twentythree :.

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

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.

When you shop online, where do you go? Most shop at Amazon and that’s not a shock to me. I go there most as well.  Some of the Top 25 Retail Sites on the list are places I wouldn’t have thought about shopping online. You?

By the way, don’t forget to check the Orangejack Mall for online shopping deals, resources, and other cool stuffs.

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Don’t know what to buy someone? Try the Amazon Gift Card. Perfect.

I have these quotes listed as ‘favorites’ on Facebook. I was re-reading them and just thought I’d push them over here too.

“We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr

“Before God we are equally wise – equally foolish” ~ Albert Einstein

“Me fail English? Thats unpossible!” ~ Ralph Wiggums

“The essential thing is not to have won but to have fought well” ~ Lady Diana

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind” ~ Albert Einstein

Some of these quotes I relate to very well, some I just want to remember, others are just unpossible.

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The Thesis Theme is used here.

When we were getting estimates from movers to take us out of the Central Florida area, one made the comment that for the first time in a very long time they consider Florida an “outbound” state. In other words, more people are leaving than moving in.

And the moving industry is very slow even though there are a lot of people moving out. I suspect it’s because a large portion of the people leaving have foreclosed or short-sold their homes and can’t afford movers.

Anyway, today my friend Jennifer pointed me to these numbers from the Orlando Sentinel:

Central Florida lost 9,700 residents in the past year, reversing a decades-long trend of population growth for the Orlando area, according to estimates released Wednesday.

“This is a 180-degree turn for the Orlando area,” said William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution in Washington. “It’s jaw-dropping, in a way.”

The region’s population drop accounted for about 17 percent of the state’s total loss of 58,294 between April 1, 2008, and April 1, 2009, according to the estimates by the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research. It’s largely the result of people leaving the area in search of jobs. Orlando ranks near the top of the state in unemployment and was listed as one of the worst cities in the country to be looking for work by Indeed.com, a site that aggregates job listings on the Internet.

Speaking of job listings, cities, and Indeed.com, did you know that Washington, DC is supposedly the best place to be?

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Host your website or blog for under $7/mth on BlueHost. I am.

I’ve had plenty of conversations with people who tried the show LOST once or twice but gave up because they were confused.

I understand. LOST is the best show I’ve ever seen because of it’s story-telling and complexities. To appreciate the show, you’ve really gotta start at the beginning and keep going (don’t quit in season 3 when it slows down a bit).

Last season was incredible and in 2010 the last season will start. Never have I seen a show that kept me enthralled with the story lines, character development, and story-telling devices. All of them change and it’s incredible.

Well, now you don’t have to be lost about LOST. You can now watch almost every episode of LOST for free on Hulu. I don’t know how long they’ll keep them online free, but now is the perfect time to start the show over from the start – the way it was written.

Thanks Hulu!

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Thanks for subscribing to my personal blog. Have you checked my business blog too?

I’m going to find this spot one day and get my own pic of it.

From: D.C.’s Most Awesome Parking Spot – City Desk – Washington City Paper.

I’ve been following over 700 people on Twitter and even though I’ve set up ways to filter and sort them, it’s just too many for me. So I’ve begun a purge.

First round was easy – If I don’t recognize you and can’t remember why I follow you AND you don’t have your name and location filled out on your bio, you’re unfollowed. Out! I found about 200 like that.

The way I see it is if I can’t remember you, and you can’t tell me who you are, why am I following you? And yes, I’m doing this organically, not with the help of bots or services.

I’m deciding on my next round of criteria. What would you suggest?

Intrigued by the whirring sounds emanating from the camera, a curious ground squirrel popped into the shot just as the timer expired and the photo was taken.

YouTube – Try to do

YouTube – The quick brown fox…

Okay, so a fox isn’t really a squirrel, but I thought the video of the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog somehow belonged.

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.

This is the funniest running gag I’ve ever seen. It comes from the show Arrested Development. In season one, Gob did a ‘chicken dance’ that got them arrested in Mexico. His impression of a chicken is not even close. Throughout the seasons, each family member also had their own ‘chicken dance’ and again, none were even close to what a real chicken acts like.

This clip is the family doing their own version of a chicken as their way of calling Michael a chicken.

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Don’t know what to buy someone? Try the Amazon Gift Card. Perfect.

I’ve been using Craigslist for several months in different ways – most of the time monitoring for job openings. But this week I’ve been using it to sell a bunch of stuff and it’s been interesting.  Here’s a few things I’ve learned so far…

First off, there are a lot of people out there trying to game/spam people. I saw the same ad with different headlines over and over.

And have you seen the list of things you are prohibited to sell on Craigslist? Makes me wonder if that list was mostly proactive or reactive. I hope it was a creative mind to be proactive, but I fear it wasn’t.

One of the things I couldn’t figure out is how many ads I can post in a day.  Seems the limit is around 8. I found out because I have several items to sell and I know the best way to do it is to put them one-by-one in the appropriate categories. However, I couldn’t get everything up there. Craigslist started saying the TV I was posting was too similar to the lamp I just posted. I get why the limits are there, but it stinks when I’m trying to be legit about it.

