It’s official…I’m heading to the Big Easy

PolyWogg.ca
February 22 2025

In previous posts, I talked about various book and writers’ conferences that interest me. I had it relatively narrowed down to ThrillerFest (in NYC every year) or BoucherCon (in New Orleans this year).

I really wanted to go to Thrillerfest because I love David Morrel and he was going to be there again this year (he goes every year). I looked at flights, had it worked out for some good options, and then went to book the hotel. Except I ran into a glitch. The main parts of Thrillerfest that interest me are Friday and Saturday. So I tried to book in Thursday and out on Sunday — four days, three nights. Except the main hotel is/was sold out. Well, dang it. Okay, it’s Manhattan, there are lots of choices. Except when I went to look for similar bookings, I was getting prices in the $1800 US range. Wait, it was only $300 a night at the conference. I started playing with options to maybe only go for one night (Friday), nd maybe fly down Friday morning, leave Saturday night. Quick down and back. I went back and was fiddling around with the main site and saw that you could see other room options even if sold out.… Read the rest

Working on images for an astronomy guide

PolyWogg.ca
February 22 2025

I wrote on my ThePolyblog.ca site about “needing” to write an astronomy guide, but not really being that thrilled about it. The issue is that there are a few fora that I participate in for astronomy, and I really don’t like the way people answer certain questions. It almost seems irresponsible to me to answer the questions like they do.

For example, if someone said to you, “I want to buy a vehicle”, would you say, “Oh, you should buy (this specific model)”? Probably not. You’d ask them what they want to use it for, how often they’ll be driving it, how many passengers, etc. The car they use to go shopping around town once a week is probably not the vehicle they need for hauling pigs, if they have pigs to haul. And a whole host of other variables, which is partly why there are so many cars on the market. They serve different market niches. But someone out there could probably just say “Get a Honda Civic”. The basis for their recommendation is relatively linear — a good all-around sedan, and if you don’t have any other details, maybe it’s as good a recommendation as any, probably better.

Yet, for astronomy, people frequently respond with:

  1. Just look up with your eyes — the equivalent of telling someone just to walk instead of buying a car;
  2. Buy binoculars — like saying to get a bus pass;
  3. Buy a Dobsonian — the Honda Civic of cars, a good all-around suggestion;
  4. Buy a large EQ mount with an expensive refractor and some good camera gear — the equivalent of telling someone they need off-roading capabilities so they can get all the way to the top of a nearby mountain because that is the biggest / hardest use to handle; or,
  5. Don’t buy (brand x)—this is the same as those who will tell you never to buy a Ford or Dodge or American or Japanese, whatever, because someone they once knew had a bad experience 40 years ago with a bicycle owned by someone who drove one of those vehicles one-time as a rental.
… Read the rest

Working on images for my astronomy guide

PolyWogg.ca
February 22 2025

I wrote on my ThePolyblog.ca site about “needing” to write an astronomy guide, but not really being that thrilled about it. The issue is that there are a few fora that I participate in for astronomy, and I really don’t like the way people answer certain questions. It almost seems irresponsible to me to answer the questions like they do.

For example, if someone said to you, “I want to buy a vehicle”, would you say, “Oh, you should buy (this specific model)”? Probably not. You’d ask them what they want to use it for, how often they’ll be driving it, how many passengers, etc. The car they use to go shopping around town once a week is probably not the vehicle they need for hauling pigs, if they have pigs to haul. And a whole host of other variables, which is partly why there are so many cars on the market. They serve different market niches. But someone out there could probably just say “Get a Honda Civic”. The basis for their recommendation is relatively linear — a good all-around sedan, and if you don’t have any other details, maybe it’s as good a recommendation as any, probably better.

Yet, for astronomy, people frequently respond with:

  1. Just look up with your eyes — the equivalent of telling someone just to walk instead of buying a car;
  2. Buy binoculars — like saying to get a bus pass;
  3. Buy a Dobsonian — the Honda Civic of cars, a good all-around suggestion;
  4. Buy a large EQ mount with an expensive refractor and some good camera gear — the equivalent of telling someone they need off-roading capabilities so they can get all the way to the top of a nearby mountain because that is the biggest / hardest use to handle; or,
  5. Don’t buy (brand x)—this is the same as those who will tell you never to buy a Ford or Dodge or American or Japanese, whatever, because someone they once knew had a bad experience 40 years ago with a bicycle owned by someone who drove one of those vehicles one-time as a rental.
… Read the rest

Planning some more PolyWogg guides about HR

PolyWogg.ca
February 22 2025

For those of you who have read my PolyWogg guide for competitions, you know that I have the general “slogan” of “Be the Duck!”. The idea being of course that if a manager wants to hire a duck, then your best chance to get hired is to tell them you’re a duck. Not someone who speaks Duck, or who knows Ducks, or who has worked with Ducks, but rather that you are indeed a duck. Preferably the best dang duck they’ve ever seen. But definitely you want to say “I’m a duck”.

