[tor-project] Research Janitor Cleanup Work in February, and March Plans

[Mike Perry]

Phew this month was exhausting. But not because I got a lot done. When
compared to January[1], I barely kept my head above water, while a
stream of low-priority interrupts tried to drown me.

About a dozen times, I got a couple hours into a topic, and then was
interrupted by a request for a different topic, which I then had to
evaluate if it was more important than what I was currently working on.
Sometimes, it was more important and so I dealt with it, but most times
it was not. By the end of each context switch, I had lost track of what
I was working on before, erasing most of the progress I had made. I
tried to restart, and then a new interrupt came in. Rinse, repeat. And
repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

Then I had to explain to folks why their pet topic was not getting
attention. This was about as pleasant as you might expect, and so I
decided to spend the remainder of the month to diagnose and figure out
how to correct this failure mode.

For this reason, I'm changing my scheduling algorithm. From now on, all
requests of my time must come either through the Tor Project team leads
meeting, or be added to the below pad's request section. Random
interrupts will be dropped. If you are lucky, you will be referred to
this mail and/or this pad, on which you can add your pet idea to the
appropriate section:
https://pad.riseup.net/p/research-janitor-cleanup-schedule


Here's the TL;DR, lol:

February plans:
  - More metrics + graph analysis for Rob's experiment
  - Iterate on sbws eval metrics + graphs w/ Karsten
  - Funding proposal assistance
  - Tor Performance Pipeline R&D migration to gitlab

February accomplishments:
  - Assistance with funding proposals
  - Tor Performance Pipeline R&D migration to gitlab
  - Lots of conversations about everyone's most important things
  - Lots of time spent taking out the trash

February drops:
  - More metrics + graph analysis for Rob's experiment
    ^ (thank you for your work here, Dennis!)
  - Iterate on sbws eval metrics + graphs w/ Karsten and Dennis
  - Fixing circpad bugs that impact external padding research
  - Various mails about circuit padding docs + research options


March plans:
  - Re-review of my review tickets stuck in needs_revision
  - Help finish off funding proposals
  - Get more input on Tor's most important janitorial role items
  - Write Tor employee peer reviews
  - USENIX paper review
  - Explain this mail and why I'm ignoring ppl who didn't read it
  - Vanguards integration tests w/ onionbalance v3 (if ready)
  - More metrics + graph analysis for Rob's experiment
  - Iterate on sbws eval metrics + graphs w/ Karsten and Dennis
  - Fixing circpad bugs that impact external padding research
  - Various mails about circuit padding docs + research options
  - Maybe also work on other channelpadding and circpad bugs

Potential March Drops:
  - Vanguards integration tests w/ onionbalance v3 (if not ready)
  - Various mails about other things that might actually be important
  - Any requests for my time that don't use the pad or vegas meetings
  - Random subset of February's drops?
  - Work on other channelpadding and circpad bugs



1.
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2020-February/002707.html


-- 
Mike Perry

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