went down to harvard square in the late morning to catch the end of some commencement action. the forecast called for rain but once again it was a relatively nice day. graduations make for good people watching as folks get dressed up for the special occasion. there was a sea of people, graduates and their families and friends. i felt sorry for any cars passing through harvard square during that time. the frenzy of activity was so overwhelming that i ended up only taking a few photos.

returning home, i went to the community garden to water the plants and to check up on the basil i planted yesterday. i'm happy to report that they've all survived so far. even one of the old shredded basil is still alive; i'm hoping it might even regrow some new leaves. plants can be amazingly resilient.

i went to belmont to watch some more recorded freddy's nightmares episodes on the DVR. i managed to go through 8 episodes, watched in fast-forward mode since most of the episodes weren't worth the time to watch them in normal speed. i also went out into the backyard with the set of new spray heads and watered the plants. my favorite is the extended arm shower head.

i managed to test some hard drives. my father recently had a 500gb internal SATA die on him and i was trying to resurrect it. unfortunately there was nothing i could do since it was already giving me the click of death sound. maybe i could try freezing it overnight, which is one online suggested solution.

while testing some drives, i discovered my brand new thermaltake blacx docking station had a defective power switch. instead of sending it back to newegg, i decided to go down to microcenter, buy a replacement, and then swap the bad one with the good one and then return the bad one. returning home, i stopped off in harvard square again, looking for some graduation photo opps, but there wasn't much to see, and by that time, most of the students were already busy moving out.

after dinner, i went back to cambridge, where i watched game 1 between the lakers magic. i ended up rooting for the magic, which was weird, because i'd already rooted against them in two different series (versus the celtics, and then against the cavaliers). but i hate the lakers so much, i'll basically root for any team they're facing. by this point i have the magics figured out, both their strengths and weaknesses. tonight the lakers just demolished the magic because orlando just couldn't get their 3-point game going. that's their achilles' heel, because without their perimeter shooters, they really don't have anything else going for them. hopefully they can rebound in game 2.

harvard is the last school to hold its graduation ceremony, and the one with largest student body. now with most of these scholars gone, there's an unusual calm that pervades cambridge for the rest of the summer. i noticed it right away when i got home. normally the end of my street would be parked with cars, but tonight it was empty. so weirdly devoid of vehicles that i even doublechecked to make sure the street hadn't been reserved for more tree pruning or a moving truck.