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cambridge road crew was filling up the potholes on my street this morning. they seemed confused, so i went out to show them the town line between cambridge and somerville. turns out they were just admiring the houses. the guy i spoke to - bruey - said these old houses are better built than the new ones. he also couldn't get over the price and how condos were stacked on top of each other, that you only owned a floor or a section, not the whole house. his partner - jimmy - resembled mike ehrmantraut from better call saul. they did an okay patch job, but it's only a temporary measure, if we have another snowstorm that will freeze and thaw the roads, the potholes will be back.

i migrated my whatsapp chats from my iphone to the pixel 3XL. iphone backs up the data to icloud while android backs up the data to google drive, neither of which are compatible with one another. such an easy request was actually pretty technical. i ended up downloading and installing the wazzap migrator apk (4.1.94) to my pixel phone. i then had to download a different app onto my computer - wmextractor - to extract the ChatStorage.sqlite from my iphone backup along with its media folder. next i copied those files onto my pixel phone, where the migrator app was able to import those chats, but only after i uninstall the latest version of whatsapp and install an older version that's somehow compatible with the imported chat. finally, i had to erase the old whatsapp and install the new one to finally get everything to work. the media folder's a real mess (scattered across several dozen directories) and most of the chats didn't have names, i had to read the transcripts to figure out who it was. but i'm finally able to use whatsapp on my android phone, something i'd never been able to do before.

after a chicken salad on bagel sandwich for lunch, i went to market basket to pick up some groceries. i still have enough meat sauce to last me the rest of the week, especially if i cut my carb intake and only have it with a cup of pasta noodles. i picked up some salad, feeling a bit heavy after this weekend, trying to slim back down again.

afterwards i went to the cafe to deliver the newly customized oneplus one for my mother. she didn't seem all that excited. normally she uses her ipad, and only sparingly use the xiaomi phone, which the oneplus was supposed to replace. she can do with the replacement phone whatever she likes: it's not as light as the redmi note 3, but it does have more memory (64GB versus 16GB) and a faster processor that still rivals some midrange phones of today, even after all these years (bought the oneplus one back in 2014). i left with some leftovers for dinner.

i got a little surprise today: kevin came home unexpectedly at 3:40pm. he immediately went to his room to sleep. i predict he'll do the same again tomorrow: 26th is went rent is due, and typically he'll leave work early to go to the bank to withdraw some cash.

kevin woke up around 6pm to ask me if he could borrow the vacuum cleaner. i took the opportunity to remind him that urine goes into the toilet, not on the floor. he always seem so incredulous when i bring it up, as if somebody else was peeing on the floor.

i heated up the leftover i got earlier for dinner: ground turkey with cauliflower stirfry over rice. this means i'm saving the cheeseburger for dinner tomorrow night. afterwards i watched the south carolina democratic presidential candidate debate. i rarely see a bunch of adults behave like children, talking over one another, trading insults, i feel none of them qualify to be the next president, though the current president sets the bar pretty low.

i managed to get a staggered icon layout on my homescreen after i increased the number of rows by one. there's so much room available, i'm surprised i didn't do it earlier. staggering is not the most efficient use of space and i lose 3 icon spots, but it's a more unique configuration. i don't like the row of folders on top but there's nothing else i can do to fit all my apps onto one screen. at some point i may forgo folders altogether and just have the remaining apps laid out on a second page. this staggered layout reminds me of a gameboard. my child self would've been mesmerized by all the different icons and colors and shapes.

i realized that my version of google camera is 6.2, while the latest camera app is 7.3. why i never got the updated version i'm not sure, until i discovered the latest google camera app is only available for android 10. i've been reluctant to upgrade my system from 9 because i didn't want to risk things breaking. but in order to get the latest camera app (including astrophotography option), it was worth upgrading. i left the system download the upgrade and left it alone to install. it was all pretty painless, though at some point i was afraid maybe the installation crashed because i didn't see any progress. when it was all over, android 10 looks pretty much like android 9, most of the changes are behind the scenes stuff. the emergency button when i pressed the power button for 2 seconds is annoying; i liked it before when the last option on that pop-up selection was to take a screen capture. smart lock finally seems to be working though; i've had the option on my oneplus one but now it really seems to be working, keeping my phone unlocked while i'm at home.

as for the google camera app, there's some interface modification. i didn't get a chance to test out the night sight with astrophotography, but i did like the fact that it now takes selfies in the correct orientation (words are not flipped); the way they had it before was very annoying.