Aminge is now available on the App Store!!! Check it out here Amgine in iTunes directly or click the Available on iTunes image below. Please leave reviews and comments in iTunes or post them directly to the Amgine website found here.

Some of you may or may not know, but I have been developing an iPhone game off and on for the last year or so. Well I’m happy to say that I finally submitted it to Apple last night and it’s currently Under Review. This is a big moment for me and I’m very happy with the end result. So happy in fact that I’ve already started thinking of ideas for my next game (to Alex’s dismay).

Hopefully all goes smoothly with Apple and my Beta testers and Amgine will be available in the next week. Just in time for that Thanksgiving / Christmas rush. I’ll update the status throughout the process.

The iPhone Game (Amgine)

Check out Amgine here.

With absolutely no on-screen control Amgine takes full advantage of the iOS touch capabilities as the player easily glides with the simple navigation of your finger.

Amgine is a fast-paced puzzle game in which the player must employ a variety of strategies in order to succeed. With over 30 levels and 4 different scoring mechanisms Amgine offers the player hours of challenging fun.

In the distant world of Amgine evil enemy orbs have begun to multiply and are evolving in a plot to take over the world. They have adapted and are now able to change their appearance and color and have begun to attack in pairs. Once an attacking pair of evil enemy orbs has established a connection the only hope is for the player to destroy the connection, thus destroying the pair of evil enemy orbs. Does the player have what it takes to outlast the evil enemy orbs as they become faster, smaller and stronger? Take the challenge!

In the past years, we have walked with our good friends Austin and Kara and their adorable chihuahua Lola (who have since moved out to San Diego—boo!) and another year with Grandma and Jack while my dad did the 8K run. Every year the weather has been perfect, fairly warm and sunny, so the walk along the lake has been particularly beautiful. It starts along the path at Montrose Harbor and is basically a big loop. Owners can sign up to walk with their dogs or run by themselves. It is so fun to see all the different sizes and breeds of dogs walking, pooping, peeing, sniffing, barking along the lakefront! Hef is definitely on overload when he is there and has a blast!

PAWS does a great job of putting on quite a show. When we arrived, Montrose Harbor was packed with tents giving out tons of dog stuff. There is a local radio station covering the event, so lots of loud music. Some dogs and owners were walking around in costumes for the Halloween costume contest. There is a food tent with bagels, water, yogurt, bananas, Ann Sather cinnamon rolls (awesome!) and other great treats for before the walk/run. After, they usually have pizza along with a Adopt-a-Thon for some homeless pets. And what event in Chicago could be complete without the Jesse White Tumblers?!?!

The cost is about $35 per person, which seems a bit pricey but it is for a worthy cause. The fee also includes a goody bag with coupons, advertisements, the PAWS magazine and a long sleeve t-shirt commemorating the event. Only a small price to pay for a fun-filled morning spent getting some exercise with my family and dog while enjoying Chicago’s beautiful lakefront. Definitely worth it in my opinion!

From Hef’s Bedroom:

I give the PAWS Walk 5 outof 5 paws. I get to walk with all my friends and get lots of treats and attention. A day centered completely on me!!! Too bad the PAWS Walk is not every weekend!

As I said, I have been going consistently every week for a year now. Occasionally I will get a “mani pedi”, but typically it is just a “mani,” as they like to call it. It is very inexpensive, so that means it is easy to go often. I think it’s $14 for a manicure–pretty sure. They have a Monday and Tuesday special where you can get a “mani pedi” for $35. What a deal! Also, you don’t need an appointment. What?!?!?! Just walk in whenever you want to and they will fit you in, no problem. CJ, the owner, is so accommodating and the rest of the staff is so nice and friendly. At first I thought to try and stick with the same person, as I am accustomed to do with other places, but they are all so good it really doesn’t matter. The manicures really last all week, so chips are not a problem. Shout out to Sara, Tina, Erica, Hannah, Sunny, Uma, and Judy! Since I am cool and I am a regular, everyone knows me.

