One of the ways I go about living life is put a lot of things into motion and see what happens. It’s based on a core belief I have that God shows us where He wants us by showing us the path as we move down it.

We knew our time in Orlando was probably limited so we put our house on the market trusting that if it sold, it’d be how we knew it was time to leave. The house sold within 2 months in a horrible home-selling market. So we moved.

For the last 18 months or so I’ve looked for new full-time work. In the meantime I decided to go for part-time jobs and open our small business Orangejack LLC.  If Orangejack takes off, that will be my full-time job. My first part-time job was in Orlando as a photographer at the Walt Disney World. Now that we’re in Virginia, I have a new part-time job in another industry I enjoy.

For the past couple weeks I’ve been going through Barista training at a local Starbucks.  Although it’s sometimes intimidating (there’s over 700 crazy combinations of drinks!), I work with a great crew and they are training me well.  It’s pretty fun too.  I’ve even learned a few off-the-menu drink names like the Red-eye (coffee with a shot of espresso), Black-eye (coffee with 2 shots of espresso), and a nifty afternoon sweet drink called the Black-and-white Americano (equal pumps of mocha and white chocolate in an Americano).

When I get there early in the mornings, I get the Red-eye to get me going and sometimes I have the Black-and-white Americano in the afternoon for a sweet pick-me-up.

I can freely admit that I have lost some sleep over my new job — but it wasn’t because I was worried!

This doesn’t mean that my networking, job hunt, or small business are on hold. It just means we have a bit more stability right now and I’m going to be more awake for everything else!

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Got some shopping to do? Check the Orangejack Mall for deals and resources.

So long, Bellingham. You’ve been good to us. We’ll miss you.

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Reminder: if you’re going to shop from Amazon, please consider shopping on Amazon through this link. Thanks.

We’re relocating to Virginia over the next 2 weeks

7-29: Movers load the truck
7-30: House closing
7-31: My final Orlando presentation
8-1: Drive to SC
8-4: My birthday
8-5: Drive to VA
8-8: Movers unload truck

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Relationships are too valuable to take for granted. Appreciate someone today.

YouTube – Fireworks Song (High Quality Version)

If you think this video is a joke, well, it is mostly. But I’ve got similar stories (not all from July 4th – many come from New Years also)…

• We rarely used a bottle for bottle rockets. My favorite was a 5-foot piece of round bamboo I used like a bazooka.
• We would break the stick of a bottle rocket into a right angle and place it on the street. No one knew where it’d end up chasing you.
• We would lauch bottle rockets from our hand by lighting them, playing chicken with the fuse, then tossing the rocket into the air timing it right so when it launched it would go up. The only things that would go wrong were if it turned and lanched straight back at you or if you waited too long (or had a short fuse) and it blew in your hand instead.
• I remember climbing a tree to launch a few bottle rockets by hand from the top of the tree. It was all about how high we could get them.
• I had a friend light a bottle rocket and stick it in the hood of another friend’s hooded sweatshirt. Freaked the guy out, rung his ears, and burned a hole in his hood.
• My friend who lived behind us and I would have bottle rocket wars firing them into each other’s yards to see if we could hit each other. Instead we’d usually catch the innocent neighbor’s yards on fire. But we’d stomp them out quickly.

I’m sure I have more stories but just can’t think of them now.

Stay safe, peoples!  And be careful in the rural South. I’ll tell you what!

Well the day has finally come. Actually it came last week, but nonetheless, our house is officially on the market.

It’s been a roller-coaster ride for quite some time but it’s been slowly moving downhill for most of it. We’re now at that point where we have to put this in motion and see where we end up.

We still continue to serve clients through Orangejack LLC and we both continue to look for full-time work (Rob’s resume, Patricia’s resume) in Orlando, Greenville, SC, and Northern Virginia. We have family in SC and VA so we can move in with them to start right away if needed. And of course there’s always a chance of finding a full-time job here and then we can take the house off the market. And I can take my business with me anywhere since it’s Internet-based. If the house sells quickly, we’ll move to the DC area right away. It’s like a race to see what huge thing happens first.

But we need stability. We can’t continue at our current pace.

The tough part about selling a house in this economy is that our house is competing against those that went through foreclosure and short sales. It’s not fair to us who have kept up the house and never missed a payment, but our house is worth less because other houses are being sold for 10’s of thousands of dollars less. They are our competition.

So if you know anyone looking to move to the Orlando area, pass this along to them. It’s a great house in a great location.

You can find more information about the listing of the house at the Orangejack Mall.

Front of the House

Backyard / Conservation Area

Many Southern states — particularly South Carolina and Florida — have been ravaged by layoffs and home foreclosures

via To find a job, ignore doom-and-gloom news, experts say – CNN.com.

…within the four-county Orlando MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area), the unemployment rate is 7.7 percent, the highest the region has experienced in 16 years when it was 8.1 percent in August of 1992. “Just one year ago, the unemployment rate was only 4.3 percent. There are 39,529 more people unemployed in December 2008 than one year ago in Central Florida,” says Gary Earl, president and CEO of Workforce Central Florida. 

via State of the Workforce: What Are the Numbers in Central Florida? 

