The Path To Riches

Weekend!

2013-05-17T10:39:00.001-04:00

Monkey Monday

2013-05-13T07:41:00.004-04:00

We're back from vacation to Riviera Maya Mexico and I haven't had time to write anything about it, but we had a great time! The highlight of the trip was our excursion to the Jungle Place, where you get to hang out INSIDE the world of a monkey sanctuary for a little over an hour. SO cool, will talk more about it in another post, but as I was looking through the pictures this morning this one cracked me up. The monkey and I both have the same expression, HAH...We're both looking at the baby monkey overhead. And I loved that it looks like the other one is sticking her tongue out. I agree, it's the first day back to work after a long vacation, I say PSFT and stick my tongue out to that as well! Happy Monday!

Fun times with Fiverr!

2013-04-29T07:00:00.000-04:00

What exactly is Fiverr, you ask? It's a site where people will do just about anything for $5! It ranges from the completely bizarre, like a woman that will record a video hula hooping while saying anything you want, to very useful things like website logo creation, business promotion, YouTube video creation, etc. Check out the full post that I did over on my niche site. You'll be surprised at all the different things you can get someone to do for just $5, there really is something for everyone!

Terrific Tuesday

2013-04-23T07:00:00.000-04:00

I like to FaceTime chat with my nephew Max when I get home from work cause he's just waking up and always fun! Monday I got to follow along as we got Max and his cousin Kinsley up from their naps. I love that they're so attentive and they always smile when they see me. I might not be there in person, but it's the next best thing. I also got him to do his head shake thing 3 times, he made the fart/raspberry noise on command and since I said "cracker" they both got to get a cracker as well. You're welcome guys!

Magic Bullet Blender Review

2013-04-22T07:00:00.000-04:00

I've been wanting to do a review of our Magic Bullet Blender for a while, so here goes!

First off, I want to give a point of reference. We previously had a Black and Decker BL5000 blender and that thing was the absolute worst for smoothies! I fought with that thing for about a month, thinking that all blenders must work the same way, but all blenders are NOT created equal.

The issue I had with the old one was that the blade would spin forever and none of the frozen fruit would make it down to the blade to get chopped up. No matter what setting it was on, no matter how much liquid I added, no matter how many times I took the glass container off and shook it, it would take forever to end up with an actual drinkable smoothie.

My sister Jen had turned me on to smoothies several months back and she never seemed to have a problem making hers. She was using the Magic Bullet and that is what I decided to try out as well. I read a ton of reviews, some great, some middle of the road, but based on Jen's good experiences I decided to go for it and am so glad I did.

I have probably 3 smoothies a week on average and I think the wifey has one or two as well. I utilize frozen strawberries and a frozen bag mix of blackberries/blueberries and raspberries, along with a banana, sometimes spinach and flaxseed mix combined with some ice and water. I occasionally add protein powder for post workout smoothies also.

The Magic Bullet does a great job grinding down all of that into a super tasty smoothie with no lumps. What I like most is that it is fast and there is hardly any cleanup required. Since the cup is actually what holds your mixture, you only have to clean the bottom blade part after your smoothie is done which takes 2 seconds. Here is a quick video showing how quick/easy it is to make a smoothie:

After you're done drinking the smoothie you have to clean your cup, but that's it. No huge container to cleanup and store each time.

The 26 piece Magic Bullet kit comes with a ton of different cup sizes and tops and mine came with the standard 2 blades and 1 new ice shaver blade as well.

I have utilized mine exclusively for smoothies, well actually I also made one Strawberry Daiquiri with it also, but if you are looking to do lots of stuff with the Magic Bullet, it comes with a ton of simple recipes as well. The wifey utilized it to make fresh salsa one time and it turned out great.

Conclusion

Bottom line, if you're looking for a blender for smoothies, look no further. The Magic Bullet is it! I've utilized it for 4 months now with no issues whatsoever. It just works.

One suggestion, be sure to get smoothie straws also, they work great. Enjoy!

Wedding Weekend

2013-04-15T07:00:00.000-04:00

This past weekend we had a rehearsal dinner on Friday and wedding to attend on Saturday. Our good friends Sean and Rachel were getting married and we were asked to do a reading at the ceremony. They are the friends we hang out the most with and we always have a good time.

