Patrick Lam

Thoughts and travels of Patrick Lam

May, moving down the levels

It’s astonishing how quickly things have returned to almost-normal in this country. Since May 14 (3 weeks ago already!), we’ve been in Alert Level 2, where most things are open. Physical distancing, capacity controls and mandatory contact tracing remain for now, although there will be another decision next Monday, June 8. The number of known active cases is 1 and the last positive reported case was on May 22.

Haircuts

I had been planning to wait a few more days, but I was walking down the street and noticed a barber open with no line, so I’ve had reasonable hair since May 17. The Onward deadline was with too much hair, but the OOPSLA deadline had the right amount of hair. Very important when spending hours at the computer. Looking through the records, it looks like I feel like I need a haircut after 6 weeks and then wait another 2 weeks to actually get one: Sept 5, Nov 5, Jan 7, Mar 3, May 17. The 10-week interval was excessive.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Wednesday, June 3, 2020

A Locked-down April

I’m writing this on April 30, a day after we were originally scheduled to leave Wellington. But that was no surprise to month-ago me.

Most of April has been under NZ Alert Level 4, although we’ve been in Alert Level 3 for a couple of days now. We’ve been in Wellington since March 20 and not in a car between March 25 and April 29, which is some sort of record for me. Usually I can go a week without a car ride, but 4.5 weeks is something. Also my last haircut was March 3, which is also a record. It looks like The Warehouse has a 2 week shipping time for clippers, so I’ll be going a bit longer still.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Friday, May 1, 2020

The Longest Month

My notes say that I bought tickets to Athens on March 1. As if things would be normal in two months. The first nine days of March, which I wrote about last time, did seem completely normal. Then we went to Queenstown/Wanaka and Taranaki. As we were at Taranaki, things quickly became not normal. The last 11 days have been a whirlwind, and only in the past few days have I been able to get some research done.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Second month (plus 10 days) in Wellington

We’ve now passed the halfway mark for my time in New Zealand, even with an extra 3 days courtesy of Air Canada/Air New Zealand—they rescheduled my return flight from 29 Apr to 2 May and I didn’t notice until I got the seat change email. I’m totally fine with an extra 3 days in New Zealand.

Classes have started again. I guess it’s like September in the northern hemisphere. Days are only 13 hours now, on their way to 10.5 hours when we go back north.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Sunday, March 8, 2020

First month in Wellington

Sabbaticals are a large block of unscheduled time. Time always passes. Have I done stuff in my time in Wellington so far?

Professional

I’ve started a number of collaborations with colleagues in Wellington, and am thinking of a survey paper and an essay in particular. I’m excited about contributing to these projects. I hope to have more to report in my February update.

In other news I have a climbing-related submission to the Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism (sadly an Elsevier journal) which got a revise-and-resubmit. Progress!

Posted by Patrick Lam on Friday, January 31, 2020

January 2020 Reflections

Bryan Cantrill (of dtrace fame) writes about engineering performance management.

https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/1216491216356823040

He suggests the following five questions for engineers to answer twice a year.

  1. What are you most proud of in the last six months?
  2. What did you learn?
  3. Where did you struggle?
  4. What are you anxious about in the coming six months?
  5. What are you excited about in the coming six months?

Most proud of

Having recently removed the se-director email from my Thunderbird, I realized that this role consumed a lot of time and energy. I am most proud of having completed my term and helping students, both in the moment (advising and leading the advising team) and through program changes.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Monday, January 13, 2020

2019 retrospective

New year, new website! I hope to start breaking out of Associate Professor Purgatory in 2020 and what I’ve accomplished in 2019 will lay the groundwork for that.

Professional

I completed my 3 year 4 month term as SE Director. It’s been rewarding but work/work balance means that I’ve had less time to spend on research.

SE Director

I was thrilled that my students successfully nominated me for the Friend of EngSoc award. It was a great token of appreciation.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Tuesday, December 31, 2019

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Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo; patrick.lam@uwaterloo.ca

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