I developed the cover long before I had the guide written…seeing the cover is “visually motivating”. So what if I do ones beyond the Duck?

For example, are there times when you might want to do something other than say you’re a duck? Sure. Like when you’re managing your career, not just going through a selection process. Then, you want to…dun dun dun…

As you can see, I maintained the same look and feel. Same frog, top swath in green, bottom swath for name and website address. I added an edition, but ignore the year, not sure when I’ll get it written. Volume 2 — Be the Swan — is more about how you strut your stuff to be a great employee and to develop in your career.… Read the rest

My brain won’t let a creative idea go for PolyWogg guides…

PolyWogg.ca
February 19 2025

I think I’ve mentioned more than once (hah!) that I think in frameworks. It’s one of the reasons why I wrote my HR guide. I have a framework that works for me, it makes sense to me. More importantly, it lets me make sense of the HR world AND to be able to communicate that approach to others in a way that often resonates with them and let’s them understand it.

I’m not the smartest guy in the room. I don’t have the deepest insights. I’m not the most experienced with the most profound understanding of a topic. But I often can find a way within a framework approach to figure out how **I** understand it, and then explain that same approach to others in a way that they tell me they find helpful.

It works well for HR, but I am confident enough to admit that I know it is an approach that works in other areas too. I might have trouble EXPLAINING the framework until I’ve actually created it or written it down, but once I have it down in some form of written or graphic form, it’s clear. And then I own it intellectually, spiritually, physically, mentally. It becomes part of me.… Read the rest

So, I want to go to a book conference

PolyWogg.ca
February 18 2025

I’m a book nerd, born and bred. I’m replicating that with my son, who has gone from having a book collection resembling that of a small town library to going through series after series to taking a book whenever we go anywhere. It is one of the things I am most proud of with him, even if most of it is just his personality and I get no credit for it. Having a literacy practitioner for a mom probably doesn’t hurt his support network either.

With that love of books, I’ve always wanted to go to a book conference. I minimally helped to organize a mystery one here in Ottawa the year Jacob was born, and the weekend that it happened? Yeah, that’s the weekend Andrea had a premature partial rupture of the membrane (PPROM). Fun times, I hung out with her at the hospital, scared out of our gourd. No book conference for us! I haven’t tried for another one since! 🙂 The conference or another kid!.

Which leaves me wanting to attend a conference somewhere. I don’t know if I want to attend a book festival or a writing conference, although either will do for my interests. 🙂 I’m scouring the web for some options; let’s see what I find.… Read the rest

Curation: The 26th Annual 101 Best Websites for Writers (Writer’s Digest)

PolyWogg.ca
February 9 2025

Every few years, I try to review the list of what WD thinks are the best websites for writers, as included each year in the Writer’s Yearbook. You don’t need to read the list every year; for 2025, 91 were included last year with only ten new “additions”. They don’t say which 10 they dropped to make room.

The first set, Creativity, has 6 sites listed, all repeats. I’ve looked at the sites before, but I confess I find nothing “inspiring” in most. Many are light on craft and heavy on reading recommendations in multiple ways, but they do interviews with writers that may reveal their creative process. It includes one software package (MasterWriter). However, I confess the site TerribleMinds.com/ramble is worth its weight in gold, assuming you’re willing to do some panning. The blog part that you want to read is primarily from Chuck Wendig, a very candid and opinionated writer when it comes to writing and the publishing business. That might sound bad, but it isn’t. He definitely has clear views, but he’ll tell you why he has those views and what experiences he has had, and he is very transparent. When he started sharing his experiences, some people thought he was nuts.… Read the rest

Understanding a partially-assessed pool…

PolyWogg.ca
January 18 2025

If you read through my PolyWogg HR guide, Be the Duck, you know that the general approach to a federal government competition looks like this:

