i tried evaporust on my bicycle chain. the chain itself didn't seem all that rusty after i took it off my cargo bike. maybe because i recently oiled it and rode the bike a few times, which is typical how i get rid of chain rust. i also wiped down the chain with a rag to get rid of any residual grease. i found a small enough plastic container to hold the chain and poured in some evaporust. i'm a real klutz when it comes to pouring so of course i spilled some on the floor. but being that evaporust is supposedly super safe, i wasn't that worried. i poured enough just to cover the chain.

later i added a few hex wrenches i had lying around that had a tiny bit of rust. the evaporust solution went from clear to yellow to rusty brown then almost black as the day wore on. looking at the chain and the wrenches, i didn't really notice any improvements, but in order for maximum rust removal, i'd have to let everything soak overnight (12 hours).

i biked down to the cafe in the afternoon to help my sister do her taxes at her place. it was pretty much done the minute i input her single MISC-1099 form last night, but i just her to take a look. it ended up taking almost an hour because she wanted to input some donations, which made no difference in the end regarding the amount she had to pay (federal) and her refund (state), including several $1 donations. since the local post offices were almost closed (the only one opened was the main office at south station), my sister e-filed: free for federal, but $25 for state. it didn't send the first time, but after i applied the turbotax updates, it send out successfully. i returned home by 4:30pm.

my replacement tire arrived today, a day earlier than expected: the kenda K-193 kwest commuter wire bead SRC/PRC black 26" x 1.5" ($17). and though not advertised, the tire also has a reflective strip which i didn't have on any of my previous kenda tires. if i could, all my tires would have reflective strips: it's just an additional layer of passive safety. if this new tire works well, i might order another one (with reflective strip) for the front wheel.

i brought home my sister's macbook pro to fix. i wasn't planning to work on it until later, or possibly even tomorrow, but i don't often get to play with other macbooks besides my own, so i was curious. also there's something about a misbehaving mac that's irresistible to me, i've yet to face a broken apple computer that i wasn't able to fix.

the macbook had 2 hard drives: the original 128GB SSD and a 128GB memory card semi-permanently embedded in the SD card slot. the computer also had two operating systems: 10.9 and 10.11. 10.11 is the one i wanted, but every time i booted into the system, the computer would act weird. first, it was incredibly slow, second, it'd always automatically open up the same apps, finally, whatever changes i make wouldn't take because the system would freeze up whenever i tried to restart/shutdown. all of these symptoms made me think it was a malware/virus issue. the only way i could do any work on this machine was to boot up in the 10.9 partition. it was only after i opened disk utility did i discover the problem: i thought 10.9 was on the memory card and 10.11 on the SSD, but it was the other way around. the reason why the 10.11 partition was so slow was precisely because it was running off of the memory card, something i didn't believe could be possible.

after making that discovery, the solution seemed obvious: upgrade 10.9 on the SSD to 10.12 (OS X sierra), backup the files on 10.11, erase the 10.11 drive, copy back all the files. the app store allowed me to download the installer for OS X 10.12 (i could also jump from 10.9 to 10.12 without having to install all the incremental versions) but i didn't have enough memory on the SSD drive. so i backed up all the music files (around 25GB), erase half of it to make space, then installed 10.12 from a thumb drive OS X installer i prepared last night, so i didn't have to waste time downloading it again.

today we produced 26.83kWh, a little bit more than half of peak production. it was the first day of significant production after 2 days of single digit energy generation.

i ate late, around 9pm, making a salad and roasting some asparagus.