They recently expanded and remodeled the place and the décor is very tranquil. Perfect for relaxing on my lunch hour. I especially love the massaging chairs they have at the pedicure stations. There are some small private rooms in the back where they do chair massages (AWESOME!) and facials, which I will be trying soon. They feature Essie and OPI nail polishes and even paint cute flowers on the fingers and toes of the little girls that come in. How cute! The manicures include a great arm/hand and shoulder massage out of the deal and they even rub you with a hot towel too. Nail Art has a frequent manicure card, which may be the best part of this place. If you get 9 stamps on your card, your tenth mani if FREE! Honestly, this place is just the best. If you haven’t already gone you absolutely have to go. You will not be disappointed!

Nail Art
917 Ridge Road
Wilmette, IL 60091
(847) 251-0351

The Tile

We had picked out the tile months ago and had it sitting in the garage all summer. Funny how household projects all seem to follow this pattern. We (when I say ‘we’ I mean ‘Alex’) chose multi-color glass tiles that came in 12in x 12in mesh sheets from a tile warehouse in Niles where I was mistaken for a Romanian forklift worker. I was waiting next to the forklift as one of the workers was in the back of the warehouse getting our tile when another customer walked up to me and said, and I quote ‘Are you Romanian?’ while handing me his receipt. Interestingly enough this is not the first time I’ve been mistaken for a European. On a flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, I had a flight attendant recite me my full dinner and drink options in German before I stopped her and explained that I don’t speak a lick of German.

The Plan

As I said, I’ve never tiled anything before so I went to the best source of how-to information in the world, the internet. In a matter of minutes I was a tiling expert and was pretty confident I could build an extension on the back of our house with the help of the internet, but that’s another story. With my list of materials in hand I set off to the best source of tiling materials in the world, Home Depot.

The Execution

Three things I learned while tiling.

• Tiling is a Mess

The grout was flying everywhere, behind the stove, on the countertop, in the sink and in my hair. Everywhere!!! What a mess, I swear it took me longer to clean up than it did to grout the tile.

• Cutting Small Glass Tiles is Impossible

The glass tiles were approximately 3/4in square in a 12in x 12in mesh sheet making them flexible and very difficult to cut with a wet saw. To make matters worse the clamps provided by the almighty Home Depot saw weren’t made to fit our specific tile. Lets just say that safety flew out the window after a few scrap sheets were wasted. It wasn’t pretty, but with the help of a pair of vice grips, a couple of shims and a home made clamp I was able to cut a few tiles to fit in the corners.

• Glass Tiles Look Wonderful

You can judge for yourself, just take a look at the before and after pictures, but I think it made a huge difference. The kitchen looks great and it was well worth the effort!

The Aftermath

Unfortunately for Alex, I’m ready to take on any tiling project. I already have plans for the kitchen floor, bathroom floor and shower. Watch out world, tile man is coming! Now I just need a cool green spandex suit like the guy on Always Sunny.

All in all, though, this time was pretty good. It wasn’t a sold out show, so we had a little breathing room. And we got the tickets for free, so we only had to pay for our food and booze, most of which we purchased before and brought with us. It ended up being quite a chilly night though! It was only in the 60s to start and then the temp definitely dropped down to the 50s by the end. The gift shop was doing particularly well selling Ravinia sweatshirts and blankets that night. We saw several suckers walk by as we ate our picnic! I guess summer is officially over in Chicago.

The food we brought consisted of a few varieties of artisanal cheese (gouda, goat cheese, huntsman) some sea salt and rosemary crackers, french bread, hummus and peppers, a nice bottle of red wine, and 3 brownies that I hate to admit I polished off myself after Dave only took one or two measly bites (wimp!). We did end up buying a margarita style flatbread pizza from one of the restaurants at Ravinia, which I have to say was just OK. It could have been a bit warmer. Wait—maybe just warm in general since it was ice cold when we ate it. But it was still tasty.

If you didn’t want to pack your own food, you could certainly choose from a wide assortment from the restaurants there, as long as you are willing to pay for it! Prices, like any concession, are a bit more money. There were several people walking with chinese food containers from one restaurant, and they also had burgers, salads, and sandwiches. We looked into a second bottle of wine (we only brought one) and it was going to be at least $35, so we took a pass. There were even a few brave souls eating ice cream, which I cannot believe considering it was freezing outside.