I met Sean when we worked together shortly after we moved here in 2003 and we've been good friends ever since. Sean met Rachel at work as well a few years later and Rachel and my wifey became good friends as well.

Our reading had a portion about a truce bell. The bell is for them to ring if an argument arises and they want to put a stop to it. They asked us to do the reading because they say we 'never' fight, not entirely true of course. We were honored to take part in their special day and everything went off without a hitch.

Here is the reading: "Early 16^th century legend tells us that a fishing boat from an Irish village was captured by pirates and the crew taken as slaves. One man, Richard Joyce, was to be married the same week he was captured. Years went by and Richard became a master goldsmith and shaped a unique ring for the girl he could never forget at home. The design was born from their love. At the center, a heart symbolizing their love, on top a crown symbolizing their loyalty, and two hands holding the heart, symbolizing the friendship they shared. After eight years, he escaped and returned to his village to find his love had never married. He gave her the ring and they were soon married.

We ask God to bless this bell today for Sean and Rachel as a symbol of their love, loyalty and friendship. Should a quarrel or lover’s tiff arise, Sean and Rachel should ring the bell to remind them of the love they feel today.

Anna and Sydney (Sean's daughters) tell us they believe this bell will get a good workout."

Great friends, good times and a very happy couple. Congrats to Sean and Rachel and we wish them a lifetime of happiness together!

Sean and his daughters Anna and Sydney

Rachel and her Dad

You may kiss the bride

First dance as husband and wife

Father daughter dance

Sean and Anna dancing

Sean and Sydney dancing

The 4 of us having a good time!

Our friend Chris and his girlfriend


Cake cutting

Cake feeding, no smushing

Departure time with sparklers

Adios!

Friday Funday - Max Edition

2013-04-05T15:25:00.000-04:00

Our nephew Max is at that so freakin cute/fun stage and it is always great when I get to see him on FaceTime. Today I needed a dose of Max and as always, he did not disappoint! He always does something funny. He is so good at imitating, like if I stick my tongue out or shake my head he will do it also.

Today he was doing something new, his Daddy taught him how to shake his head back and forth real fast and with all that hair he has, he had me laughing so hard that he kept doing it cause he knew I was getting a kick out of it.

And right after, he almost gave his cousin Kinsley another "love" bite. Close call.

And at the end when it was nap time, GiGi told him to give kisses and he took out his pacifier and would give kisses to the iPad screen. So cute. Love the Buddo!

New head shake fun!

Haha, great face!

I'm pretty funny GiGi!

Poor unsuspecting Kinsley ALMOST got another love bite. :o)

Visit From Mom - Easter Weekend

2013-04-01T07:00:00.000-04:00

My mom came to visit Wednesday night-Sunday evening of Easter weekend for some good eats, good times and relaxation. She picked a great weekend weather wise, started out a bit cooler in the high 60s when she arrived, but picked right up to the mid to upper 70s by Saturday/Sunday. I'll give you the full play-by-play of the weekend activities.

On the agenda were visits to several new restaurants she hasn't been to and a few favorites as well. On the way back from the airport to pick her up we spontaneously hit up Seasons 52 at the Town Center. That is a nice place with good ambiance and a portion of their menu changes with the seasons. All the entrees and desserts are under 550 calories or something like that, but they're still filling.

Seasons 52 dessert for Mom

Thursday night we walked over to our local Mexican place and my mom not being a big fan of Mexican, always gets the chicken wings, but we have to say, they are pretty darn good!

In between all the eating, we got in a few nice long walks on the beach. 2.8 miles down to the pylons on Friday and 3.2 miles down to the pier and some shops on Saturday.

Friday night we hit up KC Crave, which is another yummy local place at the beach that opened up within the last year or so. After dinner, we went over to Nippers Beach Grille and Billy's Boat House for some live music, drinks and to check out the sunset over the Intracoastal waterway.

Dinner at KC Crave

Drinks & Live Music at Nippers/Billy's Boathouse Marina

Sunset over the Intracoastal waterway

Interesting Hula girl on the hood of a car in the parking lot

We also decided to hit up the St Augustine Trolley Tour as a little touristy something to do since we were heading down that way for dinner Saturday night.