  1. POSTER: Job goes up with elements for eligibility, experience, knowledge, abilities, personal suitability, language, security and conditions of employment
  2. APPLICATION: People apply and are screened in/out for eligibility and experience;
  3. WRITTEN TEST: Remaining candidates are tested for knowledge and some abilities;
  4. INTERVIEW: Remaining candidates are tested for some abilities and some personal suitability;
  5. REFERENCE CHECK: Remaining candidates are tested for some abiliteis and some personal suitability;
  6. LANGUAGE TEST: Candidates are tested by PSC for French and/or English oral, written and reading;
  7. POOL ESTABLISHED: All candidates who have passed steps 2-6 are put in the pool, which means they are all considered fully assessed and can be offered a job.
  8. SECURITY CLEARANCE and CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT: As part of the letter of office process, the selected candidate will be assessed for security (if necessary) and asked to agree to conditions of employment (most often travel or overtime, as required) before the letter is issued.

That is the whole process start to finish, generally speaking, for a fully-assessed pool. By contrast, a partially-assessed pool would be if they stop / pause their process any time before Step 6 (the last assessment phase before language testing).… Read the rest

Breaking a long astronomy hiatus

PolyWogg.ca
August 22 2024

As much as I still want to call myself an amateur astronomer, it requires you to DO something astronomy-related occasionally. Like looking through my scope, perhaps.

Just as the pandemic started, we were about to host a RASC Ottawa telescope workshop where people could come and see the different scopes, how they were set up, etc. When we cancelled, many people accused us of hysteria and that the virus wasn’t a threat. I wish I had saved those emails. 🙂

Since then? Almost nada. While lots of people around the world turned to sourdough bread, many also turned to astronomy. Purchase orders went out, production waiting lines got longer and longer, and prices went up, but many tried it out. Not me. Oh, I bought two new telescopes at the Black Friday event that year, and they were good deals. I bought a refractor and a reflector, with mostly the intent to try them out, write some “step-by-step” guides on how to use them, and perhaps either donate to the cottage or sell off. I planned some writing, looked at some stuff online.

But since March 2020, the only active thing I have done is to go to one of the first Star Parties in Carp, but even then, only to wander around to talk to people.… Read the rest

Friday Question (FQ): How do you answer a question marking more than one element?

PolyWogg.ca
February 5 2023

I received a really interesting question from a commenter who wanted to know how to handle a specific type of element in an interview process. Let’s say the interview is evaluating you on four elements A, B, C and D, with perhaps D being communications. In a traditional interview process, and the default of most managers, they’ll ask you three questions:

  1. About Element A
  2. About Element B
  3. About Element C

And then they’ll grade D for communications on how you did across all three questions. Sometimes they’ll give you a question and evaluate your Comms only on that question, but most do a global score for Comms.

But today’s question is about what to do if the interview combines A & B together into one question for the interview.

A small digression on Elements

Let me first say that a combination of elements can happen at any stage of a process or even ahead in a poster.

For example, in a traditional poster, “Ability to work with others” is a frequent and popular “Ability element” (perhaps A above). Equally, “Interpersonal relations” might be a “Personal Suitability” element (perhaps C above). And just for fun, let’s say that B was another Personal Suitability element listed as “Initiative”.… Read the rest

Friday Question (FQ): Why would my boss not approve an assignment?

PolyWogg.ca
January 20 2023

I mentioned in a previous post that I was going to do some Friday Questions, and there is a really persistent question that people in non-managerial positions have trouble wrapping their heads around. In the shortest form, someone wants to go on an assignment, and their boss said no. They think it’s mean of their boss, and they want to know why the person is such a jerk. Even some inexperienced managers frequently want to say, “Well, of course, you should say yes. Holding people back is just short-sighted”.

If that is your frame, it DOES appear to be mean or short-sighted. So let’s look at why.

Understanding assignments

In short, within the public service, you occupy a “box”. It is a specific box, with a specific level and classification, let’s say PM-02. There’s an actual position number for that box, you get a letter of offer that appoints you to that box, and it comes with a job description of what you will be doing (albeit often a very generic one). That box is what you have been hired to do, and let’s make it simple and assume you’re in an indeterminate/permanent position (not casual or term, etc.).

