i woke up at 10:30am, reluctant to get out of bed. it wasn't that cold in the house - the heater had kicked in at 9am according to schedule (65° until i adjust it otherwise) - but it was cozier underneath the comforter. li was in his room with the lights on. shortly afterwards li came out and asked if i wanted to go to the supermarket today. i didn't really need anything but went anyway just to get out of the house. market basket was crowded but it wasn't bad (maybe a lot of people stayed home due to the cold, upper 30's). li insisted on a pushcart even after i told him it'd be hard to navigate through the crowded aisles. sure enough, he was stuck in cart traffic while i easily navigated with just a shopping bag. after watching me make italian subs for dinner all last week, li wanted to get in on some of this action. ham and salami we got from the reasdy-cut refrigerated display, but we had to get capicola and provolone from the deli.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "raspberry pi0w" (creates .ssh directory) otherwise: install -d -m 700 ~/.ssh on mac: cat id_rsa.pub | ssh pi@192.168.1.194 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys' add more wifi network/password to wpa_supplicant.conf (now located in /etc directory) sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

it was very cold last night and one of my fears was realized when i couldn't start my motorcycle. i worked at it for several minutes and even got the engine to start one time but the choke was closed and the engine quickly died after a few seconds. eventually the battery went dead completely (made that sad clicking and hissing sound when i tried to start the engine) so i had no choice but to ride the bike instead to belmont. maybe i was carrying a lot of stuff, maybe i haven't been riding in a while, maybe it was just the cold weather, but i had zero energy, and it was a strain to reach my destination.

my father was still at the cafe so i wanted to see if could reach him on his new mobile QYT KT8900 radio from inside the parked car. i could transmit and he could receive using the hanging coaxial dipole antenna he made, but i couldn't receive any of his test transmissions. i then switched to the raised 2m outdoor ground plane antenna and what a difference that made! transmit and receive on both ends from their house to the cafe with very good clarity, on both 2m frequency and 70cm frequency. later i switched back to the dipole. i could transmit just fine, but i still couldn't receive on 2m. i could however receive on 70cm though with much more static than the outdoor ground plane (about 50% clarity).

my aunt lili was hosting dinner at her house, invited my father and i as well bin bin's family. i can't remember a time when we were all together at her place, and certainly not in her new kitchen. bin bin's parents are returning to china early next month after a 4 month stay, to return again come spring. anderson was especially naughty tonight, no longer the shy little boy of years past. the only way to placate him was with videos on a phone, and even when he was eating he had to have his video.

after dinner we returned to belmont and i biked back to cambridge. i took the fancy antenna that came with the QYT KT8900 radio. from the design it looked like it'd perform well, super gainer mini diamono brand SG-M507. wait, what? diamono? not diamond? so an obvious knockoff (not unexpected given the price). still, i put it to the test. i couldn't receive anything from the back nor the side of the house, but when i walked to the front of the house and stop on the sidewalk underneath a tree with a good view of the sky, i was able to receive and transmit with my father back in belmont. i also had to hold the radio completely vertical otherwise the reception would cut out. so diamono or diamond, it's still an okay antenna.

i was reluctant to remove the motorcycle battery at night because if i dropped any screws on the ground it'd be hard to find in the dark and leaf litter. but it needed a good overnight charging if i wanted to ride the motorcycle tomorrow, so i went out with my tools and took out the battery. i did it carefully, made sure i didn't accidentally drop any screws or bolts. it wasn't that bad, there was a street light on the other side of the street that gave me plenty of illumination so i wasn't working in the dark. back inside, i plugged the battery to the tender junior and left it to recharge overnight.