i biked down to the cafe in the late morning to drop off some supplies and to give the xiaomi mi band 2 to my 2nd aunt. first i downloaded the mi fit app to her ipad (took a few tries to find until i discovered it's an iphone app) then created a free xiaomi account. however her tablet just wouldn't recognize the fitness tracker. i was afraid there might be something wrong with the band, until i restarted her ipad and it finally connected with the device. only then did i begin defrosting the freezer, which took a while, lasting through two timer cycles. it's only been 3 days but that's enough time for an ice age to develop on the radiator fins. i keep on thinking i should go out and buy a cheap $20 blow dryer with a concentrator nozzle, because the one we use now doesn't have one and it seems sort of inefficient. afterwards i went to my sister's place to help her move a heavy wooden screen panel. she was going to take hailey to the vet later, her leg was bleeding last night, and the paw has swollen to twice its normal size.

i decided instead of going home i'd get my hair cut. i'm long overdue, i have a mullet now, long enough to tie a little ponytail. i don't mind longer hair, and i've had a few good hair days, despite not taking care of it besides shampoo and conditioner (black person shampoo/conditioner i might add). and the longer my hair gets, the curlier it gets too. but my hair is at a length now where it's starting to bother me.

my last haircut was back in august when i tried fast phil's on the cambridge-arlington line. i wasn't entirely satisfied, so i wanted to try someplace else. i've seen charlie's barber shop out by porter square, seems like an old-timey folksy place with a barber pole that i'd be able to get a decent and cheap haircut. it was actually larger than i thought, a long room with about half a dozen cutting chairs and a dozen waiting chairs. instead of the old italian-greek barbers i'm used to, there was a young guy giving somebody a haircut, while an older woman was standing by a barber chair, and another young guy looked like he was waiting but turned out to be the third barber on duty. the woman gave me my haircut. i'm used to chatty barbers but this woman didn't say anything to me, other than the occasional hairstyle question (tapered? straight? scissor cut?) or command. in between cuts she'd take a sip from a bottle of ginger ale through a straw (i was worried she'd get hair in her drink). i could feel her wheezing as she worked. she was also very detailed, i could tell i was getting a quality haircut.

the haircut ended up taking almost half an hour, not sure if that's typical, or maybe just because there wasn't any customers so she could take a bit longer. while i was there only 2 other customers came in, an old guy who specifically asked for charlie (turns out the young guy giving the haircut earlier was him) and a student-looking fellow who got the 3rd barber. when she finally finished, she put warm foam on the back of my neck and shaved it with a straight razor, don't remember ever having that experience before. i should've known better when i didn't see a price board anywhere when i first came in. but how much can a haircut cost anyway? when she rung me up i tried not to show the sticker shock on my face: $30. i'm a guy who gets $5 flushing chinatown haircuts, or i get them free from my mother. true, most of the time i'm not entirely happy with the hairstyle, but i've grown used to that fact, and after a few weeks i sort of grow into it. i'm saying i'm not very picky about my haircuts, as long as they're cheap. but $30? that's like 6x what i usually pay! on top of that, i gave her $3 tip, not sure if that's standard or maybe i gave too little. $30 haircuts i expect at some fancy salon, not a place that touts itself as a genuine barber shop. however, i wasn't too angry, because to be honest, it was actually a pretty good haircut, but i'm definitely not going there again. later i checked out their website, which says $20-25 haircuts (sorry, i haven't been to a real barber shop in a while, not sure what the going rate is), but that price could be outdated (place opened up back in 2003).

i bumped into paul when i got home. he said he and steve saw me at the march for our lives rally in boston. so they're weren't as oblivious as i'd thought. after a pause, i said i saw them too. he must've noticed i was taking photos and asked if i got any good snapshots. i told him i'd send him some. steve also wrote me earlier, asked if i was going to clean and oil the deck again this year (not that it needs it, he was just curious). because of their tenants (due to arrive in mid-may), he said he might oil the front steps. i wrote him back, told him where the timber oil was, gave him a few tips.

i had a tea egg back at the cafe so i wasn't particularly hungry. i decided to go to market basket to get some groceries. it was a sunny but cold day, the sky a deep dark blue, the best kind of solar production day, and i couldn't wait for the results to come in. i decided i was going to make prosciutto egg english muffin sandwiches for lunch, and risotto for dinner, so gathered the necessary ingredients. i felt more confident with my new haircut, compared to what i had before, which made me look like a homeless person. i also noticed i was suddenly checking out the haircuts of other people, something i'd never do before. i ended up getting 14 items, so couldn't take advantage of the faster 12-items-or-less lines.

a few things arrived in the mail: my HDMI adapter, my glass protector screen for my iphone 5s (i've been using cheap plastic ones which scratch and lift up causing air bubbles on the edges and need to be replaced periodically), and my order of 10 mini bi-pin sockets (when i only really just one).

it didn't surprise me that once again we set another new production record of 45.71kWh, about a kWh more than the previous record exactly a week ago. the only surprise was a small blimp around 9:45am when production dropped a little bit. probably some passing stray clouds even though i didn't see any clouds today. it's not important anyway, since i'm sure in a few more days the record will be broken again. i expect to see a string of broken production records all the way to the end of june, the start of summer.

i didn't make risotto because i still had two slices of leftover meat pie from last week which i reheated for dinner. i ate while watching DC's legends of tomorrow. later in the evening i watched the season finale of the good doctor.

with the arrival of the replacement mini bi-pin socket, i had all the parts i needed to fix the halogen light fixture. the only other thing i was still waiting for was a new halogen bulb, but i could just as easily use the old one, it wouldn't be a problem. the wires that came with the sockets were indeed too short, but they were also too thick, so i'd have to splice the old thinner wires onto these. to seal the splices i'd use heat shrink tubings, but i needed a heat gun to get a proper shrink, so i'm going to wait until tomorrow and get the heat gun from my parents' place.

i played around with IFTTT tonight. i was surprised so many smart device companies have joined up with them to create programmable triggers and events. i created a few if-then-else commands but quickly realized it only allowed me to use one trigger to create one event. if i wanted the lights to turn on if i'm home and it's after sunset, it can't do this. nevertheless, i turned a few commands into android widgets to turn on and off a living room light. i noticed there's a slight delay, since it has to send the command to the server to parse before the action can be activated. when i use the smart life app, the smart plug is activated instantaneously, regardless of distance. i went exploring and there seems to be a few ways to do multiple if-statement commands. i'll look into that.