Privacy: Accomplished

What a day!

I went to pick up Aurelia from WW today, and dropped off Azumi for her ``spa'' session. Azumi requires a bit more work than Aurelia---she has started tarnishing(!) after nearly ten years of not having that problem, and I have started to find the D trill lever and D♯ trill levers were sitting a little too high for comfort (check out Jennifer Cluff's flute diagram for nomenclature). It's interesting, because I never used to have that problem before I had Aurelia; Mr Guo of GUO Musical Instruments Company (GMIC) had pointed it out before a few years ago, but it hadn't bothered me then.

I think it's just my getting used to the sleeker set up that is on Aurelia.

Anyway, after sorting out my flutes, I dropped by MusicGear to shoot the breeze a little with them, and bought some thicker mouthpiece pads. And some discussions of perhaps getting a cor anglais came to play... It is on my shopping list, but the damnable reed is always going to be a problem. All my other single reed instruments are using synthetic reeds, which suit me just fine because they are virtually immutable for the long periods of time that I might not be touching them. Double reed instruments are finicky---I have played the 管 before, and it is horrible to get right.

So... while the offer stands, I might need to do a serious rain check.

Now, much of the afternoon was spent running around looking for the laptop webcam privacy sliding sticker, or as they call it in Amazon.com, ``webcam cover slides''. I thought this would be the easiest item to find, having remembered seeing them freely around, but boy was I wrong. No one sold it.

My only lead was from the Challenger store at Waterway Point when I dejectedly purchased my compressed air twin-pack---the cashier suggested checking out the larger Challenger stores as they were likely to have stock. That lead told me two things:

1. I wasn't hallucinating---they were sold by a chain store (i.e. ubiquity exists); and
2. I could just be plain unlikely with stocks being drained from the massive work from home stuff.

And so, I tried my luck by heading out to NEX's Challenger.

I couldn't find it. I asked for help, the bro was like ``ah, I think I might have seen it, but I'm not too sure''. He went to get another bro (nicknamed ``the Professional'' for some reason), who was like ``Yeah! I remember seeing it also... it was like a stack of them (emphasis mine)''. Lo and behold, it was found in a corner of a small and low rack facing the cashier counter closest to the exit.

🤦‍♂️

And there were only two 3-packs left. I bought both---this is going to be something that will remain useful for a long while. I have not had a need to use my webcams on my laptops for a long time, so I usually use the lo-tech method of just taping a piece of paper with cellotape. But, two things:

1. The cellotape was getting more useless with all the stupid dust around, or the quality of the ones we had stank. I breathed on the bloody thing, and it would float off. Unacceptable!
2. I have many more teleconference calls these days from care group meetings and baptismal classes, and having the lo-tech solution (with shitty grade cellotape) was just not working out. And this was before going for interviews in the near future while searching for jobs.

And with that, I've got to get them. And boy am I glad to have gotten them.

I also bought replacement ear cups for my QC35 wireless headphones too. At this point, I'm just filing that SGD39 as an annual consumable. Buying stuff of a good enough quality is one thing, ensuring that it stays at that quality with regular maintenance is another. But the cost of such maintenance is still cheaper in the long run as compared to having to frequently replace the entire item each time the low quality version fails.

------

I wondered why did I not learn of lock lacing earlier. That would have solved my ``beat up toe'' problem, where my pinky toe was always bruised, with the latest saga leading to the nails peeling off. The lock lacing technique stops slippage of the foot in the hiking boot, and thus despite being on my feet for the whole day, my toes were completely fine.

Hurrah!

I did a little extra with the prescribed lock lacing technique though---I tied just enough to secure the position before running the boot laces around the groove of my hiking boots back to the front, where I finally actually complete the tie with a knot. It makes hold much more snug, and solves the problem of the excessively long laces that often come with boot laces.

And that's about it for today. I'm bushed. Gonna lay out some blocks in Minecraft in the nether to create an overworld ``quarantine zone'' for future Wither fighting while watching some of Calli's playthrough of Earthbound. Till the next update.