my sister got in touch with me, freaking out this morning. the family she nannied yesterday informed her when she arrived that a month ago their whole family contracted covid-19. kind of thoughtless to mention it now, although realistically i don't think they're contagious anymore, but still, inconsiderate none the less. that got my sister worried maybe she might've gotten the coronavirus from them so she wanted to get tested. the problem with exposure is the first 3 days there's not enough viral activity for a positive test, so the earliest she can go get tested would be friday. since i'd already been tested i knew all the steps and told her to just go to the testing clinic on church street in harvard square, don't even need an appointment. in the meantime my mother banned my sister from going to the cafe until she can get a negative test.

i made a quick trip to star market in the late morning to pick up a few things. temperature was in the 20's and it was still very blustery, making it feel much colder. there was a sale ($1.97/lbs.) on sugar bee apples, one of my favorite varieties. there was also a sale on asparagus ($1.47/lbs.). i got a package of english muffins (99¢). and i bought a gallon of whole milk even though it's due to expire in a week, i'm still trying to figure out if i can finish the whole container.

lesson learned: when you froth milk, it makes it turn cold. i used too much warm milk to mix the matcha powder so when i poured it into the rest of the warm milk, it turned lukewarm at best. next time, use the minimum amount of milk to mix the matcha. i also warmed up the rest of the cabbage celery soup bruce gave me and had some scallion bread. i prefer day-old scallion bread as it turns softer, compared to bread that's right out of the electric pan which is too crispy.

i called xfinity regarding signing up my sister's godmother for their low cost internet essentials plan. i submitted the application two weekends ago and i still haven't heard back from them, even though it's only supposed to take 2-3 business days to process. every time i check the status online, it says still under review. so i finally called their office to ask what's going on. the guy i spoke with told me the application was approved but there was no apartment number on the address so they couldn't go ahead with the next step. he did say he could correct the address but only my sister's godmother could do it, and i was too honest to tell him i was her, so instead he cancelled the application and i told him i'd redo it, making sure the apartment number was on the address this time. thankfully there's no rush, my sister's godmother not due back until 2 weeks.

harvard university is still running specialty lectures even though there's no in-person contact, with everything done virtually. i get their weekly newsletter with the list of events, but only now did i sign up for something. at 4pm i attended a lecture titled "Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India". it's actually kind of fun attending a lecture virtually. i don't have to worry about being polite and pretending i'm listening, and i can leave whenever i want with being rude. the topic was interesting but i don't think i got too much out of it, much of it was esoteric in nature, and the best lectures are those where the speaker can put the subject into layman terms (though by their very nature and their audience, these lectures are technical in scope).

the one advantage of a sunny yet freezing cold day is optimal solar production weather. late winter into spring is when we get the best solar production despite the shorter (though ever increasing) days. we get these beautiful bell curves and during peak production it scrapes the maximum photovoltaic limit of what our 24 panels can produce. it's true that in terms of quantity nothing can beat the summers, but that's only because of the longer stretch of daytime. during the summers we rarely get perfect bell curves (there are always a bit of cloud) and the air gets hazy because of the humidity so we don't get the maximum output during peak production.

i reluctantly upgraded to macos mojave (10.14) today. i was quite happy with high sierra (10.13) even though it dates back to 2017 while the latest OS is big sur (11 AKA 10.16). the only reason why i upgraded was so i could run my bootleg copy of turbotax deluxe (it'd only run on 10.14+). installation was painless, i'd already cleared the necessary space on my hard drive and backed up my data. when i finally booted up with mojave, i didn't really see much difference, which is the point.

however, i realized there was a big issue when i tried to transfer photos from my pixel 3XL android phone to my macbook pro via USB using the PTP protocol: it didn't work anymore. i went in search of answers and sure enough, PTP seems to be no longer supported from 10.14+. i can still use the android file transfer to copy over files, but it's less elegant and requires digging into the file hierarchy to find the files to transfer, compared to before, when i could just use apple's image capture app to automatically copy over photos and videos. to make matters worse, the file date is wrong, it uses the transfer time as the creation date, not the actual file creation date. i need to run the photos through a file attribute app to fix the dates. this is entirely an apple issue, since it used to work before, but they're just trying to find ways to force people into the apple ecosystem by not playing nice with non-apple devices.

adding insults to injuries, after installing my bootleg turbotax deluxe, i found out it'd break after receiving the latest updates, making it useless. even when i do get turbotax to work on my mac, next year's version won't run on 10.14 anymore and i'll need to upgrade my OS again, maybe break something else. i could use time machine and downgrade back to 10.13, but it'd be a hassle. i guess i just have to learn to live without PTP transfer support in the name of apple-style progress.

for dinner i made two different english muffin sandwiches: lettuce-onion-turkey with mayo, and lettuce-onion-capicola-prosciutto with spicy mustard. the turkey sandwich was better. i ate one of the sweet bee apples for dessert while rewatching ted lasso.