Archive for May, 2008

Life is not always great and doesn’t always go as planned for some of us. Some of us have to deal with tragedy from a very young age, while some of us get to arrive in our adult hoods before we have to face any. Dying is a part of life and at some point and time, we will have to bury a loved one that we wasn’t ready to see go. This can be very hard and I have lost loved ones in my life too. I still have all the members of my immediate family intact, but I have seen the death of my grandparents, uncles and aunts and some really close friends I had while growing up. I have had to deal with more tragic events than most people and even going through the experience of losing one of my best friends.

One of the ways we can continue to keep our loved ones in our memory is by visiting their grave sites or final resting places for them. It’s also nice from time to time if we can clean up around their burial place by cutting the grass, picking out the weeds and even leaving some silk flowers on their grave. I believe most of us think they would have did that for us, if we was the ones that were lying in that grave now. So we try to do our best and do what we think is right. If you think your friends or family that has passed away in your lifetime would have did that for you, please return the favor and keep their grave sites looking neat. I think this is a good way to get over a death that caught us off guard and part of the healing process can be taken care of the spot that will be their final resting place in our world that we know.

Time for the Outdoors

We don’t have to stay cramped up inside all the time now and we can put that exercise equipment up for the summer.

One place that I like to go everyday and surf is at StartXchange. It’s a smooth place to surf through other member’s websites and the 10 second timer helps you to zip through the pages in no time. This is great for anyone that needs to build up credits in a hurry and they even reward you with more credits, the more active you surf there each day. If you surf a lot today, then your bonus percentage will be a lot higher for tomorrow. So it really pays at StartXchange to be an active surfer.

Another great thing about the traffic exchange StartXchange is that they have teams there. You can join up with any team that you like, as long as the person in charge allows you on the team. There is no limits to the number of players each team can have, but the top teams try to keep their numbers trimmed low, so they get a better percentage in the different stats for team competition.

My team is the Dutch Crew and I am just a member on that team. We get loyalty points for each member on our team that can surf at least 20 websites a day. It only takes a few minutes each day to get 20 websites, because it is just a 10 second timer. If you think you can login to StartXchange each day and surf at least 20 websites, then feel free to join the Dutch Crew when you sign up for StartXchange. It’s completely free to join StartXchange and it cost nothing to be on a team either. If you would like to be the captain of your own team at StartXchange, you would need to upgrade to do that. A gold membership costs you $6 a month and the platinum membership is $14.95 a month.

StartXchange is one of the better traffic exchanges out there and anyone that is looking to drive more traffic to their websites should consider joining StartXchange. You will have a hard time trying to find a better traffic exchange than this one and consider all the quality visitors you can get each day and you can do this for free, it makes the decision easy on why you should join StartXchange to help give your websites more exposure.

The National Basketball Association or NBA is coming down to the wire and soon we will know which teams will be playing in the finals. Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers are looking really good and I’m not sure any team can stop them. The East is a battle right now, but I would imagine the Detroit Pistons would win that series and move on to the NBA Finals this year. I will probably sit back and watch all the games during the finals and see if the MVP Kobe Bryant can lead the Lakers to another championship. I already have the big screen television to watch the Finals on, but it sure would be nice if I could have some home theater seating in place, so I could invite all my friends over to watch the games. I’m just glad Kobe is finally away from the shadows of Shaq and now people can really see who the best player in the NBA is. All of my hopes for this season in basketball are on the men from LA to win over the Detroit Pistons. I guess we will have to wait just a bit longer to see which teams actually make it to the 2008 Championship Game!

Security for the Home

Our homes are one of the biggest investments we will ever make in our life times. So it would only make sense that we would want to protect it and all the valuable things inside our homes. Some things are not replaceable and losing them would be devastating to us all. I think it would be a good idea for every homeowner to have a security system in place at their home; one that could protect you from burglars when no one is at home or even something in place that could alert emergency crews to a fire at your house. I think it would be a wise investment for most and if you ever needed it just one time, it would be safe to say that you got your money’s worth. There is a lot of different systems on the market today and if you take the time to do a little research on them, you can find one that makes the most sense to your family; one of the security systems that ademco offers might be a good choice to make. If you have a little time this week during dinner or perhaps this weekend, take the time to discuss this topic with the family and see what everyone in the household thinks about adding a security system to your home. I’m sure this decision would be a no-brainer for those that have been victims in the past, just don’t let your family be the next one on the victim’s list.

