For 364 days out of the year, you’re a pretty decent human being. But for just one day, be it for a random costume party or for Halloween, you’ve decided to be a douchebag. The following guide will help you along your way to becoming the douchiest douchbag you can possibly be.

• Spray-On Tan
  Having a tan is vital to the appearance of any douchebag. Having a tacky spray-on tan is really just taking it to the next level. You probably don’t have to do your whole body to complete the costume, just your face, neck, and arms should be fine. Be sure to wear some sort of goggles while applying it to your head. In part, this is to ensure that you don’t get any in your eyes, as I’m sure that would hurt like hell, but mostly it’s so that the pale-white skin around your eyes and over your nose makes you look as douchey as you can. Don’t worry, you’ll only look ridiculous at work for “up to 5 days” after you wear the costume.
• Spiked Hair
  What goes better with a spray-on tan than spiked back hair? Nothing, that’s what. You’ve really got two options for this one. For those with uncooperative hair, much like myself, you might prefer to go with the ever-classy orange spiked hair wig, which should really go well with your new skin color. For those of you with hair that will do what you want, some firm hold styling gel should do the trick. When you think you’ve used enough of it to hold your hair in place for the night, add even more.
• Pastel-Colored Polo Shirts
  This part is extremely easy to follow: Buy at least two of the pastel-colored polo shirts I linked to above, all in different colors. Wear them all at once. Pop all of the collars up. You are now wearing your shirts the way only a true douchebag would.
• Khakis
  Pretty much any khaki pants will work just fine, so wear whatever is comfortable. More than likely you’ve already got a pair sitting around.
• Bling
  Every douchebag needs his bling. I’d recommend at least one of each of the following, the tackier the better: a gold necklace, a gold bracelet or watch, and a gold pinky ring. If you already own any of these that you think would work, great, otherwise just buy something cheap and fake from the links I offered or just head to your local flea market.

There you have it! Yet another DIY costume courtesy of Chai Life! I hope you’ve enjoyed it and if you do choose to be a douchebag for Halloween this year, I hope your friends find it as amusing as I would.

Like this post? Read more at The Apple Vine.

Because of the popularity of my Top Ten Must-Have Free iPhone Apps, I’ve decided to put together yet another top ten free apps list, but this time entirely games. Some of these you may have played, some you may not have, but all are awesome and free. These time wasters are sure to amuse you for hours and hours on end.

1. Mancala FS5 Free
   This is by far the best online-player board game available for the iPhone. It allows for single player, two player on a single phone, and multiplayer via WiFi (there’s a world-wide leader board!), local networks (bluetooth or wifi), and AIM. It even allows push notifications so you can invite a friend to play. I’ve easily clocked more time playing Mancala FS5 than any other iPhone app.
2. TapDefense
   Anyone who loves flash games on the Internet has probably lost hours of their life to one defense game or another. TapDefense is no different. This highly addictive tower-style defense game is fun, challenging, and offers a huge amount of variety in levels, playstyle, and challenges. No two games are even completely alike.
3. iMafia
   There are many types of MMORPG-style games available on the iPhone, but the ones I liked the most are by PlayMesh. They make at least a dozen variations, be it Ninjas, Wild West, Warbots, etc, but they’re all very similar in playstyle. If you enjoy online gaming for your computer, this is a must-have time waster for your iPhone.
4. Sol Free Solitaire
   Hands-down the absolute best solitaire game available for the iPhone, paid or otherwise. The interface is extremely intuitive, it keeps in-depth statistics, and there are a nice variety of solitaire games to choose from.
5. Paper Toss
   This game seems extremely easy and boring at first glance, but for some reason I just keep coming back to it. The concept is simple: Flick a wad of paper in to a trash bin compensating for a fan blowing one way or another. It seems simple, but it’s harder than it looks, even on the easy level. Give it a try, you won’t be disappointed.
6. Enjoy Sudoku Daily
   It took me a while to find a Sudoku game that is easy to use and offers great features for both novice and advanced players. This game does exactly that. It offers eight different levels from “Just Starting” to “Fiendish” and has a very intuitive hint system, should you get stuck on the tougher levels.. The only downside is that the free version offers only 1 game per day per level, but that’s still 8 games a day.
7. Fish Food Frenzy
   You’re a tiny fish. The more fish you eat, the bigger you get until you can eat bigger fish. Sounds easy, but this game is extremely challenging and is an absolute blast when using the accelerometer to move your fish around.
8. Checkers FS5
   Brought to you by the same folks that did the Mancala FS5 that I’m so hooked on, this is the best checkers game available for the iPhone, allowing you to play against the computer, against a friend, or online against the world.
9. Unblock Me
   What’s a top-ten game list without a puzzle game? Unblock Me is extremely simple to play, yet each level offers different challenge. Just move the blocks around until you can get the red one out. With 400 levels, this will take you quite some time to beat.
10. JellyCar
    This driving-platormer looks like it was drawn by a four year old, but the goofy graphics somehow just add to its charm. Drive your car through the various worlds to try to reach the exit. Careful, though, it can sometimes be trickier than you’d think.