An assignment would say that you, as the Employee who works for Manager A, are authorized to go and work for Manager B for a set duration of time.… Read the rest

Curated: We Need To Talk About Professional Jealousy – Electric Literature

PolyWogg.ca
January 20 2023

I occasionally like to share online articles that I like, and you’ll see sporadic posts entitled “Articles I Like” throughout the blog. But honestly, Curated is probably a more accurate title. I recently found an article by Benjamin Schaefer on the website Electric Literature, although I was led there by ThePassiveVoice website. The article is entitled “We need to talk about professional jealousy,” but if you read through it, you’ll see that the term isn’t quite right.

We Need To Talk About Professional Jealousy

He is writing from the perspective of a writer who is not as successful as some other writer friends. And when he saw their successes, he tried to hide from what he was feeling, telling himself that it was jealousy. But as he notes, it is not really jealousy. If you accept that jealousy is usually experienced from the perspective that someone else has something, it is finite, and therefore you can’t have it, or even more pointedly that it is something that can be taken from you by another, seeing someone else’s success is more about envy than true jealousy.

And I find that an incredible nuance. I have always felt that “jealousy” was never the right term in careers, writing or otherwise, even when it was a position you competed for and didn’t get.… Read the rest

Friday Question (FQ): Can a PM-06 report to an EC-07?

PolyWogg.ca
January 6 2023

Someone on Reddit asked this question this past week, and it is a great question because it brings in a combination of culture, classification, and delegation authorities. I’ve decided to use it for my first Friday Question for HR issues in the federal government.

The question is often answered with an easy response — no — but not quite for the reasons most people assume. And when you drill down, the answer is actually wrong. The question actually has three separate components.

A. Can a PM report to an EC?

If you ask the question of classification experts, you will likely net the official answer that PMs should report to PMs. Note that the answer would NOT be that they can’t, but that they SHOULDN’T.

The premise, backed up by union grievances and labour relations, is that managers should have expertise in the type of work that their employees are doing (note that it doesn’t have to be that specific job, just that they understand the nature of the work) in order to both guide the employee effectively as well as evaluate their performance.

However, suppose you have a PM job that combines analysis (30%), program management (50%) and coordination (20%).… Read the rest

An unusual type of interview

PolyWogg.ca
December 29 2022

When people ask me about HR interviews for government, my answer is pretty standard. As per the guide, all interview questions are tied to the statement of merit criteria. And, in almost all cases, that means they are focusing on Experiences, Knowledge, Abilities, or Personal Suitability. Seems relatively straightforward, right?

Now, if you add in the fact that your cover letter / initial screening deals with experience, and a written exam normally knocks off most knowledge if there was a knowledge component identified at all, then the interview becomes more about abilities or personal suitability. In those instances, the popular but dangerous approach is to use the STAR method to structure your answer — Situation, Task, Action, Results. I consider it dangerous because if the question was “What would you do in situation X?” i.e., a hypothetical situation, then talking too much about your past experience doesn’t actually help you answer the question. They don’t care what the situation was, or the tasks, and only the actions or results that are applicable to the question they ask. However, while that is true for hypothetical situations, it is EQUALLY true for “tell us of a time when…” that LOOKS like an experience question but isn’t.… Read the rest

#NaNoWriMo2022: Days 11-19: A wasteland revisited

PolyWogg.ca
November 19 2022

The last week has been a wasteland of productivity with many other things intervening. School, appointments, ambulance rides. Yeah, not a great week.

Jacob checked in tonight on his book, Draconic Earth, finishing a chapter and starting a new one. Some of it is foreshadowing major pieces for his eventual conclusion. About 400 words in total.

Andrea is still working on her “cancer journey” story, suitable for future blogging installments but for now, she is writing without editing as she goes. About 2700 words in total.

I did a few blogs in the last week, but not much new writing. I also received some really great feedback from a beta reader on my updated HR guide, Chapter 2 (Understanding yourself), and it took a while to get everything incorporated, updated and saved. It’s mostly camera ready, I think at this point. 3475 “final” words added to the book, bringing the edited total to 7962. That’s a little under 10%, I think. But I’m happy with the progress considering everything else going on in the last week.

Onward!

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Holy crap, I missed two milestones!

PolyWogg.ca
November 11 2022

I’ve been doing a fair amount of blogging in the last two years here and there, I’ve moved some stuff around, added some content that was pending. And somewhere in all of that, one of my “tools” stopped functioning. I had a word count plugin that wasn’t very good, and it even reached the stage where WordPress wondered if it was abandoned before it was updated recently.