Freaky machine at the "penny" arcade by the Trolley

Mom on the trolley

St Augustine Bay Front

Magnolia Street with a mossy tree canopy on the Trolley Tour

Apparently, the colder temperatures in the north and one of the first perfect weekends weather wise down here gave lots of folks the idea to go to St Augustine for the weekend. It was the busiest we've ever see it and the Trolley guy said the only other time he's seen it this busy is the 4th of July weekend. He had been pulling double shifts for 2 weeks, since this is Spring break time for lots of folks and the Easter weekend as well.

That turned the normally 90 minute Trolley ride into a full 2 hours just to make the one loop around the downtown St Augustine area. That was fine for something different to do, but whew, it sure was a bumpy ride and so many stops with all the traffic made it a bit long. Had it not been as busy, we could have fit in a stop at the San Sebastian winery or taken a tour of the Whetstone Chocolate factory.

We went to Cap's on the Water for dinner, one of my Mom's favorite places to go.

View from our table at Cap's on the Water

And we ended up the weekend Sunday with some homemade Minastra, which is basically a Zucchini soup type dish from my Gma, that the wifey does a wonderful job with. Not your traditional Easter dinner faire, but something my Mom has been wanting for a while and I love it any time!!

All in all some very good eats, drinks and good times. And of course we were keeping up with my sisters via pictures of Max and Hadley, as they were together for Easter weekend in Mississippi.

Max hunting for Easter eggs

Hadley in a Lamb Chop looking bunny-ish outfit

Hope everyone had a great Easter weekend!!

iOS 6.1.3 Update

2013-03-20T07:00:00.000-04:00

I am getting into some good stuff of the Forever Affiliate program and need to get back to it, but wanted to let you know there is an iOS 6.1.3 update available and wanted to give you the dealio.

The main thing that this update does is fix a vulnerability where someone that knows how, could circumvent your lock code to gain access to your phone if it is in their possession. This is done by utilizing the emergency call feature and doing a few other things that I won't mention on here. Additionally, there are improvements to Apple Maps Japan. There are no other add-ons, features or fixes. There are however, breaks.

The big thing that this update does is remove the ability to jailbreak your phone and if it is already jailbroken, it won't be any longer. If you do update to 6.1.3, there is currently no way to go back to being jailbroken. In other words, if you have any intention of jailbreaking your iOS 6 device at any point in the near future or enjoy your jailbroken iOS 6 device, do not update!

This has been a public service announcement from someone that feels Apple is doing a huge public DISservice to themselves and the popularity of their devices by locking things back down. The evasi0n jailbreak for iOS 6 has been installed on over 18.2 million new devices since the release last month. That was only 43 days ago, yes 18.2 million.

So, there is obviously a huge demand for having the ability to customize and tweak your device the way you want to and by locking things back down and not embracing the hobbyist/geek community, I think they will lose out on a portion of that community to Android. This is coming from someone that recently purchased a very tiny piece of Apple stock through options (much cheaper way to try and capture some gain on the stock from these levels) that wants to see the company do well and wants to see sales increase and innovation thrive.

Ask, Believe, Receive

2013-03-18T07:59:00.002-04:00

I wanted to get out a new post today and the inspiration came from an email today from the Secret Scrolls, which is an inspirational/motivational email that you can subscribe to on thesecret.tv Start off the week asking and believing and get ready to receive! Happy Monday!

Paddy Not Patty

2013-03-15T07:00:00.000-04:00

Photo Courtesy of paddynotpatty.com

Happy early St Paddy's day! Yes PADDY. Who knew? Not me, definitely not George Takei, but lots of his 3 million+ Facebook fans did and they made sure he was aware when he had it incorrect.

You would think that since it is Patrick, Patty makes sense, but as you're probably aware Patty is typically a female name and because of that, it is some what of an insult.

As paddynotpatty.com says:

It's Paddy, not Patty. Ever.

Saint Patrick’s Day? Grand.

Paddy’s Day? Sure, dead-on.

