If You See This On Your Blogroll...

You need to update it to my WordPress location :)

http://diggingoutandup.wordpress.com

The Final Post

I almost feel a little sad about leaving blogger, but I think in the long run it's a good way to go.

I've published my first real post over at WordPress, it would be great if you could all update your blogrolls/readers and come check it out :)

http://diggingoutandup.wordpress.com/

Thanks everyone for reading here, I look forward to talking with you all over at the new blog!

Update

Okay, so I am slowly figuring out how Wordpress works. I’m glad, because I was SOOOO confused when I opened the account! I actually opened it back in January, but after a frustrating evening trying to sort things out with it, I resigned myself to being technologically inept and went back to just writing blogger posts. As of today I have a test post up, and a header that I’ll be happy with after just a little tweaking :)

I’ll have to figure out if there is a way of moving my archive over to my new blog, I don’t want to be orphaning my posts over here.

Speaking of posts, I finally got off my butt last night and submitted a post for Moneyville’s Next Blogger contest! Fingers crossed I’ll make it into the top four, but I know I’m up against some pretty stiff competition. The whole pf community is full of very talented and entertaining writers. If my post doesn’t make it, I’ll throw it up on my blog for everyone to read anyway.

The Boy gave me some gas money for my car yesterday. I’ll admit, it was kind of uncomfortable with accepting the money. I understand where he was coming from, we live on opposite ends of the city and I’ve been the one driving back and forth. I drive a Smart Car and he drives a big F-150; with the price of fuel being as high as it is it’s much MUCH cheaper for me to drive there than it is for him to come pick me up. It’s probably a pride thing for me, but I don’t want to take money from people when I’m not working. It feels too much like a hand out. It’s especially awkward, because his dad asks me whether or not I’ve found a job yet every time I see him. I REALLY don’t want to be taking money right now. *sigh* On the plus side, when I filled up my car I “won” $5 worth of fuel for my next fill up. Ka-ching.

I went in for round two of of the interview process yesterday. It was kind of like being on Canadian/American Idol, I sat on one side of the table, and the 3 judges sat on the other side. 

Dun dun duuuuuuuhhhhh...

As much as I expected it to be nerve wracking, it actually wasn’t that bad. It was the recruiter I had talked to on Tuesday, the hiring manager who looks after the reporting that goes out, and the manager that looks after the technical content of the reports. Towards the end of the interview the hiring manager explained that usually if they like a candidate, they’ll invite them back for a 3rd interview to tour the facilities, and leave the candidate alone with some Engineers so that they can ask questions without the pressure of the manager standing right there. They said they’d let me know by noon today.

Well, I wasn’t even out of the building yet yesterday before one of the managers waved me back to his office to pick a date and time for the 3rd interview! I go in Monday morning for round three!

I’m so happy :D

Anyway, that’s what is new in my corner of the world. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Moving Day?

I was supposed to be meeting a friend for coffee 45 minutes ago, but she hasn't shown up yet, and she's not answering her phone.

Oh well.

I am sitting in what is quite possible the most cliched blog writing location out there, Starbucks, fighting with Blogger again. I'm pretty much ready to give it the old heave ho. I'm not going to stop writing, I'm just going to give blogger the boot.

It's going to take me a bit to figure the site out, but I'll be moving over to Wordpress shortly. When the move is complete, you'll be able to find me here.

Please bear with me, I'll try to get back to posting ASAP :)

Google Diaries

So, when was the last time you googled yourself?

I'll raise my hand, I was doing it yesterday.

I find the stats tab on my blog (it's not public) to be absolutely fascinating. I love checking out where in the world the people who are reading this are. The last little while it's been interesting watching the key words people are finding my blog with as well. They range from the obvious:

• digging out and up
• digging up and out
• up and out blog cassie

To the interesting:

• clothing budget woman 60,000 a year
• what to do if my wallet is stolen in canada
• 18007147257 busy

To the downright strange:

• i don't wash my face anymore   -   seriously? That's how you found me?
• the year before along   -   I don't know what this means?
• the end of the   -   what? debt? world? ice cream cone?

I was quite surprised when my name started showing up in people's searches, but I thought it was kind of cool. Then yesterday I noticed that someone had google searched my full name.

wtf?

I only write with my first name, and I've been working on going through and taking my last name down off my recreational internet stuff seeing as more people are reading it. So, seeing my full name typed into a search engine was a little unnerving. Anyone who knows my full name should know if they want to know something about me they can just ask. Who else would be doing it? Then it hit me. 

Job recruiters.

You know that blood running cold feeling you get when you realize you may have forgotten something important? I definitely got that.

So I searched myself.

Up popped twitter, with a link to my blog, followed by LinkedIn, a newspaper article interview, a woman in the states, another blogging site, another woman in the states, a page with my parent's address on it from when I lived abroad, and so on and so forth. Surprisingly enough, no Facebook.

It was a quick, if incomplete, snapshot of me. There is nothing I'm ashamed about by any means. The only thing I can see being construed as negative is my financial position, but frankly I don't think money should be a taboo subject. If anything I think getting it out in the open helps take some of the stress out, and facilitates communication with others on how to fix the problem.

So, I feel okay for now. I should have gone through and given myself the search engine thumbs up before I started applying to places, but hind sight is 20/20.

To Mr./Mrs./Ms./Miss Recruiter: HIRE ME!!! :D

To everyone else, have you googled yourself lately?