So, I haven’t been keeping track of my word count overall between my two sites. I knew I was up there. I had hit 1.5M words quite some time ago, and I figured I was probably over 2M now easily. I had to be, right?

Today I did a quick dive to find a simple word count stats plugin to replace the old one, which is not as easy as it sounds. There are lots of REALLY complicated ones out there, but I don’t want all that extra bloat. I just want the basic stats.

Basic stats

For the number of posts, I have 1591 here at ThePolyBlog, although 26 are still in draft. PolyWogg has another 147 with 3 in draft, although that will likely increase as I revamp that site a bit more and add some regular blogging posts about HR or astronomy.… Read the rest

#NaNoWriMo2022: Days 07-10: From blog to dragons to blog

PolyWogg.ca
November 11 2022

We’ve all had other stuff going on the last few days, so our word count was a bit lower in there. Tonight we re-engaged, with different pieces:

a. Andrea is working on a blog about her cancer experience over the last while, which will eventually show up on my blog here somewhere, probably a series of shorter posts in the end. But she added 3700 words tonight.

b. Jacob struggled a bit, which isn’t surprising, but he managed 170 words. He’s been tired the last few nights and had some challenges with his computer earlier this week. Funny story in there actually…we went to the local computer shop, thinking we might go for a full new gaming rig, but it would have been a desktop instead of a laptop to keep the cost down. So he would have lost his mobility factor when he goes to Peterborough or the cottage. Just to be “sure” about options, I took his laptop with us in case there were other config things we could do. Most of the time, they’re backed up in service, you have to leave equipment and they’ll call you, nothing unusual about that though. Instead, they were perfectly happy to open it up on the spot, not forcing me to wait in the bench queue, to see what internal upgrades were possible on the existing chassis.… Read the rest

#NaNoWriMo2022: Days 05/06: More speech, more dragons, and more HR

PolyWogg.ca
November 6 2022

Over the last two days, Andrea has kept making progress on her TM speech, although it is more in finalizing and trimming mode at this point, I think.

Jacob keeps typing away, he’s up to almost 7000 words overall on his novel, chalking up another 300 words today.

And I finally finished my HR guidance for Health Canada employees from the Young Professionals Network presentation I did. And answering all the various questions and sub-questions? Well, 18,750 words later, I’m done. That was way more work than I expected when I started. But I know that my answers are way more helpful than simply say “yes, do this” or “no, do that”. As always, what I wrote is about trying to build capacity to manage their own issues.

My HR Guide: Detailed answers to a Q&A session at Health Canada

On top of my earlier work, that puts me in 25K territory for week 1 so far. Not including regular blog entries.

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My HR Guide: Detailed answers to a Q&A session at Health Canada

PolyWogg.ca
November 6 2022

This past week, I had the opportunity to speak to the Young Professionals Network at Health Canada about HR processes and what happens after a pool is established. Earlier sessions had already covered how to get into the public service and how to prepare and participate in various processes. There were a LOT of questions provided before the session and even more posted in the chat during the event, so I offered to try and do a blog response for some of the pieces I didn’t get to during the event or where I didn’t have the luxury to go into more detail. I have taken the liberty of trying to group them into some semblance of process order rather than just going numerically. Buckle up, and get comfortable…it’s a long and bumpy ride!

What are the ways to get into public service?

Some of this had already been covered in previous presentations, so I didn’t want to spend too much time on it in the session. My main focus was that all government staffing is governed by the merit principle, and in order to do any staffing of any type, the focus is on documenting that each of the merit criterion has been demonstrated by the candidate, hence why they’re being chosen.… Read the rest

#NaNoWriMo2022: Day 04: TM speeches, Draconic Earth, and blogs

PolyWogg.ca
November 4 2022

Tonight, Andrea added another 450 words to her ToastMasters speech.

Jacob hit a groove and was closer to 500 words (double his normal output) on his book — which he has agreed I can say has a work-in-progress title of “Draconic Earth” (which I love by the way).

I continued to work on the blog post of the Q&A at Health Canada, polishing the first 4K words that I had already written, and adding another 2500 or so. I haven’t gone back to my main HR guide as I’m trying to get the blog done and I’m hoping my beta reviewer will give me feedback on the first big chapter too (of the HR guide). But once I’m done the Q&A — I’m about 80% done for the big questions, mostly flourishes left — I’ll go back to the Guide.

In the meantime? Onward!

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