As always, I hope you’ve enjoyed this list and maybe even found some new games to play. Got any games you felt deserved to be on here that I missed? Feel free to share them with a comment.

Everywhere you look these days there are hoards of teabaggers, 9/12ers, and other uncategorized crazies crying about how socialist the pending health care reform is. These people just love hanging off the nuts of the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs of the right-wing. What they are unaware of, however, is how truly socialist this otherwise capitalistic country already is and how truly dependent they are on that socialism. As such, I’ve compiled what I consider to be the top ten socialist programs run by the United States government that every citizen takes for granted, including the anti-socialist nuts holding signs and protesting.

1. Public Education
   You, your children, you family, or someone you know has participated in this socialist institution. Not surprisingly, the ancestors of the same nuts crying foul today were doing the same thing when government-funded school were first proposed.
2. Police, Fire, and Emergency Services
   Next time you get robbed, your house is on fire, or you need other emergency services, be sure to turn them away because you hate socialism.
3. The US Postal Service
   It’s pretty nice to be able to send and receive mail every day (except Sunday) wherever you are in the country. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
4. Medicare, Medicaid
   My absolute favorite of the right-wing protesters are the ones who don’t want socialized medicine, but insist that the government not interfere with their Medicare and/or Medicaid. Ignorance is just too gentle of a word.
5. Public Subways, Metro Systems, Buses, and Light Rails
   Millions of people in our nations cities use these socialist methods of transportation to get to work, go shopping, or just get around town.
6. Sidewalks, Roads, & Highways
   Sure, not every street in the country is in the best condition, but they wouldn’t even be paved at all if the government didn’t provide them as a service to all of its people.
7. Public Parks, Beaches, and Zoos
   Who doesn’t enjoy a stroll in the park, relaxing on the beach, or seeing monkeys fling poo at the zoo? No one, that’s who. If it weren’t a national park protected and funded by the government, the Grand Canyon would probably already be the Grand Landfill.
8. Public Museums, Public Libraries
   These fun and educational institutions are a vital part to any decent city. Their enjoyment can be shared by everyone because of their “socialist” government funding.
9. S-CHIP and other state-run insurance programs
   I’m not sure how, but the Glen Becks and Rush Limbaughs of the world have managed to convince their listeners that health insurance for children is a bad thing.
10. Social Security
    I’m skeptical that I’ll ever see a dime of the money that gets taken out of my pay check to pay the social security of others, but this New Deal program was a vital part of recovery from the great depression. It’s even got “social” right in the title!

There you have it! Are there even more socialist government programs that hugely benefit the country? You bet. Know what that I didn’t list but you feel belongs on there? Feel free to leave a comment.