UPDATE: Oops, just got worse: Jobless rate soars to 8.1% in U.S., 8.6% in Florida

Get your twitter mosaic here.

Dude, I can’t wait for the new Will Ferrell movie Land of the Lost! I’m pumped to see how they do the Sleestacks. Love the Sleestacks!

This is the mini-trailer shown during the Super Bowl.

YouTube – Land of the Lost Trailer (Super Bowl)

I also made a Sleestack and Land of the Lost fan page. Would love for you to stop by and say hello.

The need for social media leaders has, unsurprisingly, been on the rise.

  

Chart: “social media” Job Trends, “social media” jobs

In my opinion, social media is recession-proof but you can see that leadership roles in this field have taken a hit in the bad economy.

Although I’m still freelance Internet consulting through Orangejack LLC, I’m also looking for full-time work as an Internet Strategist or Social Media leader. That’s why I keep my resume and LinkedIn profile updated accordingly.

I’m open to relocation if the right position comes along, particularly in the regions around these airports: MCO, ATL, GSP, CLT, RDU, and IAD. Those are the top of my list because our family lives near these areas (GSP & DC). However, other locations will be considered!

Over the holidays I cleaned up my resume and my LinkedIn profile (including several new recommendations!) then ran my resume though wordle.net.  The site takes a webpage or blocks of text then makes it into a word cloud where words mentioned often get larger.  The idea is to highlight what are the common words and themes of that document.  Here’s mine.

So here’s the Sesame Street question of the day: Can you pick out where the majority of my experience has been?

If you guessed “Internet”, “Marketing”, “Web”, “Strategy”, “Social”, “Media”, and “International”, you’d be right.

You should run your resume/blog/twitter/document/presentation/book of the Bible/US Constitution/something through wordle.net and see what you get.  It’s fun!

Dear Mom and Dad,

Thank you for my name.  I don’t tell you often but I do appreciate it.  Mostly because the name you gave me will not keep me from eating cake.

Heath & Deborah Campbell named their kids Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell.  And would you believe that little Adolf almost couldn’t get a birthday cake with his name on it?

I can’t imagine not eating cake.

Thanks for the name and the everlasting opportunity to have a cake with my name on it.

Rob Williams

A while back I wrote a post on the top 5 online tools to find a job and I mentioned using indeed.com becasue they do a rockin’ job at job searches and alert subscriptions.  Soon after writing that I got in my email inbox an exchange with someone from indeed.com thanking me for writing and recommending them.  So guess what I got in the snail mail box later?

Now I just need an iron. Rock on, indeed.
 

Feel free to use this sticker on your website or wherever!

My first reaction:

It took us 75 minutes from parking to voting.  I wasn’t impressed with the lack of privacy and inefficiency.  It was a small room with a lot of people wanting to vote.

I can prove I voted:

I can proove I voted on 12seconds.tv

Also, our ballet was long!  We not only voted for President and US Rep, but also State Attorney, State Senator, State Rep, Clerk of Courts, Sheriff, Property Appraiser, Tax Collector, Supervisor of Elections, 7 Judges, 3 Soil & Water Conservation Supervisors, 6 State Constitutional amendments, 3 County Charter Amendments, and a Special Referendum.  Whew!

It felt like a final exam that I’ve been studying for months.  But it was worth it.

Go Vote!

It’s fun to see when others think my sweet candy corn blog is fun!

Neatorama » Blog Archive » Sweet Candy Corn

I love to see ever narrower and narrower examples of niche blogging. Here is a timely one: Sweet Candy Corn, a blog about nothing but the Halloween candy everyone either loves or hates. Remember, National Candy Corn Day is October 30th!

I’ve been helping get the word out about the unconference BlogOrlando on Saturday.  There are events around it so I’m going to be very busy the rest of the week.  But it should be fun!

We’re planning to have 300 people there – mostly from the Orlando area but some are coming from all over the country.  I’m really looking forward to reconnecting and starting new connections with a lot of new like-minded folks.

If you’re going, leave a comment or connect with me so we can meetup!

Although I’m trying to blog more often, the stats don’t lie.  It’s just easier for me to post short updates quickly or share other things I find interesting.

This chart shows how I’ve been contributing online in the last 30 days:

I’m also trying out a couple of sites to pull all of this together.  One is soup.io.  Check out the Orangejack Lifestream on soup.io because it’s easy to keep up with everything I’m posting or sharing.

On Wednesday I went to fulfill my jury summons.  It was my second time doing this.  Last time a few years ago I got to leave at lunch because they didn’t need us.

Yesterday they told us if we were’t called by 2:30 we’d go home.  They called my number at 2:00.  By 5:00 I had been sworn in to be on a jury for a criminal case.

So Friday I will do my civic duty and be on a jury for the first time.  I’m kinda looking forward to it.  The judge said it won’t be complicated nor long.  So maybe it’ll be kinda cool.

The funny thing is the judge told us it isn’t like CSI or Law and Order.  I don’t watch those but I understood what he meant.  I was a little bummed because all I could think about was this…

YouTube – My Cousin Vinny Trailer

Laptop monitor is Busted on 12seconds.tv

Laptop monitor is Busted | 12seconds.tv (alpha)

My resume run through wordle as a ‘word cloud’
(click on image for larger view)