St. Pat’s? Aye, if ye must.

St. Patty? No, ye goat!

So as you get your weekend festivities on, don't be a goat! Post with confidence on all the social media outlets, knowing when you say Paddy you won't be offending any Leprechauns! Enjoy!

Secret Scrolls

2013-03-14T07:00:00.000-04:00

I've mentioned a bunch o' times I'm a big fan of The Secret and I also subscribe to the Secret Scrolls where they will email you something inspirational/insightful about once a week free of charge. I'm also a fan of their Facebook page where they post about every other day. Thought I'd share this one I just read in my email, enjoy!

A Secret Scrolls message from Rhonda Byrne
Creator of The Secret

From The Secret Daily Teachings

When a big change occurs in your life it forces you to change direction. Sometimes the new path may not be easy, but you can be absolutely certain that there is magnificence for you on the new path. You can be absolutely certain that the new path contains things that you could not have experienced otherwise.

When we look back at a negative event that occurred in the past, we often see how in fact it transformed our life. We see how that event directed us toward a life that we would not change for anything.

May the joy be with you,

Rhonda Byrne
The Secret... bringing joy to billions

Catch-Up: Oz and Concours d'Elegance Amelia Island

2013-03-12T14:20:00.003-04:00

Thought I'd stop by the blog and say heyyyyyyy!

I've been busy lately with that new Forever Affiliate marketing program that I mentioned a week or two ago. So if I'm kinda quiet here, that is why. It really is an awesome program with the latest and greatest info on how to setup your own affiliate sites and generate sales and I'm about half way through.

It includes some theory/background info, but I'd say it's 90% hands on with step by step videos on exactly what to do to create your own successful affiliate sites. It has helped me immensely so far. I was on the right track with one site that I setup, but I was completely going about things the wrong way. It is definitely worth checking out if you're at all interested in affiliate/internet marketing. If you have any questions, let me know!

This past weekend we wanted to pack in some activities cause we knew I'd be stuck home this coming weekend due to being on-call.

On Saturday, we saw the new Oz movie, it was decent, not a must see in the theater, but good. I especially liked that the flying monkeys were still scary this time around. Anyone who grew up watching the original Oz knows what I'm talking about. Many a child was tormented by nightmares of the wicked witch and her flying monkey army back in the day!

On Sunday, the weather was perfect in the low to mid 70s, so we decided to do something we've been wanting to do for a few years and attended the annual Concours d'Elegance on Amelia Island. It is always touted as one of the best vintage/rare/expensive vehicle showcases in the world and it did not disappoint.

I'd say my favorites were the McLaren's and Lamborghini's. They had everything from immaculate vintage vehicles from the early 1900s, to concept vehicles from over the years, to Ferraris to vintage racing vehicles to the completely strange. Here is a link to several that were up for auction that sold for up to 4.5 million! :-o A few highlight pictures are below.

Hope everyone out there had a great weekend and hope you're enjoying the additional hour of daylight and warmer temps as well! The first day of spring is just around the corner, March 20th, woot!


McLaren

Lamborghini Countach, my favorite when I was a little kid!

New Lamborghini

From the "What Were They Thinking" Category


"Shark"

"Vegas" Style ?

Buddy and Sage Win Cutest Pets of February!

2013-03-08T08:29:00.002-05:00

The wifey entered a picture of two of our kitties, Buddy and Sage, into a cutest pet contest on our Vet's Facebook page and they won! We're definitely biased, but come on, how cute is this picture? They're best friends. We haven't seen them do this again, so we're glad we caught it. Happy Friday!

I take back what I said earlier about them not snuggling since then, I just caught these shots today. Such good boys, at least to each other, not so much towards Monkey.

Happy Birthday Mommasita!

2013-03-05T17:46:00.001-05:00

Happy Birthday to my MOM today! She turns 65 today, shhhh, don't tell!

If you have her contact info, be sure to Facebook, text, call, etc. and might as well do all of the above cause chances are she won't remember anyway! We love ya mom! ;)

Make $300 to $3,000 in Passive Income

2013-03-01T12:07:00.000-05:00

That is the claim of a new Affiliate Marketing system by Andrew Hansen. He has been successfully doing Affiliate Marketing online for over 7 years and his new program takes into account all of the new Google algorithm changes that took place over the last year. I purchased the program myself and did a more detailed post on my niche site here. If you want to go right to the program details, you can click here.

