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my quest to buy a new rear tire/wheel for my trek 800 has gone pear shaped. the tire arrived last week: but instead of the road-style kenda kwest K193 (26 x 1.5) i ordered, i received a cheaper mountain bike-style kenda K841 komfort tire (26 x 1.95). i put in a return request but i haven't heard back from anyone. as for the replacement wheel itself, i order from niagara cycles via the amazon marketplace. that order has been designated as "shipping soon" for almost a week now but i haven't heard anything from them yet either. it's as if the gods of cycling want me to continue riding on my knobby rear wheel, rim rubbing and all.
preparing for bed last night, i ran off on a tangent when i noticed the stains on the bathroom rug. i spent 15 inglorious minutes cleaning the rug in the tub, squeezing it dry, then laying it flat to dry in the kitchen. it doesn't require saying but LJ made those stains. toothpaste? make-up? who knows. all i do know is i won't be putting a rug in the bathroom until she leaves. this is actually the 2nd time it's happened.
it took me a long time before finally deciding on the diamond TVW750USB ATI theater HD 750 tv tuner. chances are i'll probably return it ($45 before a $10 rebate); i only got it so i could try recording bin bin's cable community access show tomorrow night. there were USB tuners for $80 that were also mac compatible, but this one seemed straight-forward. 
it was simple to set up on the windows 7 partition of my macbook pro. the software could use some improvement as the settings seemed to be hidden to make it seem less complicated. i couldn't get any HD channels directly from the coaxial wall cable, so i had to use the set top box, which in my case is just 4:3 analog. it records 720x480px mpeg files (mpeg2 codec) at about 48mb for a minute of video. it also has a schedule function and i tested it by creating a program and then turning off the application. as long as the computer was on, the program self launches and records automatically. it does ask you if you want to record, but if there's no response, it'll default to yes. one bad thing is after it finishes recording, it leaves the program open, along with the channel running in the background. the only option to disable this is to choose the "shut down computer when done" which seems like a weird choice. i'll play with it more tomorrow, hopefully on my desktop pc (where i had a lot more storage space), maybe try to get some over-the-air HDTV channels using the included antenna. it also came with RCA jacks for recording analog videos, like say from old VHS tapes. that's something i could look into, digitizing some of my old analog cassettes.
the grill cover arrived in the afternoon (so far we've covered it up with a plastic tablecloth), and i biked down to the cafe to drop it off. only my father was there, my mother having walked home already. also with the package was a homemade soil test kit i ordered. not sure how well it works, but it should at least give us some basic idea of pH, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium levels.
i had some zongzi for dinner. LJ didn't come home until much later around 9:00. i felt bad because it seems like she was making good on her plan of staying later at the office so she could use her work computer for personal stuff. i was ready to tell her that i really didn't need to use my desktop pc and she could use it for the remainder of her stay. however, she told me that my previous roommate LX lent her his laptop since he brought 2 with him. problem solved it seems!