Tag Archives: age

50by50: See live performances – Volta (#02b)

Posted on by August 30, 2017  

I mentioned earlier that I wanted to see five different types of live performances. The first one (50by50: See live performances – NAC & the Tenors (#02a)) was for an NAC Pops concert with the Tenors. However, this past Saturday, I went to see a performance of the Cirque du Soleil called Volta, located across the river in Gatineau.

I’ve seen one CdS performance previously, way back in 1997 or so, and it didn’t turn my crank. But it’s progressed since then, and Andrea wanted to go for her birthday too, plus Jacob’s never been to a circus or performance like this. All together, it was a no-brainer even if the tickets are not cheap.

Interestingly too, the location is directly across from my office at work and my window overlooks the parking lot where the tents were set up. A mere few weeks ago, the “lot” wasn’t even a full lot. The whole zone is an active construction site, and yet they finalized it, paved it, and put the anchors in the ground for the installation of the tent. I got to to watch it go from parking lot to small installation to full tent over a series of weeks in July. You can see the growth below.

For those more experienced with the CdS-style of show, the “storyline” that weaves the various acts together is not that rigid. More metaphorical, allegorical or suggestive than explicitly narrated, the hint is about a small boy with blue hair who doesn’t fit in with his friends, so he becomes a “grey” performer who wins a contest to join the show, and eventually becomes a big star by conforming to what the Elites demand. But he’s all dressed in gold, even his hair is covered, and he’s not really “himself”. Eventually he “breaks free” of the show, runs off to find himself, and eventually comes to be accepted by a group of very colourful street performers (Free Spirits). Or at least that’s one viable interpretation. But again, it’s just a storyline to link various acts together.

At the start, there’s some basic dance, contortionism, and awesome rope skipping, before it moves on to a juggler. While lots of amateur jugglers — and I mean amateur in terms of their stage presence, not their physical skill — try to go for big and flashy like flaming sticks or chainsaws, this juggler was amazing with simple basketball-sized balls. He laid on this back and passed them back and forth between his bent legs, and then later bounced several of them between his legs better than I’ve seen the Harlem Globetrotters even attempt. Really simple-looking, but at great speed and dexterity.

The first half also included some rope work, a bit of bicycle balance-riding, and some other acrobatic work. But for me, the highlight was a woman bungee-jumping from the rafters and doing flips and twirls. Really quite enjoyable.

I found the second half a little less exhilarating. The three big highlights for me were some BMX riding (both climbing up obstacles as well as the grand finale of going over ramps and doing flips, while also going really high and touching a floating wall with their back tires); a woman doing some weird twirling routine looking like she was hanging from her hair, almost freaky even; and a tumbling routine where the various acrobats launched themselves through three different hoops stacked on top of one another. Andrea also really liked a ladder routine. Jacob liked everything, as he often does.

I took a couple of photos before and after, but honoured the prohibition against photos during the show (which many people ignored, either because they’re jerks or perhaps they didn’t understand the announcements, most of which were only in French). However, there are some pretty good videos shared by Volta itself, and I’ll include one of them at the bottom.

VOLTA premieres in Gatineau tonight!

Bon matin Ville de Gatineau! #VOLTA #Premiere is tonight! Will you be under our #BigTopCirque? http://cirk.me/2h3cMeN

Posted by VOLTA by Cirque du Soleil on Thursday, August 3, 2017

 

Definitely worthy of counting as my second “live” performance of the year.


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50by50: Seeing a solar eclipse (#06)

Posted on by August 21, 2017  

I am having trouble separating out my emotions after today’s events, and even figuring out if I should count it towards my 50by50 list. I guess I should give a bit of context first, before I get to the roller coaster part.

Unless you have been living under a rock, or are a member of Trump’s cabinet, you likely saw the gazillion posts about the eclipse. What you probably didn’t see was any reference to the fact that eclipses happen approximately every 18 months somewhere on Earth, this one just happened to go through the centre of the US and thus became the EVENT OF THE MILLENNIUM. Or some such nonsense. So, yes, there was an eclipse, and the path of totality was across the U.S. Here in Ottawa, we were likely to experience somewhere between 61% and 68% overlap, depending on which scientist was doing the calculation.

Now, if you’ve read my blog, you know that I’m into astronomy, and you might therefore think I was super excited about the eclipse. I wasn’t. Honestly, eclipses don’t do much for me in the abstract. The idea of driving hundreds or thousands of miles to see a total eclipse for 2.5 minutes, if the weather cooperates, was tantamount to insanity.

I like the moon, I like the planets, I’m keen on certain deeper space phenomenon, but usually when it comes to observing the sun, my reaction is often “meh”. I do have a full solar filter, so I can do full observation. I even took some shots of sunspots on Sunday, just to try it out.

It’s interesting, but not as cool to me as most of the moon or seeing Saturn. Mostly I got the filter to try it out, and I trot it out from time to time when I hear people mention sunspot activity or just to give myself a chance to use it during the day if nighttime hasn’t been cooperating for the weather. But I’m not a keen solar observer.

And some fans of astronomy — les maniacs d’astronomie if you’re into french — get super-excited even when the moon occludes (eclipses) a planet or a star, or when there are conjunctions of one planet or moon near another celestial body. Again, for me, it’s more “meh”.

So I had very low expectations for the eclipse today. Back in May, I thought, “Hmm, perhaps I could take the day off and take Jacob” to wherever the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (Ottawa Chapter) of which I am a member would be doing their likely outreach event, which as it turned out was at the Museum of Aviation and Space. I wasn’t super keen, but he enjoyed his first star party in June, and it wasn’t like I was going to have to drive all the way to Wyoming or anything. So I did think about it.

Which is how the roller coaster started. I was thinking of putting it on my 50by50 list, doing the day thing with Jacob, low expectations but a learning event for all of us. Then we scheduled Jacob for Lego Robotics camp this week, which would mean I’d have to pull him out and he’d miss part of the camp. Was it worth it, yes/no? A consideration.

Then I got my french exam scheduled, and while I hoped it would be in early September, it came back as August 25th, which puts me on french this week. So I can’t really afford to take the day off to do astronomy, I need the practice so I can be as ready as possible on Friday. I wasn’t too disappointed to miss it, but more disappointed that Jacob would miss it.

However, when I was at the RASC meeting in June and at the one last week, people were handing out the little viewing tools (not the glasses with arms, but little cardboard slats with the filter in them), and through the varying avenues, I somehow ended up with three. One for me, one for Jacob, one for Andrea. But I was still wondering if I should take the afternoon off.

On Friday, I spoke to my french teacher about it, and she was at least willing to go outside at that time, and I thought, “Well, might as well”. I gave the other ones to Jacob and Andrea, and we were all going to be in separate places. Jacob had his at the sports camp today, and initially it looked like they would let him try it at the break, but in the end, the City of Ottawa decided the risks were too high for the kids, and everyone was kept inside. Unless I wanted to come pick him up, again the same question.

I debated taking my french teacher, picking up Jacob, and then trying to get to the Museum for the high point. It was a thought, but again, my expectations weren’t very high for my own personal enjoyment, and it was only partial anyway. Plus there’s a full one coming in 2024. The logistics were too tight for time, and I decided not to go. And I’m kicking myself for that decision, at least in part.

Because I went outside with my french teacher, crossed the street, put the lens in front of my eyes, and looked up. And was blown away. It is so basic, so simple, so primal that it was almost breathtaking. I couldn’t believe how well the filters worked or how awesome it looked. And then a funny thing happened.

My teacher looked and was blown away too, and that was almost as sweet. Then other people walking by, random people I didn’t know, were looking over to see what we were doing, and I asked them if they wanted to look at the eclipse. And they would come over, shyly, curious, almost timid. Kind of like, “Really? You’ll let me look? You don’t mind?”. And then “Oh, wow, that’s amazing!”. Then they would hand it back gushing, and I’d hand it to the next person. I had people LINING UP spontaneously, “Can I try too?”.

I didn’t have a scope. I didn’t have a bunch of glasses to hand out. I wasn’t doing outreach for the club. I just had a single filter. And about 50 of us used it over the course of about 30 minutes or so. People tried to take a few photos with their cell phones and the filters (heck, some tried it without the filter, which is definitely NOT recommended), but more importantly, some of them were using their phones to call colleagues upstairs in the office towers to come down and see this.

I wasn’t in a high traffic area, I was just in front of a building, looking through a gap between two other buildings. The shared experience of seeing people completely delighted in seeing something so innocent, so pure, so primal, was awesome. Everyone was like a little kid. This “free” event, you could just look. Somebody jokingly suggested I should charge a dollar to view, which is the complete opposite of the experience I was having.

