Curtis Matthews

My mom had won a sight seeing boat trip at her church. The sight seeing tour was along the coast of Singer island in West Palm Beach. Four of us had went my mom , niece, nephew and I. I drove up from Pembroke Pines to meet them in Wellington and then we drove to the charter company which was located in Rivera Beach.
I don’t have much to write about the cruise. It took about two and a half hours and was very entertaining. I learned that I am not making enough money to live on Singer Island and I saw homes by Celine Dion and owners of big corporations like at&t. I do have  some pictures I want to post on this Blog. So I hope you will enjoy. All pictures here was taken with my Blackberry Bold 9700.

Pompano horse track

Hardrock winnings

The wheel spin for the players card.

This Mother’s Day my mom wanted to go to a casino. A few weeks earlier she went to Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood with her seniors group from Palm Beach and she enjoyed herself so much that’s what she wanted to go to a Casino on Mother’s Day.

So this Mothers Day we were going to take my mom to the HardRock casino. She had won $157 last time and started only with $15 that was given to the seniors to start them off.

We did go to a Casino but ended up at the Isle Casino in Pompano Florida. The Isle casino is also a horse racing track.

My mom wanted a players card that tracks your gambling and gives you points from the amount of money you spend. When the casino gives you the card you get to spin a wheel for a prize. The prizes range from $5 to start gambling too $500 cash.

My mom spun and got $5 on her card to gamble. It just missed the $500 prize by centermeters. When I spun the wheel the people in line cheered I won the $500 cash.
We are not big gamblers we only played the penny machines. It took us an hour to play about $25 dollars. The casino had a Mother’s day buffet that everyone was raving about. It was $16.95 per person for the buffet. I asked my mom if she wanted a Roti which is one of our favorite Trinidadian foods. She said yes but where were we going to get a Roti.

I knew of a resturant that was about 20 minutes away Joy’s Roti shop. So off we went to Joys Roti shop. I ordered 2 Rotis and other Trinidadian foods for my sister and her family. They drop my mom off at the casino but did not stay because of her kids. Instead they went to a movie a few miles away. After eating we headed back to the casino to gamble a little more.

We played a few more penny machines lost $10 then moved on to the high rollers machine the 5 cents machine. The $10 dollars we put in it was gone in seconds and that was to rich for our blood. My mom saw a penny machine when we first got to the casino that she wanted to play but when we went to that machine the same people were playing that machine for hours now. So we went looking for another machine but the machine we picked was in a tournament area and we were kicked out. On the way out we saw the original machines we wanted to play was empty now.
We hustled over to the machines and my mom picked one but I said use the other one of the two. We put $20 in the machine and that $20 went to $23.15. The second spin that machine gave us 20 free spins that paid us $796. I instantly cashed out the receipt and told my mom I would give her $20 more to play.

That $20 went down to $4 and the back up too $44. I cashed out again and told my mom let’s run away because we are ahead and our luck might run out. She hesitated, the gambling bug caught her. It did not matter to me I was firm and we left the casino with over $1300 in winnings and all we spent was little over $40. So my mom and I enjoyed our day at the isles casino on Mother’s day.

I renewed about 17 if my domains a few days ago because on July 1, 2010, Verisign will increase prices for .COM and .NET domains, so I beat the increase. So renew now for savings.

It looks like it would be around 50 cents more per domain starting July 1st. Frank found a coupon code online that save me another 10% at the check out, so that was real cool.
Godaddy winner notification from twitter
Plus I won a tank top from Godaddy on twitter.

Verisign

This is a cool way of tracking your workout progress. Handy logs fitness app on the Blackberry app world. The application is free and you can sync it with there website allowing you to track your progress online and from your Blackberry.

Today was the first day I tried it out. I entered each set of each exercise after the set with the reps, weight used and a description of the exercise equipment used.

Below is a sample of what I get from Handy Logs. I copied this information using the Bolt browser and pasted the info into the Wordpress application on my Blackberry.

New entry First Previous 8 to 22 of 22 Date & Time Exercise Sets Reps Weight (lb) 04-23-10 07.06 Tricep Pressdown 3 11 110.00 Detail 04-23-10 07.03 Arm Curl 3 11 130.00 Detail 04-23-10 06.54 Incline Press 3 11 160.00 Detail 04-23-10 06.52 Incline Press 2 11 140.00 Detail 04-23-10 06.51 Incline Press 1 11 120.00 Detail 04-23-10 06.49 Incline Press 5 7 135.00 Detail 04-23-10 06.46 Incline Press 4 7 120.00 Detail 04-23-10 06.43 Incline Press 3 7 95.00 Detail 04-23-10 06.42 Incline Press 2 7 70.00 Detail 04-23-10 06.38 Chest Press 3 10 150.00 Detail 04-23-10 06.34 Chest Press 1 11 110.00 Detail 04-23-10 06.34 Chest Press 2 11 130.00 Detail 04-23-10 06.29 Chest Press 4 7 140.00 Detail 04-23-10 06.28 Chest Press 3 7 115.00 Detail 04-23-10 06.26 Chest Press 2 7 70.00 Detail  

This is a video promoting Trinidad and Tobago. I almost did not watch this because I could not watch from my Blackberry Bold 9700.
I am glad I opened this video from the PC.

