If you’re not familiar with Words with Friends, it is essentially a Scrabble clone. The game is played by two players each starting with a set of 7 lettered tiles that are automatically and randomly drawn. Each tile is assigned a point value from 1 through 10 (higher points for less commonly used letters like Z,Q,J,K less points for the more commonly used such as E,A,S,T), words are formed by placing tiles on the board, either from left to right, or from top to bottom. In addition to the values of each individual tile, there are bonus spaces on the board (which is a grid of 15×15) that increase the value of specific letters (either 2x or 3x) if the tiles are place on that spot on the grid and there are spots that increase the value of the entire word if just one of the letters from that word falls on one of these spots (either 2x or 3x). Points are assigned to each word based upon the sum of their individual tile points and account for any tiles placed on any of the multiplier locations. The rules are simple, more points wins the game. Oh, and they have to be real words based upon a dictionary called the Enhanced North American Benchmark Lexicon (ENABLE). This dictionary is the basis for their list of accepted words, Newtoy has gone and added some of their own words that are commonly used today, but are not part of this dictionary.

Once I had heard that the game was going to be available for the Android OS, I started checking the Android Market regularly to see if it was available. On Wednesday evening, I had checked and saw that it was finally available for download. I had gone ahead and installed the free ad supported version and within a few minutes I had started my first game with a random opponent. Gameplay does permit up to 20 simultaneous games going at once.

During this first game, my first thought was this game board is visually busy. I think it’s the detailed graphics used to outline the tile spaces on the board, the graphics detail used in the tiles, in addition to the color scheme used; in my opinion this game is not friendly on the eyes. In addition to the busyness of the game board, after each move you are presented with an ad that you must manually cancel out of, or press the back button. Currently, there’s no paid version available for Android just yet that omits the ads as there is for iOS. While the ads are not “that” intrusive, you do see a lot of them over the course of a game.

Having played other Scrabble clones for quite a while, I found the actual game play to be very similar. When it’s your turn, or during your opponents turn, you have the ability to move the tiles around to try and find or form words. This is done by the simple sliding of the tiles either left or right, or the game can take advantage of your devices accelerometer by shaking your device. While the shaking is a neat idea, it’s not very conducive to fluid game play, and just does more of a random shuffle of your tiles. There’s a nice zoom feature that is activated by double tapping on the game board. Depending on where you double tap, that is the area that becomes the center of focus. Double tap a second time, and the board zooms out so that you can view the entire board. Placement of letters on the board, will automatically zoom into that area so that tile placement is more accurate. This is a nice feature and I have found the zoom animation to be very smooth and fluid. Other options when it’s your turn are to swap tiles, or pass on a turn, or simply resign the game. If you placed tiles on the board that do not allow for a proper word, you can easily recall them all by pressing the Recall button. The game also provides an in game chat feature, allowing you to converse in an SMS style chat session. This is also a nice feature, although I have found that I don’t use it too much.

I have found the initial release a little buggy. Playing a game with my wife, she could not join the game despite sending an invitation to her user-name. I was seeing that she was in the game, however, she could not see the game. It was not until I sent her an in game chat message was she finally able to see the board and her tiles. Another issue I noticed is that if I want to swap tiles I don not see the tile from the swap screen unless I cancel out if the swap and attempt it again. Another minor annoyance, is that I keep getting notified that there is an update to the game, however, when I tap the update button I am taken to the Android market page only to find out that I already have the update applied. The update allowed for a few sound options, allowing me to turn off the sound completely and customizing the notification time frame. When it comes to game settings, that’s pretty much it; two settings. I had the notifications set to a 5 minute interval, which may have caused excess battery drain. When I check battery usage within the Android OS, it will show Words with Friends as being one of the bigger offenders of battery usage. I find this rather odd given the frequency that I play the game, again i think this goes back to the polling interval being a little to frequent. We’ll see if changing that to 30 minutes makes a difference.

In summary, over the last few days, I’ve found Words with Friends to be a suitable Scrabble clone. While I don’t feel it’s the best one available for the Android platform, it is also not the worst. When compared to games like Wordfeud, it pales in comparison. The game in it’s early releases is a little buggy, I don’t find it visually pleasing, and there are too many adds with no current option to purchase an ad free version. The biggest benefit is the ability to play head to head along with your iOS toting friends, as well as options for several million opponents. If you’ve installed this game, either in Android or iOS, send me an invite to play. My username is CRG625.