Another great thing about finally going back to Raveenia, I mean Ravinia, was that Dave and I finally got to use our picnic basket/backpack we got as a wedding present from my neighbor almost 4 years ago. That thing is awesome! I should have brought it down from the attic ages ago! Williams Sonoma definitely has everything figured out. We had everything we could possibly need in that thing—plastic plates, wine glasses, silverware, tablecloths, napkins, knives, containers, even a teeny cutting board for the cheese! In fact, there were several parties around us who kept coming over to borrow our wine opener because they had forgotten to bring their own.

And for the entertainment, Nelly Furtado put on a pretty good show. Although I only know her popular music from Kiss FM, I guess she does some spanish stuff too which wasn’t all that bad. She kept saying stuff in her cute but strange Canadian/Spanish accent, which was a little hard to figure out. And I told Dave that I think she’s from Portugal as well, but he said she couldn’t be FROM Portugal AND Canada, which doesn’t make sense to me at all. Dave doesn’t make sense most of the time. The best part? Nelly yelling over the mic that it didn’t seem so cold out tonight. Yeah right lady. You are up on stage jumping around with 10,000 watt bulbs shining on you. We are all out on the lawn in 50 degree weather with the wind whipping up trying to keep our pretty tea lights from blowing out.

Maybe next summer we will go earlier in the season!

If you haven’t ever gone, you are missing out–seriously. Can you think of anything better than spending a beautiful sunny afternoon along the lakefront drinking a cold one and pinching your ears shut as a F14 fighter jet goes screaming past you? Or watching a plane make smoke loop-d-loops and then go straight into a dive bomb, only to pull up at the last second before almost touching the water? I don’t think so! And honestly, the ONLY way to watch the show is from the water. Lucky for us, we ended up watching the show from a beautiful boat this year and it was incredible. It definitely made the experience of watching the show from the water even better.

We took a lot of photos and videos of all the action. Check them out below!

Chicago Air and Water Show

Pictures from the Chicago Air and Water Show 2010. Blue Angels and others.

11 Photos

WordPress

Why WordPress? Simply enough, it seemed to be the industry standard from what I could tell in my research. By research I mean Googling. Off topic for a moment, but do you think Googling should be classified as a skill? I think it should. I often ask interviewees this question. Many of them are a bit perplexed by the idea at first but through some prodding they come to the understanding that in our field it is extremely difficult to know everything about a particular programming language, software, browser, etc… and if you can find the specific nugget of information you’re looking for in a shorter amount of time than your colleagues it might be classifiable as a skill. You should Google the term ‘Googling, or ‘Is Googling A Skill’, it’s interesting. Back to the topic at hand, WordPress seemed like the best choice for our needs, it has a well established blogging framework, easy to navigate admin section, a plethora of free templates and utilities (plugins) and was easy enough to learn in a day or two such that I could customize our site to our liking. If you know PHP you’ll be able to easily understand WordPress. Plus WordPress is Open Source, which I tend to prefer (that’s a whole other topic). Check out the history and documentation for more information.

Free WordPress Templates

When starting our site I immediately gravitated towards free WordPress templates for three reasons; I didn’t want to waste the time to create a WordPress site from scratch, there are plenty of free templates available online (I’ve listed a number of sites below that I perused in my search) and of course they’re free. There are also plenty of WordPress themes that cost a pretty penny and most likely worth it (better SEO management, customization, etc…), but my suggestion when starting a blog is to limit as much of the overhead costs as possible. Most bloggers warn that making money blogging takes months to years to see decent returns, so I figured we’d start small and see what happens. I focused on free WordPress templates which already contained customization for Google Adsense.

• 18 Adsense Optimized WordPress to Maximize you Contextual Ad Earnings
• 21 Free AdSense-Ready WordPress Themes

Once we decided on a theme (honestly this took over two weeks as Alex and I have different opinions on look and feel) I installed WordPress on my local machine to get better handle on it. It wasn’t too difficult and the WordPress documentation helped a ton. To be honest, the basics of a WordPress site are rather simplified for the user which is great. There are few things you must do and the rest is styling and customization.

Bluehost Hosting

After deciding on the theme it was time to purchase a site and hosting services. I had used Bluehost before (davealexwedding.com – sadly we didn’t keep this site going) so I was comfortable with them and after some more quick ‘research’ I found them to still be one of the top rated hosting sites. The price was good ($4.95 / month for a 12 month contract) and WordPress installation is literally a one click setup. The total time for purchasing the site, installing WordPress, uploading our files and the site being up took a couple of hours. It’s still a little early to report on any down time or customer service issues so we’ll see how it goes.