If you do end up checking out the program, drop me a comment below or email to chris "@" thepathtoriches.com and we can go through the program together and help each other out along the way! I plan to do posts on my NicheSiteTool.com site, detailing my progress along the way, so head on over there and subscribe if you want to follow along as well.

SpaceX Dragon Live Friday Launch

2013-03-01T00:30:00.000-05:00

SpaceX is launching their Dragon cargo rocket up to the International Space station today at 10:10am Eastern time! I'm pretty excited about that, because we missed the last one and since I will be working from home tomorrow and the weather looks good for launch, I'm hoping to have a birds eye view here at the beach.

Unfortunately, all I got to see was the smoke trail. Bummer.

For anyone interested in watching live, check out the live feed below. Also, here is a link to the SpaceX Livestream site. Enjoy!

Live stream videos at Ustream

Kindness Snowball

2013-02-28T13:01:00.002-05:00

Jen S has always been one to participate in and promote acts of kindness and here is another great example of how one act can snowball into a wave of kindness! Keep up the great work and let's keep that ball rolling!

"A new co-worker was hired a little over a month ago. She just found out that I post (inspirational) quotes in our bathroom each week so she sent me a link to her blog where she wrote about it. The quotes reached her enough to write about it, then if you read the 17 comments below the post, 5 of them mention the bathroom quotes. Amazing how one simple act can snowball!"

Wordless Wednesday

2013-02-27T14:03:00.001-05:00

Max Birthday Party Weekend!

2013-02-19T07:00:00.000-05:00

We drove up to attend Max's Bday weekend festivities and we had a great time! It's great that they have a huge house now that can accomodate lots of us at the same time and thanks to my mom for surrendering her room for the weekend as well!

It was great to finally see little Miss Hadley, she is cute as a button! She makes lots of little noises and some not so little noises as well. We got to see lots of smiles and even a few giggles too. And Buddo was of course the center of attention since it was his big party weekend! It was of course great to see Jen, David, Michelle, James, my Mom, Aunt Cathy, Maddie and Molly as well! And thanks to my sisters for sharing 4 jars of canned tomatoes, woot woot!

When we arrived I told Max to smile and say cheese and he smiled and made what I now call his "cheese face" and this was apparently a new thing that I started without even knowing it! I thought it was something he always does when someone takes his picture, but I guess not. I must have squinted and made a funny face when I told him to say cheese and it is something he repeated throughout the weekend and it is super cute especially with his little teeth visible on top and bottom.

I know I am seriously biased, but I can't get enough of these two little munchkins. They are so stinkin' cute/fun! Hope to see them again soon!

Cheese!

Cheese face with a pacifier.

Max trying out the new motorcycle we got him

Smash cake fun

Looks a bit like an Elvis face...thank you, thank you very much.

Such a cute one with wifey and Molly

Check out my teeth!

Scary face! Roarrrr!

Cute as can be!

Little Miss Maddie

Little Miss Hadley with her single dimple!

Looks like a big girl in this one. Reminds me of Jen as a baby.

Pretty girl.

Baby Hadley

Wifey got Max to mimic her with the "bladle bladle" tongue

noise and he some other noises, so funny!

Acts of Kindness Update and Random Stuff

2013-02-15T07:00:00.000-05:00

Blog Visual Fix
You might not have even noticed, but I apologize for an unacceptable visual snafu that has been on my main page since I converted over to my existing layout quite some time ago. For the current blog posts that show on my main page, the beginning text of each blog post wrapped around a set of share buttons and it was visually unappealing. I didn't give a whole lot of thought to it, I just figured it was an issue with the template.

The other day I said to myself, "self, why the heck haven't you tried to fix that?!" I also noticed that none of the share buttons worked anyway, so not only did it not look good it wasn't functional either. That is truly unacceptable. So I manually removed the share buttons at the beginning of each post, which fixed the text issue and I added a Facebook like button to the end of each post. Problem solved!