I’ve experienced some of that at star parties, but this was like a pure hit of outreach crack. So simple and so immediate. And then the guilt hit.

Because while Andrea experienced the exact same thing on the other side of the river with her filter, Jacob never got to see it. He had to be inside. And I didn’t expect it to be that good, so I didn’t go pull him out. And I wish I had.

Yet it wouldn’t have been all partial sunshine and roses, for a completely INSANE reason. I would have picked him up and headed for the museum. Not realizing that the simple outreach program that was underway was overwhelmed with response.

If someone asked me to guess, I would have estimated 500 people at the museum. I know that is a bit low, but I would have thought of it as partly location (a bit farther out), it’s through the week when people are working, and our star parties churn out 300 people on a good night.

Instead, current estimates are that they had closer to 10,000 people. Yes, 10,000. I would have never made it to the museum. There were traffic tie ups all the way down the parkway, the police had to be there to direct traffic and were not happy with the semi-organized chaos. The eclipse period didn’t start until after 1:15 p.m., and yet by 11:00 a.m., the line-up was out of sight past the end of the parking lot. They started handing out 2800 viewers at noon, and even restricting them to one per family, they were gone within minutes. People were trying to get them all around town this past week too, and there were none available.

Whatever I do for 2024, it will NOT be with an organized group doing outreach. Wow.

There are a lot of photos on the net, some videos, all amazing. Yet our local Doug George (who taught the course that the Ottawa Carleton continuing education program used to offer) went all the way to Oregon, and sent back a link of some full eclipse shots, a small handful that are amazing:

https://goo.gl/photos/j1iMUF7m yZddJ8VM7

So, in the end, mixed emotions for the day. It was unexpectedly awesome for me, I just wish I could have shared it with Jacob.


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50by50: Crowd-sourcing an eight-layer nachos recipe (#05)

Posted on by August 19, 2017  

A lot of people are likely to think that this goal hardly merits being a “50 things by 50” item, and I can see their point. It’s not a “bucket list” type item like bungee jumping or something equally extreme, nor necessarily exotic like a trip to the Galapagos. But that isn’t what my 50by50 list is about — some of them are large, some are small, and some are Goldilocks items — just right for me.

A nacho recipe is one of those “just right” items for me. I have long-wanted a “definitive” recipe for nachos, one by which all other nachos that I encounter will be measured. I think part of my attraction to it is that it is not the type of food I grew up with, and the thought of my mom and a nachos recipe is laughable. The meat and potatoes regime that I grew up would have considered nachos like this to be something akin to “weird ethnic food”, the way even foodies might view eating insects dipped in chocolate or bull’s testicles. It was just not an option in our household. Chinese food? Never. Indian? Never. Heck, even Italian was limited to spaghetti with meat sauce.

And I know the history of nachos. It was “invented” in Mexico at a restaurant across the border by a waiter named Ignacio Anaya (with the nickname nacho) who threw some together on the spur of the moment for wives of American military personnel one afternoon when the chef was absent from the kitchen. So it was invented there, but it is not a Mexican food. It became popular in Texas at arenas, sometimes just with cheese offerings. And eventually it spread. But it’s not “Mexican” fare, even if people treat it as TexMex.

Plus there are thousands of variations. But I wanted to create my idea of a definitive nacho recipe, with multiple layers. And since I wanted to include it as a 50by50 item, I thought I would crowd-source it and get people talking, expressing their hopefully passionate views about guacamole or sour cream, or cheese blends. That didn’t quite go as I planned. Some friends wanted to know what time they should arrive for dinner hehehe, while others just turned it back to say “what did I want”. What I wanted was views! 🙂 However, like most things on Facebook, I’m not very good at being a catalyst for discussion or feedback. It was what it was though, and I’m grateful for all those who shared their thoughts.

The discussion for me starts with the base. I mentioned the thousands of variations of recipes out there, and some play with the base. Some use triscuits, or baguettes, or potato chips, or anything flat really. But for me, those aren’t nachos. I don’t know exactly what they are, but I am a purist for using tortilla chips. I pulled two brands for the test, PC Restaurant Style and Tostitos. The Tostitos ones are way better in our limited judging panel of three (Jacob, Andrea and I), with the PC ones being a bit bland. However, I find the Tostitos a bit saltier than I would prefer, so I’m still on the hunt for another brand, and we’ll see if we find something better in the future.

The second layer has to be cheese in my view. I know lots of people put the cheese on last, and I’ll come to that, but I want my chips to stay together in all their gooey goodness, and I want the various ingredients to stay put so that they are evenly spaced for the chips. I hate buying nachos where the bottom layer is basically plain chips where none of the other ingredients are left to even touch them. For this layer of cheese, I have a surprisingly-strong preference for shredded cheddar. Single, double or triple-strength, but definitely cheddar.

After that, we start into the real topping layers. Beef, chicken, shrimp, vegetable only, bacon, ham, shrimp…they’re all available as toppings, and the views on FB were less than definitive. Preferences across the spectrum. However, for the definitive recipe, I think the flavour interactions between chicken and the other ingredients are too strong to ignore. Most of the others tend to “sit” there as toppings, and while they add flavouring, chicken seems to interact more with the other toppings, as well as the chips and cheese. I prefer beef for tacos and fajitas, but for nachos, it has to be chicken in the end.

I am, however, a heathen. A rebel. A traitor to the nacho revolution. We pre-cooked the chicken in the Epicure steamer to reduce cooking time for the nacho portion. Some of the nacho recipes range from 15 minutes up to 45, often to ensure full cooking of the meat. If we pre-cook them in the steamer, no chance of the meat not being cooked, and we don’t have to risk over-cooking the rest of the ingredients nor burning the nacho chips. For some connoisseurs in Texas, cooking it all together for the whole time is a requirement and anything else might be a hanging offense. Consider me an outlaw then. For added seasoning, and there has to be some, we used Epicure spices to tweak the chicken. One batch was the standard taco seasoning, and while we used Epicure, lots of stores have some form of taco seasoning of varying strengths (mild to medium is better than strong for this). The other batch, we used a Pico salsa seasoning, and I actually liked it a lot more. It just seemed like the chicken was infused with this one, rather than coated.

For the onion layer, and yes, there have to be onions if it is going to be called nachos, I can go either way on green onions or white onions. The green onions obviously have a different taste, and for me, I suspect that “kick” is enough. I’ll spoil the finale, but I like to taste my food without having one ingredient overwhelm the rest, so there are no black olives nor jalapenos in my recipe. I know, I know, another sacrilege. But my palate, my nachos, my recipe! 🙂 Plus neither Jacob or Andrea like them either. If we did have jalapeno peppers in it, I think I would go with the simpler white onions so the flavours wouldn’t clash.

The next layer has to be the regular bell peppers. Red, yellow, green, orange…any combination will likely do, but I find that the red peppers seem to blend better with the chips, chicken and cheese. I’d be fine with just red, as the others are a bit different levels of sweetness, but I’m flexible to include a smattering of all four. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations, the Vulcan approach to recipe creation.

I then feel like it is time to start wrapping things up on the layers. But not before another layer of chips to truly “bind” it all together (so that it is not like eating bruschetta!), and then topping it all off with another layer of cheese. While cheddar belonged on the bottom, I think this last layer can be “chef’s choice”. I prefer a mozzarella blend, but I could see adding some monterey jack or even some stronger cheddar flavours. No, you can’t use feta or gouda. Well, you can, but then it’s not nachos. I don’t know what it is, more like screwed-up nachos. 🙂

There is one other layer, and this one is a bit tricky for two reasons. First, you apply it AFTER everything is cooked so it goes on cold. The second part, the tricky part, is that while it is something tomato-ish, some people just use salsa. Which is good, and if you find a good salsa blend (not mango, or jalapeno, again avoiding them to avoid overwhelming the other flavours), it’s great. Except for one thing. Even the chunkiest of salsa is too wet and can completely destroy the texture of the chips and turn it all into a soggy mess. If you’re using salsa, I think it has to be drained. Perhaps even pressed/drained. Or, you can do what we did, which is spread fresh tomatoes on top.

There were some other options I considered in the attempt.

  • Some recipes drizzled oil over the first layer of chips, but this seems gratuitous if you’re keeping the cooking time less than ten minutes as we did;
  • Other recipes went for special spice blends (cilantro, basil, garlic, salt, black pepper, chili pepper) or atypical flavourings (Italian seasoning, ranch dressing, bbq sauce), but just as with the seasoning in the meat and avoiding jalapenos, I worry that these flavours are either superfluous or easy to overwhelm the recipe, preventing other more subtle fusions from creeping forth; and,
  • Traditional recipes also wanted black beans, corn, maybe some kidney beans, and chunks of avocado, but again, it is just too many flavours or superfluous or don’t really add anything desirable.

