I’ve been working a lot lately. Mostly at my full/part-time job at B & I Nameplate, but also working on designing and administering the growing portfolio of clients at Ryaleigh Web Design in Jackson, MI, such as Custom Modular Homes, LLC . You can see a list of some of the websites we’ve worked on and some of the companies we’ve worked with down at the bottom of this page. Some of them Scott and I worked on together under the Breathingfire.com name. But as Scott moved away and took on other more pressing responsibilities (like getting engaged), I continued the work and renamed the company Ryanleigh.

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Sort of a tough week on the ol’ AI this time. About half of the performances weren’t all that bad to me. I was even half-entertained by Ace this week. But then, oh wait, that’s right, I hate Ace.

Anyways, the show must go on, and someone must get booted. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but…

Paris, baby, you’re going home. You sucked the most out of all of them this week. You have a great voice, but you just can’t cut it. Not that Ace and Kelli and half the others can either, but it’s your time.

We’ll get back to getting rid of Bucky next week…

See, I visit a ton of websites on a daily basis. Firefox has helped me do this by letting me open a folder of bookmarks into tabs, letting me read on page while the rest of them load in the background. Then I can just go across and read them all like a big newspaper.

But even this is very time consuming, and more often than not, my daily destinations haven’t even changed, and I need to load all of them to see the changes on one or two sites.

Enter Netvibes.

See, almost every website these days has a thing called an RSS feed. This is a file that contains all the recent updates and entries for that particular website. This allows other websites and software to be notified whenever someone has updated their site. I have a feed for breathingfire.com. CNN has a newsfeed. ESPN has a feed. Stop saying feed.

Anyways, Netvibes allows you to enter in RSS address for all the sites you like to visit, and it sticks the latest 10 or so entries for each site in a little box for you. Then you can drag the boxes around and organize them as you wish.

Now they’ve introduced a new update that’s drawn me in even more. They’ve brought about tabs, which essentially creates seperate pages so I can organize my feeds even more. I have three pages: daily, not-so-daily, and web design stuff. Plus each little box tells me how many stories I’ve rad, and I can mark them all as read if I want to.Look, it’s exciting for me, ok? Plus it should be exciting for SHannon because now I won’t spend so much time sitting at the computer going over my daily reads. Anyways, check it out. Google does something similar with it’s “Personalized Start Page”, but this is much more functional.

Through the wonderful invention known as Slickdeals, I have gathered up for myself a sizeable list of free magazine subscriptions. I’ve gotten quite a few things for free or cheap off of that website, but I definitely look for magazines the most. I’m obsessed. I just need more and more magazines! It’s a good thing we recycle, because otherwise there would be mountains of the things all over the place. Hmm, not unlike my room was before i cleaned it a few months ago. Not only do I crave more and more magazines, but I just can’t seem to get myself to get rid of them, either! But fortunately for me, Shannon is good about keeping things neat and tidy.

For no reason but self-satisfaction, I am going to list them here:

• Sporting News
• Sports Illustrated
• GQ
• Maxim
• FHM
• Stuff
• Blender
• US News & World Report
• Men’s Fitness
• Electronic Gaming Monthly
• Giant

I think there’s a couple more but I can’t remember them right now.

For some reason I love getting magazines. I look forward to checking my PO Box as often as I can because i know that when I look in there, there will most likely be a couple wonderful prizes in there for me. I don’t even really read the magazines that much, I just love getting them! And I used to pay for Maxim, Stuff, Blender, EGM, all of those, but now they’re all free! So I’m saving around $55.00 every month just on magazines! How wonderful.

Thank you, Slickdeals!

Quite the eventful weekend for Shan and I. First on Friday we celebrated being together for our first whole year! It is hard to tell if it feels like a year or not, because for so long it seemed like we had been together for years instead of merely a few months, but time goes by so quick and before you know it you’re at a year. But it’s been a great year, probably the best of my life, and i couldn’t ask for anyone more special than Shannon to have in my life. She’s shown me what love really is, she’s given me a new purpose and a promise for a bright future when it was looking pretty bleak at times. She’s qualified the hope that you can find that special someone that I was positive I would never find. I know in my heart that i will be with Shannon for the rest of my life, and this firs year was an excellent way to start it.