UPDATE: Changing the update notification time frame did not change battery drain. I had even gone so far as to set the notification interval to 60 minutes, and it doesn’t appear to be any better.  This application is a battery hog.

For me, there’s no more satisfying outlet to express this pride than going food shopping. I think that food is the most basic essential for human existence. Not shelter, but food.

Plain and simple, without food we die.

It’s nice to have warm shelter and protection from the elements, but from an environmental standpoint we could live without a house. We probably could not live in Southern New Jersey, but there are areas on this planet that do not have the swing in temperatures that we have across the seasons.

I get a certain sense of pride when I go food shopping for my family. Leaving a house with little food and then coming back with many bags of food, seeing the refrigerator and freezer fill up give me a great deal of pride. Sure, my wife and I provide for my family in other ways too, but this is the way that gives me the most pride.

The sun is peeking into my kitchen, just rising above the roofs of the houses behind me and I’m feeling good right now. I’ve grown accustomed to sitting at my kitchen table, tapping away; I just really enjoying sitting at my kitchen table, in my house, looking out at my back yard, through my dirty and drafty windows, all while sitting in my uncomfortable kitchen chairs.

This is my home, this is my Saturday morning.

About 7:20am, I decided to get out of bed; my back was starting to give me some discomfort, so I decided it was time to go downstairs. I could see that my son was still in his bed, so I invited him to come down with me, so we went down and relaxed, shortly afterwards my daughter came down, which was unusually early for her, she doesn’t normally doesn’t arise until 9:30 on weekend days.

While downstairs, my son was eyeing up the Legos we had purchased the day before for his birthday, once my daughter had come down, we started to build the 188 piece set, or I should say, I started to build the set. While I was building, my son and daughter were playing with the two figurines that were included in the Lego set, while I finished building the space ship. Shortly after finishing up, my wife came down stairs; I decided to go for a ride on my motorcycle.

About 9:30, I told my wife that I’d like to go out for a short ride on my bike. I was very pleased that the bike started right up, this was most likely as a result of purchasing a replacement battery a few weeks ago and filling it up with fresh gas. I proceeded to convert my riding jacket into a warmer weather jacket, and the headed out on this humid Sunday morning. I rode through Sicklerville, and wound my through Williamstown, then back through Sicklerville, all in all riding for about 30 minutes, certainly enough all suited up on this humid late spring day.

I returned home around 10:00am, started a pot of coffee and started up my laptop. I ready the news from the previous day, World Cup scores from the day before, and my usual tech news. My kids then gave me the Father’s day cards that they had made me, both of which they had made in school. My daughter had seemed excited about give me the card she’d made, and when I read it aloud with her, a tear started to fall from my eye. The card was the top 10 reasons why I was the best Dad, and while the two of us read it together, I could tell that she actually felt that these items were true. It made me feel really special. My son had given me a card that was stapled to a bag of Sun Chips, again, it sort of re-iterated the points of why they had felt that I was a good Dad, I was feeling good at this point.

My wife then told me that we were invited to her brother’s house for a cook out and swimming, however she told me that if I wanted to stay home, it was up to me. I though it’s be a good idea to go swimming today, I knew it was going to be a hot one, and it’d be good for my kids to get outside today, and god knows these kids love to swim. It was about noon now, and my wife told me that she needed to run to the store to pick up a cake and some things for dinner. I was feeling a little groggy, so I wanted to take a nap. I had asked the kids if they wanted to go into the basement and watch a movie because we were going to be leaving for the party in about 2 hours or so. They agreed and we watched Toy Story 2, the three of us snuggled up on the couch in the basement, which was a little chillier than I last remember, underneath a light blanket, while we watched the movie. During the movie, I was able to squeak out about 15-20 minutes of sleep, and surprisingly so, the kids pretty much stayed put in their seats during the movie and really seemed to enjoy it. This may be because we had just seen Toy Story 3 on Wednesday, so the story line was probably fresh in their mind; either that or the basement was a little colder than usual. They had laughed and enjoyed themselves, and end of the movie I had turned the sound on up on the closing credits while the two of them danced to Robert Goulet singing “You’ve got a friend in me”, it was one of those moments that as a parent, you know you don’t have too many remaining, but it was something I wanted to last forever, they were singing, laughing, and dancing, it’s was truly a priceless moment for me. Shortly after that, my wife returned from the store and about 30 minutes later we were on our way to her brother’s house. Today was going to be a good day for swimming; it was hot and humid outside.