Some people and recipes argued it is simply not nachos if there isn’t guacamole and sour cream, but since these too can overwhelm a base, I think they can best be handled through sides that people can adjust quantities as they see fit. I like the sour cream option, but feel it is too “wet” as well to be directly on the chips. And that’s it.

My new definitive recipe for eight-layer nachos is:

  1. Add Tostitos chips; shredded cheddar cheese; pre-cooked chicken in Epicure Pico salsa seasoning; green onions; bell peppers (red plus some combo of green/yellow/orange too); Tostitos chips; and shredded mozzarella cheese;
  2. Bake for ten minutes;
  3. Garnish with chopped tomatoes, uncooked; and,
  4. Serve with sides of guacamole, sour cream and salsa, as desired.

We made it last night, and I’ll do up the full recipe later with pics, but it was certainly the best nachos I’ve ever had at home, and probably in the top five ever.

And THAT is worthy of a 50by50 entry.

 


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50by50: Re-start my astronomy hobby (#04)

Posted on by July 6, 2017  

When I set my goals for the year (Goals for 2017 – Nudging the needle), I had some astronomy goals in mind. Specifically, under my blue goals, I wanted:

Astronomy: Fixed battery supplies + 1 viewing…I want to attend the RASC annual meeting, do at least 1 viewing at Star Party+Luskville+cottage, but I’ll start with 1 viewing. And work on reading the new RASC guidebook for the year.

and under my yellow goals I had:

Astrophotography: One decent shot…Sure, I would like to do more. Level 2 would likely be a complete set of moon phases (1/4, 1/2, 3/4, full). Level 3 and beyond could be constellations, planets, figuring out the laptop thingy, filters, etc. But I’ll start with the moon. And somewhere in there I have to sort my existing astro photos.

Since my new 50by50 goals kind of overtake the regular 2017 ones, I wanted to keep something in my new goals related to astronomy and I wanted to be realistic. So, in the end, I chose:

#4. Re-start my astronomy hobby

  1. Attend RASC annual meeting and/or monthly meetings;
  2. Attend a viewing Star Party at Carp;
  3. Solve my battery supply for the telescope;
  4. One decent moon shot; and,
  5. Upload my previous astronomy photos to my photo gallery;

I didn’t expect to meet all five of those in one week!

Friday, Saturday and Sunday of this last weekend was the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Annual General Meeting, and because it was Canada Day, the Ottawa Chapter (of which I am a member) had offered to host the meeting. About 150-200 attendees across the three days, I think. Including…dun dun dun…me!

Yes, I registered, and yes, I went. I confess readily that I suck at attending RASC meetings. The local chapter meets the first Friday of the month, and there is a mix of technical and non-technical presentations. But the meeting is way across town, you have to pay for parking, the items I usually care about are only part of the meeting, and the reason I joined RASC is not really what they do. I originally hoped for more “informal training”, as I generally don’t know what I’m doing. I had hoped, I guess, that there would be more offerings on set themes, kind of like groups going out one night at the start of the year where everyone gets to figure out how to work the scope better; then perhaps a night aimed at studying the moon; another aimed at planets, or constellations, or clusters. Not really how it works. And I thought the star parties would lead to more obvious bonding, but honestly, you’re in the dark and you can’t even really see the other person you’re talking to most of the time! Don’t get me wrong, some people find it great; I’m an analytical introvert, and mingling is not one of my big skills. All things being equal, I feel I might as well stay home and watch the YouTube feed. 🙂

But I join every year, I pay my dues, and this year, I decided I would go to the annual meeting. I know! Surprised me too!

I won’t cover everything, but I picked up my registration on day 1, including my extra swag, a nice t-shirt for the conference. I was already wearing my “You have a place in space” shirt from the US Planetary Society; if nothing else, I have the group swag. I checked ou the displays, spoke to a couple of people, and said hi to Tristan working the Focus Scientific desk (more on that later). And then I decided to attend a sesson on “50 years of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) at the Algonquin Radio Observatory”. I know, right, how could I pass up such a stimulating topic? Dr. Brendan Quine was presenting, and I had heard good things about him, but seriously, why would I care about the topic? Cuz it was a title that did not do the presentation justice. He was fun, engaging, and talked about not only the basics of VLBI and it’s foundational work to create GPS, but also the transfer of the ARO from the government to the private sector and what his company (Thoth) was doing these days. Including workable ideas for space elevators. Not a dry technical presentation at all, although some in the room could have likely handled that detail too, and highly entertaining. Plus I found out that the ARO rents rooms out to guests who want to come and hang out i.e. a place where I could do a weekend’s worth of observing in Algonquin Park where the observing + sleeping is the same location, not a hotel somewhere nearby. With reasonable rates. Colour me intrigued, and I might book something for this fall (when the bugs are gone!).

I even attended the BBQ the first night. I normally eschew the social aspects by nature, but if I want to meet people, I kind of have to do it, right? So I did. And ended up sitting at the same table as our local rock star, Gary Boyle. Okay, so there is nothing remotely “rock star” like about Gary, but he is regularly interviewed by CBC, his name is recognizable to anyone in the Canadian astronomy community plus lots of people internationally, and not for nothing, he just had an asteroid named after him. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/astroid-named-after-gary-boyle-1.4075015 Plus I actually managed to talk to someone I had never met before, Heather from Calgary, who helps out with the Executive and is on several sub-committee/task teams. Practically being a social butterfly by my normal standards. And checking off part (a) above…meeting attended!

I left the BBQ and headed to pick up my son Jacob and wife Andrea, then a friend Mike, and we headed out to the star party in Carp. The weather wasn’t looking awesome but it was still a “go”. We arrived just around 8:30 as the sun was still setting, and Ingrid (wife of Attila, owners of the giant scopes) showed us sun spots on her small 4″ scope. We had a lovely sunset, and then we got to see the Moon, and then Jupiter along with four moons eventually as the night got a bit darker. This was the only the second star party I have been at without my own scope, and the first Ottawa one for Mike, Andrea and Jacob. We all walked up and down the row looking through all the different types, seeing the different setups and viewing options. Later, someone had Saturn in their scopes, so we had to look at them all again for that. Easy to see the rings, all good. Then the fireflies arrived. The field next to the viewing area was dancing. And all of that was in about 1 hour, 15 minutes. By which time the clouds were threatening and the bug stuff we were using was NOT working well enough to stay. Great evening, and tick off part (b) of my goal…star party attended!

On Canada Day, I quite enjoyed the presentation on the solar system and current geological controversies from a retired NRCan scientist, highly enjoyable, and again, a topic I normally wouldn’t have chosen to attend if it was part of the monthly series. I even chatted with some more people at lunch — Eriq La Salle, and his friend Taras, plus Mike M of course — and got some really good advice from Taras on viewing areas and my battery problem. I avoided the opportunity to go visit the Hill that night for Canada Day, and hung out at home with my family. Sunday was okay too, nothing big sticks out, although I skipped the actual AGM in the morning and the banquet at night (which apparently was quite good).

I mentioned above that I talked to Tristan, as well as Taras, and most of that conversation was about two things. First, I have a battery problem. I have two PowerTanks to power my telescope, but they are both standard batteries, which means if you over charge them or leave them on charge or let them go too low on charge, they die. Never to work again.

I killed a large PowerTank, I killed a small PowerTank. And the pain of figuring out what to do with them has been a bit paralysing. I sought other people’s opinions and options online, and found out I could try putting the PowerTanks on trickle or DC charge to see if it would help revive them, but reliability would always be an issue even if I get them to work. Or take them apart and replace the core batteries in them. Which has a bunch of labour involved, not very clear instructions, potentially a need for soldering (!), and no guarantees of success, plus the cost of the batteries, maybe $175+ to attempt to fix both? Or I could say screw it and buy one of the almost idiot-proof lithium ion phosphate ones that don’t die if you mess up the charging schedule. But they cost almost $200 and well, I already have these other ones, they just need fixing. Grrr…

I compared options, talked to some people, bit the bullet, and bought a new one at Focus Scientific. https://focusscientific.com/product_info.php/products_id/1104 Problem solved. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the old ones, maybe offer them to anyone who wants to try to repair them or for parts. In the meantime, I had power for my scope. You know, that scope I haven’t really used in over a year. Tick box (c) above…power issue solved!