I’ve been intrigued by the Amazon Kindle since it was first announced. It is a fantastic concept, but I was skeptical about the practicality of it and how easy it would be to actually read the screen as easily as the page of a book. I finally had a chance to use one the other day, albeit briefly, and I have to say I am impressed. The absolute first thing I noticed was how slim and light it truly is. It is about the size of an average book, and as light or lighter than the average paperback. As soon as I turned it on, I realized that my concerns about readability were unfounded and it is as easy to read as any book and certainly easier to read than most computer screens. Prior to using it I had no idea this was even a feature, but the free 3G wireless access is great. I’m not entirely sure how it’s handled, but for no monthly fee and no need for Wi-Fi, it can wirelessly access Amazon’s 350,000+ book library and instantly download them to the Kindle.

It really is a great product for the casual and dedicated reader alike and can hold as many books as even the most extensive home library. The Amazon Kindle and other products like it have the potential to be regarded by future generations as the biggest development in reading since moveable type was first introduced to Europe sometime in the 15th century.

As you may know if you are one of my regular readers, every once in a while I like to post a do-it-yourself (DIY) Halloween costume. Because Halloween is coming up fast, here’s the list of the costumes I’ve done so far, to make your search for the perfect costume a little bit easier:

• Douchebag Costume
  For 364 days out of the year, you’re a pretty decent human being. But for Halloween, you’ve decided to be a douchebag.
• iPod Commercial Costume
  Know those iconic commercials where someone is dancing to great music and all you see is the iPod against their silhouetted body? Now you can be that silhouette!
• Philip J. Fry Costume
  Every Futurama fan secretly wants to be cryogenically frozen only to awake 1000 years later. Here’s your chance.
• Mario Costume
  It’s-a-Mario! Need I say more?
• Dr. Horrible Costume
  If you haven’t see it yet, you should. If you have, you probably already want to dress like him.

For those of you who already know Ishtar, you probably are already aware of her awesomeness. Well, you can add yet another reason to the list. For about two days now, we’ve had a cricket in our basement. I’ve tried to find it, but was unable to. It was being exceptionally loud tonight when Ishtar decided to quietly slink out of the living room. A few minutes later, she reappeared in the doorway, howled, and I stood up assuming she was about to retch. In the process however, she opened her mouth, dropped a cricket on the floor and proceeded to proudly play with it in front of us. After a few minutes of her torturing the poor thing, I finally put it out of its misery. Thanks to Ishtar, there will be no more cricket noises coming up through the vents while I’m trying to sleep tonight.

Being Jewish, I have long encountered people who are ignorant, anti-Semitic, or just curious about my faith. I recently read a fantastic article over at Beliefnet.com and wanted to share it with those who are interested. It covers 12 common misconceptions about Judaism and explains what the truth behind those misconceptions really is. It’s a quick read, so I highly recommend you take a few minutes and check it out:

12 Things You Didn’t Know About Judaism – Beliefnet.com

I was putting together a list of essential plug-ins, tips, and tricks for a friend who is starting a new WordPress-based blog and was looking for advice, but I figured this can help more than just him, so I’m publishing it here. The following guide will help you get your new blog off the ground, recommend some essential plug-ins, help you get your blog listed in search engines, and some basic WordPress SEO tips. I’m writing this guide assuming that you’ve already download and installed WordPress and everything is already working fine. If you haven’t even gotten that far yet, you should probably take some time and read through this guide.

Section 1: Plug-ins
The following list are a few highly popular plug-ins that anyone who’s serious about their blog should have installed. Each plug-in has great documentation and support, so they’re good for beginners and essential for the most seasoned WordPress veterans.

