i went to my sister's place before work to activate the xfinity gateway i got from the fresh pond xfinity office last night. i first split the coaxial so one was going into my sister's old router and the other into the gateway. it didn't work at first, probably because i started the activation process on my xfinity app before the gateway was fully powered on. it told me it couldn't find the gateway. when i tried again it found on the second time, and asked me to rename the network and change the password. with that i was all set. i would've swapped over the modem but i noticed it was a motorola SB6141, the same model i tried to activate with yesterday but they wouldn't let me because they said it was no longer supported. thankfully late last night i ordered an amazon renewed arris SB6190 cablemodem. it's due to arrive tonight, so i'll bring it back tomorrow, swap out with the gateway, then return the gateway.

i bumped into my moroccan mailman today by the cafe. he's apparently covering for another postal carrier who broken his leg and might be out for 4 months. my mailman doesn't mind, he gets overtime pay for covering someone else's route along with his own. i told him i work at the cafe sometimes, and he asked about the coffee. i recommended the bento (although i think he can only have the chicken).

there was a rush of activity this late morning as we had a large grubhub order scheduled for noontime with at least 16 bento boxes and a handful of other orders. they actually made the order last night but my sister only noticed it this morning. luckily my parents were also at the cafe early (to prepare all the foods for my sister's catered meals) and had time to make sure we had everything ready. we had another similarly large order a few weeks ago, not sure if it was the same person. food prepping in bulk is more logistically challenging, but the payoff is greater, instead of making the same amount in piecemeal. as long as we get advanced warning, it's actually pretty manageable.

other than that big grubhub order, business today was slow if you also don't count the catered meals. we had meat buns and salt water chicken and special new year's cake, all things my parents knew how to make. i think the only thing my sister made was a beef & daikon soup, and even that she needed my parents help because she'd planned to start the soup so late it wouldn't be ready by the time customers were coming to pick up their orders.

my sister's godmother came to the cafe today. she always come when she has a favor to ask, and today she needed my mother's help to order a plane ticket back to taiwan for next week. she came in the afternoon but we were so busy, we weren't able to buy her ticket until around 5pm. it's easier to travel to taiwan nowadays since they did away with the quarantine and testing.

later in the day i went over to the upstairs apartment to check on their plumbing issue, something about low shower head water pressure. there was a bunch of issues: low water pressure, water leaking behind the wall, and low water pressure in the bathroom sink. later my father came to take a look and we even went down into the basement to see if somebody had accidentally turned off the water. whatever the problem was it was beyond our expertise so my sister ended up calling a plumber, who will call her back tomorrow morning to schedule an appointment. at least the toilet still flushes and there's good water pressure in the kitchen sink.

i didn't leave the cafe until almost 7pm. i left with 4 meat buns and 2 slices of scallion bread. when i got home i ate two buns and a piece of scallion bread, saving the rest for tomorrow. i also went to star market to get some navel oranges on sale. they weren't as good as the ones we got from aldi's, the rind on these oranges were extra thick, so you were getting less orange.

the SB6190 modem arrived later in the evening. amazon seems to deliver later and later, not enough hours in the day to make all their deliveries. it didn't come with the original box and said refurbished. as long as it works, i don't care what quality it comes in.

i finally watched the premiere episode of the last of us, which aired this past sunday. i'm usually not a fan of zombie survivalist horrors, and that's what i thought this show would be, just on HBO's budget and high production value. but the first episode only showed cordycep fungus zombies a few times, while most of the time the horror came from human-on-human interactions. it's got me intrigued at the very least, and with nothing good to watch on sunday nights, i'll continue to watch this show.

i went ahead and cancelled the xfinity technician appointment, since i already got the gateway to work. the weird thing was when i went into billing, it gave me an error, most likely because i circumvented the usual installation process by doing it on my own. i used their online tool to cancel the appointment but it wouldn't let me, and told me i had to chat with an agent. so i used the online chat tool and got an agent to cancel the appointment. unfortunately when i went back into my account to check, the new account was gone, somehow unlinked. i think cancelling the technician appointment somehow also cancelled the account, but the account is still active because i activated the gateway, it's just not linked from anywhere. more comcast xfinity hell! hopefully i can get it sorted out at the xfinity office tomorrow when i return the rented gateway (and fingers crossed manage to transfer to the new modem).