We celebrated by re-creating our first date, 364 days later (the earlyness will be explained later.) This included dinner, ice cream, walking around Target, and then a movie. Dinner was good, though slightly more annoying this time due to the crowded restaurant and a busy waitress. Ice cream was good, even though it was much colder this year than last. We didn’t buy anything at Target, jus tlike last year. And we went to ‘V For Vendetta’, which is based on a comic book just like ‘Sin City’ was last year. By the way, they are both excellent movies.

This all happened on Friday and on Saturday we were called to Shan’s hometown to celebrate her mom’s recent marriage with a small reception. (Which explains why we couldn’t celebrate our anniversary on it’s exact date, had to be there for the moms) Well, the small reception I was expecting turned out to be a huge get-together with music, tents, a pig-roast, a porta-potty, a slushy machine, a keg or three, tons of food, darts, and roughly 3 thousand hundred people, most of which we didn’t know. But it was a good time.

Then we went out to the local pizzeria/bar to help celebrate Shan’s sister Emily’s 21st birthday. This ultimately resulted in a round of karaoke. For some stupid reason, I figured Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” would be a good choice to sing. Umm, no. Worst. Karaoke. Ever. Luckily Shan’s sister Kelli came up with me so I didn’t have to be totally embarrassed by myself, but it was a horrifying experience. I’ve had my share of karaoke, and it’s never gone that terribly bad. Wow, that song is…oh my.

But we escaped that to run home to Shan’s sister Andrea’s house to sleep. This resulted in perhaps the worst before-bed experience ever when we were besieged with mental patient cats, hyper dogs, 3′ x 3′ blankets, sliding couches that formed giant cracks in our makeshift bed, no pajamasa resulting in my sleeping in my jeans, Shan’s upset stomach, and other things so horrible I’ve blocked them from memory. But after convincing ourselves that it’s ok, at least we have each other, we were able to get some sleep. But I was this close to finding the nearest Super 8.

We made ammends with the house by welcoming cereal into our stomachs int he morning, then headed over to Shan’s mom’s help clean up after the party. Here we scored free pop, margarita mix, pretzels, and the most important of all, a free tarp! It’s a huge tarp and it’s all mine!!! How or why I’ll ever use it, I do not know.

Then we were treated to a scrumptious dinner at Shan’s dad’s house, where I enjoyed playing trains with Shan’s little brother, and giving her sister Delaney horse rides on my back.

Then we came home! All in all, a busy weekend, and we’re both tired as heck. It’s been very hard for e to recap all of this by sitting down and writing so much. I’m not used to all of this! But hopefully it’s the first of many more often updating, and things, or whatever I’m trying to say.

Ok, that’s enough. The end!

Once again here we are at yet another astonishing unveiling. Only this time I had a little help. The look and feel of things for the time being comes courtesy of the wonderful Hemingway theme for WordPress. I was on the look out for something very simple, and easy to read. I wanted to put the spotlight on my commentary and reviews and take the emphasis away from the design. This does the trick for me, and it took like 2 seconds to upload the files and click a link. Bam, my site looks awesome. Otherwise it would have taken me months to even get the front page looking ok, just because I have so much other crap going on.

So I’m experimenting with the black background. I know it can be hard on the eyes, but black is back, baby. I’ve re-kindeled my love for the dark backgrounds and I think a lot of other people have as well. so I’m going to run with it for a little bit and see how it goes.

Some new ongoing features here at Breathingfire.com are the American Idol predictions (I’m 1-4, suck!), and the annual NBA Playoffs bracket. Ok, the bracket isn’t new, it’s an annual thing, but it’s back anyways. I’ll also be trying to write some more about life and all that mushy crap. But only if Shannon can convince me to do so and help me get on the damn computer to start typing.

And there are some new features I’m looking at adding as well. One of them is the return of reviews! Ok, also not new as it’s a return, but that’s ok. I’ll be reviewing lots of different things such as movies and TV shows and comics and books and video games and all that immature useless stuff. The reviews thing is at the bottom and looks like crap now, but I had to have at least one unfinished thing on here or else you wouldn’t think this is Breathingfire.com!!!

So anyways, stay tuned, and thanks for keeping an eye out.

Ok, they all sucked this week, again. I’m starting to loose faith in this show. I’ll give it one more week before I just…I’ll just…I’ll turn the channel damn it.

Going home:

Later Bucky! It’s your tunr this week! Don’t come back! Please?

(And I hate your name )