Matt Chung's Site

Category: Weekly Reviews

Weekly Review – Week ending in 2020/08/30
- Writing
  - Developed a manageable cadence of blogging a single blog post every day, most of them daily reviews or notes taken during advanced operating systems
  - Writing the daily reviews (each entry eats up about 15 minutes of my morning) help me not only plant my two feet in the ground and settle for the day, but provide the necessary content for my weekly review / reflections. Will likely continue this new habit (assuming I still wake up between 04:30 and 05:00 AM)
- Music
  - Recorded a short little melody and harmony on my iPhone while playing guitar for Elliott and Jess during lunch. Super simple melody and chorus lyrics go “It’s a sad song, it’s a love song”
- Graduate School
  - Felt proud of myself for being able to connect the dots between theory and practice, catching the relationship between C code I write at work and what I read in the textbook (revolving around virtual private numbers using a bit mask and SHIFT operations)
  - Glad I was able to keep up with all the lectures, although I could’ve finished them much earlier in the week. But I spent an hour on deep diving into virtually indexed physically tagged cache, a topic I could’ve just glossed over but I just couldn’t let go of not understanding the topic
  - Completed writing up the homework assignment, typing it all up took much longer than anticipated due to formatting issues when copying between OmniOutliner and Microsoft Word
- Organization
  - Ripped apart three books and scanned them using my ScanSnap. Again, I’ve nailed down the process since on average, it takes about 8 minutes from running the knife down the spine of the book to the moment the last (200+ page) book scans to my DevonThink system
- Physical and Mental Health
  - Cancelled my weekly psychotherapy session, a session I often look forward to since I’ve been attending just about every week for close to 5 years now
- Family
  - Lots of administrative duties this week, including replacing the punctures front left tire at Discount Tires, chopping up all the freshly bought vegetables and storing them away in reusable Stasher bags, driving from Seattle to Renton to visit my mom who is visiting from California for a few days
Misses
- Not a single day of exercise. This habit fell off the wagon about 2 months ago (or was it 3 or 4) when I injured the sole of my left foot. I was unable to shift any weight to my foot without wincing in pain. But the food healed about 2 months ago and I need to re-establish a habit of exercising: even if it is running for 10 minutes or stretching for 5.
- Being on call really zapped the joy out of my week. For starters, I was unable to break away from the laptop while my mom was in town, not getting to spend much quality time with her. This event, along with waking up at 12:00AM and 3:00 AM throughout the week makes me re-evaluate the team I am on and wonder a team with less operational burden might make sense for my health
Photos of the week

Jess, Matt, Elliott with sun in the background, three of us walking dogs at the park early in the morning

Llttle Elliott at carcreek park, who is starting to not look so little anymore

Reflections

Jess pointed out that when I am on call, I’m a little more edgy, a little less patient. She’s probably right because during the week, I’m constantly getting interrupted with operational issues, requiring me to drop whatever I’m doing — studying, hanging out with my wolf pack — and turn my attention towards work.

Although tiring, the early morning reflections and study sessions are proving to be valuable. I’m able to crank out a ton of work, crossing off graduate school and personal writing before anyone in the house hold wakes up. Being a productive in the morning, even if its just a little, really sets me in a better mood thorughout the day, my mind free to concentrate on the present moment instead of thoughts of “should’ve done this … and this” occupying CPU cycles in my brain.

Graduate school is tough but rewarding and such a privilege. I happened to stumble upon my blog post from 2018, almost 2 years ago to date, when I just got admitted into the graduate program: I was ecstatic to learn about computer science. I still am. And need to continue with my balancing the following: learning deeply (the main point of returning back to graduate school) and just getting things done (I have a family now, so time is very precious).

Realized that checking my work laptop first thing in the morning for just that one little thing doesn’t work: I get sucked in and begin tackling other items, including checking my e-mail inbox, or slack messages, or whatever. So my rule of thumb is to not flip open the lid of my work laptop until I am ready to fully work

My noise wrinkles every time I see the photo of Elliott crawling in the back seat of the Ford Escape. The picture zooms in on face. I only see pure joy and beauty in her. It really is such an honor to be a father, to be in a position to see her develop and witness her mom basically perform mom magic every day.
August 30, 2020
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

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.
August 24, 2020
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.
August 17, 2020