i slept with the nasal dilator last night. it took some getting used to, it felt like sleeping with two things stuck up your nose. after a while the silicon would warm up, but i could always feel it. it does allow me to breathe better once i got used to it. i slept soundly, not sure if the dilator helped or not with the snoring, but i didn't feel like i snore, though that's something hard to measure.

i made my way to belmont early, as we had a supply run plus also visiting binbin's house one last time to stock her fridge with some food.

we went to the burlington market basket first, to get some supplies but also some food for binbin. we then went to her house. we didn't get too much food, just enough so that if they're hungry when they get here wednesday night, they'll be some things to eat in the fridge. we ended up putting everything in the fridge, even stuff that didn't need to be refrigerated, for fear of mice getting to the food. my father also turned up the heat and we hid their housekey outside in case they got back and didn't have their keys and the keyless entry pad didn't work either.

from there we got onto I-95 south to the waltham costco. we normally do supply runs on mondays, figuring it'd be less crowded than the weekends. this however was not the case at costco, where from the highway we could see the parking lot was already completely full. it's not so much that everyone thought like we did and avoided the weekend only to all crowd together on monday, i think it's more just general holiday shopping frenzy. most carts were filled with toys, and toys were prominently displayed at the front of the store, which all points to christmas shopping. something new was the amount of chinese lunar new year foods. they even had taiwanese fishnacks - which is one of my favorites - but it was expensive for the amount.

we finally returned to belmont by 1:30pm. i brought my sister's MBP, hoping i can do a successful migration so my parents can return the laptop tomorrow. unfortunately that wouldn't be the case. twice i tried to migrate, and both times the machine crashed midway through. i ended up doing a partial migration using time machine, manually populating empty folders with a backup i made from saturday. things like bookmarks, keychains, and mails i still couldn't transfer over.

my parents fried up some crispy pancakes for lunch, we ate them wrapped with braised beef. we also got 3 cans of david's pecan butter melts form costco and my parents were indulging. my mother also showed me a magic trick where adding vinegar to purple turnips turn them magenta.

there was enough time and the weather was good for my father to fire up the tent stove one more time, since it was already outside in the backyard. he managed to tame the fire so there was no smoke and it burned efficiently in a flaming pyramid.

i tried doing another comparison video between the gopro hero9 and the dbpower EX7000 pro. i was very careful not to shake the EX7000, afraid it might crash again and stop shooting. i managed to get both cameras going before the EX7000 told me it didn't have enough battery. i ended up with just 2 seconds of footage from the EX7000. it was still enough to do a side-by-side comparison. even though the EX7000 advertises as being 170° FOV, looking at the two stills it's obvious the gopro shot is wider. the gopro also picks up more color; the EX7000 is too saturated, the whites are too white (like behind the garage) or too dark (the lawn).

my sister dropped off her dog because she was going out, left behind some measured dog food and medicine. we got a hickory smoked christmas ham on sale at market basket and had that for dinner. instead of baking the whole ham, we sliced the amount we wanted to eat and baked it in the toaster oven. hailey seemed to know what we were eating (somebody must've given her a piece in the past) and kept hovering around the table, waiting for a handout. my mother finally gave her some ham fat.

i tried a gopro nightwarp for the very first time. it captures a few streaks that looked like they might be shooting stars, but after doing the math it doesn't work out, since each frame is several seconds of exposure. it did show stars i didn't readily see with the naked eye, i saw the constellation aquarius and pegasus, and a few planets (venus, saturn, jupiter).

i returned home by 7:30pm. i left behind my sister's computer. i think the mail and bookmarks can be fixed with manual time machine restoration, but my sister was asking about her passwords, and those are in her keychain, i'll need to do more research to figure out how to export them.