i woke up this morning at a more sensible hour of 10am after having gone to bed last night at 3am. the only thing i had to do today was wait for my mother's samsung S9+ phone to arrive and set it up for her. today was the first day of december and the weather outside was in the lower 60's.

even though the legendary limited raids event was already over, this morning i spotted several local raids featuring azelfs. i contacted frances, who rounded up her husband as well as a friend so the 4 of us could battle the azelf. i actually tried twice before but found myself facing the azelf on both occasions when players dropped out in the final seconds. that's when frances told me that if you leave a raid before the battle begins, it doesn't use up your raid pass. i didn't think that was the case but good to know, i've been waiting raid passes all this time, battling legendary pokemons solo. it was fun battling with level 40 players, and winning was just a matter of formality. best part is i managed to capture the azelf afterwards.

i got a notice from the mass department of unemployment, saying i'm not eligible for unemployment because i didn't earn sufficient wages in my base period. the letter was a little confusing, but they made an error in my total gross pay and i'm going to correct it with the wage correction sheet, though i'm not sure if that'll make any difference, though it won't hurt to try.

amazon notified me by 11am that the package was delivered. it could've arrived earlier, but for some reason the phone was rerouted from the bronx to tennessee then back up to boston, fedex shipping logic apparently. i ate lunch before i went to retrieve the package, so chicken sausage oatmeal cooked with my smokeless foreman grill. speaking of which, i decided to toss out my old foreman - the one with the non-stick coating fall off - now that i have a new one. it's served me well, nearly 2 decades. as sentimental as i want to be, there's no room in my house for an old foreman grill i'm never going to use again. i did however save the plastic tray and scraper spatula.

i went to belmont around 1:15pm. i thought about bringing my drone, maybe do some backyard flying to take photos of the dramatic clouds, but didn't want to use up my time. in hindsight i should've brought it because the clouds were the most dramatic i've seen it in a while, especially after all that storm clouds started to clear out.

while i was at my parents' house, i was a bit of backup cleaning. i found a dead squirrel and buried out. collected some buckets that'd been blown around. righted the 50W solar panel. put away the plywood launching pad. and in the kitchen there was a dead mouse in the trap which i put in a plastic bag and tossed out into the garbage. only then did i grab the new phone and headed to the cafe.

as this was a renewed phone, there were faint traces of prior usage. there was a very small scratch on the screen, almost imperceptible except i saw it. the phone seemed to have been opened before because there was some nick marks around the edges, nothing too bad, and nothing that can't be hidden with a phone case. i doubt this renewed phone is waterproof.

however, the thing that could've been a deal breaker was a tiny crease in the center of the screen. normally you wouldn't see it, but if you tilt it in the light you'd catch it, and if your moved your finger over the screen you can feel it. when i put the glass screen protector over it though, you can't see it anymore.

nevertheless, screen protector presented a new problem. glass protectors on these curved phones rely on attaching the cover to the edges of the screen instead of the whole screen. the majority of the screen is just a very thin layer of air. that small pocket messes with the phone's ability to sense screen touches. this is most noticeable on the sides of the screen, not so much in the middle, though it can happen as well.

i also couldn't figure out how to turn on the phone. i honestly thought maybe it was defective, which would give me a legitimate excuse to get a replacement, despite the hassle of shipping it back and waiting for another one. when i finally turned on the phone though, it was at 87% battery. the problem i later discovered was i was pressing the samsung bixby button thinking it was the power button. the power button on the S9+ is on the right side, and on the left are the volumes and the bixby button.

once the screen protector and cover where in place, i took the motorcycle to the harvard square verizon office to switch the sim card from the iphone 5s to the samsung S9+. i had to circle the square twice looking for parking. the thought did enter my mind, that i should've tried swapping out the sim card on my own first, because chances are it could be the same size. when i arrived at the store, that's exactly what the guy there told me. i opened up the phones and sure enough, the sim card was the same size, could saved me a trip! i told him when i did it with my pixel phone i did have to replace the sim card, and he confirmed that google phones use a different size. when i put the sim card into the samsung, it rebooted and showed verizon as the carrier along with signal bars.

i got back to the cafe by 3:40pm. my godmother and my 2nd aunt were there for their little knitting circle. my godmother has a samsung phone as well, and when she took hers out, we realized it was a S9+ a well since the back of the phones were an exact match. i set up some additional accounts, including migrating over my mother's line account (after making a backup first on the oneplus one) and manually adding some e-mails.

i returned home by 4:30pm, the sun already set. my godmother gave me a container of watermelon seeds to take back. i also planned on going to market basket today but didn't get around to it. for dinner i boiled a frozen package of cheese raviolis along with half a jar of pasta sauce.

i called my mother in the evening asking how she was liking her new phone. she said the screen protector is definitely messing with the touch sensitivity and wanted to get rid of it. i'll go check it out tomorrow, maybe there's something i can do with the phone settings to boost the touch sensitivity, i could also try repositioning the protector, maybe it's not aligned correctly, causing the air gap.

my sister's birthday's tomorrow, i was trying to find something to get her, but ended up just sending her a $200 amazon gift card.