Pretty houses should be for me

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I were just driving around the countryside. On the way home, we passed this huge apartment-type building. I desperately looked for some sort of sign to tell me what this gorgeous building was. Finally, I found the sign saying it was an addiction treatment center. Why does it seem that the addiction centers are always so gorgeous? I joked that I needed to get myself addicted to something so I could live there. Of course, it probably costs a couple thousand dollars a day. Then again, I can't imagine that addicts have that sort of money available. They must have some sort of government assistance or something. So unfair.

The World Is Yours Now

I've been slacking on the Website of the Week feature and I apologize for that. However, while this isn't an official Website of the Week, there is some pretty interesting information at The World Is Yours Now. There's a few articles on how to make money with your blogs but I think the one that is currently helping me the most is the one on tools for freelancers. Even though it's not an extremely in-depth post, it is a start in the right direction. I'd like to see a little bit more on the topic along with some links for freelance writers.

As a whole, it is a pretty good blog with some decent information on making money on the internet. There are also some fairly helpful links as well. I'm looking forward to reading new information on how to make my blog better and bring in additional readers. Hopefully, The World Is Yours Now will be an asset to everyone.

Game review: Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper Game

Every once in awhile, I get the urge to try a different genre of game. The hidden object and time management games get boring after playing them for too long. So I decided to give the childish-looking Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper Game a go. I do my best to not judge a game by its graphics. There are a few 'childish' looking games that I enjoy playing. However, this game was terrible. It's not really a 'crossword' game in that you aren't trying to solve a puzzle with clues. It's a 'crossword' game in the sense that the words literally cross each other.

Bullies have stolen pieces of a machine and it is your job to retrieve the pieces. You start on a square in the corner of the board. Using 3 or more letter words, you need to get your character to the other side of the board while picking up objects on the way. You can create any words you want to as long as you have the letters available and you need to use a letter from the previous word. Kinda like Scrabble.

This game was so annoying to play. Mostly because it was fairly difficult to get the words to line up with the objects you need to pick up so you spend a lot of time roaming around the board. In the higher levels, there are dogs that move those objects making it even more difficult. I'd rather just play Scrabble or a good crossword puzzle. Leave out the objects, they are unnecessary. The childish graphics would have been fine if the game itself was enjoyable. Sadly, that is where it is lacking.

Flash Drives For Backup?

I'm thinking about buying a usb flash drive in order to back up the family pictures. Though I'm not sure if that would be a good idea. Supposedly flash drives last longer than hard drives since there aren't any moving parts inside them. I don't know. I'm don't have a lot of faith in something so tiny and portable. It seems like they'd be easy to lose or step on or something. Has anyone ever had any experience with flash drives beyond an mp3 player?

Music review: Live - Pillar of Davidson

Artist: Live Members: Ed Kowalczyk (lead vocals and guitar), Chad Taylor (lead guitar), Patrick Dahlheimer (bass guitar) and Chad Gracey (drums) Album: Throwing Copper Release date: 4/26/94 Video link

Lyrics: Warm bodies, I sense Are not machines that can only make money Past, perfect, tense Words for a feeling and all I've discovered I'll be along son With medicine supposed to, designed to Make you high I'll be along son With words for a feeling and all I've discovered

Old, bad eyes Old, bad eyes Old, bad eyes

On loneliness comes Go see the foreman, go see the profiteer On loneliness drives We're takin' our time movin' shit for this holy slime

Old, bad eyes Old, bad eyes Old, bad eyes, almighty fear

The shepherd won't leave me alone He's in my face and I The shepherd of my days And I want you here by my heart And my head, I can't start 'til I'm dead About the song: Live comes from a fairly small town not too far from my house. Like many small towns, York, Pennsylvania is a blue-collar town. This song is about the people working hard in a crappy job to support their family. It's a pretty powerful song with a hard drum beat and a steady bass line that give the song a dark feeling. You're left feeling sorry for the people forced to live these sorts of backbreaking jobs just so they can put food on the table.

I need a bigger house

I really want to lose some weight. Doesn't everyone? I would like to get some sort of strength equipment set up in my house so I could work out whenever I want to. Unfortunately, I don't have anywhere to put it. What I need is something that I can fold up and stick under the couch yet isn't too difficult or heavy for me to set up and move around. That doesn't leave me a whole lot of choices. These are the times I think exercising sucks. I want to do it but I have nowhere to put any equipment TO work out. Bah!

Game review: Megastore Madness

There are a ton of time management games out there but I've never seen anything like Megastore Madness. Your parents have left for a couple of months so it is up to you to run the family store. In the beginning, there are three workers to help you. One restocks shelves, one helps customers and one is a cashier. Juggle the three of them to keep your shelves fully stocked and your customers happy. I went into this thinking that it could be a lot of fun. Instead, it's annoying. In a normal time management game, you only have one player to pay attention to in order to help customers or stock shelves or whatever. However, in this game, you have three that you have to control. It's not particularly easy to keep up with the items flying off the shelves, the little kids tossing toys all over the place (which the stockboy cleans up), helping customers find what they want and still cashing them out before they get angry. As a result, I ended up focusing mostly on the stockboy and customer-helping girl and completely forgetting about the cashier. Then the customers would get mad. To make matters worse, the game adds workers as the customers get more difficult.

This would have been a good game if there were fewer people for you to control. A person's attention can only be focused in so many places at once. Having to focus on up to 6 people is rather difficult. If you want to have that many helpers, then there should be some non-controllable characters in there. There is no reason for us to control the stockboys. They should be able to see what needs to be restocked or what needs to be cleaned up automatically. That would leave us, the player, to deal with just the customers' needs. It would still give us up to 4 characters to control but then our attention isn't focused absolutely everywhere and we can get things accomplished in a timely manner. As it stands, the game is just too chaotic to play properly.

Cruisin'?

I've always wanted to go on some cruises. Well, kind of anyway. See, I have a problem. I don't like deep water. Water that I can stand up in that is below my head is fine. Water that is over my head is not cool. Sadly, cruises don't occur in my bathtub. I suppose I could go on a cruise and just lock myself in my cabin or stay in all of the indoor areas but I don't know how much fun that would be. It seems like a waste of money to do things that I can do cheaper on shore.