The fourth item on my list was to have one decent shot of the moon. I have a range of options to do this, none of which I’ve figured out how to do reliably or consistently:

  1. Smartphone by itself, not very exciting;
  2. Point and shoot by itself, ditto;
  3. DSLR by itself, with a tripod, at least now I’m in the ballpark;
  4. Scope + smartphone over eyepiece — hard to get the phone centred above the eyepiece;
  5. Scope + point and shoot over eyepiece — similar to smartphone problem, but I have this little adapter thing, just never got it to work very well;
  6. Scope + NEXIMAGE 5 + laptop + software — I’ve done this before, even got some shots, but stability was definitely an issue, plus replicating the outcome from shot to shot.
  7. Scope + DSLR with adapter — sure, this is supposed to be easy, but I’ve struggled on anything other than the moon;
  8. Scope + DSLR with adapter + laptop + software — supposed to take a lot of the guesswork out of the previous option but I haven’t figured that one out yet;

Now, I have been treating these like a series of more and more complicated options and / or more reliable and sophisticated photos. Bear in mind that I am using a SCT-style scope on a basic alt-az base…this is NOT designed for sophisticated astrophotography, and honestly I don’t want it to do that…I just want some quick snaps of what I’m seeing, preferably all less than a second or two of elapsed time. I won’t get the beautiful colour shots of other people, but I’m okay with that. More souvenirs of what I saw, records of my viewing, than art.

And I can pretty much eliminate (a) and (b) above. I haven’t tried (c) yet for the DSLR just on a tripod, not consistently, although I do have a photo or two of the Milky Way and constellations. D-H are all increasingly complicated, as I said, and I wasn’t really into it.

Until I went to the conference and saw what Tristan was selling. A Meade smartphone adapter, one with a very simple setup, with good reviews online. For $30. Hell yeah.

It is a simple adapter that attaches itself to your smartphone and puts a little ring adapter over your camera so that you can “mount” it over an eyepiece i.e. the ring holds the top of the 1.25″ eyepiece (without the rubber cup around the EP) and thus allows you to almost centre it perfectly before you even put the EP into the scope. You can see the layout of it here at the FS store: https://focusscientific.com/product_info.php/products_id/1354

And I managed to get a few decent shots…they are not DSLR quality, nor will I be publishing them in an astro magazine, but as a fun addition to my hobby, I was pretty happy:

Then I tried to get a “little” fancy, and do some zooms.

I have moon maps, so I can go through some time and label some of the features. But for now, I’m happy with just getting the shots. Part (d) complete…a good shot of the moon.

Which has left me with one simple piece outstanding — to organize my astronomy photos over the last 4 years and upload them to my site. I had them semi-organized at one point when I had a Piwigo sub-site, but never got around to fixing the mess of how they are stored now that I’m with SmugMug. I hadn’t even uploaded them. So that’s fixed too: https://pandafamily.smugmug.com/Astronomy is the opening gallery. I have shots of the sun (1), moon (54), Venus (2), Mars (6), Jupiter (5), Saturn (19), Milky Way (8), Constellations (6) and my gear setup (1). Not all photos in those batches are created equal, but it’s the best I have so far. And with that, I’ve completed part (e)…upload astronomy photos to the gallery.

Which means one of the items that I didn’t think I would come close to completing before the fall is done. I’ve re-started my astronomy hobby. Feels good.


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50by50: Start a new job (#03)

Posted on by July 5, 2017  

Back in April, I blogged about Starting the Official Job Search of 2017 and I added it to the list of “50 things to do before I’m 50” i.e. find and start a new job. I mentioned at the time I started my search that I have been in my current “box” for the last nine years, and while the job changed a bit in there — six years of performance measurement plus special projects and three years of planning — it has been a similar job for most of that time. I thought about leaving before, and I’ve had offers, but either the timing wasn’t right or it wasn’t the right job. And, as I like to be brutally honest on my blog, one of the main reasons I didn’t leave was that I was comfortable.

I had good files that I liked and that I’m good at too, I had a good team, work/life balance was near perfect, and I had bosses that trusted me and gave me autonomy and room to work within my sphere. What was there not to love?

In a word? Variety.

I have a very high threshold / capacity for corporate work. I actually like it most of the time, when most people run the other way. And managing corporate planning files lets you dip your toes into a lot of pools. Public engagement through reporting, ties to policy priorities, budgeting and operational priorities, high-level management and low-level operations, audits, evaluations, risk, business planning. Lots of things that other people hate and that I quite enjoy, if enjoy is the right word. But the planning cycle is, indeed, a cycle which means that it repeats. And while it is a bit or a lot different each year, it is variations on a theme, not true variety per se. And I didn’t realize how much I needed a change until back in April when I started the official search.

Now before I tell you where I went, or even how I got to the decision, I have to confess something. I completely screwed up. Out of arrogance, mainly. But I could have really screwed my career doing what I did, I just happened to luck out near the end.

Here’s the thing. I’m a manager, and I’m not looking for promotion. That means just deployment at level. And I’m a good manager. Separate from my opinion, I entered my job search with three 5.0/5.0 ratings in a row for my formal performance, and nothing less than a 4.0/5.0 since the formal numbers started. I have had job offers with acting promotions, I have been recruited by people in the know who believe I’m good, and my own employees give me higher than average feedback as a manager, usually markedly higher in 90% of the categories. And, even without that, I’ve had other managers seek me out for advice on management issues because they’ve heard from employees i.e. word of mouth that I’m a really good manager. So my employees told other employees who told other employees who told their managers, and their managers have said, “Hey, I was curious if you have time to go for a coffee to talk about something I’m dealing with.” Even if I wasn’t naturally arrogant, I have external evidence to suggest that I’m good. Which is not to say I’m not a Grade A whack-a-doodle on a regular basis, but overall, I’m good at my job.

So I went into the job search with high expectations. Which turned out to be way too high. Unreasonably so, apparently.

When I did my last full open-ended job search, it was almost ten years ago and I had nowhere near the experience I have now. I searched pointedly for two weeks and had five offers. One was okay, two were good, and two were great. But five offers. And my network is better now.

My first tactical error was in assuming that I would have similar opportunities now, and thus I was quite comfortable telling my boss to go ahead and find my replacement, even though I hadn’t found a job yet. Just because of the environment, and a lack of immediate succession planning for my position in a narrow niche for the type of job (planning is common, but reporting directly to a DG and flying solo as a manager is not), I agreed that I would do overlap with my replacement. Which means I would leave after they started, and working backwards, we would likely need to find them before I found a new position.

That is NOT the way most people manage their careers, and as per my experience, with good reason.

I also had a small glitch…my french was expired, which means I needed to renew my written and oral before moving on. Written was no trouble, and I was confident with my oral, but there were no guarantees. Plus I got messed around with on my scheduling, and I missed my level. But the big issue was that I didn’t want to have conversations too early with my potential targets.

I didn’t want to meet with Jane Manager and say, “Hey do you have any jobs available?” and have them say, “Here’s one, can you start in two weeks?” because I couldn’t. I not only had to fix my french, but I also had to train my replacement. So I approached a couple of mentors and said, “How do I handle this?”.

Their advice was that as long as I said that I was looking for late Spring, early Summer (i.e. end of June), it would be very clear I wasn’t looking for “now”. So I started my search.

And I perhaps made a second tactical error. Many of my larger network contacts have moved up in the world. Ones that were formerly Directors and Director Generals have now become DGs and ADMs. Of my first eight meetings, I targeted three directors, four DGs, and an ADM. I expected by the time I finished those eight meetings, I would have about 4 offers. I had 0. Add in the next four, and I had approximately 1 real offer, 1 soft offer, and 1 soft interest. But here’s part of the potential tactical issue…DGs and ADMs don’t hire EC-07 managers; managers report to directors. So perhaps some of the people I was talking to weren’t exactly the right level to give me an offer per se so much as information.

Which is partly why I am not sure it is exactly an error. It was more an error of expectation, even though I wasn’t actually asking them for offers. I was in a very formal “environmental scanning” mode, and I was looking for a very specific type of job. In earlier posts, I mentioned that I really like projects. So I wasn’t exactly looking for “here’s an established job for day-to-day duties”, I wanted a large initiative or project. Equally, I wasn’t looking for just any project…I didn’t want to be spinning my wheels or pushing string, it had to be something that was recognized as needing to be done, preferably something that was broken and needed to be fixed, and which people in command actually wanted fixed. If that sounds too abstract, let me be precise. I believe our user / security policy in the department is incredibly dysfunctional and broken, and greatly in need of modernization, reorientation, and well, replacement. With my experience with privacy, risk, policy, corporate, IT, etc., I’d even have a pretty good set of skills to bring to the project. And there are lots of people around the department who agree with me on the need. Except for two very important people who like it as is — the Deputy Minister and the DG in charge. There is no desire or traction to make changes. So working on it would be completely like pushing string.

