PeopleareParked.com

Supah-bo-whoa-whoa-whoa-wol

Saw this great video on YouTube. Turn it up! Go Pats!!!

Found this nice little browser tip on Twitter, so wanted to pass it along.

Type “google” or any other site address in your address bar and then press Ctrl + Enter This will automatically fill in http://www. and .com

How many martinis are safe to have? I assume it would differ with body size and weight, but I heard a general rule that seems appropriate. Actually, my uncle told me this cute little saying awhile ago.

Martinis are like boobs.
One is not enough.
Three are too many.
And two are just right.

Makes sense, I guess. In fact, I know of someone who got really parked by not following this rule, recently. Oh well, live and learn.

I love the Patriots and the chance to see them make history by going 19-0 would be better than fantastic. I can’t afford the astronomical prices for tickets, airfare from Boston, hotel, food, etc. The prices are so parked. I’ve entered every contest I could find to win Superbowl packages, so am keeping my fingers crossed, but chances aren’t good.

Would love to watch it in Arizona - what a great venue, and warm compared to these New England winters. If anyone has any extra tickets, feel free to let me know… I know, wishful thinking. Otherwise, there’s nothing like home sweet home, fireplace going, cold brewski’s and good food. Still, I really want Superbowl tickets!

Did you know that potential employers seek information about you by doing an internet search? They may find your Facebook or MySpace pages very interesting. Not only do they seek to know your habits, preferences, background etc., but also who is associated with you. These seemingly harmless entries can actually work against you. It may not be fair or ethical, but it happens.

What can you do? Google yourself from time to time. See what comes up for your name, because that is what the rest of the world can potentially see. Take a look at your Facebook or MySpace profiles and think of what you wouldn’t want a potential employer to know about you. Pictures also speak a thousand words, so make sure they are appropriate also.

First impressions mean a lot in gaining employment, and you may not realize that yours was already given before meeting in person.

This is one of the few political races in which the process so far has been pretty calm. For the most part all the candidates have been talking about the issues, but I fear that, that will not last. Everyone on both the republican and democratic sides have been pretty good, but the race is so close that someone soon is going to play the “dirty” card. We all know them as the attack ads put out by some far right or far left, my way or no way mentality. You know - the ones that the candidates deny any affiliation to.

The republicans started it in Iowa with Romney’s negative ads on Huckabee and lost. I just think that Romney changes his position on too many issues, says what he needs to say to get your vote and then doesn’t give a hoot. As for the race in South Carolina, it looks so undecided that it’s only a question of time before the mud starts slinging. Weren’t they saying stuff about McCain and his service in Vietnam just the other day? Doesn’t anyone have a sense on integrity?

As for the Democrats, well Obama and Clinton are still sparring. This looks like it might be a “good” race to the end as neither seems to be tossing mud. Instead there seems to be a good game of one-upmanship going on. Clinton upset him in New Hampshire and scored a point. Where Obama just scored a point when he got Nevada to allow culinary union workers to caucus on the Vegas strip. The fact that same union endorsed him doesn’t hurt.

And what’s up with John Edwards? Every time he talks he sounds angry and mad at the world. And if he’s not sounding angry then he’s “gushing” about something Obama did or said. Yet, every time he talks about Clinton the “madness” rears it’s ugly head. I don’t know - the guy must have issues.

So, where does that put us? Not sure, but I’m having fun watching!

For those of you who don’t know, Alexa ranking is a measure of importance of websites in relation to all others on the web. It’s traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period. It is based on the number of unique visitors on a given day and page view requests for a site. Only top level domains, like www.peopleareparked.com are counted and not sub-domains, like each blog posting page.

After installing the Alexa Toolbar, I’ve been watching the numbers change. When we first started PeopleareParked.com, five months ago, our Alexa ranking was 8,842,119. Almost nine million — now that’s quite a high number and makes you feel pretty insignificant! Since then, I’ve been following our number everyday and it’s been falling slowly, but making progress. As of today, the number is 419,344. A little over eight million lower — not bad.

Today’s top ranking sites are #1 Yahoo, #2 Google, and #3 You Tube — no surprises there. For the full list or more information, check out http://www.alexa.com/.

So what does it all mean? Is there really any weight to this ranking system? I’m not really sure, but it seems we’re doing something right and heading in the right direction. Traffic is slowly increasing, big thanks to all our loyal readers.

On my way home from work today, I came across yet another parked driver or two. While traveling on a single lane highway, I had just passed an entrance lane, where a truck was trying to get on. He was speeding up, since there was plenty of space after me, but before the long line of cars following. Just as this was happening, the car behind me already on the road sped up, as if to block the truck trying to merge. They were both determined to beat the other one out. The scary part was that I was watching this whole thing through my rear view mirror, and having two vehicles coming at me at a high rate of speed. I had wished I could speed up to get away from them, but there was also a car in front of me.

Thankfully, there were no accidents, but what were they thinking? Especially the person behind me, speeding up to prevent someone else from getting in front of him - parked, parked, parked!

That is the question I’ve been trying to answer. What makes people comment on blogs and what can be done to encourage it?

I’ve learned some things not to do and sometimes that is the best way to learn. Perhaps by learning from my mistakes, other bloggers will benefit.

My blog is fairly new, so I’ve been trying to increase traffic to get people to read in the first place. One mistake I made was to require users to register before they could add their two cents. My main reason was not wanting to deal with all the SPAM posted automatically - wrong! This actually deters people from commenting because they have to take that extra step and give out more information than desired. Come to think of it, I like to be able to add comments to other blogs without making me jump through hoops. It just took me a bit longer to apply my own experiences to my blog.

I also turned off the option to send an email to my account every time someone comments. Found that this was not necessary, since I login to my blog everyday at least once anyhow.

Need to moderate every comment? I also found this cumbersome. The answer… add a SPAM filter like Akismet or something similar. Akismet came with my blog set up, so I just activated it and so far, so good.

If you liked what I wrote or have further suggestions, please comment!

The other night we had dinner with friends and as dinner conversation went we started talking about our blog, www.peopleareparked.com and heard a very interesting comment.  Someone thought the blog had a negative feel to it?  We thought it was a good comment and glad it was said because we saw the site as a venue to express our thoughts on all kinds of topics - whatever piece of news came across as really “Parked” or some tip we heard that might be helpful to someone else.

So here is our challenge.  Read some of the posts on this blog and send us your comments.  Are we PARKED?  Let us know.