There are a couple of songs in my iTunes that when come on, just instantly motivate me and get me all jazzed up. Some are from the baseball days, when I’d listen to Death Metal to get myself geared up. I got me thinking of what other types of songs people listen to to get themselves pumped up and excited. For getting ready for a baseball game or beating the snot out of 12 year olds in Call of Duty 4 I listen to either/or:

Three Days Grace - “Animal I have Become”
Slipknot - “Wait and Bleed”
Emarosa - “Utah”
A Day to Remember - “Speak of the Devil”
Tears Don’t Fall - “Bullet for My Valentine”

Slipknot would probably be the best for getting me insanely worked up. I used to listen to that song before every game I pitched in college. I would make sure to be the last one off the bus while I waited back and pulled a mini Dwight Shrute by rocking out to that song. Really any song that has heavy guitar riffs, loud drums, and good intense screaming will get the blood flowing. Later I’ll follow up with a list of songs that calms me down and makes me more productive.

Recently I have been slowly creeping back into the gaming world. I used to be a huge Xbox Live fan but for awhile I was just to busy to keep paying for something I hardly used. Just the other day I hopped back on and played some Call of Duty 4. The online play of this game is amazing. It isn’t just running around killing 12 and 13 year olds yelling “OWND!” that makes this game so much fun, it’s the ranking system. As you play the game there are challenges and milestones you accomplish to boost your rank and open up more weapons and fun!

This got me thinking about some of the great video games. Online gaming is on another realm compared to regular single player games, so I can’t take those into consideration for “Best Video Game Ever”. The game that stands out the most for me is Final Fantasy VII. I can remember getting the game during Christmas break, I believe it was my junior or senior year of High School. I had never played a Final Fantasy before this one, but had watched my older brother play countless hours and never really understood the excitement about it.

The Final Fantasy series continues to grow and grow, but in it’s early stages it was Zelda but 100 times slower. It wasn’t until VII that the game took off in a new direction. Although my recollection of the storyline today is a little hazy, I do remember it capturing my attention and not allowing me to put down the controller for a solid week. There were so many things about the game that pulled me in. At one time you want to beat the game but then at the same time you don’t want it to be over. Aside from the main quest of the story there were multiple side adventures that you could do to waste even more time of your life. From Chocobo racing to trying to beat the Machines, the game seemed endless.. until it actually did end. VII, I believe, is the Best Video Game Ever.

Wow more Xbox hell. This time it’s with my Xbox Live membership and how Xbox has apparently taken me to collections over a Monthly recurring fee of 25 bucks. I had my debit card associated with the account lost/stolen back in May and because I hardly used Xbox Live much anyways, I didn’t even think about changing the billing information once I got my new card.

Fast forward to now, and I go to try and re-instate my account.. they say I owe an outstanding balance of 25 bucks. I’m like sure no problem.. they give me the run around for a good 2 hours. People in India having me call “Billing Accounts” which gets me routed to MSN Broadband support.. then back to Xbox Support to be told again to call “Billing Accounts” at the same number they gave me the first time.. wait for a good 20 minutes before someone picks up AGAIN, to find out it’s MSN Broadband Support ONCE AGAIN! They tell me they can’t help me but would be able to transfer me BACK to XBOX LIVE SUPPORT! I go back to Xbox live.. tell the guy what hell I have been through assures me he can fix the problem then pulls up my info, sees I’ve been all over the place and then says “Yeah looks like your account has been written off..” You’ll need to call.. THE SAME NUMBER! Wow shocker. Says the telephone system must be mixed up and THEN tells me that even if I do pay it, I won’t be able to recover my account back into good standing. What kind of BS is that? Over 25 bucks!? Because I lost my card and didn’t know and you sent one email that I found 8 months after.. without any warning of this being the end all be all of it.. Thanks a lot Xbox Live India Support for your worthless help and Xbox Live for re-affirming your horrible customer service.