So I was looking for a pretty unique type of job — manager position not executive, problem to be solved, likely corporate, recognized to be fixed, and a desire to fix it. Kind of my dream scenario in some respects. With one extra obvious wrinkle. The position has to be open or about to be open. Of course, if a DG or ADM has a problem to be fixed and there is buy-in to fix it, they probably have already assigned someone to that task. Was that a third tactical error? Looking for something specific in too short a timeframe? I don’t now. An ADM I spoke to later thought so, and I don’t doubt his judgement, just not sure that was the only issue at play.

I met first with an old boss who I have used for mentoring and career advice before, and who is now an ADM. I appreciate his willingness to meet with me, and he gave me a good “practice” run in describing what types of things I was looking for in my search. For example, I described it as fixing things that were broken, and he countered by asking if there were any enabling services in the department that weren’t broken. Good point. Hence the narrowing to “recognized problem and desire to fix said problem”, a much smaller list. He had one big suggestion, but it wasn’t active yet, something to perhaps work towards in the future if it got going — department wide implementation of the GCDocs system. A major challenge for a department of 25K people and little to no IM practices in sight. And he did advise me that I as I talked to others, I would need to narrow my “request” if I wanted to get job offers out of it. I wasn’t worried at that point, I was meeting with people who had offered me jobs before, and I suspect I didn’t listen as strongly as I should have (hence my fourth tactical error, not being pointed enough in my approach).

I also met with a DG who I have worked for and with three times in the past. While the last time wasn’t a rousing success, she has offered me two jobs in the last four years and so I wanted to chat with her, see what was happening. She also has a job that interfaces with a lot of the corporate operations, so a good source. I confess I fully expected a job offer of something, and she openly said she had nothing right then (she had just staffed something). She didn’t have a specific idea of a problem to be fixed anywhere, but she did steer me toward a branch that is undergoing massive transformation right now. Not very specific in targeting, but general steerage in that direction. Or perhaps TBS.

Now, I had already known of this branch’s massive change agenda, and to be blunt, most of it left me feeling blah. Not because it wasn’t ambitious, but more so because I kept seeing fuzzy descriptions, template processes, and not a lot of actual strategic governance going on. In a branch known for bogging down in processes. Perhaps not rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, more like giving you a template to report how many deck chairs were still available and giving examples of how the policy on deck chair use needed to be simplified. It looked more like barely contained chaos than a well-run corporate process. And while I could see that as an opportunity too, I didn’t know any of the people involved well-enough to want to work for them or to be able to choose which pieces might move and which pieces would self-destruct. Major risk for a career move. I put it on the back-burner for now.

I also ruled out TBS. Which is weird in a way. I was looking for a problem to be solved, something to run like a project, with buy-in to fix it. From what people tell me, that’s 50% of the work at TBS. All the time. But going with that is an almost universal disdain for anything resembling work/life balance. I don’t mind working OT for crunch activities, but I don’t want to start working an extra 10-20 hours a week just for fun. Just not the environment I want to part of, and while I have had offers to go there, it wasn’t on my list of desired places.

I approached a contact I had, actually a former boss of my wife. She offered me a great job about three years ago, and the timing was terrible. If she had been in the same position, with the same offer, I would have said yes now easily. But she was in a new area, and it seemed good too, so I wanted to chat with her. Not for her area per se, but good info on life in the HR world. It was a very pleasant conversation, and she offered to set me up with her replacement in her old area, but I already knew that area was “full”. Always a pleasure to chat with her, but nothing that added up to a specific lead per se.

I threw a Hail Mary pass towards a director that I didn’t know at all, but had found out she was in charge of two HR files that interested me — student hiring for the summer and post-secondary recruitment. Lots of stuff going on, good work, potential to expand if there was an opening for me, but she was full up. She had a manager in charge, and it was a great conversation, but more like being outside with my nose pressed against the window. There are other ways to be involved, but no job in the area. It was a very focused conversation, made so partly because it was easy to say no, i.e. she had no openings. Plus, while she didn’t say it outright, I don’t have a huge HR background for the types of things they’re doing — I’m good at HR processes, coaching, etc., but not a lot of formal experience with the stuff they’re doing. Put more bluntly, I’m an EC, not a personnel (PE) specialist.

I wouldn’t say I was panicking at this point, but I was finishing my fourth interview, and nothing resembling much of a lead had poked up in my e-scan. Nor any job offers. I’m being somewhat disingenuous as I say that, as I did have a previous job offer back in February.

When my boss started the search for my replacement, she had to go to our branch workforce management committee to seek approval to launch a deployment notice. So all of WMC i.e. the DGs in our branch and two ADMs all knew and heard I was officially going to be leaving. And one of my former bosses, now a DG, reached out to say, “Hey when are we going to chat?”

I thanked him for the question, and pointed out that I needed to finish my french, it wouldn’t be for another five or six months, I wasn’t really looking for conversations at that point (I hadn’t started my search yet), etc. So he replied, “So how about Thursday?”.

We met, he described the job, and it was a good job. But it wasn’t me. Stakeholder relations, open-ended, targeted to business. I’ve done some of that work before, but not really what I was looking for, and part of the reason I eventually started looking for the Mr. Fix-It type job.

But, while I wasn’t panicking, I thought I should shore up my plans with a good old-fashioned firm job offer. So I contacted my former director who had offered me jobs twice in the last three years, and told her that I was now officially looking. And in the interest of transparency, I told her she had to make me a good pitch. Her first pitch three years before had been a back-handed pitch. We were talking about her job, she told me all that was wrong with it for about 30 minutes, just sharing and venting our own frustrations, and then said, “How about coming with me?”. Umm, how about no? 🙂

Her second pitch had been better, but wasn’t my dream job. Yet I was willing to consider it because I really like her management style. We worked really well together before — she generally would treat me as a near-equal for the files, lay out the full gamut of management work to be done, and we would just divvy it all up. There was very little of the “I’m a director so I’m doing the fun stuff, you’re a manager, let me dump stuff on you”, and it was very open and collegial. One of the best experiences I’ve ever had as a manager, and partly as I have a lot more experience now than I did before, so it’s easier for my director to do that with me. And she made me a good pitch. Not my dream job, but again, more interested in working with her than the job necessarily. I explained however that I couldn’t say “yes” yet, I was doing a full search until the end of May at least, and wanted to know if that cause her problems. No, for me, she was willing to wait.

Great, a firm offer.

What I haven’t mentioned in this post is my boss. She had been, up until this point, incredibly supportive. Whatever I needed, whenever I needed it, what could she herself do to help? Could she make calls, what did I need from her? All great. And she had said repeatedly that I shouldn’t take the first offer, take my time, do a proper search, etc. And I was keeping her up to date as I went.

When I told her about this job, and it was good, but not perfect, I fully expected her to say the same thing as I was thinking. It was a baseline, etc. Except instead she suddenly said I should take it, firm it up, was my french a precondition, etc. The complete opposite of what we had talked about. I was like, WTF?

So I waited a day and then followed up on the job, tried to firm it up. And it evaporated. She didn’t know if she could take me as an EC, they didn’t really hire ECs, not sure she’d have the budget, was I really serious, etc. WTF?

My confidence took a major nose-dive. Was that offer back in February, the one I said no to, was it the only one I was going to get? The one that I thought was a sure thing was gone, disappearing into the mist of the branch that was in chaos. I have no idea what happened, I’ll get the full story some point in the future I guess. Things happen.

So I sheepishly went back to my DG, told her it wasn’t solid, and she went back to full support mode. Totally supportive, no issue at all. I realized afterwards it was a bit of a push/pull thing for her with my replacement. She had found someone and didn’t want to lose them, but also didn’t necessarily want to issue an offer to them until I had found something or had a good line on something. And so when she saw that I had a firm offer with a good boss, it seemed like perfect synergy for us to close both deals simultaneously. But then she realized she could always use me on special projects in the short-term if she had to, so no worries. We worked out a deal for the replacement to start, and I would keep looking. Full support. Whew.

Interestingly in this list you’ll see that I didn’t talk much about my branch. Other than the one offer that I said no to, nobody was knocking on my door. And, truth be told, I was surprised. I thought more than one would knock, and they all knew I was looking, with no invites to chat. Okay, no worries. And, while still being brutally truthful with myself, I was looking for corporate problems to fix, none of which they had in their areas. They’re all program policy people.

Soooo, six interviews down, no job. Umm. Yep, I sucked apparently. Maybe I wasn’t as good as I thought. I reached out to contacts in two other branches, never heard back from either one. Okay. Maybe they missed the emails. I personalized them, so they weren’t cattle calls. Or maybe they were just busy. Either way, moving on.

