made some croissant and kielbasa for lunch.

it was a hot day but not as bad as yesterday, with temperature in the 80's and low humidity. i was able to work in the backyard, watering the plants and grass, pruning some lilacs, cutting down a wild elm and some nightshade, and weeding the raised beds.

when my father came home we tested out the transfer pump + battery + solar panel setup. he tried it on his own earlier but couldn't get it to work. we discovered that the transfer pump requires 9A of current (in addition to 12V of DC power). the used motorcycle battery was rated 12V with 12AH (amp-hour). technically, the battery should be able to run the pump for at least an hour. i went ahead and trickle-charged the battery. it completed the charge in a fast 20-30 minutes, which seems like a mistake, so the battery itself might be bad, damaged enough that it can only hold a very small charge.

we plugged in the transfer pump directly to the charged motorcycle battery: it sparked the moment i made contact with the positive lead and the pump began to run. so the battery works! we just don't know how much charge it has before it runs out of juice.

the next step is seeing if we can get the solar panel to charge the battery. at 1.5 watts with about a 200mA, it's essentially a trickle charger so we will forgo using a controller. besides, the amount of power it produces would all be lost if it had to go through a controller first. my father opened the solar panel and cut the led lead to prevent the blinking light from interrupting the power output.

when my father plugged the battery back to the outlet-powered trickle charger, the light was steady red, meaning it was deep charging. my father took that as a good sign but it could also mean that the battery couldn't hold a charge and in just the few seconds we demonstrated running the transfer pump it used up most of its power.

after dinner i motorcycled back to cambridge. i was hoping for a bit of rain today so i could wash the motorcycle (covered in sticky drops of tree sap) but it was another dry day. after taking a quick shower, i ready myself for another episode (2) of the night of. i watched it through hbo go. i tried to play it through my chromecast three times but it crashed out every time, so i ended up watching it streaming from the hbo go website instead.