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before the openplus one phone is ready for the world, first it must have a protective layer of plastic to keep the screen from getting scratched. but doesn't it have gorilla glass? that's all well and good, until you somehow manage to scratch it and then you wish you had that layer of protection! to be honest, i have a terrible time applying those screen protectors. i always get dust and air bubbles on them, no matter what i do. in fact in china there's a cottage industry of experts who you can pay to put on screen protectors for you. they actually do this by custom cutting a protector using an x-acto knife, it's a pretty amazing thing to see. so it was with some hesitation that i went about putting on the protector for the OPO. i made sure i was working at the sunniest part of the house (kitchen table), so i examine the surface of the phone and make sure there was no dust. i followed the steps including one step i never tried before: taping the positioned protector to the phone before applying it. that actually makes it easier in leveling the protector once it goes on. i did a pretty amazing job, and even a spot in the corner where i had a bit of dust, i removed it with the dust removing sticker.

for lunch i ate some of the bread i made yesterday with a butter spread. it was old butter so it had a bit of fridge taste to it.

around 1:00 i biked down to the galleria mall, to exchange my htc re camera for a new one. i haven't been down to east cambridge in a long time, and was surprised by some new office buildings. i wouldn't mind working in the kendall square area again, it'd be an easy commute for one thing. the exchange was effortless, that's one of the perks of dealing with a big box store like best buy. i was briefly tempted to go inside the mall (which i haven't visited in a long time as well) but there was nothing else i wanted to get. besides, it's been a few years since the border bookstore disappeared, so i have even less reason to visit the galleria.

back at home, i pulled my bike into the backyard to adjust the rear brake. i noticed it wasn't catching anymore, figured it was a simple matter of adjusting the tension on the cable. turns out the tension spring in the left v-brake brake arm had snapped at some point, so it would never spring back to its original position. i tried looking for spare parts in the house but didn't find any, nor did any of the old bikes in my basement use mountain bike style v-brakes. i thought about going to the somerville bike works to buy a brand new set, but decided to order it online (cheaper) since i wasn't in any hurry because i had a fleet of other bikes i could use. i pulled out the other trek MTB and stashed my regular bike in the basement.

i tried connecting my OPO with the new HTC re camera. to my surprise it connected! but after playing with it for a little bit, it lost the connection, and i wasn't able to reconnect with it no matter what i tried. i really want to love the HTC re camera but it's really making it hard with an app that doesn't work!

for dinner i had more bread, this time with an olive oil-garlic-salt dipping sauce. really quite delicious and filling! paired that with a mug of apple cider, some clementine oranges, and some defrosted cream puffs.

it was finally cold enough today for me to turn on the thermostat. at 6:00 i turned it up from 60° to 68°. after it finished heating up the house, here's what i got for temperatures: bionaire electric space heater BCH3620 68°, acu-rite 66°, brookstone desktop clock 67°, timex travel clock 68°, infrared thermometer measured area around the thermostat 68°, and finally the nest thermostat itself read 69°. so it's really all over the place, but within a degree or two of each other, not enough to make me want to return it again. i can live within this margin of error.

i kept trying to connect to the HTC re camera. the OPO can see it, but it just won't connect. but finally, through some miracle, i did get it to connect one more time. the trick? turn off both the bluetooth and wifi. the re uses bluetooth to make the initial connection, but afterwards it creates a private wifi network to communicate between the phone and the camera. i noticed it the first time i connected, that my wifi got turned off. it's currently filming a 1:30 time lapse movie (which will create just an 18 second clip)...