I reached out interdepartmentally. I wasn’t looking to leave the department necessarily, but I also needed to expand my interests. A friend knew of some needs at Environment Canada, but they went more internally for the job that I would have been best suited for…she offered to share my résumé more widely, but I held off on that for now.

A former employee of mine had interviewed with ISED, and since she has a similar profile to mine, she wondered if I might be interested. She referred me, the director interviewed me, and there was some interest. But the job had three main files — one that hadn’t started yet but could be interesting at some point; a trade-related file that tied in well to stuff I did before and would like to do again, but is generally responsive only; and a third area that she suggested was quite “minor” but involved a lot of parliamentary relations. Which I’ve also done in the past. But then I realized. The first two files weren’t really active at the present, and she had five employees in the team. Which meant they were ALL doing the parliamentary relations file somewhat, or at least, it was eating up way more than a small part of their time. Definitely NOT the job I wanted to be doing, so I didn’t firm up interest.

At the same time I was doing all this, I was interviewing candidates to join my team at the EC-06 level. While I was doing reference checks for one of the candidates at Public Health, their manager asked me about my team, and I mentioned I was moving on myself but I didn’t know where. We were doing similar jobs, and we chatted a bit about our experiences, and he asked if I thought about working at Public Health. One thing led to another, and we set up an interview with his boss. I interviewed with them, seemed okay, but there were a few structural issues that seemed “off”. And there was an element that it wasn’t going to be “new” . It was the same job I had now, just in a different department. But a change is as good as a rest, as they say, and I was interested still. Until I did reference checks on the area. And while I expect a few pluses and minuses to come back in any real reference, I got more of a “run the other way” response from people. Poked a little further and suddenly the structural anomalies made more sense in that context. I withdrew my interest, citing my desire for a change. Which was entirely true. The more I considered the job, the less interested I was in replicating my current role.

I am likely missing some interactions in there a bit, but basically at this point I was nearing 8-9 formal interviews, and nothing to show for my search. I needed to be more pointed.

I reached out in the short-term to a colleague in one directorate in our branch, and got the lay of the land for her area, but it didn’t look like a good fit in any open positions, and I put that area on the back-burner.

I contacted a DG contact in the IT branch, and had a GREAT conversation with her. Exciting opportunities, and one in particular sounded promising. She offered to follow up with him, and I wanted to think about which area for a couple of days. I also was targeting another branch, and met with the DG, but it was a short conversation, and she didn’t have any suggestions for me.

But something weird had happened in that timeframe too. I had contacted a DG who formerly worked in our branch, and to be honest, I had forgotten she was in this other branch that I was interested in. It was an area that interested me but I had no management-level contacts and hadn’t figured out yet how to contact them. It was also very different from what I was doing. Anyway, I realized she was in that branch, contacted her, chatted, she asked me what I was interested in, etc. I told her the one general area and she knew one of the DGs was actively looking. I didn’t know him, but would be happy to have a chat.

The program was Canada Pension Plan – Disability, or as they refer to it, CPP-D. I have had some exposure to it over the years. Back when I was in university, my father was on a disability pension for a while, which meant I could get a “Disabled Contributor’s Child’s Benefit”. Plus I have family members who are receiving CPP-D and I’ve been dealing with an employee who’s gone through medical retirement in recent years.

And I’ll confess…from a policy perspective, I think pensions are just flat-out cool. I don’t care about the finance side, I just mean all the policy issues that go with them. And disability pensions takes that “vulnerable group” and “rich policy area” dynamic, and feeds it steroids. Sure, I was looking for those corporate problems to fix, but if I was to go more policy-oriented, pensions would likely top the list.

I met with the DG and the acting director, and I really liked his management style. Open, transparent, plain-spoken. Kind of a blue-jeans and sports jacket vibe to him. We were supposed to chat for about 30 minutes, and I didn’t treat it as an interview really, mainly because I’m not a pure policy wonk nor am I a stakeholder specialist, which the job entails. But the 30 minutes turned into 90, and I grilled him like a fish on the policy issues. I just let my full policy wonk side run wild during conversation. Pilot projects, program issues, links with the delivery, Parliamentary engagement, FPT roles.

And I found myself really thinking about the job. Normally, if someone said “Stakeholder Relations”, I would run the other way. Often very responsive, too many dockets coming through. But CPP-D doesn’t deal with “all” disability issues, there’s the separate office for that (Office of Disability Issues). It is geared specifically to stakeholders of the program itself. Clients, insurance companies, FPT partners. And they have a formal roundtable set up that meets on issues through-out the year. Put differently, it’s not “open-ended” stakeholder relations, it is very structured SR. More like managing a large interdepartmental / FPT / client / partner roundtable plus doing bilateral relations. Now THAT’s a different type of Stakeholder Relations that I can manage. I’ve even done variations of that before. Plus it’s for a vulnerable group that appeals to me from a policy perspective. Kind of like when I was at CIDA — “developing countries” writ large didn’t excite me, but Small Island Developing States did. And I did work on the negotiations on the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities back in 2005-06, so it isn’t like it is completely foreign territory either.

I thought about it for a day or two after the meeting, and my interest didn’t wane. I followed up to confirm my interest, and was happily surprised to find they were interested too, and they didn’t have too many other candidates left to consider. I provided references, we figured out some options around my expired french levels. They were ready to offer and I was ready to accept. Win-win.

Almost.

Way back when my “open-ended” scanning process was on, I thought to impose upon my current ADM for some advice. He is involved in stuff all over the department, and has a planning background, so I thought he would be an ideal candidate for some advice, if he could spare the time for coffee. We scheduled in early April, and then I got bumped. Again and again and again. It wasn’t urgent, and he’s a pretty busy ADM. A couple of times he had openings when I was off in May with Jacob’s series of appointments. No biggie, we rescheduled. But that meant that by the time I had a chance to meet with him, it was two days before I was to get my formal offer from the new area. I was going to let it go, but my DG encouraged me to meet with him and get his reaction to the job.

We met, I was pretty candid with him about my job search experience, and mentioned I had zero offers in the initial stages. He asked me why I thought that was, and I mentioned targeting DGs and ADMs rather than directors who hire EC-07s. While he agreed that was part of it, he thought it was more the narrow type of job I was looking for, and that those don’t come around every day. Might take six months to find a specific example of that type, and I was moving faster than that. An interesting thought.

He asked me if I was set on leaving our branch, and I said no, but that I hadn’t really found much interest within the branch either (both from my own searching of work to do / openings or their own expressed interest or not). He pointed out though too that the management all knew me in one specific type of work, and thus might not have considered me for other types of files. We chatted about what he thought my real skills were — comfortable creating and telling evidence-based storylines that combines data, policy, and programs together — and about a couple of areas in the branch that might be a fit. And then he offered to reach out to them.

Umm, okay. But I was set to say yes to the other job in two days. He asked if I could extend that deadline by a couple of days, which I agreed to explore. My advisors all agreed to just be straight up with the new DG about the ADM’s offer, and he fully understood. I told him I was leaning towards accepting his offer, and honestly I would have said at the time that I was 98% sold. It’s just a huge policy rich area, and the DG told me that partly what sold him was that I had an obviously curious mind for policy and I asked a lot of the right questions during the interview, the exact issues they had to deal with behind the scenes and balance out against the public commitments.

So, at the ADM’s nudging, I met with another directorate in my branch. Huge program, lots of policy work across the board. And they had two openings with some great work to do. Two very good jobs. Which left me with an actual question. Stay and do good work in the same branch, where I was comfortable and knew everyone, and would be able to hit the ground at a full run, or move to the new branch, new area, and a huge learning curve.

Interestingly, way back about 20 paragraphs ago, I mentioned that I had met with someone in the branch, this was their area, and I had put it on the back-burner at the time. I had not pursued it as I didn’t see a fit for what I was looking for, and this was very different still. Opportunities we didn’t even know about a month before.

In the end, I realized that I was more attracted to the Disability file. It ties in closer to my social roots, I like the client group, and as I said, it’s a huge policy area with lots of rich pockets to mine.

So I said yes to the new job, and started the countdown from my old job. There were still lots of hoops to jump with various approvals, and I didn’t really tell that many people where I was going officially unless they pointedly asked. There are always chances something will come up, stuff happens. But I started yesterday in the new job so I guess it’s safe to say where I’m “going”. 🙂 I have a slightly smaller team than before, with five employees, including a co-op student, plus a potential sixth coming later. And I probably understand only about a tenth of what the job entails (I only got the basic elements of SR above, haven’t even touched long-term disability yet).