Traffic exchanges are a good way to bring more exposure to your products, services, referral pages or other affiliate programs that you might be involved in. Many people are online today trying to promote a multi level marketing program and some have been successful with this, by using traffic exchanges for exposure. If you have a MLM program or perhaps you just have a website and you’re are looking to increase traffic and visitors to your website; join up with several traffic exchanges to help you out.

They are a ton of traffic exchanges online today. There are new ones that come online daily and choosing which one to be members of can seem like a duanting task at times. A new traffic exchange gives you the chance to build a fast downline and getting members under you, is a good way for them to help you earn extra credits for promoting your own interests online. Hopefully the new traffic exchange will continue to grow and you get the chance to be in on the ground floor of a traffic exchange. The owner or owners of a new traffic exchange will ultimately determine the success of the traffic exchange. If you can build up your referrals in a new traffic exchange, you’re helping the chances of that traffic exchange to succeed.

I’m surprised that more people don’t focus on the larger traffic exchanges out there. A good way to see and keep up with the top traffic exchanges that are out there today, is by joining up with a website like Traffic Hoopla. They focus only on the top traffic exchanges out there, based on the membership levels. Traffic Hoopla also offers ways to help you increase your downlines for those traffic exchanges. Once you become a member of some of the top traffic exchanges out there; then you can enter your referral information in at Traffic Hoopla and then show their page in the traffic exchanges and help build your referrals up for all the big traffic exchanges.

If your ready to get started with traffic exchanges or maybe you have already been using them, let’s get you started off on the right foot and get you hooked up with Traffic Hoopla. I am going to feature other traffic exchanges from time to time on this blog, but you can do your self good right now, if you will start out with Traffic Hoopla to help you start using the top traffic exchanges online today.

1st Join Traffic Hoopla for FREE

2nd Pick out 1 or 2 traffic exchanges they offer and sign up with them today.

3rd Get comfortable with the new traffic exchages you sign up with today and surf some.

4th Go back to your Traffic Hoopla account and add in the referral information for the traffic exchange or exchanges you joined up with today.

5th Continue this process daily, until you have joined at least 10 traffic exchanges that Traffic Hoopla represent.

6th Once you have your referral information in for at least 10 of the traffic exchanges Traffic Hoopla offer; then feel free to show your referral pages there and start working on referrals for Traffic Hoopla.

Once you have completed thses steps, you will be getting exposure on some of the biggest traffic exchanges that exist on the net today. If you will continue to join more traffic exchanges that Traffic Hoopla offer and keep entering your referral information at Hoopla, each time you do join a new traffic exchange, you will start to see the resutls real soon.

When a new member joins your Traffic Hoopla family, they will be signing up for the traffic exchanges they are not members of yet and these members will be going in your downlines at the big traffic exchanges. When your Traffic Hoopla referral shows their Hoopla referral page, they will be showing your links to the traffic exchanges they didn’t join and you will receive additional referrals from this process. Just bringing in one new member to your Traffic Hoopla family, can get you several sign ups for your traffic exchanges you’re a member of; due to the fact that your Hoopla referral might not be a member of some of the traffic exchanges that Traffic Hoopla offer.

So if your new or a season veteran to traffic exchanges, everyone should be a member at Traffic Hoopla, so you can start building up your referral bases to some of the biggest traffic exchanges out there! It won’t take long for you to see the increase in your referral counts across the board.

The gas prices continue to soar and the stock market is showing that. The high gas prices will not be going down soon and many travelers will have to face this high cost on their trips this summer. We should see some declines this fall, but the summer looks like a record breaking season for gas prices.