We arrive at the kid’s uncle’s house, Grand mom, the other uncles and aunts were there, and the kids were ready to get right into the pool. They did; immediately. I put a little sun block on myself, and got into the pool. At first, the water felt cold, but after a minute or two, it was all good. The sun was bright, it was hot, it was perfect swimming weather; I was in the pool with my two kids and we were enjoying ourselves. My daughter and I were the only two in the deep end of the pool, when I thanked her for making today such a good father’s day, her response was as simple and genuine as it gets, she said in her small sweet voice “You’re welcome Daddy”. We played in the pool for a few hours, alternating our time in and out of the pool, not being able to escape the sun’s blistering rays, we all started to get a little hungry. I got out and snacked on a few items, while I finished my margarita I was definitely feeling good, it was a beautiful day, I was surrounded by family all of whom seemed to be in equally good moods.

After we ate, the kids got back into the pool, and I was feeling so full all I wanted to do was vegetate, so I got back in and got on a float. By this point the sun was starting to fall being the trees and it was not as inescapable as it was a few hours earlier. Having just had a good meal, as I bobbed up and down in the pools gentle waves, I was thinking that today was a good day, no, it was a very good day. A short time later, we decide to head home. The kids were tired, the adults were tired, our hosts were tired, rather than out stay our welcome we headed for home. Driving home it had cooled off considerably, I opened up all of the windows and the sunroof, it was just a pleasant slow ride home.
Today was a great day, it was an even better Father’s day.

The keys on my keyboard are not stable and have a tendency to want to rock back and forth. Additionally, there’s something with the spacing between the keys, because I can’t count how many times the fleshy part of my fingers times have gotten caught in between the keys, and when I pull them back, I always fear that the keys will be pulled off of their mechanical joints. Anyone who’s had a single key come off of their keyboard, knows how difficult they can to be put back. I should rephrase that, anyone who’s had a key come off of a cheaply made, poorly designed keyboard, knows how difficult they can be to put back.

In addition to the wobbly and poorly spaced keys, the entire keyboard has this unusual flex to it, as if the keyboard were made entirely out of plastic, and was mounted to the chassis entirely around it’s perimeter, and the center has no support. In addition to the unusual amounts of flex, the keys when pressed also make this, for lack of a better term, wimpy clicking sound. The sound the keys make is difficult to quantify, however, all I can say, is the Dell laptop that I purchased for my wife about 5 months after I purchased mine, seems infinitely better, and depressing the keys has a more reassuring feeling when typing.

From a specification standpoint my laptop isn’t necessarily lacking, it’s just the quality of the keyboard that I sincerely dislike.

Here’s to hoping that this trend changes for the better.

Having kids I try to take off either the week preceding Christmas or the week after depending on workload, I usually try to alter this time off every other year. This year, I took off the 3 days prior to Christmas when combined with our company’s holidays, I was off that entire week. I must admit it was nice to have off and spend some time with the kids, watching the Christmas excitement build on their eyes. It would have been better if we didn’t receive 24 inches of snow that week, and it would have been ever better if I wasn’t sick with killer sinus headaches and a nagging couch. But nonetheless, I was grateful for that time off.

Now that New Years has passed, it’s time for all of this celebration to come to an end. The kids go back to school this coming Monday, and at work it officially is the start of our project season. I’m counting down the hours until I go back to work, trying to relish ever last remaining minute of time before the return to work, serious work. We have some ambitous schedules ahead of us, and I look forward to being able to get some real work done, not just patch work. With everyone back from their vacations, it’ll be full steam ahead.

Here’s hoping that 2010 is a happy and healthy year.

2 Medium sized Avacados
1 Small onion
1 Plum tomato
1 Jalapeño pepper
1 Lime
2 Garlic clove

For roughly $4 we had the makings of guacamole, my wife said that price was good since at our local supermarket 2 avocados can cost over $5. It was a beautiful Sunday evening in late August, it was typical New Jersey 80% humidity and 90 degrees, perfect weather for eating light.

Directions, serves 4:

Scoop out the avocados from their skins, remove the pits, place in a small bowl.
Peel and dice the onion into small pieces
Seed and dice the tomato into smaller pieces.
Seed and dice the pepper into small pieces
Skin and mince the garlic cloves into small pieces
Cut the lime in half

Take the avocados, and in a small bowl, mash with a fork until there are no large sections. Add the onion, jalapeño, tomato, and garlic and mix with a fork, then squeeze the juice of the lime, mix everything together with a fork.

The lime juice adds subtle flavor and also aids in the guacamole not turning brown after sitting out for a little bit.

