i decided to work from the oft-unused dining table, a more civilized way to compute instead of lounging on the sofa which is comfortable but terrible for my back, my body curled up for hours. i tried attaching my external monitor but i couldn't find my DVI-HDMI adapter, so had to buy one off of ebay (arriving monday the latest). i then did a 3-way swap of surge protectors (SP), between the one underneath my bed, the one in the grow closet, and one of the SP's in the living room. the closet SP only had 4 outlets for some reason, enough to power my four fluorescent light banks, but not enough for an usb fan which i have to turn on and off manually everyday. the whole SP runs off of an industrial timer which switches everything on at 10am and shuts everything down at midnight. another SP i moved to the kitchen, so i could power my laptop when the battery finally went out and the monitor as well (when i finally receive that adapter).

working from the dining area, i still have access to the tv thanks to google tv streaming from my phone. despite facing south, it can actually be darker in the dining area because of all the shady trees. since it doesn't face out onto the street like the living room, the dining area is more quiet, although retired paul was doing yard work and i kept seeing him going in and out of the basement (he was edging the border around the sidewalk tree with some plastic barriers). i had some used pillows and propped them up on the chairs for a butt cushion and a foot rest.

while surfing the free access IPTV channels through my VLC (can't get enough of FTV, afghan ariana, or any of the kazakh broadcasts), it bounced me from the channel i was watching to the local live stream of WHDH 7. breaking news: someone had robbed a bank in somerville. at first i thought it was union square (that poor citizens bank, it's been robbed before), but when i took a closer look at the photos (no live coverage as it was an ongoing manhunt) i realized it was davis square.

a gunman had robbed the middlesex federal bank. he fired a shot at a police officer, who fired back but no injuries. the robber escapes on foot down college avenue and the police were still searching for him. i immediately went on the baofeng radio to listen to the police chatter. there was surprisingly little talk with somerville police - maybe they'd purposely gone radio silent or went to a private channel. i listened to the state police on the android scanner radio app; there was a bit more talk (about blockades on college avenue), but everything seemed calm.

apparently they had somebody in custody (one of the channels had live coverage from a helicopter, the man appeared suspiciously topless on this 40's day), but turned out to be the wrong person. my father also called me at some point to let me know what was happening (but i was already monitoring the situation). later they had security camera video of the robber running down the sidewalk; a brave samaritan pushed the robber while he ran past him, forcing him to drop his backpack which not only contained his gun but also his money.

for lunch i made a prosciutto egg english muffin sandwich. for dinner i had some oven-baked french bread pizza.