The stock market will not improve this summer while these high oil prices continue to rise. I do think it’s a buyers market right now and will be for the rest of the summer. No one should be investing too heavy, until we can clearly see the bottom at some point. There is no bottom limit in sight right now and buyers should use caution.

Retail stocks and pharmacy stocks should be ok for this summer, but only buying small portions to add to your portfolios. My outlook on the pharmacies, drug makers and the drug stores all look great for 2008. If you haven’t added a medical stock to your portfolio yet, look for the big pharma drug companies and some of the drugs stores like Rite Aide, Wal Greens and even a place like Wal Mart for taking advantage of the drug stocks and the retail sector that looks promising for later on in the year.

Banking stocks will take their lumps and bruises, just like the rest of the financial sector will this summer. Your financial stocks are safe bets and you should earn a little money in 2008 from them and I do like the big banking stocks as a place to hold your money, until the summer is over or until gas prices go back down some.

The energy sector should be avoided and I would not recommend any energy stocks this year and they need to be viewed like the airline stocks have been over the past few years. I understand the huge profits they are generating right now and many shareholders have been award nice gains over the last 30 months. It’s just too volitale to get in the energy stocks right now and I would even go as far to say that you sell all your energy holdings right now, if you’re up on them and look to reinvest that money into a large banking stock or go ahead and get in on the drug and retail sectors that will have a nice finish in 2008.

Compare Hotels and Save

The best way to save money on your vacations or out-of-town trips is to stay in the cheapest places possible. If you know that you’re going to be traveling in the near future and you will need a room to stay overnight, be sure to look now for the cheapest places on your trip. HotelsCombined.com offers a great tool you can use to compare hotels with. This tool is free to use and it will search 30 different websites at once! This tool received honorable mention in the 2007 Web 2.0 Awards by Seomoz.org. If you need to find a hotel to stay at and you don’t have much money; you will certainly want to use this free tool that HotelsCombined.com provides.

I haven’t been hearing anything on the writer’s strike recently and was just wondering if it has ended now. I know one of my favorite tv shows is Earl that comes on NBC and they were showing reruns due to the writers strike. I really hope they get things worked out soon, if they haven’t already so they can get back to making new episodes of Earl. I really don’t want to take sides in the matter, but I can understand people wanting a bigger piece of the pie. If the writers feel like they deserve more, then let them have their strike. If the people paying them are not for it, just let them find some new writers. It might not be easy to find talented writers out there, but I’m sure many would work for the wages the current writers are getting now.

I have some good ideas for tv shows and movies on the big screen and I would love the chance to write. So if someone is looking for a writer; feel free to get in touch with me and I would gladly work for the wage that is in place now. If the current writers hold their ground, I’m sure some will give in to them. Maybe some of the really good writers will get a higher wage when this is all over with and some writers might find their self without a job. I just know I hadn’t heard anything recently about the writers strike, so if you know any news on this situation, please be sure to let me know.

Police for years, decades and even centuries have used weapons that weren’t exactly made for their jobs. It’s glad to see steps are being made now, to get more non-lethal weapons into police officers hands, so the serious tragedies can be avoided. Guns are not right for every situation and the damage they do is sometimes un-repairable. I think the majority of the public feels this way too and would like to see more police officers in their area carrying non-lethal force as a means to control someone that is unwilling to cooperate.

I know the public as a whole carry more self defense products than ever before. I think its ok for citizens to carry something like a stun gun and it could save their lives or help them protect their property some day. Police can use things like stun guns to help control an individual or crowd, so they can take control of a unstable situation faster. Guns have cause so many heartaches and it’s not always the bad guys that are pulling the triggers, so that’s why I support the police stations that are making a more conscious effort to use non-lethal weapons first and only consider using their revolvers as a last resort of action.

