Oops

Published at 09:32 on 14 September 2011

I recently applied to a job from an employer that used Careerbuilder to manage their job applications. As part of the application process, it requested my résumé and demanded that I either enter my current Careerbuilder username and password or register for an account.

So I did the former, without thinking of the possible consequences. And sure enough, Careerbuilder saved the copy of the résumé I just uploaded, which of course didn’t have the explicit message telling insurance companies to go away at its start. Surprise, surprise: the spam from insurance companies is baaaaaack.

Of course, sleaze outfit Farmers Insurance has been uninterruptedly spamming me several times per week for over a year and counting now. They’ve long since earned a spot in my spam filter, and I recommend that anyone who hates spam should avoid doing business with them like the plague.

Update: If you Google “farmers insurance spam,” it is fairly easy to see that I am not alone, and that this firm’s sleaze extends far beyond being an unrepentant spammer.

Some Notes on the Transition

Published at 17:15 on 13 September 2011

  • I decided to pay money to host the blog myself, because that option allowed me to avoid Google/Blogger’s creepy terms of use while also avoiding WordPress’ broken CMS (which the hosting site WordPress.COM forces you to use) for hosting the old entries.
  • Regarding those old entries, I eventually gave up on trying to import them into the new blog software. It’s too much of a headache to do with WordPress (which perverts imported HTML in strange and unpredictable ways).
  • Regarding the blog software, I settled on WordPress, because it’s a popular platform, and of the popular platforms it can run on the least expensive hosting services.
  • My main motivation for the transition was to join the modern world and have my blog available for syndication with RSS.

And We’re Up at Last

Published at 16:31 on 13 September 2011

It was a process fraught with difficulties, both in converting the old blog to a new format (something I essentially gave up on), and in getting this blog hosted (there were a number of hiccups in the process, you should have been seeing this message on Saturday). And there’s still a fair amount of configuring to do.

Ah, well. The main part of the deed is done at last.