Rain on the way to mile marker 49

We started out meeting at a friends house at 4:30am on Sunday April 18th. Their was a total of eight guys going on this fishing trip we all put in $75 each for the cost of the boat and bait. I had first thought the boat was leaving out of Key Largo but when I heard mile marker 49, I knew it would be a lot further down into the Florida Keys.

It rained all the way down on the drive and we were worried about how the weather would turn out for the day. The weather report had stated we would have 70 percent chance of rain. That was okay with us but we did not want any lighting because that would not be safe. When we got closer down to mile marker 49, we look for a store to buy beer and other snacks. I did a search on Google and found a Publix close by.

Loading the cars at Publix

Publix in the Florida Keys

At Publix everyone got a but me got a sub, I decided on fried chicken from the deli. The beer we decided on was Heineken and Presidente in the bottles. We re packed our vehicles with the food ice and beer. The Hyundai Tuscon in the picture is mine, I was a driver of one of the cars. The other car was Damian’s Toyota Scion, small but it took four guys easily to and from the Florida Keys. After we left Publix we went looking for the boat yard and was pleasantly surprised it was only a few blocks away.

The name of the rental company is Fish and Fun rentals off mile marker 49 in the Florida Keys. When we got there no one was around to rent us the boat. We had to call them to find out what was going on with the boat rental. They told us on the phone we should have called them first to see if the trip was still on because of the weather. The guys were all upset now we just spent money at Publix, drove all they way here and were told we should have called to cancel because of the bad weather. It took a few minutes for everyone to calm down and the owner said she was sending someone now to get us our boat but not to go into the Atlantic because there was an advisory warning.

nobody working at the boat rental office

Five or ten minutes later someone showed up from the boat rental company and started to open the place. We asked him about bait and he said they don’t sell live bait but we could got down the street and get some before we set off. Two of the guys set off for the bait and the myself and the others loaded up the boat with our supplies.

I was shocked about the boat, I expected a larger boat with a captain and a cabin. The other guys just laugh at me saying that would have cost us in the thousands to do. I am not a fishing or boating guy but I assumed that for the money we paid we would have had a bigger boat. The boat I had pictured we were going on look like this one.

I assumed this was the type of boat we were going on

I was wrong this is the boat we got a 24 foot open fisherman with a 175hp motor.

our boat

The guys got back with our live bait, shrimp and small fish, what kind of small fish I do not know.

Now the boat owners representative wanted to go over a few instructions with the guy who where the drivers of the boat. I just learned then we had experience boat drivers among the group off us. Boy was I glad to hear that at least two of us had boating experience.

Getting our final instructions

One of the thing we were warned about again was going into the Atlantic because of the advisory issued. The instructor also told us that we could be tracked by GPS with the Garmin equipment we have on board. I took that as please take the warning seriously and we know where you are at all times. I was hoping that none of the guy wanted to play macho and break the rules. A couple of them did speak about it but we did follow the rules.

The weather turned out great for us, we did not get a drop of rain while out on the boat. The day did start out a little gloomy but the sky opened up into a beautiful sun shiny day.

The start of the day

On our way out

Stop and drop lines by seven mile bridge

seven mile bridge fishing

We had no luck fishing off the seven mile bridge so we decided to go out into the Gulf of Mexico and try our hand spear fishing. The sun was completely out and shining brightly now. The guys were all impatient to get into the water and spear fish. The water was calming down but we had no luck find any  fish in the Gulf. We even had guy pulled behind the boat with masks on look for good spots to fish and spear fish.

We decided to call the boat company and see if it was okay to go out into the Atlantic ocean now. They said the advisory had been lifted and it was okay to go out now. So we pulled up the anchor and were off to the Atlantic ocean. I noticed that the water turned blue and the Depth Gage showed much deeper water than the Gulf. The waves were a lot rougher now and the boat was going up and down, not good for week stomachs. Our destination was a coral reef that we saw on the map that was given to us at the beginning.   When we got to the spot we had our first victim with sea sickness, the second victim was me. I threw up everything that I ate that day which was mostly fried chicken from Publix. I was one of the only guys who did not go into the water. I wimped out after getting sick, plus I suck at swimming. The other guy was not a strong swimmer also.

