Firefox had chosen to use Windows Mail as my default email client ever since I had installed it on my computer. I hadn’t and won’t ever setup Windows Mail or use it so this has become a somewhat minor inconvenience every now and then. Anyways, onto the good stuff!

Open up Firefox if you haven’t already. Click on Tools, then click on Options. Select the Applications icon in the popup window and then type in mailto in the search box. Firefox will automatically do a search and find what we are looking for. From here, all that I had to do was to click on the dropdown box, select Gmail as the default mailto: client and click OK.

You can actually select several other different mail clients to use with Firefox which makes this a really useful feature even if you don’t necessarily use Gmail.

Lyrics

The warming sun returns again
And melts away the snow
The sea is freed from icy chains
Winter is letting go

Standing on the ocean side
We can hear the waves
Calling us out with tide
To sail into our fate

Odin! Guide our ships
Our axes, spears and swords
Guide us through storms that whip
And in brutal war

Our ships await us by the shore
Time has come to leave
Our country, family and homes
For riches in the east

Some of us won’t return
But that won’t bring us down
Out fate is written in the web
Woven by the Norns

A ram is sacrificed
Across the longship’s bow
And as we set our sails
A strong breeze starts to blow

It carries us out to sea
With hope of fame and pride
And glorious all will be
That with sword in hand will die

Odin! Guide our ships
Our axes, spears and swords
Guide us through storms that whip
And in brutal war

Odin! Guide our ships
Our axes, spears and swords
Guide us through storms that whip
And in brutal war

My Thoughts

Amon Amarth has to be one of my favorite bands as my brother turned me onto them about a year ago. Most people would say that they are melodic viking metal or similar….me? I just say that they plain kick ass!

I’ve seen them live in concert once and hoping that they come back to the U.S. again so I can see them. I had a really great time at the concert and they put on a really great show with the whole viking theme going on.

I’m normally not too big on lyrics in music but I really enjoy some of their songs and what they sing about. If you’re looking for another great band to listen to and you like anything to do with vikings, war or Odin then I would suggest to definitely check out Amon Amarth if you haven’t already heard about them.

\m/ Rock On!

Tomorrow I go into the oral surgeon to have my wisdom teeth taken out because apparently even though they have never caused me any problems it’s better to do it now than later. At least that is what I’ve been told….

And the day after I head back to the dentist to receive some fillings, not sure how many teeth I need done but I can tell you I’m not looking forward to it. I’m not one of those people that are afraid of the dentist, its just more or less one of those things that are a pain in the ass but need to be done.

I’m not too sure how well I’ll feel tomorrow after having the wisdom teeth out, so you may or may not see me on Twitter.

It has some nice new features that will definitely attract even more users. One of the major updates was the addition of a theme installer, so no more FTP’ing files onto your server. You can now just browse theme’s directly from your dashboard and install them. The only downside to this is of course you are limited on the themes that you can download.

Considering most of the premium WordPress themes aren’t in the WordPress Theme Directory you are still going to have to manually upload them to get them working.

You can view the full list of the updates to WordPress 2.8 by checking out the official WordPress.org 2.8 page.

But, I was also given news that because of the way that my jaw was growing that it would be advised to look into surgery to correct it. However, my orthodontist that I saw back then also said that because I was so young that surgery wasn’t a viable option considering I was still growing. So instead of having the surgery back then we decided to just wait it out.

Fast forward to the present

I’ve never had great teeth and I hardly ever smile because of it even though it isn’t a big deal to me. Yesterday I went into the dentist to get my teeth cleaned since it has been almost a year since the last time I had them cleaned. Of course I haven’t been super strict on brushing my teeth and flossing every night like you should be doing so I got the whole lecture on brushing and flossing and how important each of them are.

After the cleaning my dentist came in to check up on my before I headed out. A quick glance over of my teeth from him and he recommends a few things ( I can’t tell you exactly what they were because I wasn’t listening that closely anyways ). He recommends that I speak with an orthodontist about the problems that I currently have. Before leaving the office, I speak with one of the women behind the desk and she schedules my next cleaning appointment.

She also calls up the orthodontist to schedule a consultation with him and somehow they can fit me in the next day ( today ). I head in this morning for my appointment scheduled at 11:30am. I get there and being a new patient I have to fill out their bullshit paperwork and useless information that I don’t think they really need. Stuff like my brother’s name, how old he is, what school I went to and so forth.

Plus, I actually showed up ON TIME for my appointment but I don’t get called in until about 20 minutes later. Funny how it seems that anybody in the medial field has fucking horrible time management skills and is hardly ever on time.

After having pictures taken of my teeth and talking with the orthodontist ( for whatever reason has to repeat about every 5th word that he says 2-3 times ) I find out that I need braces and will probably end up wearing them for around 2.5 years. This wouldn’t be such a big deal but also because of my previous issue with my jaw I also need both lower and upper jaw surgery to fully correct the issue.

Apparently, my top jaw is set too far back and needs to be pushed forwards while my bottom jaw is too far forwards and needs to be pushed back. Plus, my top jaw needs to be widened and my bottom jaw needs to be rotated so that my teeth sit level with each other. Because I was too young back then to have the surgery ( and have it be successful ) my jaw progressively got worth as I aged. There is more to this story as well, I also need my wisdom teeth pulled.

The orthodontist says that I need to have my wisdom teeth pulled right away in order to give them time to heal before they perform the surgery should I decide to go forward with it. I was told that after the wisdom teeth are pulled I would get braces and wear those for about 8-12 months and then I would have the surgery to fix my jaws. Afterwards, I would still have to be in braces for about 6 more months to ensure that everything works out correctly.

I always knew that my teeth were messed up but I wasn’t aware just how bad it was. When I bite down only 2 of my teeth are actually touching leaving a gap between all of the other ones. Which consequently makes it very hard to actually “bite” something into pieces. I guess this is also why I have always consumed bigger pieces of food since it was just too much work to cut them up into smaller pieces or try to bite them into smaller chunks.

It’s all about the money

The braces are going to end up costing around $6000 and the surgery itself is going to range around $20,000. That is just for the surgery, not including the hospital stay and everything else that goes along with it. Not to mention that the surgery itself isn’t covered under dental insurance, it is considered a medical procedure.

All in total probably looking at around $30,000 to have everything worked on and fixed.

Thoughts and decisions

I wouldn’t say that im self concious about my smile or the way that my teeth look. I just never smile hardly because I know it doesn’t look good.

The jaw alignment problem has had a considerable impact on how I eat food though as I have either been forced to place food in the back of my mouth to actually bite off a piece or use my tongue to hold it up against my top teeth and try to bite it into pieces that way. I will say that it does take some practice to get it working right but I can never bite off a piece of steak considering your tongue really isn’t strong enough as your teeth Olympus DS 40 digital voice recorder.

I am now forced with the decisions of having my wisdom teeth pulled, getting braces as well as having major surgery on both my upper and lower jaws to have the alignment corrected. I’ve contemplated just having my wisdom teeth pulled and getting braces and just keep living with the alignment issues. While i’m not afraid of the surgery it will just be a major pain in the ass not to mention the amount of money that it is going to require.

Maybe I could just knock out all my teeth and have dentures permanently implanted into my mouth? Seems like it would solve all my problems and would probably be a lot easier and cost a lot less money.