Serve with fresh corn tortilla chips and you will have a fresh snack that takes about 5 minutes to make, and if you’re anything like me, you won’t feel guilty since you’ll what all of the ingredients are, and tis’ a relatively healthy snack. If you’re going to serve later, place into the refridgerator and be sure to cover with plastic wrap that has been conformed to the top of the guacamole, not allowing any air to hit the top of the guacamole.

Wow, is all I could say, the guacamole was perfect, creamy and full of flavor, bits of tomato and onion present in every bite. I think that this recipe has spoiled me, I can’t eat any other recipe with out comparing it to the guacamole my wife had made on that hot, humid summer day.

When Carol had asked if I was interested in having guacamole tonight, I told her I was interested as long as she didn’t divert from the recipe we had last summer. After Carol had made some again tonight, on this cold December night, I’m reminded of that day in August when everything was perfect, or at least the guacamole was.

First, I’m thankful for my wife. I’m thankful that she is so vigilant in raising our children, and she is so selfless in her care of the kids as well as addressing the day to day things, such as Doctor appointments, and calls to the teachers, and health insurance companies. For example she makes their lunches for school every day without complaint (except that the kids are so unwilling to try new foods), she does her best to see that the kids are provided with a well rounded lunch. My wife does an awesome job, and it seems that sometimes I don’t give her proper recognition for all that she does for our children. I’m also greatful to my wife becuse she’s understanding when it comes to my job. There have been times when I’ve had to call her and say that I’m running late in coming home, which have sometimes been followed up with another phone call where I’m telling her that I’m going to be really, really late. She doesn’t give me grief about this, which is so helpful. It allows me to concentrate on the problems and work without having to worry about getting grief about being late for dinner, or missing dinner altogether. There have been times where I’ve had to bail out on plans we’ve made because something has come up at work and she’s been completely supportive, often telling me that she feels bad for me because I’ve put so much time in there. She does so much for all of us, and asks for so little in return.

I’m thankful for my children. They are two of the sweetest kids I’ve ever met. Every day when I get home from work, I am greeted with hugs and kisses, and I can tell that they are both happy to see me arrive at the end of my day. This makes my hour long commute much easier, and I actually look forward to seeing them at the end of a stressful day. I’m so hopeful that I can maintain this relationship when my kids are older. My kids appear to really appreciate what they have in life. As an example, this morning I ran to the supermarket and I was going to stop at Dunkin Donuts for coffee. I had asked my son if he had wanted anything, and after some deliberation we decided that I was going to pickup some hot chocolate and munchkins for a breakfast snack. While I was out at the store, my son had told my daughter that I was picking up hot chocolate and munchkins, my daughter’s response was ‘this breakfast keeps getting better’, showing me that she really appreciates the little things we do for them.

I’m thankful that I have a job. Work has been strange lately with everyone on edge, sales being down, every is unsure about their future in this economy. However, I’m thankful that I’m not forced to look for another job at this time, although I’m giving some serious thought to looking for a new job, as of right now I can do this on my terms.

I’m thankful that I have a house. This was something that my Mom had always instilled in my when I was a kid. She would always reinforce that we should be greatfull that we had somewhere that kept us warm when it was cold out, and somewhere to keep us dry when it rained. I used to get annoyed when my Mom would keep reminding my brother and I as to how lucky we were, however, I find myself doing this with my kids too. I get the impression that my kids do appreciate it more than I did when I was their age. I can not say how much I love owning a house, despite the stress that comes with ownership and despite the fact that this is probably not the ideal house for us, it is nice to come home after a long day at work and be able to sit on my aging couch and just know that while I’m home I am in my sanctuary, regardless of how small and cramped it seems to be at times. It’s also nice that I have somewhere I can call my own, and when I’m not feeling well my recover is always aided by being in my house.

I’m thankful that I can afford to have some luxuries in my life. Although I would appreciate just having the basics in life and do realize that I’m fortunate to have what I do, there are somethings that I’m thankful to have that are not necessities. First, would be having two cars. Although the car I drive on a daily basis is a 10 year old Honda, it’s been reliable and gets me to work and home every day accumulating 25,000 miles a year. While my wife drives the newer car, just the fact that we have two cars makes our lives so much easier giving us added flexabilty. Then there are the ancillary things that I’m thankful to have. Cellphones, cable television, game consoles, iPods, DVD’s, CD’s, and computers are all things that make life more interesting, convenient, and at times more fun.

There are so many things that I’m thankful for and I could go on forever on how fortunate my family and I are.

This is what I’m thankful for.