But it was time for a change and I took the leap on faith.

And then something strange happened. A bunch of people in my old branch said, “What? I didn’t know you were willing to do full policy work? Why didn’t you approach ME?”. Including two areas that I probably would have said yes to early in the process if they had been on the table. Meaning I wouldn’t have considered a larger move to an area that likely suits my interests and skills for the long-run a lot better. But they weren’t on the table, given the way people saw me and that I was originally looking for that narrow “fix-it” job. It all worked out in the end, as they say, but the trip was far more painful than I expected.

I know I made a lot of errors in my planning, which seemed good going in and there were reasons for each leg, but it added to my stress:

  1. Giving up my current job before finding the new one — While it motivated me to actually look, the added pressure was too intense;
  2. Not finding a way (ANY way!) to meet with my ADM sooner — It would have changed the conversation way back at the start, instead of force-fitting it at the end;
  3. Being overly confident — Sure I have high ratings and am flagged for talent management, but that didn’t mean it went well or was easy, although it made it easier for my DG to support me;
  4. Not waiting for my french to be fixed before searching at all — It just added a dimension I shouldn’t have had;
  5. DGs and ADMs are fine for scanning, but I likely should have aimed lower for job offers and been more pointed;
  6. My unique opening target niche was too narrow, and there weren’t any jobs of that type available in the timeframe I had; and,
  7. Since I had been in a specific role for a long time, I didn’t tell people I was open to other types of files too.

None of them egregious, and as I said, it worked out in the end. But definitely not the way to run my career in the future.

On the other hand, I stayed in my last job for 9 years…if I stay in this one for 9 years, I’ll be eligible to retire when I’m done.

I’m sure other thoughts will occur to me in the future…it’s hard to have perspective without some distance between me and the process yet, but this is what I have so far.


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50by50: See live performances – NAC & the Tenors (#02a)

Posted on by August 26, 2017  

One of the things I was thinking about for my 50by50 year was to see some live events. Maybe some sports, like hockey, football, soccer or baseball. Maybe some plays like Ottawa Little Theatre. Or maybe some live music like Bluesfest, Jazz Festival, a concert or the NAC.

Yet I don’t want those taking up a bunch of slots as they are all relatively the same thing — going to an event to see a live performance of something. I thought about separating the sports from the arts, but in terms of going out, the organizational side i.e. the “prep” work to go is the same.

And I realized somewhere in there too that if it is *my* list, it can’t be dependent upon others to complete. So, for example, if a friend suggested we go do activity X, that’s great, but the commitment can’t be about doing it together. What if the friend flakes out? Or is just too busy? I like going for wings, and doing so with friends, but the commitment would have to be about MY effort i.e. arranging and going for wings, not whether the friends decide to join me that week.

I feel kind of the same way about the live performances — it is about ME deciding to go see something, not about the people performing or even how they perform. I have to schedule it, I have to figure out logistics, buy tickets, figure out if anyone is coming with me, find parking, and go. All of which is about the same whether it is for an arts performance or a sporting event.

So I committed to a second item on my 50by50 list:

#02. See five different types of live performances.

I’ve thought about waiting until I reach the five different types before I write about it, but where’s the fun in that? There are a couple of goals like that, but this one can be part of the shared area.

This past week, Andrea and I went to see the NAC Pops series (we had a mini-subscription), and this week it was listed as the Four Tenors. I swear that is what it said when I ordered tickets. But then they became the Canadian Tenors, and then they had their fourth member who intentionally altered the national anthem during a MLB appearance and blew up social media, and they became the three tenors in search of a name that wasn’t already taken. Now they are simply The Tenors.

I knew none of this of course. I don’t even think I really registered who the Tenors were under whatever name until Andrea explained it to me. Often when the Pops series is on, they come up with some catchy title like Broadway Divas, but it isn’t an official group name. So when I read there were tenors, I thought they were just lowercase tenors. Not an actual act. I know nothing about bands or music groups. Heck, I’m doing well to recognize U2 or The Tragically Hip — I like songs, not bands, and I almost never know who the artists are.

So I went into the night expecting a group of four lowercase tenors. And then there were only three, and the event title was simply The Tenors. Oh, that group. Okay. Didn’t really help clarify anything other than the name. 🙂

I also wasn’t that impressed when I went to the program and it says “The program will be announced from the stage.” In other words, people didn’t get their shit together in time to publish the actual schedule in the program. Nice. I’m a BLUE RATIONAL INTROVERT — I want an agenda to follow, people! hehehe Don’t get me wrong, I’m okay with “spontaneous music” by a band. But for the NAC series, they have a program already set because the orchestra has to have and practice the music; they KNOW what the program is, they’re just not going sharesies! Heck, even the group description was just pulled from Wikipedia.

Which also makes it hard afterwards to review and say they did “this” song well, or “that” song really well. Because ten minutes after I left the hall, I’d forgotten what half the songs were, and even more forgotten after a day. Their set included:

  • The Canadian Tenors — Hallelujah, Home I’ll Be;
  • The Perfect Gift — Instrument of Peace, Hallelujah;
  • Lead With Your Heart — snippets from Manana, Forever Young, Anchor Me;
  • Under One Sky — I Remember You;

There were a smattering of other songs from Reba McNeil, Rankins, etc., plus a medley of Elvis and others. I am okay with Hallelujah, but as Andrea pointed out, it’s kind of saturated with tons of artists doing the covers, and she didn’t think it was the best cover. I liked Home I’ll Be and Instrument of Peace, plus I Remember You. O Sole Mio was impressive to see, but honestly, 30 seconds is enough for me. While I’m impressed that the sound doesn’t seem to match the body generating it, I could care less about that singing. It’s like opera — why do I want to see someone singing, even impressively, in a language I don’t understand, for any length of time? If there’s a backbeat to tap along to, something Spanish maybe, sure. But a friend of mine went to see 18 hours of opera one weekend in New York in languages she didn’t speak. If I had a choice of that or letting a rat chew on a body part for a minute, it would be a close call.

Now, don’t get me wrong — the Tenors were way better than being a rat’s chew toy, but the multi-cultural aspect left me bored. Even with the french songs, I found it challenging to follow the lyrics. Which would be a good time to tune out and listen to the orchestra, if you could hear them. Often they’re pretty muted during the singing.

The NAC Orchestra did do an instrumental opening and closing, and I wish I knew what the finale was (hey, look, it would be in the program, if they had generated one!). It had a spanish-sounding string section that was quite cool.

Overall, as always, I enjoyed the night. Wasn’t the best show we’ve seen, wasn’t the worst. And better than being a rat’s chew toy. What greater praise can I give?

One of five live performances checked off from my 50by50 list, and accompanied by a fun panda.


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50by50: Who am I when I’m online? (#01)

Posted on by July 5, 2017  

I mentioned in an earlier post that not all of my 50by50 commitments were going to be “bucket list type” things. Some of them, in some ways, are really just getting myself squared away. Deciding who I am, I suppose.

And I’ve been struggling with one aspect of my identity for quite some time. Who am I when I’m online?

Way back when I started engaging on the internet, I shared jokes and humour. I ran a trivia contest by email for a very long time. I wrote movie reviews and shared those. But I always wanted to get to the point where I was sharing my own writing online. I struggled though between writing stuff that was essentially “for me”, or more accurately, “about me”, and stuff that was more business-oriented or professional. Like writing about my own jobs vs. writing about HR processes.

I waffled on how it looked online. Awhile ago, I switched to having two sites — one personal, one for writing. Yet are those really different? Are there two sides to me? I wasn’t even sure I got the split right. I made the writing one the “PolyWogg.ca” web domain, as I liked the idea of being PolyWogg for my writing. Yet that left ThePolyBlog as my personal area. Then I would go to write something about goals, and I couldn’t decide — was it “polywogg” as it was about a serious approach to goal-setting, something I am fairly knowledgeable about, or was it “thepolyblog” as it included my own goals?

I’m heavily influenced of course in that division by lots of writers out there who have a “professional” site for all their books and things, and perhaps a “personal” site where they share recipes and stories about their families. Or knitting patterns. Links to Instagram, etc. I kept telling myself if I was going to ever get to that professional writing stage, I should plan now to have the two sites, keep them separate, never the twain shall meet.

Which I have realized is ridiculous. One of the reasons writers often do that is so that publishers and editors and agents (oh my!) can see their “work” all together, not cluttered with personal stuff. But I don’t care about publishers or editors, and don’t get me started on my feelings about most agents (think lawyers and used car salesmen, and drop a level or two). So why am I separating things?

There is me. Only me. PolyWogg, with a blog that I call the PolyBlog. But it is all me. And it is far less work to have one site than two, even just on overhead management.

