It’s a little wet outside here in Vancouver, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy this lovely Friday! Here are five posts that I’ve found in the past week that’ll amuse and enlighten.

Hari put up a guest post on Untwisted Vortex, asking if the question if we are overdoing social networking. In this day and age where everyone seems to have a blog, participate in forums, and upload videos on YouTube, we know more about all the other web users out there than we ever did before. From Facebook to MySpace, Orkut to MyBlogLog… are we overdoing it?

Jon Lee has a useful article that helps you determine who’s sharing your shared hosting. Not everyone can afford a dedicated server for their blogs and websites, so most of us are on a shared hosting plan of some kind. It can be a pretty big bummer if you happen to be sharing your server with an unoptimized, resource-heavy site. Now, at least you can know.

Stunt actor and film professional Leo Chiang recently took a trip out to an abandoned Chilliwack prison to partake in some intense firearms training. He shot off some guns and had a heck of time. Although it may sound out of place, he even had a Harry Potter moment at one point.

Jamie Harrop of Daily Web Ideas outlines 7 ways to increase your PageRank. A higher PageRank can open your site (and blog) to a lot of great opportunities — like more lucrative ad networks — as well as the possibility of improving your traffic. And we all know that you need traffic before you can make any money online.

Remember last week when I mentioned the story of Josh from Career Ramblings and how he overcame adversity? How his home business saved his life? Well, this week, Josh follows up with part two to the story. He may not be swimming in money, but he’s a heck of a lot happier now!