House of Cards

Most days you pretend. You take another card from the deck and you put up a wall. But, they're not your average cards, they look just like walls. Your neighbors compliment you on "building a mighty-fine house."

On wonderful, rare days you put up a real wall. It's sturdy and you can lean on it. You lean hard on these walls. Your cards lean hard on these walls. "Yes, that's a sturdy house you're building."

Months go by and the house is bigger. "It's becoming a good, strong house." It's about this time the big, bad wolf of doubt comes along. Huff. Puff. The house collapses on itself.

You realize you've been fooling yourself. They're not walls; they're cards. Flimsy cards. Flimsy cards that made a mess of your house. The few walls left standing remind you of your foolishness.

You stare at your non-house. Your rubble of cards. Time to start again. First, clean up the mess.

You start putting the cards back in the deck. You find old walls, rotted walls that you'd covered with cards. With all the cards put away, you notice the cracked foundation. You try to remember the old house. The house you thought could survive anything and everything.

The house you remember has cracks in the walls, flaking paint, and a leaky roof. You don't care. That dilapidated house was at least a home. You'd like to go home.

Most days you pretend. You take another card from the deck and you put up a wall.

Jukebox Hero

So, just a music update. The two songs that etched themselves in my brain as a kid. I remember listening to a tape of these songs, which had been recorded off the radio, over and over. It wasn't until couple years later that I owned my first tape Def Leopard Pyromania which my sister Candy gave to me. I think I shortly after inherited Quiet Riot as well.

Whoa! Creepy Photo

What happened to the bottom of my photo? It's like a horror movie invited itself in. Talk about a weird digital camera glitch. If it turns out to be demons that swallow your soul when you view this picture on the internet, I'm really sorry.

Oh, and I swear I did absolutely no photo editing on that thing. I didn't even notice the photo was funky until it was uploaded to blogspot. I think it's the result of capturing the pure evil of Bank of America on camera.

Oh, and click on it for a higher resolution version.

Bank of America Sucks

Apparently Bank of America has started redirecting the Countrywide traffic to their website. Being a Countrywide customer (now Bank of America customer) I have to say that Bank of America's online service is absolutely awful. Not get your monthly statement in the mail? Want to view a copy of the paper statement online? Tough shit. All Bank of America is going to show you is that a monthly statement was sent on a specific date.

Since you can see how much you owe, all that's really important is being able to set up bill pay, right? You have your account number, but where is that all important address information? Prepare to do some hunting through their site which is filled with pages that give ASP errors. Speaking of which, the link to print a payment coupon is one of these broken links. That's right, even if all you want to do is mail your payment, you can't get to the payment coupon so they can easily associate your payment to your account. Bang up job guys.

Bank of America really should've looked at how easy and user-friendly Countrywide's site was. And, until they got their site to that level, let the Countrywide customers use the Countrywide site. But, no, we get to use a barely working site and are forced to navigate through the dark like paraplegic moles.

Seriously, what jackasses are writing the code and where can I send the hate mail? Even more importantly, who is the idiot that designed this unfriendly abomination? Worst banking site ever!

Rhythm Heaven

I just purchased this 4 hours ago (so mostly first impressions), but this game is really fun. The simple mechanics of tap, hold, and flick to the music make for a great time. The remix levels are fantastic and the game has a good level of difficulty.

My favorite game so far is the choir guys. I like how the other two glower at you when you're out of rhythm.

In this economy, you can't afford not to have this game.