Max's 1st Birthday Party
We're super excited to be heading to see our nephew Max, niece Hadley and the rest of the gang at Max's 1st Birthday party! Luckily everything fell into place and we are really looking forward to it!

Acts of Kindness Update
I've been slacking on the acts of kindness, so when the opportunity presented itself the other night we took it! I've always wanted to leave a big tip like $50 or $100+, but being relatively frugal it never seemed like the right time.

However, we said that once we sell the house, the $200 we get from the buyer for some household items would be utilized for the year of kindness, so since we got that $ last week it was time! Specifically I wanted to at least leave 1 big tip and see how it felt. We had gone to dinner at Bonefish Grill and we said if it feels right, we will go for it. Our server Jarrod was friendly, personable, knowledgeable and very attentive so it all lined up. Given the relatively high bill, it's not an amazingly huge tip, but it was a start and still fun!

That was inspired by something I had read online last summer called Aaron's Wish. It was about a young guy Aaron that passed away way too early and in his will he asked his friends/family to go to a restaurant and give the server a $500 tip. They recorded a video of the event and it was super fun and emotional to watch.

When the video was posted online it went viral and people wanted to donate so that that his friends and family could do more $500 tips in Aaron's name and apparently they're on a tour around the country right now to keep it going! They're recording video of each $500 tip and it's very fun to see. How cool...they are not anonymous or random act of kindness, but like I said before, any act of kindness is great, whether random or not! I would love to do that at least once this year!

To support the cause, I decided just now to create a PayPal account to be able to accept donations and I put a little donation box in the right hand column. 100% of all proceeds donated will be utilized to support our year of kindness. It would be REALLY great if we can get enough $ to do something similar, to really make a memorable day/week for some unsuspecting/deserving person or perhaps lots of people!

Any amount large or small would be greatly appreciated and I will be sure to post about any acts of kindness that we do either here, on our Facebook page or both! Thanks ahead of time and let's keep those kindness ideas coming!

Happy Valentine's Day!

2013-02-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day to the BESTEST wifey!!

Happy Birthday Max!

2013-02-09T07:00:00.000-05:00

Max is 1 year old already! Crazy...It's been super fun to see him develop, but it's time to slow things down a bit. This is a fun age and he seems to be having a great time, so let's pause things a bit where we're at! Here are some highlight pics from the past year when he was visiting here and the videos were from a recent visit to Max's pad. Happy Birthday Buddo, can't wait to see ya next week!

Fun in the tunnel

Dancing Max

Jimmy Buffett Jacksonville Concert Feb 7, 2013

2013-02-08T11:49:00.002-05:00

This was our first Jimmy Buffett concert and I have to say, it was well worth it! We are not hard core Parrot Heads or anything, but we've always been big fans of his music, his laid back beachy party vibe and we missed him when he was in town a year or two ago and didn't want to miss it this time.

We heard ahead of time to be sure to check out the tailgaters and they were certainly in full effect. The arena in downtown Jacksonville is right next to the Jaguars stadium and all the lots were open for parking/tailgating and it appeared that many had been setup for all day festivities.

We arrived around 7 for the 8pm show and it was dark by then and I didn't want to snap flash shots of random people, so I instead grabbed a few from the jacksonville.com site to share and I also included a few of my own videos.

If you get the chance and like his music even a little, I'd definitely say go check it out! If you can make a whole evening of it and the weather is good, by all means, get a group and tailgate as well!

Had to include this one for Sandy/Jen S. They love to do pictures with their tongues out and I immediately thought of them on this one!

One of the many tailgating setups.

Being a fan of community shots, this was quite an interesting contraption. However, I bet it results in more spilled shots than anything else. Looks fun though, but I'd be careful not to chip a tooth! :p

More partiers, complete with a little kiddie pool and a big fin on their vehicle as well.

It appeared to be pretty close to a sold-out show, good times!

Changes in Latitude

Southern Cross, my Mom's favorite

It's 5:00 Somewhere

iOS 6.1 Untethered Jailbreak Now Available!

2013-02-04T12:08:00.000-05:00

Brought to you by evad3rs, the iOS6 untethered jailbreak is now available! Thanks guys!! Be aware, the site will probably be overwhelmed most of today since so many people have been waiting for this!