• WordPress.com Stats
  If you’re at all concerned over who your readers are, what brought them to your blog, how many people read your blog, or what search terms people are typing to to search engines to find it, then this plug-in is absolutely essential. It’ll tell you pretty much everything you need to know about your blog’s visitor statistics.
• Akismet
  If you don’t plan on having comments enabled, then you can completely ignore this plug-in. If, however, you do want your readers to be able to leave comments on your posts, then this is an absolute must. As far as comment spam filtering goes, there is absolutely nothing better than Akismet. It is extremely accurate and only maybe once or twice since I first started using it has there been true spam that got through and I had to delete or a false positive that I had to approve.
• Google XML Sitemaps
  This excellent SEO-related plug-in automatically generates a Google-compatible sitemap file of every single post and page on your blog. Every single time you create a new post or page, it will automatically recreate an updated sitemap for search engines to index. As if that isn’t awesome enough, it will then automatically ping Ask.com, Google, Bing, and Yahoo letting them know that your sitemap has been updated and that they should re-check it. Just having this installed and running is enough to start getting your site indexed by all of the major search engines.
• All in One SEO Pack
  The All in One SEO Pack has pretty consistently been the most popular WordPress plug-in of all time. To be honest, some if not all of it’s features should just be built in to WordPress, but because they aren’t it is still around. I can’t even begin to list all of the great SEO features that this offers, so just visit the download page to view them.

Section 2: Themes
You’ve got WordPress installed and you’ve added some key plug-ins to make it work even better and help with SEO, but now that it works great behind the scenes, you want it to look awesome to your readers. Here’s are some great theme resources to check out, all of which are free.

• Official WordPress Themes Directory
• Top Wordpress Themes
• FreeWPThemes.net
• 100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes – Smashing Magazine
• 40 Excellent Free WordPress Themes – Six Revisions

Section 3: Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (commonly called SEO) is key to getting your blog noticed by the search engines and ranked will for certain search terms or keywords. There are entire books written on the subject that still don’t cover the subject, which is constantly evolving, so I’m not going to attempt to teach everything there is to know in this small paragraph. What I will instead do is offer some tricks to getting your blog recognized by search engines, quickly indexed, and some basic tips to improving the ranking of your blog.

• Link Structure – You’ve probably been to some websites and noticed that they have long hard to understand links, whereas others have shorter links that are easy to read and often have the title of the post in the link. If you look under the settings section of the admin section of your WordPress blog, you will notice a link that says “Permalinks”. If you click this, it will bring you to a page where, if your web server supports it (most do, ask your webhost if you’re unsure), you can change your link structure. The default is the “ugly” style of links, but I prefer the “Month and name” or the “Day and name” setting. Play around and find a link structure you like, but be aware that once you choose one, you should stick with it.
• Search Engine Submission – Many search engines have a submission page where you can enter your URL and it will be added to a presumably very long list of websites for their spiders to crawl. This works, but isn’t always the best solution. Pinging the search engines with your sitemap, as I described earlier, is a good way to get them to recognize your site. The best way for search engines to find your site, however, is for them to find a link to your site on other sites. Talk to your friends with their own blogs and ask them to put a link to your site on theirs (if you’re really nice, you’ll do the same for them). Add a link to your website in your signature or profile page on any social networks you’re a member of as well as any forums you post on. Not only will some people see the link and visit your site, but the search engines will see it and start to be aware of your blog. My last little trick is to click this link, type in your URL, click submit, and then click every link in the list that will appear on the next page.
• Anchor Text – When you’re adding your link to the places I mentioned previously, be sure to choose a good anchor text where you can. The anchor text is the what text appears as a link. For example: Chai Life is a link to this blog. The anchor text for that link is “Chai Life”. The more consistent you are with your links’ anchor text, the better you will rank in search engines when someone searches for that term. Using a few different anchor texts will help you rank better for those different keywords, but I would recommend choosing only a few keywords and sticking with them. Too many will saturate your results and not really be any help.
• Content – Having original content is very important. For most blogs, this isn’t really an issue because you’re writing your own posts. Keep in mind, however, than most search engines, Google included, will essentially just regard your blog as trash if it has duplicate content (articles, blog posts, etc) from other sites on other domains.