That covers the initial setup of the blog. Overall it took us approximately two weeks and most of that as I said was deciding on a theme. For the most part it was a pretty painless process and having done it once I could easily get a blog setup in as little as a day. However, since the blog has been up I have done quite a bit of customization, Adsense and SEO management that have proven to be a little more difficult. I’m still working on these areas and hope to have a post up shortly with more in depth information on how we are approaching these areas and how that affects our progress of reaching our goals.

About a year or so ago, I found this adorable shop in Hubbard Woods that I get almost everything from now. Well, actually that is a lie. My mom found the shop and had been telling me to go for about 6 months and I finally listened to her. It is a tiny place, just about a “hallway” of a store. They’ve been there over 10 years and they have a great local following. It is the place to go for clothes and cute baby stuff.

And what is the name of this perfect paradise for shopping do you ask? Well, it’s Randoons Wearables and Whatnots, of course!

Everything is priced very reasonable. I’m talking shirts from $25 to $60 or so. The pieces are definitely on the casual side, but I have found a few shirts I can wear to work too. They have adorable dresses, jewelry, purses and they carry some cute shoes now as well. They also have a good selection of baby clothes and gifts—and with all of my cousins having babies right now I can shop for me and shop for them at the same time.

Another thing I love about this store is the sales people! I know what you are thinking about sales people and especially sales people in small shops– they can be a little pushy most of the time. Not at Randoons though! The owner is as sweet as pie and makes you feel right at home. The other woman that works there is just as sweet too. She has helped me pick clothes that will work well with my body type and also pull pieces together to help complete an outfit, which I love because it always seems like I buy a bunch of stuff that doesn’t go together!

They have a variety of designers featured, although none that I have heard of before. I’m not a “big name” shopper. (If I want that, then I would go to a boring department store.) The clothes are unique and I always get compliments on what I wear.

Randoons will run cute sales depending on the season or holiday. I’ve been able to pick an egg out of an Easter basket to discover what percentage discount I get off my purchase, I get a coupon in the mail on my birthday, they host spring break sales when everyone else is out of town, and have a birthday party every year for their anniversary (which is where I discovered cupcake bombs! But that is for another blog post.)

Oh yeah—they are also dog friendly! They sometimes have a small selection of dog clothes and the owner has 2 dogs that are there on occasion as well.

Randoons in my opinion, is just the best. If you haven’t gone yet, you definitely need to bring some girlfriends and check it out! And with the prices, you can walk out with a lot of clothes for little money!

From Hefner’s Bedroom:

I give Randoons 5 out of 5 paws because anything that keeps my mom this happy deserves 5 out of 5.

It is a pretty typical yogurt shop, you can choose from the several varieties they have each day and they also offer low sugar options which is nice. Anything swirled is my favorite. I have had chocolate and peanut butter swirled and it was umm umm good. I’m in LOVE ! (ok ,bad pun. I apologize.) But it does hit the spot on a hot summer day and even fits into my South Beach Diet guidelines. (Actually it does not, it just makes me feel better saying that.) They have a ton of toppings too! Oreos are my favorite or maybe Reese Pieces. Dave likes gummy bears on his ice cream—can you believe that? Any way you order it will be good, even if you are a weirdo like my husband.

The only downfall, in my opinion, is that you will have to navigate your way through the tons of kids who hang out there after school at all the tables outside. But you gotta work for all those unnecessary calories, right? On the other hand, if you are a kid reading this, check out the hip new hangout in Winnetka! It’s where all the cool people go who like ice cream and want to get away from their parents.

In addition to the yummy yogurt, they have salads, wraps, paninis and baked potatoes if you want lunch. From what I’ve been told it is good food, inexpensive, and a quick bite. I need my frozen yogurt though so I cant waste time on nutritious food. And guess what??? Hef loves Loves’ too! Big surprise, considering he likes anything that we are eating that he is not supposed to have. He did get a little lick from Mom and enjoyed the sunshine on the patio.

From Hefner’s Bedroom:

3 out of 5 paws for Love’s. I will have to reassess my review once I eat a full meal and not just a measly lick of ice cream.