We stayed out looking for fish a  few more hours, two fish were caught, one by me and the other by Damian but they were only 9 1/2 inches and needed to be at least 10 inches to keep. Luckily for those two fish a half an inch was the decision maker on getting eaten or not. We stayed out a few hours in the Atlantic and then headed back to refuel the boat. After refueling we decided to go back by the seven mile bridge and try our hand fishing there before packing up shop.

The bridge did not yield any fish that day and by now we were burnt out. I was dead tired from the sun and throwing up all my stomach contents. I was even burnt from passing out on my back in the open sun on the boat.

Back at land

Sun shinning back on land

A spear gun that was not put to good use

End of the day and the sun is out

The day ended up with us heading to a Waffle House in Key Largo and instead of eating fish I had a burger and chili. What I learned from this trip is that we could have gone to Bud and Marys’ for $60 per person and have a boat with a captain, crew, rods, bait and a cabin for less than we paid with left over money for beer and snacks.

Waffle House Key Largo Florida

Waffle House double burger

I started back a few weeks ago using Google Adwords to promote some of my websites. I should of started back in February when I got contacted by Tangowire. Tangowire wanted to assist me in creating good landing pages for Google Adwords. I first had to understand what landing pages where.

Landing pages is the page that a person is directed too after clicking the ad you created in Google Adwords. The landing page should be specific to what your ad is promoting to work effectively. If  I am promoting a Gay Dating site my ad will speak about Gay and Lesbian dating and I would make my ad’s landing page show gay couples, you would not put straight couples on the landing page because it would not make sense that I would click a link that is suppose to take me to a Gay Dating Site. The better the landing page relates to the Ad in Google the better position that Ad will get, mean more clicks and hopefully more conversions. Conversions is when some clicks your Ad and purchases a product or service from the website you are promoting.

So its been about three weeks now and I have spent only $50 on Google Adwords so far. I have gotten more clicks this last few week and a few new free members but no conversions. A few years ago I spent hundreds of dollars every few months with Google, Yahoo and MSN ads. I broke even sometimes but really never saw a profit. Now I have a better understanding, I hope to make this venture profitable.

I had a thought today that was more than 40 characters and I wanted that thought to be published on the web with its GPS and a picture I took outside. I had a number of options, I tried the quickest first and after my work out I am writing this post now doing cardio with my Blackberry and the Wordpress application second option choice.

The first attempt to get my thought across with GPS in the Twitter applications I have on my Blackberry. Twitter for Blackberry and Ubertwitter. I went with Ubertwitter and my twitter account Curtis Matthews Twiiter accountIt allowed me to take a picture and post a note less than 140 characters.
I remember the application asking me during the initial setup about which GPS option I wanted, I want with cell towers the first and default choice. I am trying to save the draft now but the GPS did not work the first time.
Ok now the second attempt did not but when I got into my car it let me post. Its now 9:10am in front of LA Fitness. I will add my picture I took of the front when I first came in.

I download an upgrade for my Wordpress application on my Blackberry 9700.
I just took a short video clip of inside the store here in Weston Florida to see if it uploads properly with this application. Before the upgrade I really could not add video with this app from the Blackberry.

It still does not work to upload video taken with the Blackberry.

The error message says:
Blog message (code 500) could not write file test-video.3GP (invalid file type)

Since February 14th 2010 I have tried to figure out the correct way to track a diet and workout on a Blog. I wanted to put all my workouts and food intake on this Blog eaisly with my Blackberry Bold 9700 and the WordPress application.

I started to make 2 pages a day for the day’s food intake and workouts. It was not hard to do these post but somthing did not make sense with the format.

While I continued to make two pages for each day I saw on the Blog it placed the pages on the bottom of the Blog under the headings (my daily eating habits) or (my daily workouts). I did not want that formating, logging one after another on the bottom like that would make a very long footer with days of workouts and eating habits. What I wanted was every days diet and workout to be listed only under the corresponding pages only with the heading, (my daily eating habits) or (my daily workouts. I want that you have to click on the page About and on that page you see the links to my daily diet and workouts.

My web guy said each daily log should be one page for each category and just add to that page the daily logs. So yesterday I started to copy the daily pages into their categories and it did look a lot better but I am want to try some other things.

One of the main things I do not like is when I want to add to the post it becomes very difficult to do from my Blackberry Bold 9700 now using the WordPress application. I have to scroll way to much to add more daily deatails because of the amount of preivous logs and the pictures html. I need a easy way to add the daily logs of workout and diet on the Blackberry.

Until I can figure out a better way to do my posts I will not continue to do my daily logs with the WordPress application on my Blackberry Bold 9700. I have done the last 2 weeks in February and edit it on one page like my web guy told me too.