Pacific Coast Highway RV Trip – Pacifica, CA to Westport, CA

by | Apr 30, 2011 | Travel

This was the fourth week of our RV trip to Alaska via the Pacific Coast Highway. This week’s trip took us from Pacifica, CA (San Francisco) to Westport, CA. The trip was almost exactly 200 miles and took us through Santa Rosa, where we stopped for lunch with one of the new hosting companies I’m working with. We used US-101 almost the entire way, but had to take a small side road from Laytonville, CA to connect back up with US-1 and Westport, CA. This road was about 22 miles and seemed harmless at first. However, the last 12 miles of it were some scary stuff. The middle line disappeared and the road narrowed to about 1.5 lanes. Then, we stared climbing up and down mountain roads that included 180 degree switchbacks. Luckily for us, the road wasn’t very traveled. We only passed 2 cars in the scariest sections, but they had to stop, back up, pull over, and then let us by. It was by far and away the scariest driving we’ve had yet; not something I want to experience again anytime soon. When we arrived at our campground in Westport, the brakes on the RV were literally smoking (badly). We’ve now traveled a total of about 750 miles with about 3,000 miles until we hit Anchorage. Westport Beach / North Mendocino KOA This week’s home was at the Westport Beach / North Mendocino KOA in Westport, CA. The campground is situated just steps from Westport Beach and about 2 miles north of the very small town of Westport, CA. The hosts at this campground are super nice...

The Black Friday Of Online Poker

by | Apr 27, 2011 | Blog

There are very few events which have happened in my life that I can remember exactly where I was when it happened. Things like when the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up, “9/11”, my wedding, the day the UIGEA passed, and now Black Friday. Even though I’ve been out of the online poker affiliate business since January 1, 2011, it’s not that unusual for me to be talking with people in the industry from time to time. After 7 years in the business I made a lot of contacts and even consider several people in the business good friends. In fact, I’m stopping to see several of them on our RV trip to Alaska. So, when I got an IM from a friend of mine who works at an online poker site, it didn’t strike me as all that unusual at first. Here is how the conversation basically went: Online Poker Friend: Are you in the USA right now? Me: Yes, we’re in the middle of our RV trip, heading up to Alaska Online Poker Friend: Oh, that’s right. Can you do me a favor? Me: Sure Online Poker Friend: Can you goto www.ourpokersite.com? Me: Sure Me: Uh, that’s not good. Online Poker Friend: I think we may have been hacked. Needless to say, they weren’t hacked and we were right in the middle of witnessing history. A few minutes later the same person asked me to check the other online poker rooms, which were returning the same DOJ message. I was actually on the phone talking to someone else about one of my new projects. To say the least,...

Pacific Coast Highway RV Trip – Morro Bay, CA to Pacific, CA

by | Apr 24, 2011 | Travel

This was the third week of our Pacific Coast Highway RV trip to Alaska. This week’s journey took us from Morro Bay, CA to the San Francisco RV Resort in Pacifica, CA. Pacific is a neat little suburb just a few miles south and west of the city. The San Francisco RV Resort sits right on the edge of the ocean. In fact, our parking spot was just a few feet from the edge of a cliff; the only thing we saw out our window was water. Our trip was 227 miles and took just under 5 hours. We’ve now traveled a total of 537 miles with about 3,200 miles until we hit Anchorage. I’m going to use a different format for my blog post this week since we really didn’t do all that much. I had some issues with work which kept us in the RV working all but 2 days of our trip. We didn’t get to do 80% of what we originally planned in San Fran. Things like Alcatraz, a drive along the coast, Point Reyes, and Golden Gate Park. Luckily I’ve been to San Francisco before, so I didn’t feel as bummed. San Francisco RV Resort The San Francisco RV Resort should really be named “Big, Crowded, Parking Lot With A View”. This was the first RV park that we’ve visited on this (or any) trip that I truly disliked. Not every campground is perfect, but this is the first one I looked forward to leaving. This place just put me off from the second we pulled in the driveway. Sure, it had an amazing...

Building An Affiliate Website (websitehosting.com) – Part Four

by | Apr 20, 2011 | Business, SEO

This is part four of my series on how to build an affiliate website, where I’ll be using websitehosting.com as a case study. In this article I’ll be discussing the progress of the site so far and talking about the process of submitting the site to Google News. You can find previous installments in this series by following the links below: Part One – Basic site structure Part Two – Basic content guidelines, getting ready for Google News Part Three – Initial site design Website Hosting Progress: It’s been about 10 weeks since I purchased Website Hosting and I think it’s important to cover some of what I’ve done so far. In previous parts of this series I talked about how important posting original, well-written content to the site is. In fact, this has been my main objective from day one. I’ve done my best to ensure that at least one new piece of content has been posted to the site everyday since I launched it. I’m happy to say that I now have over 150 news articles on the site, 10 web hosting reviews, and about 10 general hosting related articles. Since I now have over 100 news articles on the site, I feel comfortable submitting the site to Google News – something I’m going to talk about in depth later in this post. I’ve also been successful in getting some early links to the site. By working with my partners in the hosting industry, I’ve been able to get a few very high quality links from Host Gator, InMotion Hosting, and WebHostingHub. I’ve also gotten a few...

Pacific Coast Highway RV Trip – Long Beach, CA to Morro Bay, CA

by | Apr 16, 2011 | Travel

This was the second week of our RV trip to Alaska via the Pacific Coast Highway. It went by really fast as Morro Bay, CA was an excellent spot to be stationed for a week. The only downside was that it was VERY windy the entire time we were there. It was only in the high 50’s / very low 60’s most of the week, so the combination of the wind and cold was annoying. We made the best of it though and really enjoyed our time in the Morro Bay area. Morro Bay, CA is a small beach town of about 11,000 people, located about half between LA and San Francisco. It was nice not having any traffic, but still having a lot to do in their little downtown area. It’s also only a few miles to San Luis Obispo, which is a bigger town of about 50,000. Since Cal Poly is also based here, there is a large transient population too. It was my first time in San Luis Obispo, but I now understand why everyone always talks so highly of it. Drive From Long Beach, CA to Morro Bay, CA (Saturday) We traveled 188 miles from our stop last week, Golden Shore RV Resort in Long Beach, to our destination this week. We used a combination of I-710, I-405, US-101, and US-1 to get to Morro Dunes RV Resort in Morro Bay, CA. As expected, the drive through LA was very stressful. There was traffic most of the way, which turned into stop and go traffic for a bit. Once we got out of the reaches...