Summer and the weekends were made for just one thing and this is to party! I love a party that starts off in the evening time and will carry on until the wee hours of the morning. The ones that are outside and you get a grill and cook up some good things on the barbie. Those are the best summer time parties and all you need is some raw meat, a grill and a few friends and your all set. The lighting is important at your summer parties that are held outside. You want to get lights that don’t attract the bugs or at least have things there to combat the bugs if you’re going to bring them in from the darkness. The bugs can ruin a night time party in the summer, but if you choose the proper lights or bug repellants; then you can avoid the little pests and have a good party. Sometimes people never stop and think about the bugs coming to the lights and are attracted to the foods you might be preparing outdoors and it becomes a thing that someone has to run to the store and buy some bug repellants, so the party can go on. If you host a summer time party this year on a certain weekend or know that you’re going to one, make sure that the host is aware of the bugs, so steps can be made to take care of the little boogers. Have a fun and safe time; be sure to let me know how your weekend outdoor parties did this summer.

Red or White Wine?

Which type of wine do you prefer the best? I hear a lot of talk over red and white wines and was just wondering what people preferred. When you go to your wine refrigerator, which one would you be more likely to pull out? I know red wine has proven to have a lot of good nutritional benefits and from that stand point; it would probably be the better choice between the two. If you just based your decision on taste and wanted the best tasting wine, would you select red or white wine? Is one of these wines better to cook with; than the other wine? It would be interesting to do a taste test for those that don’t drink wine much and blindfold individuals and see if they liked the white wines or the red wines the best.

Today’s Directions

I guess the way we use to find things in the old days is to try and get as close as we could to our desired destination and then stop at a convenience store or gas station and ask for the final details. Directions for going places are now much better than those days. You might not get a lot of help from the gas stations anymore anyways, since chances are the person working there might not speak English. People can use their computers now and find some of the popular places online to search for directions. I have found this to be a very useful tool and it’s amazing at how accurate the directions are on the computer. In many cases you can get how long you will need to travel on a certain road and if you need to turn right or left when you get to the end of that road. You can find the shortest distance to a place by miles or search for the interstates in your travels and find the best routes in terms of time. I really like the modern way of getting directions and if you can’t find your destination via the computer and those popular websites, you can still pull out the GPS and this will help you find what you’re looking for.

Ok, I have never been to Sin City, but when I do decide to go in the next few years, where should I stay at? There is so many great vegas hotels that you can choose from and many of them make up the face of Las Vegas or have been featured in movies. I’m not even sure which hotel in Las Vegas you could consider the most popular or famous?

Have you ever been to Vegas? If so, where did you stay at? Please let me know the place you chose to stay at and did you choose that place due to money or desire?

I think most people would pick the hotel that gave them the best rate. If you don’t have a lot of money and you go to Vegas, you certainly don’t want to spend too much on your rooms there. I know the cheapest might be best, so you could use all your spending money to gamble on in the casinos. I was just thinking if money was not an issue and you could stay in any of the hotels on the Vegas Strip, which one would be the top hotel in Las Vegas. I have about 5 I could name off the top of my head and not really sure if one stands out more than another one does. Most people can name 1 or 2 Vegas hotels pretty easily, since Hollywood does show a lot of them on the big screen. I think most of us know Vegas as well as we do, because of all the movies shot in Las Vegas. I think I would need to do more research on selecting the top hotel in Las Vegas and I can not think of one right now that would have a clear advantage over all the others. Please let me know if you think there is one hotel in Vegas that does stand above the crowd.

Prescription Diet Pills

Dieting is one of the most popular things that people do today and it’s not too hard to find someone setting some sort of weight loss goal for their self. Most common things people will talk about is eating less or smarter and then exercising programs. I know you don’t hear many people using diet pills in their daily routines to lose weight. I think people do use over the counter diet pills too much and any help you get from diet pills should be monitored by a doctor. Checking with your doctor and getting prescribed something like Phentermine, is a safe way to diet properly. Consumers might not be dosing properly with over the counter diet medicines and a doctor that prescribes diet pills to you, can monitor how the pills are affecting your overall health. So it’s great that you want to lose weight and get in better shape, but you might want to check with you doctor if you decide you want help from diet pills.

The little sluggers of the world are all hitting the baseball diamonds across the country and getting their best grips on the bat and swinging for the fences with every swing. I like little league baseball and I have enjoyed watching my nephews play it through out the years. It’s really fun when they are on a winning team and they get all of those baseball trophies at the end of the year.