So I tried to post a list of everything in the Garage Sale/Moving Sale section. That got no traction at all.  I hoped people use search to find stuff — and maybe they do but they weren’t finding the list of items.  I know because hours later with no replies, I posted a couple of items one-by-one again and got a flurry of email inquiries right away.

So it certainly seems the best way to manage multi-postings is to spread it out over time and go one-by-one, categorizing them correctly instead of doing a list (a Craig’s List as it were? ironic)

I’m also using Flickr to keep a running photo gallery of what is available and that seems to work decently well to point people to. Any time we make a sale, I delete the photo from Flickr and ad from Craigslist.

Overall it’s pretty convinient. Most people come and pick up the stuff. Several just write to see if it’s still available and I never hear back. Not sure what that’s all about, but maybe you’re one who does this. Would love to know what the motivation is.

We’ve sold some of our stuff so that’s cool. It’s a lot less work than a yard sale, but this seems to be better for items worth something, not just a dime.

What are some of your lessons learned from using Craigslist either as a buyer or seller?

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The Thesis Theme is used here.

I took my personal blog offline last week to take care of some hosting and design changes. It’s back up and better than ever! Stop by and check it out. It’s built on the great Thesis Theme with minimal customizations.

One feature you may not notice for a while is that the photo on the top of the sidebar is one of a dozen of some of my favorite pictures I’ve taken. Refresh the page or visit a new one and you should get a new pic.

Enjoy!

Host your website or blog for under $7/mth on

I’m a fan and user of BlueHost as a website host and have set up several people up on them. Great support. Great product. I’m also an affiliate.

Today I found out (while setting up a friend with a website) they dropped their 3-year host plan, but right now the 12 and 24-month hosting packages are on sale for $4/mth!

This is a screen grab of part of the recipt after signing up my friend:

So if you’ve thought about switching to a self-hosted website (like Wordpress.org), this is a great deal. And I wouldn’t tell you if I didn’t believe in it and use it myself.  I have no idea how long it’ll last.

If you do it, please use this link as I will get credit for the referral. Thanks.

Billy DeBeck coined the term in his hugely popular 1920s comic strip, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, about a community of backwoods hillbillies and moonshiners. It first appeared in a 1923 strip where Barney tells someone to “get that stupid look offa your pan. You gimme the heeby jeebys!” It meant “a feeling of discomfort.”

Other phrases coined by DeBeck: “horsefeathers,” “hotsie-totsie,” and “googly-eyed” (after Barney Google, who had huge, bulbous eyes). The strip also gave us the nickname “Sparky,” from the name of Barney’s horse, Sparkplug. (Many young comic-strip fans were given the name “Sparky,” among them, Peanuts creator Charles Schulz.)

via Comic Origins of Phrases – Neatorama.

The death of Michael Jackson is moving. I’ve loved his music for as long as I can remember knowing about him. Like most, that attention span happened during Thriller. But going back to Off The Wall and the stuff the Jackson 5 put out – it’s rare I find something I don’t like (except the song Bad). He was the best musical entertainer in his prime. I still listen to his music all the time and love the mashups that DJs make of MJ music.

But there was a deeper side to MJ. I used to joke “His music is awesome, but he’s a freak”. I take that back. He wasn’t a freak. I feel more sympathy for him now…especially as I was reminded of his life in these great posts below.

The Daily Dish – Thinking about Michael

Crocker Chronicle – Michael Jackson Dead at 50

Now I realize just how much of a performer he really was.

I’ve always loved the crazy setup scenarios for infomercials…

Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? Perhaps. But did you know the rainfall in a section of an African desert can effect the chance of a hurricane?

The Sahara Desert in Africa is the major source for African dust (or Mineral Dust) floating across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and South America each summer. I’ve been in Puerto Rico during one of those summer “dust clouds”. The sky is hazy but more reddish than grey.

However, it’s the north-western end of the sub-saharan Sahel Belt in Africa that can be a factor in Atlantic Ocean temperatures. The Sahel’s rainfall is a variable compared to the Sahara so if there’s more rain, there is less dust blowing from the African coast.

How does this effect the formation of hurricanes? Dr. Jeff Masters reports that when there is more dust, the water temperatures can fall by a full degree Celsius. Hurricanes need warm water to form, so more dust means cooler water temps.

Therefore the amount of rain in NW Sahel effects the amount of dust that blows over the Atlantic which effects the water temperatures which effects hurricane formation.

Got all that?

So what does it look like this year? There has been more rain in NW Sahel so there’s less dust so the water temps should be warmer so the likelihood of hurricane formation increases. But here’s the good news: the dust level won’t be as low as it was in 2005. You remember the 2005 Hurricane season, don’t you? Do the names Wilma, Rita, and Katrina ring a bell?

Also see Dust from Subsaharan May Affect Frequency of Hurricanes. Originally tipped off from the FriendFeed Hurricane Room.