Ch-ch-ch-changes!

Oh, hey there pals!

Someone once wrote in their blog that they hate it when someone disappears from their blog for a while then apologizes for it... so I'm not gonna apologize.

I'm gonna disappear and you're gonna like it!

Or you'll just stop reading my blog.

Ok, you called my bluff. Please don't do that. You'll break my achy breaky heart.

So I've been absent a bit. Moving on to more important things - some random shit that I decided to blog-vomit into one post.

The past month has been a little nutso. In short, all of my available brain RAM has been taken up by the planning and co-hosting my BFF's bachelorette party and wedding shower as well as looking for a new job.

Remember back when I contemplated my next career move, whether to stay with my current job but at a different office or to seek out something completely new?

Well, after I wrote that post, I'd pretty much decided that I was going to stay at my current job in the new office and got comfortable with extending my contract (which ends tomorrow, btw) at the other office. I decided I was going to stay in my boring (but well paid) little rut and I got relaxed. A little too relaxed.

A few weeks later I spoke with the company that contracts my services and learned that slacker me waited too long to get on the ball and the position at the new office was no longer available.

DOH! *Face Palm*

They did, however offer me a position at their office in Rock Island, IL... on the Illinois-Iowa border. 200 miles from my home. In the middle of nowhere. Um... no, thank you for the offer, but I'm going to have to politely decline. The decision was pretty much made for me... I told them that I appreciated them providing me with contract work for the past 1.5 years, but right now I am not looking to relocate to the Iowa border.

So, about 3 weeks ago I embarked on the world's laziest job search. I say laziest because I have no desire to do any job searching myself, I just want someone else to do all the work for me. Which is why I've been consorting with a healthcare staffing agency. They pretty much just find me a job and bring it to me, like breakfast in bed - but for jobs. It's just a matter of finding the right assignment from the job menu.

I have no fear of becoming unemployed - the jobs are there. I'm being solicited like 1000000 times a day by healthcare agencies all over with basically the same job I'm doing now, but that's the thing - I want to do something different. I want to work with a different population. In theory I could take a position similar/identical to my current position if I got desperate enough, but right now I'm holding out for something I actually like.

So as of today, I have no job lined up for next week. It's actually strange how non-stressed I've been about this process considering the fact that when my life is at loose ends I usually turn into a giant spasmodic ball of stress. I'm actually more stressed out about the fact that I'm not stressed out. Is that weird?

I hope to start a new assignment the week after next, but while the search for jobs in my current field continues, I've also been considering what other awesome careers would suit me. Because I'm awesome and therefore deserve an awesome career.

Here are some of my ideas in no specific order:

1. Dog photographer - Well duh, I love dogs. I love photography. Put 'em together? Bam. Ultimate job.

2. Dog masseuse - I pet my dog all day long, now I can get paid for it! Yippee!

3. Rickshaw driver - Benefits include getting some really toned legs towing people around the city in a pedaled rickshaw.

4. Bike messenger - I dunno, these guys just seem to piss people off and that seems like fun.

5. Bartender - I tended bar in college. If anything I've become LESS mature since I've graduated, so why not?

6. Professional blogger - Think anyone wants to pay me to take a month long mental hiatus from blogging at random?

7. Snakes - Um. Not sure what. Just something with snakes.

8. Vegan baker - I baked my brother an awesome vegan cake with strawberry filling for his 32nd birthday last week, but when I bake I tend to make a big mess and swear a lot, so I might have to post one of those parental advisory stickers in my storefront window.

9. FBI agent - I've been watching a lot of X-files reruns, can you blame me for wanting to chase down UFOs on the government's dime?

10. Sharpie Artist - I can't guarantee my art will be any good. But at least I'll be high enough from the fumes that I won't be able to care.

So. Those are my shitty ideas. Suggestions welcome. In the mean time I'll continue seeking out a regular person full time job and I'll probably gripe about it the whole damn way, but not here. Like I've said, this is my happy place, so my rants will be kept to a minimum.

Finally, I will get back to gracing (read: forcing on) you with the musings of my rusty brain, which is still recovering from being my life's personal chew toy. What does that mean for you, reader? Just bear with me while I brush the dust off and oil the gears to get back into making semi-intelligent and/or witty posts. I anticipate some awkward/shitty writing at first, but with massive editing and some time I'll get back into the swing of things.

I also want to get back to the original purpose of my blog and resume the Dear Diary saga. If you are relatively new to reading my blog,  I originally started it because I found my old childhood diaries in my parents' basement and thought the musings of 9-14 year old T were hilarious and needed to be shared with the interwebs. If you want to read the past entries, you can locate them by using the "Dear Diary" search term in the search box on the right. One of these days I'll compile an archive, but for now? You do the work, I be lazy.

