i biked to belmont by 11am, not realizing my parents were getting ready for a market basket supply run. my mother opted not to go since we weren't getting too much, just various meats. but we ended up convincing her to come anyway after we added a costco stop. while my parents were getting ready, i went into the backyard and inspected the solar panels. the snow and ice on the sunroom panels had mostly melted. by day's end we generated almost 26kWh of electricity, we haven't had so much production in over a week.

we left by 11:30am, heading to costco first. it was very crowded, not sure if any of the other weekdays are any better, but monday is the normally the only time we can come, and it feels just as crowded as the weekend. my father got another pair of orvis fleece-lined pants while i grabbed another bag of tamarind bites. my father also bought another sur-la-table air fryer oven. we use two already at the cafe, he wanted to have a third as a backup. this is a newer version - v2.0 - that has the oven door open from the side instead of from the top. one issue with top opening is oils drip down into the hinges and can't be easily cleaned so side opening is an improvement.

next we went to market basket. i wasn't interested in the groceries as i was in the liquor store next store, which i went to while my parents were checking out. i got a bottle of wild turkey 101 ($25) and a bottle of xifeng jiu ($25) for my father.

because we bought so much supplies, we had to drop them off at the cafe. entering cambridge, we made another stop at the fresh pond trader joe's to get a few more things, before finally arriving at the cafe by around 2pm.

we returned to belmont around 2:25pm. my father helped me jack up the motorcycle on the stand. i do this so the bike won't rest on its tires all winter long, deforming them. after that i ran the engine to burn off all the fuel in the carburetor. the motorcycle wouldn't start so i used the portable car jumper to bring the engine back to life. i ran it for a few minutes before the engine stopped on its own. i then took out the battery so i could trickle charge it inside the house. finally i put the cover over the motorcycle. with that the 2023 riding season officially comes to a close. the odometer read 16,577 miles, i probably only put a few hundred miles on that bike all season.

when i went back inside my mother scolded me because she'd already made me so lunch but i was outside working. it was some leftover rice mixed with the fish stew from last night plus some slightly spicy korean spring rolls we got from costco. afterwards i went back outside again to refill the birdfeeder with sunflower seeds.

around 4pm i went down to the basement to water the plants in the grow room. i started by inspecting the jasmine and gardenia plants for mealybugs. i found on the smaller jasmine closest to the entrance, the jasmine on the far back wall (elevated on two milk crates), and the jasmine in the far right corner. the far back wall jasmine had the worst infestation. i used several 70% alcohol dipped q-tips to removed any mealybugs i saw. for some reason the systemic insecticide granules i added doesn't seem to working, or maybe they've started to lose their efficacy (i heard it only last 2 months, and i applied the systemic back in early november). i may have to apply more just to prevent an outbreak. i also need to respray all the jasmines and gardenia, but i need a warm day so i can bring them outside for the spraying, as doing it indoors would just be too messy.

only after the mealybug inspection did i finally start watering the plants. i started with the orchids, then the pennyworts (full submersion), followed by the jade plant, spiderworts, and prayer plants, before moving on to the pileas.

the light fixture above the dining table has been flickering a bit. i thought about replacing the bulb to fix it. it used to have CFL flood light bulb (PAR38), but we replaced it with an equivalent led bulb a few years back. led bulbs are supposedly able to last for years if not decades, but this one seemed to have gone bad sooner than that. i checked the bulb to see the specs: apparently it's a CREE bulb, 3000K 47° 18W 150mA no lumen rating. the fixture itself supposed can handle a 150W equivalent bulb. the latest generation of PAR38 LED flood light bulbs can be as bright as 3000 lumens (although i'd like to get one locally, quicker and easier to return).

dinner took forever because my parents turned on the wrong burner on the range followed by forgetting to turn on the rice cooker (twice). we didn't eat until almost 6:30pm, waiting for the rice to cook. even then the rice was weird, instead of sticky clumps, it was individual grains. my father made a chicken and arrowhead root stew, and my mother made some steamed egg with ground pork. she also cooked up some tofu with chinese celery.

i left by 7:30pm, getting back home by 7:45pm. the new replacement pixel 6 pro arrived today, several days ahead of schedule. i was excited to take a look at it, but once i had it out of the package, that excitement quickly faded as i saw two scratches on the screen. this was supposed to be a premium renewed phone which isn't supposed to have any scratches. i could return it but it'd be a hassle, plus you can't see scratches when the phone is on, only when it's off.

so i decided to press forward and set up the phone. it arrived with its battery completely drained, so i had to charge it up a little bit. i ran into a problem when i tried to transfer data from the old pixel 6 to the new pixel 6 pro: i couldn't see the screen on the pixel 6, so i couldn't validate the phone when prompted. i ended up doing a setup from the online backup, but it all did was copy over the apps, contacts, and settings. things like apps layout it lost. now i have to think about of it's worth replacing the broken pixel 6 screen. the replacement parts cost $160, which is nearly the price of a renewed phone.

there was a mavericks-celtics game tonight. the team was reunited with former celtics grant williams. porzingis sat out the second night of a back-to-back while alford started in his place. it was a crazy game but the celtics had a 6 points lead going into halftime and never gave it up after that. celtics won 119-110. now they have a few days rest before they play the heat in miami on thursday.

i played around a bit more with the pixel 6 pro. the one thing i wanted to try was the 4x optical zoom, something i wished i had on my pixel 7. it arrived with a thin film screen protector already in place (maybe to try and disguise the scratches). it's not that much bigger than a pixel 6, you can barely tell the difference. the pixel 6 pro is a little longer. it does have a premium feel to it, but i think that's only because it doesn't have a case, so it feels a lot thinner than a typical phone. but because it doesn't have a case, it's super slippery, and it fell off the desk a few times. it features a curved screen, which was all the rage for a while in android phone design before people realized it was impossible to add a protective glass screen protector, so now all the phones are going back to flat screens. one thing i did was to upgrade the OS to android 14 and set the launcher to nova, before adjusting the settings.