Well, there you have it. Is this guide the definitive guide to starting your blog and increasing it’s popularity? No way. Is it missing stuff that I didn’t go in to or could have done in more detail? Probably. Will it help someone who is new to WordPress, SEO, and blogging get started? I sure hope so!

I love Indian food. It’s flavors range from sweet to spicy and it is equally good whether you prefer vegetarian dishes or meat. Recently we’ve had a bit of bad luck in our area, however, as our favorite nearby Indian restaurant closed over a year ago, followed recently by Saffron in Brookfield. Sure, Maharaja on the east side is among the best in Milwaukee, but that’s a bit of a drive from our side of town. After expressing my frustration on Facebook at the discovery of Saffron’s closure, I got a couple recommendations for Tandoor, which is actually closer to us than Saffron was.

When you first walk in to Tandoor, you might be a little nervous as it kind of has a hole-in-the-wall feel to it, because, well, it kind of is. Rest assured, however, you’ll still get a tasty meal. They have a large menu with lots of options, with plenty of appetizers, a great selection of different types of Indian breads, and a huge list of entrées with chicken, lamb, seafood, and vegetarian dishes. We decided to start off with an order of samosas, which were on par with the samosas I’ve had elsewhere and are a great start to any Indian meal. For dinner we got the always-classic chicken tikka masala, an order of lamb shahi korma, and their peshwari naan bread. Although we ordered everything medium, both the masala and korma were on the spicy side which is always fine by me, but if you have a weak stomach for spice, I’d suggest ordering your food mild. Both dishes were good, however the lamb shahi korma was spicier and less savory than we’re accustomed to. That said, our standard for lamb shahi korma has unfortunately been set unreasonably high by India Palace in Roseville, MN. The peshwari naan bread was unlike any naan bread I’ve had previously and was filled with nuts, raisins, and coconut. It tasted terrific and was great for scooping up any extra sauce from our plates. To wash everything down, we each ordered a mango lassi which, if you’ve never had one, is a traditional yogurt-based mango drink that will instantly cut through any spice lingering in your mouth and tastes great. Having eaten way more than I probably should have, we skipped desert and went home happy, full, and with leftovers.

Although Tandoor is certainly not the best Indian food I’ve eaten, nor would I consider it the best in Milwaukee, it still serves good food, the service was fast and courteous, and I will certainly be eating there again. They even offer take-out, which I’m sure I will be taking advantage of sometime soon.

Here’s the info:

Coa is the newest restaurant to open up at the Bayshore Town Center in Glendale. Filling in the long-vacant property previously occupied by Cameron’s Steakhouse, Coa markets itself as offering true-to-taste Mexican street food. Not ever actually having eaten true Mexican street food I can’t say for sure what that means, but the wide variety of appealing tacos and entrés made making a final dinner selection tough. As soon as you sit down, they’ll bring you some sort of extra salty Frito-Lay flavored chip with two types of dip, neither of which in any way resembled the traditional salsa that you expect from most Mexican restaurants, but both of which were spicy and at least decent, but not great. Unable to really decide what I wanted to eat, I decided to get their three taco meal, which offers the most variety on their menu. First you choose whether you prefer white corn tortillas, flour tortillas, or lettuce wraps. From there, you can choose any three of their wide variety of tacos. The three I chose, carne asada, baby back ribs, and chicken, were all terrific and I would definitely eat again. Also included with the tacos was an option of white or Mexican rice as well as black, refried, or their own “coa” beans. I opted for the Mexican rice with refried beans. Normally I enjoy that combination of sides for a Mexican dish, but the both were rather bland and unimpressive. Aside from that, the meal tasted good, was very filling, and the service was not always fast, but at least friendly. It won’t necessarily be my first choice of restaurants when eating at Bayshore, but I’m sure I will end up there again and, assuming the service and some of the food improves once they get more established, I would recommend it to family and friends.

Here’s the info: