Love You Forever

As read by the author:

Fountains of Wayne, best known for their hit Stacy’s Mom have been one of my favorite bands for quite a while. Specifically, since the first time I heard their first album and songs like Radiation Vibe and Leave the Biker dug their hooks into me. They’re really an under appreciated band.

Hey Julie might just be the perfect song. The narrator is an average guy trying to make a living and missing his special lady friend who makes all the crap melt away. That’s it. There’s really no deeper meaning and the music is just as simple - mostly just acoustic guitar over a mellow beat. It gets in my head and I can’t help but hit the back button every time it ends. While FoW write their songs as stories told by or about different characters (one of their strengths that keep them from getting old), they’re always heart-felt and honest.

Please listen and enjoy.

	Fountains of Wayne - Hey Julie
	Found at skreemr.com

I’ve also installed a couple of Firefox extensions that I’m hoping will help me keep up to date with everything (including my own website). These are:

ScribeFire - An in-browser blog client. I happen to be writing this post with it. Maybe if I don’t have to visit my own site, I’ll post to it more often.

Shareaholic - Adds a multi-use button to Firefox that allows you to quickly post to many social sites.

Feedly - This one adds a really nice magazine-like homepage to Firefox. It still seems to have some bugs (I sometimes have trouble getting it to add pages, and many changes seem to require a browser restart without telling you), but it makes for a really spiffy RSS reader.

So please, add me as a friend on any sites you might belong to. I can be found under the names voteninjaparty, sandpaperback, or speeb most of the time. And give FriendFeed a shot.

In the past week, I’ve acquired two splendid new items:  Rock Band and Quigley.

Rock Band is awesome — even the stripped down PS2 version.  Drums are harder than I expected, vocals are easier.  Both are tons of fun.  Gimme a call and we can rock.

Quigley is our new dog.  He’s a 3 year old Australian Cattle Dog (Blue Heeler).  He’s a very sweet and already loyal boy.  He doesn’t always like to listen, but we’re getting there.  Right now we’re all adjusting.

Later today I have to get some insect and weed killer for my yard.  I was just going to let the little ants be, but they’re starting to really take over the yard.  And so they must die.

The next day, we started painting and dealing with the minor problems.  We got three rooms painted (ours, Rory’s and the living room).  And we started work in the kitchen.

It had wallpaper on the upper half of the walls and dark wood paneling on the bottom half.  When the wood paneling came down, the walls had holes in them, they were teal, and they had some fake tile on them.  Whoever did it plastered over cement board, then scored the plaster to look like tile.  THEN they took the time to hand paint the score marks to look like grout.  It looked like a locker room or like there should be a urinal on the wall.

Eventually, the bottom half of the wall had to come down and be replaced with sheet rock.  Now, a week later, I’m going to sand it down and finally get around to priming and painting it today.

Pictures to follow.

By the time I got to the front of the store, she was completely white and her lips were purple.  She wasn’t breathing right.  I was freaking out.  I stopped and told the women at the register that I needed help.  They called 911 for me and let me call Jill.  Rory threw up on me again and then kind of went limp.  I was freaking out.

The emergency unit was there in minutes.  In the meantime, some extremely kind people stopped to help me.  I think there were a few Best Buy staff and a couple of passerbys.  By this time, the seizure and vomiting had stopped, but Rory was just kind of staring at the ceiling with her mouth hanging open.  All I could do was hold her close and keep talking to her.

They took us to the hospital in the ambulance.  I had to hold an oxygen mask to her face on the way over.  That woke her up a bit and she got more responsive.  Jill was by our side before the ER had finished checking us in.  Rory took a short nap on Jill and then woke up ready to go.  She started running around the waiting room and talking a little bit.

We spent a few hours in the ER and for the most part, Rory was bored out of her mind I think.  She was definitely in a bad mood.  They told us the seizure was really just a result of a fever spiking.  It’s good to hear, but I’m still pretty scared.  When Jill was pregnant, I had a break down at one point because I was afraid Rory would inherit my epilepsy and I really didn’t know how we would deal with it.  This brought that feeling back even though I do trust what the doctor was telling us.   I’m certainly going to be watching her closely.

I’ve been crying on and off since it happened, certainly less today than yesterday.  Sleeping was fitful last night as well.  Every time I closed my eyes I saw my baby girl shaking and felt completely helpless.  It was truly the worst and scariest moment of my life.

You’ve no doubt seen ads all over the internet that claim you can get a free iPod or Xbox or Wii or whatever. Some are scams, some are not. I’m trying to work my way to a free Xbox and I need your help.

1. Click this link:
   http://www.360Elite4free.com/index.php?ref=4768479
   (I suggest choosing to go the referral route, otherwise you need to complete all the offers on your own.)
2. Find an offer you like and sign up for it. Be sure to check the requirements to complete the offer. I recommend either Blockbuster or Gamefly (or Stamps.com if you would use it). They’re actually useful and each are only $10 to complete.
3. If you don’t want to continue the service you sign up for, make sure to cancel after meeting the offer requirements.
4. Email me and let me know! Once I see that your offer has been completed, I will reimburse you the $10 and pay you $5. That’s $15 for 10 minutes of your time!

This isn’t a scam (if you need evidence, google Transcendent Innovations and look what people have to say). Once you complete your offer for me, you need to get 9 referrals of your own and you’ve earned an Xbox 360 Elite for as little as nothing!

If you have any questions, leave a comment!

So I re-installed Anarchy Online and Guild Wars.  GW is a beautiful game and I’m sure I’ll get back into it later.  Anarchy Online on the other hand…

I can see how people are able to be completely obsessed with online games.  AO is basically the same as any of them: talk to NPCs, run missions, team up, blah, blah, blah.  I find the sci-fi setting much more interesting than the fantasy world of WoW.  Character customization is pretty limited visually, but the skills you can put work into are many.

I’m playing a soldier right now named Nevaline.  I have to get back to my old Fixer character, and then I think I’ll try on the Trader profession.

If any of this sounds appealing, give it a try.  It’s completely free to play (the base game, you will have to pay a subscription fee if you choose to play and of the expansions).

Get Anarchy Online.

If you’re looking for more of a blog-type website, I’d suggest Wordpress.com.  Wordpress is the software that this site runs on.  It’s a very powerful yet easy to use site and they have a huge number of templates you can choose from.  It also has a feature that is very effective at blocking comment spam.

Note: both of these will result in a website address like pumpfirst.wordpress.com or pumpfirst.talkspot.com.

Update (03/08/2008): It looks like Google has incorporated Google Sites into my Google domains site (or whatever it is), NeeOnline.  Any user on the domain can simply create a site and choose if it’s public or private.  I will look into this more.

(Credit for the photo goes to Michael Barriault.)