So I decided to merge the two websites and put everything under PolyWogg.ca. I could have just as easily called this “Fixing my website”, but that is just the activity. I’ve embraced the totality of who I am electronically, and jettisoned some other elements in the process too.

I have struggled a lot with my social media presence. The short version is that I don’t “get it” for certain types of interactions, how to scale up so to speak. I have tried more postings, less posting, more content, less content, different days, different times of the day, different types of content. On Facebook, where I have limited myself to about 100 friends and am not looking to expand that number drastically as it is primarily for friends, I have extremely limited engagement on my posts.

Take my memes for example. I loved the idea of trying to create my own little brand of meme, following in the footsteps of some giants on the ‘net who have created little shareable cards with their logo and some text. I did quotes, I did jokes, I did lunchnotes for kids. The vast majority by far received ZERO response. Most of them not even a single like outside of my wife, and those are often pity likes. 🙂

I stopped them when I was getting no response. I switched my focus a bit to sharing my TV reviews and photos. I watch a lot of serialized TV, review episodes, and post the reviews to Twitter. Since I was actually clicking to NOT share them on FB, I started letting them go through too. I figured a handful of people would start liking the shows they watched. Nope, one or two, occasionally, but not very often. Even though my occasional posts about cancellations, etc., attract some comments, I get nothing on my TV episodes. So I have gone back to Twitter only for those. I’ve even tweaked my setup a bit on those for what makes sense for me, even if it reduces my hashtag pickup occasionally.

I’m almost finding FB to be a negative influence on my life. I’m not talking about people who are obsessed with it, constantly refreshing etc., I mean that while it is a good tool to reduce feelings of isolation, those feelings do not diminish if you’re posting into the wind and there is no echo coming back. I actually have felt more isolated at times with some of my posts, particularly where I have shared something I felt really strongly about, and received nothing but silence. I feel like sometimes I’m craving the likes too much, too much desire for acceptance or positive feedback.

So a week ago, I withdrew from FB. I didn’t delete my account or anything, I just stopped posting. I have logged in each day once just to scan for news announcements from friends, liked a few things, a couple of small comments for the week, but nothing substantial. I read things where I was tagged, that’s about it.

It’s just not my focus, since I get almost nothing out of it. I feel almost the same way about my blog at times. I wrote 50,000 words about previous jobs, and even though I know a bunch of people read the various posts (I have stats on the site), I received 3 comments in total across 17 posts.

I thought about killing my blog entirely and just saying “screw it”. Moving on to something where I get more pay-off for my time investment. Except here’s the thing.

I like writing the posts. Even if people don’t “like” the posts. Even if people don’t comment. Even if people don’t share. There’s a Pearls Before Swine comic strip about writing on the bathroom wall generating more eyeballs viewing it, and it’s true. But I’m going to keep writing. And I guess it comes down to a simple reality.

I’m writing for me. It is a creative outlet for me to say “this is how I see the world”. And when I get to the fiction stage, or bundling up my non-fiction for something into an actual book form, I’m keeping it all on this site.

Because this is who I am. I finally feel like I’ve found my persona for online, one that has been there all along.

I’m PolyWogg.


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50by50: 50 things to do before I’m 50 years old

Posted on by June 24, 2017  

Today is my birthday (yay me!), and I’m 49 years old!

I have a pretty good life, and so I don’t have any major sources of angst about roads not taken, even if I was a believer in regrets, which I’m not. But next year, I will turn 50, and I was wondering what to do to mark the occasion. Not a single event so much as smaller events over the next year. Think of it as a short-term mini-bucket list. My very own “50 things to do before I’m 50” list, which some people create when they’re in their 30s or early 40s, not usually when it is a single year away.

And with great tasks come great doubts, so I asked my friends and family for suggestions.

I put a couple of caveats on the list though…I was leaning towards things that can be done in and around Ottawa. And since I wasn’t looking to break the bank, probably things that individually wouldn’t go above $500. I also am not looking to risk my life doing stuff, since as I said, I kind of like my life. And, you know, living and stuff. I also know too that there are lots of natural caveats in there that are other personal limits. Like for example that my knees wouldn’t let me run a marathon anytime soon, if at all, even if I was in shape to do it. I’m also probably not going to perform brain surgery either. And flying a plane in a simulator made me sick, so that might be out. Yep, I’m a wuss. Mostly I’m looking for fun and interesting things to consider, not death-defying feats of derring-do.

I know, when you clicked on the link for the post, you probably thought this would be my ACTUAL list. It isn’t. Instead, I will tell you things people suggested, and some types of things that I found or thought of on my own, but I’m not going to share the official list in advance. I am however going to use it as a theme for a lot of blogging throughout the year. So you can see the journey as I go, not the planned destination all at once.

Here are the suggestions I got from asking on Facebook:

  • Liz: Edge walk at CN Tower;
  • Stephan: Golf, Keg for dinner (re-enactment of my bachelor party);
  • Lisa: explore the caves, rock climb outside, cupcake bar, eat snails, casino and blackjack, sing in public, go to a nude beach, get something pierced, get a tat, have a 3some, learn to paint, buy a pet, go to a retirement seminar, go to a time share, make your own ice cream, sail a boat, all day trail ride, hot air balloon, have a prof makeup artist make you up like one of your idols and get pics done, redecorate a room just the way YOU like it, eat something spicy, drink a wine from your birth year with your parents, do a couples swap, shave a pattern in your legs or head, (NOTE this is NOT my bucket list, I’m just sharing IDEAS!) eat frog’s legs, travel to Vegas or Nashville, re-enact a scene from your fav movie, but yourself a treat like jewellry/car/art, have your home prof cleaned and appraised then go to open houses, enter a contest, make a new friend, fire a poor friend, have a party with good friends, body paint, donation to a charity, park bench dedication, name a star, fly a drone, helicopter ride, white water rafting, hold a snake, east exotic meat, costume party
  • Martin: Fenway Park, write your congressman, discover new galaxy,
  • Andrea: Make a list, axe throwing, escape room, dye your hair (+hot shave?), boat cruis
  • Leanne: National park, national historic site
  • Aliza: Tourist in Ottawa; weekend getaway to Quebec City, Montreal, Toronto, Vermont; giant lego or Ikea ball room; travel; explore new hobby; health something or other; new job
  • Pete: Bungee jump, sky dive, scuba dive
  • Julie: Fan expo/comicon, $$ to charity, 50 different meals/drinks/dishes, reconnect with 50 people
  • Mike: Indoor go karts
  • Vivian: Canoe trip in Algonquin park
  • Diane: Fishing
  • Cori: 50 gifts to random people (compliment, help, something)
  • Zoe: Yoga classes
  • Linda: Walk for charity, volunteer at soup kitchen, donate blood

It’s a pretty good list, said Gerald McGrist, to misquote Dr. Seuss. There are definitely some items on that list that I wouldn’t have thought of on my own and some will definitely make the final single list.

Some of them could be all encompassing on their own, like Julie’s idea of 50 meals to try…at one a week, that would be significant all on its own, but I’m not looking for 50 things to do 50 times. In those cases, I might combine them with something else like say 10 restaurants, 10 baking recipes, 10 wing sauces, etc. – i.e. combining a few things that might “add” up to 50, but not 50 all by themselves.

On my own list (I had 42 ideas before I started, mostly from internet searches and things), a few of them are quite, umm, boring. Administrative perhaps. Definitely blue activities like updating my will, or getting a physical. Not very “exciting” but things that should be done to make sure (insert solemn voice here) “my affairs are in order” (end solemn voice). Or to creepily quote Jeff Lindsay from his Dexter novels, to get myself “squared away”.

When I combine the two lists, there some items I will do alone, some with Jacob and Andrea, some with friends and family. A nice mix, even balanced perhaps.

And in the end, I’ll cheat a bit…probably more like 50 items with some sub-commitments that might mean almost 150 “things”, some of them quite small but as I said towards a larger commitment. And if I don’t get them done by 50, I might have to carry a few over, I’m going to be a slave to the list.

But at least I have a starting point…I made a list. Let the journey begin.


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Getting older (PH00015)

Posted on by June 24, 2017  

Three old ladies are sitting around talking. One said, “Sometimes I catch myself with a jar of mayonnaise in my hand in front of the refrigerator and can’t remember whether I need to put it away, or start making a sandwich.”

The second lady chimed in, “Yes, sometimes I find myself on the landing of the stairs and can’t remember whether I was on my way up or on my way down.”

The third one responded, “Well, I’m glad I don’t have that problem, knock on wood,” as she rapped her knuckles on the table. Then she told them, “That must be the door, I’ll get it!”


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