Mary J. Blige Had It Right... Internet Privacy and Such As

When she sang, "No more drama in my life."

This whole FB defriending thing has completely exploded into a huge deal... over a stupid misunderstanding. I'm not going to go into detail about it, because life I've said I don't like to use my blog as my drama outlet. Plus, I've talked about it enough to my mom, friends, and R that I think I'm all talked out (never thought that would happen).

So anyway, on to happier things like rainbows and unicorns and candy mountains...



Hahaha, it's an old video, but it never fails to amuse me. I have to thank Miss N for introducing this to me so many months ago when she and I were nothing but young she-wolf pups.

So back in the vein of social networking and Facebook, I read this in a friend's status update today:

"FACEBOOKERS fb is at it again...violating your personal information: As of today, there is a new privacy setting called "Instant Personalization" that shares data with non-facebook websites and it is automatically set to "Allow." Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites and uncheck "Allow". Please copy & repost as I did, to spread the word"

I thought this might be one of those lame FB "urban legends" that spreads like wildfire but has no basis to back it up, so I checked it out. I stumbled upon this story Facebook's Instant Personalization Is the Real Privacy Hairball.

Well, so it's legit. I read up about it and from what I read - adding your preferences to sites like Pandora and Yelp doesn't seem like a HUGE invasion of privacy. That being said, I can see how it could snowball and turn into a new way for cyber predators to stalk their prey. What on earth is going on in this world?

Have you heard of the website Spokeo.com? It's a cyber stalker's dream. While it doesn't bring up any information that isn't already available to the public via the net (no, not that Sandra Bullock movie), it conveniently compiles all of the accounts associated with your email address or name/ home address into one database.

You can search for people by name and it will come up with all the results for people with that name and divide them by state. From there you can narrow it down, find the person's address, and often, the person's email address.

If you search for someone by email address (which you can conveniently find by searching for someone's name), it will produce a list of all of the accounts associated with the email address. It will show any public pictures from those accounts, or even cached photos from private profile before the profile was set to private.

How do I know? I searched for myself. I found my Myspace profile, which I set to private over a year ago, yet somehow the picture slideshows from my profile and most of my profile album pictures are available via spokeo's ability to scour the internet for cached files.

This seems highly problematic to me. As many of you may know, employers are now using Google, Facebook, Myspace and other search engines to check up on the goings on of potential employees.

Did you do a beer bong once back in college and someone photographed it? Well it could cost you that job, even if your  profile is private, apparently.

Even better, some (a lot) of the information is erroneous. When I searched for myself by name, the email address associated with it was my mother's. It said I was in my 60's. It provided my parent's address and even an estimate of the value of the home, estimated credit level, and estimated level of wealth.

None of it was correct. All because my mother helped me apply for student loans using her email address when I was 18.

You can "opt-out" and remove listings associated with your name, but it's considerably more difficult to remove entries for a specific email address. So someone searching you by name may not be able to find you in that way, but if they already know your email address they will have no problem.

After discovering this, I took the opportunity to start removing my own listing as well as R's, my parents, my siblings... until I found out that you can only remove up to 5 listings under the same email address. What kind of BS is that?

My only solution to this is to set very strict privacy settings for all of my profiles, allowing only close family and friends to view my pictures. I also untag any photos of me doing anything unbecoming of a lady... or an employee.

So, fellow bloggers and devoted readers, what are your thoughts about your Facebook privacy and internet privacy as a whole? Have things gone too far on their end, or are we just too lax about sharing personal information?

Clearly, this isn't the end. Where do you see the invasion of internet privacy going next?

I'd love to know your take on this. Comment away, por favor please.

Whiners are Weiners

I originally had intentions to use blog as an opportunity to vent about certain aspects of my job that make me want to gouge my eye out with a teaspoon, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt like this isn't the place for that. This is my happy place and I don't want to contaminate it with all that negativity. But hey, if you are a complete masochist and you actually want to read a 30+ page manifesto about everything that is fucked up with the company I work for, shoot me an email and I'll be happy to indulge you :)

So, after I had that profound moment of maturity (doesn't happen too often...) I logged on to the 'book and browsed the activity on my newsfeed. I saw this:

Kayleigh I am not aloud to complain for a month. No thinking complaints, not speaking complaints and no being around people who do. If I complain, or have a complaint tosay I have to also come up with a solution so that it will no longer be one. I challange EVERYONE to do it with me. Lets be different ♥

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