Matt Chung's Site

Category: Weekly Reviews

  • Weekly Review – 2020/08/17 – 2020/08/23

    Weekly Review – 2020/08/17 – 2020/08/23

    • Writing
      • Wrote and published close to a dozen blog posts over the past week, creating a new cadence of bite-sized posts instead of large pieces that sit in draft mode
      • Feeling more confident about my digital organization system, storing all my books and articles and journals consistently, naming them author_year and storing them into DevonThink
    • Graduate School
      • Finished Advanced OS refresher course (threads and file systems and memory systems — skipped over networking module) and posted notes on blog
      • Finished taking notes and watching video lectures from Lesson 1 from Advanced OS course
      • Finished pre-lab assignment on fixing up multi-threaded code (producer/consumer) written with pthread library
    • Health
      • Took 1 hour tennis lesson with Olivia (shoulders and chest sore, that’s a good thing) and most important — produced some sweat
      • Attended my weekly therapy session (mental health: check)
    • Family
      • Bathed Elliott 5 nights this week (1:1 Father and Daughter time)
      • Sang Elliott “Punching in a Dream” while she balanced herself on top guitar neck
      • Visited sister and niece and brother in-law in Renton
      • Shopped with Aunt at Viet Wah, picking up all the ingredients for cooking clay pot fished (vegetarian version)
      • Called dad for his 62nd birthday, despite us not talking for the past two months

    Photos of the week

    Metric the human dog sprawled out across the couch
    Metric the human dog sprawled out across the couch

     

    Little Elliott looking super cute, Mushroom in the background
    Little Elliott looking super cute, Mushroom in the background

    Reflections

    I’d like to find a way to more shave off a few minutes when copying my outline notes from OmniOutliner to WordPress. To this end, perhaps I’ll code up a little python script because right now, copying and pasting and formatting takes an unnecessary 10 minutes, time that I could’ve spent on writing or studying or something else.

     

  • Weekly Review – 2020/08/09 – 2020/08/16

    Past Week

    • Published 8 blog posts within a week. I’m developing a cadence, aiming for one (very) short blog posts a day and one medium blog post per week. I think this target is manageable and S.M.A.R.T and will help force me to get in the habit of shipping small fragments instead of never shipping (in)complete blog posts.
    • Took a 3 day vacation with wolf pack at Suncadia, a hotel resort in eastern Washington. This was the first “holiday” (if you can call it that) since COVID19 hit. So … that’s about 6 months and I totally needed it, since I felt my mental health was deteriorating and it was impacting not just work but my personal life: my patience for others was wearing thin and found myself snapping at almost everyone (especially at Jess, no fair to her). Overall, unplugging for the past week has been great not just for me but the for the entire family. Able to spend quality time despite being in the midst of a pandemic and able to help more around the house
    • Hit with tennis coach on Sunday, my first lesson in about 8 months? I had considered cancelling the lesson the day of given that the weather was blistering, 99 degrees (and probably hotter on the tennis court).
    • Bathed Elliott every night this week. Finding joy in these fleeting moments. She’s growing up so fast and although I’m almost always tired, she’s worth it.
    • Refined my organization and writing workflow. Started creating a digital library, scanning about 10 of my books using my recently purchased ScanSnap.
    • Finding that my slimmed down GTD (getting things done) system is kind of working. Needs some tuning – probably need to incorporate a tickle file to remind me of projects, goals, etc.
    • Cooked a couple decent tasting meals. Always feels good to eat clean plant based meals and feels good to help Jess out
    • Still haven’t mustered up the courage to reach out to my dad. I think about him daily but him and I are entangled, like two cowboys about to fast draw but nobody will make the first move

    Next week

    • Start advanced operating systems next week (i.e. Monday). Will need to switch back on into academic mode
    • First day back in office after a week long (much needed) vacation.