A Great Way to Babysit - Cruising

Hello Everyone!

My name is Kristina Mangiafico and I attend Florida State University. GOOO BOBBY!! Football season's coming up, and what an exciting season it will be. I can not wait for the festivities; it is probably the most exciting thing about the college experience. It really brings the student body together. Besides football, I participate in intramural sports like kickball and softball, and I play club soccer for FSU. As if studying, football, intramurals, and club soccer, aren't enough, I also hold down a job. I work on-line for Uscity.net, which is an internet business directory for the US. Check It Out!

MY VIEWS ON CRUISING:
If ever you have the opportunity, you should take a cruise. This year, I have been fortunate enough to have been on three; my first being in March during spring break. The second cruise I convinced my family that it was the best way to vacation. They bought it, and loved it. Finally, the third for the year, was just two weekends ago, and this opportunity was given to my in a very strange situation. My sister and I were invited by my aunt and uncle to go to the Bahamas via Carnival Cruise Line, if we babysat their two boys. For all those babysitters out there, I think you would have to agree this is the best location for a sitter job.

All three cruises were great. I traveled on both Royal Caribbean and Carnival Cruise Ships, and I have to say I enjoyed Royal Caribbean’s service a little better. They seemed to have more activities going on for the “days at sea” (this is where you spend the entire day cruising without stopping). The activities are hosted by the cruise employees and involve group and individual activities. I try to participate in everything offered, in order to make the most out of the cruise. Besides that they were equally relaxing and equally stuffing. And when I say stuffing, I mean there is enough food on these ships to make you feel like a stuffed turkey when you leave.

This type of vacation is the perfect getaway, because you really do getaway. It’s a transport to paradise, and I hope that everyone gets the opportunity to experience it whether with family, friends, co-workers from uscity.net, or to baby-sit your cousins.

Space Shuttle – Fourth of July – Category Clean Up

We hope everyone had a safe and happy Fourth of July. I must be getting old - I didn’t see any fireworks this year (not even on TV), and didn’t really miss them. My family and I DID see a beautiful shuttle liftoff over the blue skies of Florida Fourth of July afternoon. This was the first-ever space shuttle launch on Independence Day. We wish the crew Godspeed and a successful mission.

We have been busy here at uscity.net cleaning up our directory. This has been causing some errors to our visitors, but it is necessary to keep our directory up to date and to get rid of unneeded categories. We first started creating categories in the late 1990s and some of the categories still had no links in them last week. We decided that if no one had signed up in over five years, it was probably best to just get rid of that category. To make the directory more manageable and easier to use, we are cleaning it up. We apologize to everyone who has been getting errors from this process.

Earlier this year, we got rid of several categories that were not really consistent with our “G” rating, such as gambling and alcohol sites. We also took out categories such as “Surveys and Polls” as we found that the most of the links in this category required someone submitting their email address, these types of sites frequently sell their email lists and these are often misused by spammers.

Our first priority is making this the best directory we can, so we deleted several categories last week and have also added a few throughout the last month.” How do we decide what categories go in?” you ask… Sometimes we get suggestions from members as to what to add. One of our interior decorator members suggested a Faux Finishing category and we thought that was a good idea, since adding it a few weeks ago, we have had several companies and decorators sign up under that category. One of our employees thought we needed a Digital category, and after adding that – the directory grew with additions in that category too. We also found that several subcategories would make finding what our visitors want easier, so we added Audio, Camera, Products and Software as subcategories under the main category of Digital.

Another way to make our directory easier to use is by adding subcategories and we recently added a bunch of subcategories under Restaurants.

In March, we took our Home category, which had well over 100 links in it and added several subcategories. This makes it easier to find something for the Kitchen, the Bedroom and Bathroom or the Yard.

Other recent additions:

Maternity
Car Loan
Computer VoIP

We always welcome suggestions for making us better and easier to use, so just leave a comment if you have one for us.

Miss Pam

Jennifer's First Blog

So, it looks like I may be the first one to blog on our new employee blog page! I’ve never done this before, and I’m not very good at writing about myself, so cut me some slack! J

For starters, my name is Jennifer, and I am a junior at UCF. I live in Orlando with 3 guys in one apartment. YES, please feel bad for me that I am the only girl in this apartment! I think I’m the only one who knows how to clean around here! I am majoring in elementary education, and have about a year or so left until I finish. When I first moved here my plan was to obtain a degree in Chemistry, and to go on and get my doctorate in Pharmacy. WOW! How things can change! After failing my first Chemistry class, I decided that Pharmacy was probably not a good idea for me, and I changed to elementary education. I am so glad I did, because I love every class, and I can start interning this year. I will be doing that with Pam’s sister, Donna, who was my 5th grade (and favorite!) teacher. She will be an excellent teacher to intern with since she is so creative and has great teaching skills and ways of working with children. I can definitely learn a lot from her. And, along with changing majors, I also decided to move back home when my apartment lease is up in August. I can take all of my education courses at UCF in Daytona, plus I will be saving at least $500.00 per month in rent! It will be a bit of a change since I have been living on my own for the past year, but I really believe it is a change for the better.

Well, that’s me in a nutshell! That’s my life, crazy as it is, but I love every minute of it!

Now, all about USCITY.NET - aren’t you really curious as to how I got started here?! I bet you are!! :)
Here it goes: When I moved to Orlando, I had a really hard time finding a job in this huge town. After about a month, I finally got a job on International Drive at a big tourist shop selling helicopter flights to people who wanted to see all of Orlando from up above. Sounds cool, right? WRONG! It was the worst job I could ever imagine! You wouldn’t believe how rude some people can really be! Not to mention the shifts were 12 hours long! I was calling my mom every night crying and crying because I hated it so much. After about a month or so of that, she remembered that Carol told her that she and Kristina were working for Pam at USCITY and that they both loved it so much because it was an at home job and perfect for college kids like Kristina and I. That’s when my mom called Pam, and asked her if there was room for me at this company. And, sure enough there was, and here I am today!! YEAH! Thank you Pam and USCITY! You saved me from the worst job ever! I can’t tell you how much I have appreciated this job! College can really take up a lot of your time, and having a job like this makes the ride so much easier and smoother since I easily work around my classes and homework that gets piled up.

I enjoy the job I do here very much. I’ve really learned a lot about the internet business and how we function since I’ve started working here. I hope by doing this blog, all of us employees will be able to share ideas and different ways of doing things with each other.

I look forward to reading about everyone else, too!