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it's just 74-1/2 hours until we board the carnival ecstasy in galveston, texas for a 5 night cruise with our entire family of 5!

we have been looking so forward to this cruise for a long time and now it's almost time to actually start packing and making final plans for the voyage.

it will be my 3rd cruise, the second one for ruthie and the first cruise ever for josh, david and jon.

note: for sanity reasons, we opted for our own cabin and the boys will be sharing a cabin. it's a big ship and we can get lost (see large image) if the noise level gets too high.

ruthie and i plan to just relax, read and explore the ship, plus take many cool shipboard photos. i'm bringing my small sony portable and my Canon DSLR camera, so i should be able to get lots of great shots.

josh, david and jon have vowed to gobble down a huge share of the vast amounts of food on the ship. there is a 24 hour pizza joint, a (read a review) very good hamburger stand, buffets and formal dining available for all to enjoy. they also plan to spend many hours in the workout room to balance this out.

more on the cruise after we get back on august 23rd.

recently i came across this new site for freelancers (all types of creatives) that is called anthillz reputation network.

i'm not sure where the funky name came from, but i like it.

it's a brilliant idea. for employers looking for freelancers, be they in web design or development, graphics, programming, database or other related fields, they can come to the anthillz site and search for a freelancer by keyword or name.

it can be used also by other freelancers to see what the competition has to offer, plus if they are looking to hire another freelancer to fill part of an assignment with a skill they might not have themselves. most of these people will have no problem doing work remotely, so location should not be an issue.

there is a search and the results will give them a list of individuals and when you go to an individuals page, you can see what they do, plus see reviews by past clients. only clients can submit reviews so the site does not get a lot of fluff that you have to weed through.

it's a nice site and a good resource for both employers and freelance professionals. the look is real clean and organized and the idea is great.

i created a profile for myself and have a few reviews already from past clients. it was a quick easy process to add yourself to the profiles on the site.

check it out and let me know what you think.

it's been a while since i blogged about the "out of work, looking for work" deal, so here's a little update.

about 6 weeks have passed since i was laid off and i have been actively searching for web design and related opportunities/positions.

i have come across some really diverse things. i have landed a freelance gig helping a small company ramp up to the opening of an e-commerce furniture store and am working a bit on that now.

i have been spending some time working on developing some phpBay pro based sites to earn eBay affiliate income. they are wordpress blogs/sites that point to items on sale currently on eBay. if a visitor comes to your site, clicks on an auction or one of the other eBay pointer links, then a 7-day cookie is set on that computer - if an eBay auction win occurs from that computer within the 7-days, then i get a split on the fees that eBay collects for the auction.

it all works through the phpBay pro wordpress plugin i purchased that calls in all the auctions based on keywords/parameters you set in the software. pretty neat. it was only $49 and can be used on an unlimited number of sites.

as of today i have yet to earn any income from that, but i am willing to sit it out and try to build up traffic to the sites (a list of these sites are in the sidebar under "other buford sites").

i am currently participating in a new online blogging contest/course called the thirty day challenge. it has videos that teach you how to learn how to do sites for profit the correct way to not spin your wheels. i just started this and will post more after i get more into the course. the course is free, run by aussie's named ed and dan.

you can sign up for the thirty day challenge (30dc) yourself and try it out.

i'm also looking into various opportunities making partnerships with business owners selling items for them on eBay. it's amazing how many of those are out there.

today i went to a company that had boxes of computer products (new, but pretty old), plus 23 new violins (go figure) to sell. i took home a box full of them (1 of each item) to research the products to see if they will sell.

i have answered a ton of online ads for web site design, graphic design, html, css, web optimization, seo and more. there seems to be a lot out there, but nothing has fallen into place yet.

no prob. i'll just continue doing what i am doing and something will happen. more later.

if any of you got an email from the ebay partner network about the changes coming in payouts related to acru's (active confirmed registered user) and said "huh" after reading it then go read this article by j. frank carr at the blog optempo.

epn acru changes and you

he explains the whole thing pretty well.

sixflags48 is the user name of my nephew dillon moskowitz. it turns out he is quite a youTube video contributor with 84 videos currently hosted on the site.

this is his video he created in tribute for nascar driver dale earnhardt sr. after he died in a crash in a race.

i would have embedded the video, but dillon has embedding turned off, so here is the video at youTube.

way to go dillon.