What is the best way to jailbreak your iOS 6 device?

Planetbeing recommends the following steps below, be sure to temporarily disable your screen lock code before proceeding.

1) Make up a backup with iTunes.

2) Restore the device with iTunes. Select "Set up as new device" on the device itself during the setup process after the device is restored. Do not select "Restore from iCloud backup" or "Restore from iTunes backup" yet.

Note: When I tried to do this step the first time it told me that "there are purchased items on this iPhone that have not been transferred". So I had to go into iTunes and in the file menu button all the way in the upper left, I selected show menu bar. Then under the file menu I went into Devices and selected 'Transfer Purchases'. It told me my PC wasn't authorized, since this was the first time I was using iTunes, so I went into the Store menu and selected 'Authorize this Computer'. After entering my Apple ID/password I was then able to go into Devices and 'Transfer Purchases' successfully and could continue on with this step.

3) Jailbreak your device. First disconnect the USB cable from your computer. Go to http://evasi0n.com/ and download the correct version for your particular computer. Launch the executable file and then re-connect your USB cable and select Jailbreak. It will take a minute or two and then will tell you to go into your device and click the Jailbreak icon. It was on the screen to the right of the main screen for me. I clicked that, it rebooted a time or two, said it was 'Finding offsets...' for approximately 7 minutes and then it rebooted one more time and then it seemed to hang at the Apple startup icon for a few minutes. I then did the home/power button reset and things came up fine.

4) Open up Cydia on your device to allow it to "Prepare the filesystem". Once that is complete, go back in and your device is now jailbroken! Congratulations! Now you can go back into Cydia and download various apps and tweaks. The first time you launch Cydia after it prepares the file system it will ask you 'Who are you?'. This page says when in doubt, choose 'Hacker' as that setting is needed for some tweaks, which is what I picked.

5) Start iTunes again and select "Restore from this backup" to get everything back on there.

Be patient while the jailbreaking process is running, don't start iTunes or Xcode in the meanwhile. The best is to not touch the computer until the end of the jailbreaking process.

If you run into any problems, here is a page listing some known issues.

Since there are so many people running the jailbreak today, Cydia is quite overwhelmed and you will probably get an operation timed out or internal server error when trying to download apps/themes through Cydia. But you can at least look at the tweaks/apps/themes out there and put together a wish list of items to download when things calm down a bit. The first one I tried to download was the Chuck Norris Facts for Siri, cause who wouldn't want to have that?! But like I mentioned, due to the overwhelming traffic, I'll have to wait a bit or keep trying. Since I'm impatient, I'll keep trying.

With some persistence I was able to get my first Cydia app SBSettings and it is very cool! Here is a screenshot showing what you can do with it:

I set it to enable by double clicking the status bar and it will give the IP of your phone on a WiFi network, on your regular carrier network as well as showing you available memory and it also allows you to customize which easy access buttons you want to put in there.

I added buttons for Brightness, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Data so you can quickly turn those options on and off without having to dig into your settings app to find them. There is a lot more you can do with the app, for instance you can hide any unwanted/unused icons that you normally cannot remove, you can have the app remove your cell phone carrier name in the upper left, etc.

Here is a prior post I did listing some cool free tweaks you can do with your jailbroken phone and here is a post I found today listing the best jailbreak apps in Cydia.

This was my first jailbreak of an iOS device, since it's the first iOS device I've owned. I rooted my previous Android phone as soon as I could and really I just want to do it because I can. I rooted the Android phone to remove Ads and to be able to utilize the phone as a WiFi hotspot, but since I can already do that with my iPhone 5 on the Verizon shared data plan for free, it's more just to see what else I can do with the phone as far as tweaks and customizations.

By the way, it is legal to do. You might have read articles recently saying it is illegal to unlock your phone, but that is something completely different. Unlocking allows you to move your phone from one carrier to another. Jailbreaking allows you to install software outside of the normal Apple Store software channel.

Will you be jailbreaking your phone? If you've jailbroken devices before, what are the must have tweaks/apps that you need to have? At long last, let the fun begin!