when i went to go take a shower i noticed freddy had adjusted the showerhead. why do roommates do that? i don't mind it, but it's something i notice immediately. i suppose it was to be expected in freddy's case, given how tall he is. he angled the showerhead up and opened the spray radius. i actually like this setting better now.
i was ready to bask in the glory of another patriots sunday afternoon victory, read up on all the positive post-game analysis, track the latest power ranking, but that would not be the case, because all of football was talking about the stunning new england trade of all-star linebacker jamie collins to the 0-8 cleveland browns for a compensatory 3rd round draft pick. i only knew jamie collins the player by name, not much beyond that. fans were naturally confused and angry, but when has belichick let us astray? we might hate his decision now, but later down the future it will make sense. i was far more upset when new england traded chandler jones at the start of the season. he was a guy i recognized, always animated on the field and was a visible presence in the locker room.
i hooked up my pi3 so i could fix the security vulnerability with a dirty COW patch. the pi3 uses 1.7 watt of power, according to my wattage meter, roughly double the power consumption of the pi0. while i was at it, i also set up the pi3 for ssh and made the necessary adjustments to my router. now there are 9 things in the house that's connected to the internet: my 2 phones, my laptop, the nest thermostat, the panasonic smart TV, the chromecast, my network printer, and my 2 raspberry pi's. the pi3 has a more robust wifi, automatically reconnects if the network is done. with the pi0, if i reset the router, it gets confused and doesn't reconnect, and the only way to force it to rediscover the network is by manually unplugging/plugging the wifi dongle. i think there's a way to fix that by adjusting the retry limit. on the pi3 it's set to 7, on the pi0 it's set to 0.
i went to the community garden in the afternoon to collect my tomato cages. they take a serious beating since i usually just leave them in the garden over the winter. half of my cages are rusty, many have kinks (easily to fix, just rebend them back). these are all powder-coated galvanized steel wires, 
but even those get corroded when you leave them outside year round. i've seen fancy ones that are rubber coated, but i'm fine with the classic exposed steel wires. apparently you can also make them out of wire fencing (square cages), which i might try in the future. i carried the cages by hand, a stack in each arm, making sure to point the sharp ends skywards to prevent poking anyone in the eye. on crescent and traymore people were already setting up the haunted houses for tonight. i saw a taped flyer that said the halloween festivities would begin from 4pm until 9pm.
i rode the motorcycle to belmont. my sister had dropped off hailey at the house earlier. i let her outside to use the bathroom but she only seemed interested in looking for squirrels to chase. hailey seems more and more willfully disobedient, ignoring commands, but she still understands "squirrel" and will look to where i'm pointing to give chase. unfortunately there were no squirrels in the backyard today. while i was out, i used up the last bit of round-up herbicide to spray some bamboo clumps that've popped up. you can kill bamboo overnight, but given enough vigilance, we can probably slowly starve it to death over the next few seasons.
my father removed the controller faceplate of their old programmable honeywell thermostat. i didn't realize this, but the thermostat actually runs off of batteries, not through the wiring. there are 3 wires in the wall which is enough wiring for the nest thermostat, but when we went downstairs to check how it was wired to the boiler heater, we noticed that the boiler controller doesn't have a common terminal. this could be a problem because the nest needs a common wire to power the battery. the boiler uses a aquastat L8124A relay box. after an extensive research, i found a possible solution is to solder a new cable out from the 24V transformer to make a common terminal. the DIY doesn't seem that hard, requires a bit of soldering, and possibly drilling the circuit board.
i'd turned down the heat at my house, but wanted to turn it up in case freddy returned home. i figured out a way to know if he got back or not by remotely accessing my router and checking the DHCP client list. if he was back, his iphone would show up on the network, and i'd remotely tell the nest thermostat to crank up the heat.
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bruce called me about checking out the neighborhood halloween displays. i told him i'd get back home sometime after 7pm and call him back. when evening came around some trick-or-treaters rang my parents' doorbell even though they turned off the front light and pulled the curtain so the house would look darker. i think it was because of the motion-detecting light that triggered when somebody walked by the house that gave them the idea there was candy. fortunately my mother did have some candy on hand and gave them out while i held on to a barking hailey (she doesn't like the doorbell sound).
after dinner i returned to cambridge. temperature was in the upper 50's early, but by evening had dropped into the low 40's. i made sure i wasn't traveling too fast, and kept my eyes open for trick-or-treaters in the streets. i'd catch glimpses of people in costumes, children and adults, walking around outside. i didn't get back until 7:20pm, but by that point bruce and jack were already out. i went inside my house to drop off my things and switch to my 28mm f/1.8 night lens. i was disappointed that freddy wasn't home yet, i think he would've found the halloween celebration interesting.
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i went down to traymore first before heading out to crescent. i remember in years past more houses participated in decorating and the displays were more elaborate. the number of children stayed the same, maybe even more than last year.
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i bumped into bruce and jack on crescent street. they were soon to leave, while i walked back those streets for an encore. on eustis i bumped into our mailman handing out candy. he joked that he actually lived here, but later told me he was just visiting a friend (mailman lives in somerville). i almost didn't recognize him without his postal carrier outfit on.
in the end nobody came to my house for candy. i did notice a pile of candy on the steps, maybe put there by S and P, but they never showed any interests in halloween before, so i wonder if maybe some child accidentally dropped them (they were a mix). but when i returned to the house the candy was all gone, taking by greedy trick-or-treaters. i had a bowl of leftover snickers, now i will be forced to eat them all for myself.
since my next door neighbors had moved out, there was a pile of discarded items lining the sidewalk. because he was a bike guy, he tossed out some bike items that i picked up: 2 rear racks and 2 bike wheels.
freddy didn't come home around 9:20pm. i figured maybe he'd be out later, spending the evening with coworkers, but it looks like he didn't, because he didn't even have dinner yet. he asked me if the supermarket was still opened (until 10pm) and then went out to get some groceries. when he came back i saw he bought some simple items: hot dogs, cheese, milk, apples, egg, bananas. doctors tend to eat healthier. he ended up cooking up some eggs for dinner. before he started, i was asking him about his day. he told me after he finished medical school, he will continue studying to be an endocrinologist, which will take another 5 years. i did the math, assuming he was 24, until he told me he's only 22! maybe that's why he has a little of that deer-in-the-headlight look to him. that meant he went to medical school when he was just 16-years old. a regular doogie howser! i shouldn't be surprised, the fact that a hospital here would invite him (a medical student from another country) to their clinic to do research for a month must mean he's a pretty special candidate.
i finally asked him if he could take off his shoes indoors. he reluctantly took them off, but still put them on the carpet. i was chatting with him in the living room, and i get the feeling his english isn't very good. he speaks it well, but his listening comprehension could use some more work, a lot of things i said to him he didn't seem to understand initially. maybe i was speaking too fast.
he told me his mother is a teacher and his father is a "merchant." he has an older sister who's a dentist. i asked him about his hobbies, he gave me the usual response (music, movies), but said he likes to cook and go running. i asked if he had any problems this morning getting to longwood, he said he didn't, took the subway to central square and then waited for the bus. mornings and nights are cold now (30-40°F), he didn't seem to be dressed appropriately, but he did tell me he has a winter jacket. he said his hometown is in the northeast (bucaramanga?). i asked how cold it gets, if they have winters, he said no less than 4°C, and that's only in the mountains. the average is typically 20°C. i asked him if he slept well last night, he said yes, but only for 3 hours, he went to bed by 10:30pm, to get more sleep.