I was hoping to be less busy in April, but that didn’t really work out. A flooring update at my place meant that I had a second shift of carpet removal for 8 days in the middle of the month, and I met up with MP in Montreal for the last week of the month. Also, I gave 2 exams and worked on a SAS submission.
Health news
I got a small scratch with a rusty nail while removing carpet. Turns out that pharmacists in Ontario can’t yet give the tetanus shot (coming soon), but it also turns out that NZ health records can say that my most recent tetanus shot was in 2024, so I was fine. Also went to the dentist again for a bunch of implant work, which was finalized in May. Nice to have a complete set of teeth again (minus wisdom teeth, which was decades ago).
There are quite low levels of COVID circulating right now, according to multiple sources.
- Is COVID still a thing? in STAT News.
Professional
There still was a lot of teaching related work in April, with some lectures at the start of the month, then on to exams. Then it was the SAS paper at the end of the month. There was one day where I worked on both the ICSE and SAS submissions.
This worked out to another 28 days of work for April, just like March. One would think that April would be different from March, but not so much. There are 21 work days in April in Ontario (Good Friday is a holiday). May is much more reasonable.
Teaching
There was only 1 day of lectures in April for me, but I did have a lecture to prepare, so that did take some work. And, even though I didn’t do any exam grading, I still had to finish the exams and solutions. Fortunately it was only 33% of the ECE 459 exam, since we had 3 sections. Administered 2 ECE 459 oral exams.
Grad students/mentees/collaborators
Above average month with 15 days of meetings/collaborations. Probably a normal amount with my PhD student Alex, but then also a lot of meetings with collaborations for the SAS and ICSE papers, as well as some SIGPLAN-M mentoring.
I had my semesterly cook-for-students event, and also got them to help move furniture around the house in preparation for the flooring. (Afterwards, I got my colleague Mario’s son to help me move furniture back to where it should be, in exchange for money.)
Collegiality/Service
Also above average: SIGPLAN-M mentoring; walks as a service; DEBT reviews; chaired a PhD defence; attended a PhD seminar (defence coming).
Ran a bunch of consultation for the FAUW governance work, including a town hall.
Trips
We took a while to figure out what to do about Montréal. MP was scheduled to fly in on Tuesday. I had thought about driving from Brampton to Montréal, but eventually took the train there and back, before an action-packed weekend around Waterloo and leaving for NZ on the Monday. Good thing, because I needed the extra time between coming back from Brampton and leaving for Montreal to pack.
Brampton, April 25 to 26
Refereeing at the Tora Annual Shiai. Saturday went super long; we got out of there at 9:30pm. Sunday was a much more reasonable 3pm finish time. One would think that it would have been possible to get us out of there sooner, though. Apparently, people were complainy about the categories.
I thought about staying overnight in Brampton on Saturday, but also didn’t do that. Meant an extra 2 hours of driving, at the cost of not having to find lodging and not needing to pack for an overnight. If I put it that way, maybe not worth it. I did stay overnight in March for the Peterborough tournament, which didn’t save any driving time, but meant not getting up at 6am.
Montréal, April 27 to May 1
Took VIA Rail both ways from Toronto to Montréal, although TRTO-MTRL was on old equipment and MTRL-TRTO was on new equipment. The CO2 on the old equipment is actually terrible, with 2500-4100 ppm of CO2 on a fairly crowded car. Much more reasonable on the new equipment (though I was also in Business on that segment), with 600-1200ppm.
I took the GO Train to connect to the VIA Rail both from and to Kitchener. That works, even with a relatively late train scheduled to arrive in Toronto at 9:48pm and actually arriving at 10:27pm. I thought I was going to have too much time to connect but I actually had about 5 minutes to connect. On the return, I got to the train station a few hours early, having finished everything I wanted to do in Montreal on that day. Even from train boarding time, though, it was still an 8 hour trajectory. Waterloo and Montreal are pretty far apart.
I visited SE alum Michael in Montréal, including a visit to Mila. It’s a university lab, but feels like a tech company. Weird.
I also made it to Bloc Shop again. Bouldering grades fluctuate, and apparently they are currently on the stiffer side.
I met MP at YUL, where she would be for a few weeks. Also visited Bromont for a day.
Travel Planning
Mostly just figuring out what we’d do in Montreal, and maybe some arrangements for Canterbury Open in May, though I’d got that plane ticket in March.
Movement statistics
Pretty similar to March, but no planes and no taxis.
Movement statistics:
- 🚶 Walking: 18km on 12 days (marginally down from March, but also terrible)
- 🚲 Biking: 188km on 24 days (about the same as March)
- 🚗 Driving: 1045km on 11 days: 3 Toronto round trips plus one Rattlesnake Point run, and then 200km for Montreal/Bromont
- 🚗 Taxi: 0
- ✈ Plane: 0
- 🚌 Bus: 3km on 1 day (to Kitchener station)
- 🚆 Train: 650km (Kitchener-Toronto, Toronto-Montreal, Montreal-Dorval)
- 🚆 Metro: 24km on 2 days (Montreal)
- 🚆 LRT: 26km (Montreal’s REM)
Transit: 703km.
Pictures
March and April were both better than January for photo processing. I don’t really have new sets of photos from these months, but I also only processed 8 sets. So the backlog from January 2024 is now 2 1/3 years.
Picture logs available, and, as always, pictures are clickable to go to the full gallery.
- Sets of pictures processed: March/April=10, February=10, January=1
- Total pictures selected: March/April=330, February=276, January=27
- Total pictures in selection pool: March/April=1263m February=1210
- Accept rate: 26% (min 15%, max 78%)
Unsurprisingly, most of the highlight photos are from the Cascade Saddle: although 3/10 sets weren’t from that trip, the non-Cascade Saddle sets are tiny and not that photogenic.
Some birds from Zealandia and from the Cascade Saddle trip:
Miscellaneous
Went to judo practice at UW judo in late March and pulled something in my back which hurt for a couple of weeks. Quite suboptimal. I didn’t even think I was working hard.
Flooring
As I mentioned above, the main extracurricular activity was flooring installation. I did the carpet and laminate removal myself. Financially probably not really worth it, but it feels like I did something aside from just forking over the cash. Also, I moved 40 boxes of engineered hardwood from the garage to the main floor, one at a time, over a few weeks, after pulling my back (oops). And, I picked up a couple of orders of LVT and baseboard from local suppliers.
The bathroom was weird. In an instance of scope creep, I agreed that it made sense to install LVT in the bathroom. So I had to remove the old vinyl. Underneath that, there was some treated plywood, and the vinyl was glued to it. That made no sense and was pretty annoying to remove.
Moving the furniture around was a whole task, especially by myself. On several occasions, I invited people over, gave them food, and had them help with moving the furniture.
Independently of the floor install, I had a replacement window installed, but that was the responsibility of the condo corp. I just had to let the guys in.
Posts
None, except for the February and March summaries.
Acquisitions
- Various home reno materials, most notably including extra vinyl tile due to scope creep (yes, sure, we’ll redo the upstairs bathroom), as well as baseboard. Also some rugs: one for the living room and one for my computer chair.
- Raspberry Pi 5 starter kit: my desktop computer has been randomly crashing, which prevents easy remote access to my NAS; the rPi is easy to wire to the router via Ethernet and should be more reliable. Took a few hours to set up.
I also finally set up the 8TB hard drive I got a few months ago. It’s for backups.
I also also got around to mending my snowpants after the ice festival. Gaiters didn’t help enough.
Sports
GRR 8×, Bloc Spot 1×, Rattlesnake 1×, judo 2× plus a refereeing clinic; didn’t quite trust the back for judo after pulling it in late March.
Food
Maybe a normal number of new restaurants, though a lot of midsize chains.
- KW Empanadas, Kitchener: good addition to the downtown Kitchener scene, with both standard and less-standard empanadas, though I only went there because Banh Mi Givral was closed. Had a shrimp and cheese empanada.
- Rosie’s Burgers, North York: mid-sized chain, I guess, like In-N-Out but better.
- Duke of Wellington, Waterloo: enormous, but very average, poutine; did have real cheese curds though. “Finest British Pub in KW”: perhaps, but the competition is sparse.
- Là lá Bakeshop, Waterloo: tried to go here a few months ago but on a day they weren’t open; Vietnamese bakery; also has an acceptable banh mi. 3 locations in Ontario, maybe also some in New York?
- Taza Xpress Brampton, Brampton: it was 10pm on Saturday and I hadn’t had real dinner, so the shwarma was what I needed.
- Mami Cantina, Toronto: had lunch here on my way through Toronto; excellent tacos near Union Station.
- Cafe Guerrero, Montréal: good sandwiches near Mila; high-volume lunch place.
- Bistrot Boisselet, Montréal: hard to get French bistros in Wellington; this one deserved its current Google 5* rating, and wasn’t too expensive either. Also, would have been hard to find in the time before Google Maps.
Volunteering
Had a 4 meeting day; that day had a mix between work and volunteering.
Helped run a JORC refereeing clinic in Toronto, after which I visited former student Moh in Toronto. Got home at 2am.
Conclusion
Still a lot of course admin, but it was all over at the end of April, whew. Working on two papers, plus a flooring install, and a visit to Montréal.