Well as any Twins fan would know, as soon as a player reaches all-star status, the team tries to dump them before they actually have to pay them what they are really worth. Once again, they dump a player like Johan Santana and get no established big leaguer in the trade. They had chances to get other players that have already stepped foot on a big league field but they were greedy and thought they could get more. As it turns out, both the Red Sox and Yankees stopped talking with the tools that are the Twins and let the Mets get a steal on Johan. The Twins got 4 minor leagues in return, none that project out to be anything near a Santana.

I’m happy for Santana though. He finally will be on a team that will do something if they are in a race and need another player. The Twins, when they are in need of a player go and grab the best play from the St. Paul Saints or some other washed up big leaguer.. or else trade for more minor leaguers. I’m also happy for Terry Ryan who left the circus that is the Minnesota Twins. I can only imagine what it’s like working for the cheapest billionaire in the game, Carl Pollad. That guy pulls in so much money but for some reason doesn’t want to put anything back into the team and bring another World Series to Minnesota.

Leeks, I think it’s time I start cheering for the D-Rays.. I mean Rays.

I think with all of the debates going on and the races starting to heat up, the candidates need to start discussing real issues. Issues like clean code, valid XHTML, usability, and coolness. Each candidate has rather up to date websites, in terms of look and standards. All are filled with ads, flashy galleries, sign-up forms every where, videos from YouTube. For me, my vote is going to come down to who has the cleanest XHTML, great use of standards and usability, because a candidate that cares about their site, cares about the people.

Worst Code
Taking a look underneath the hood of each site, you’ll be able to see just how well these sites are groomed. While all of them are up to date with certain 2.0 trends, there are a few that missed the boat. John McCain takes the Worst Code award. Very disorganized and bloated with inline JavaScript. Sorry but I just can’t look a candidate in the eye and believe what they are saying when they have coding practices like this. Coming in a close second is Mitt Romney. Full inline CSS style sheet just isn’t very 2008.

Most Like a Billboard
The winner of this category goes to Hill-Dawg. This site is piled high with ads or announcements that look like ads. I wonder if she has those tied into Google Adwords and just gets paid by herself for serving them, bold strategy. The rest don’t have a huge amount of advertising and actually cram a lot of content in the correct places.. so points to everyone else cept Hill-Dawg on this one.

Best Logo Design
Obama has by far the best logo of the bunch. It’s intuitive and fitting, really presents him the best. Others have various renditions of the flag or else there’s McCain who just has a standard Photoshop shape of a star as his logo. Minus 5 points for McCain again. I think a lot of thought went into creating Obama’s logo and it definitely shows in the end results. Obama 10 everyone else 2, except McCain who’s sitting at negative 10.

Best Color Scheme
This is a tough one to judge because it’s a little hard to waiver from the red, white, and blue.. but I think Obama shows the best use of a great palette. The vibrant blues and reds show off well with glowing accents and other effects throughout the site. A few others use a rather dull and boring palette, but McCain once again scores at the bottom with his use of heavy black tones. Trust me it’s nothing personal against McCain, I just don’t like him.

Overall Design Concepts
Huckabee’s is probably the most bloggish looking site, but with Chuck Norris on his back I don’t really want to go any further on that one. Guiliani I think, has the best integrated video player. Almost every other candidate went the easy route and just embedded some other video source. Best rotating feature pane goes to Obama, surprise surprise. It flows very well with the rest of the site and doesn’t look like every other rotating pane.

Conclusion
Adding up the points, looks like Obama wins with a score of 124 while the next closest, Ron Paul comes in at 34. This rating system is based solely on the time of day and how many cups of coffee I have had at that time. Other notables are Hill-Dawg with 8 points, and John McCain comes in at -17 points. So looks like based on these issues, which every true American should weigh, Obama is the clear favorite in 2008.

So I go to pay my Best Buy bill this month.. and this is my first payment, just got the card. I noticed on their website that if your are 2 days early on your bill, it won’t process in time so it would be late. BUT! You can do the speed processing but that’s an extra 15 dollar service fee. How is this even legal? Charging someone for making making a payment on the day it’s due.. Not sure it costs the company anymore money to have the payment authorized that much faster.

Credit Cards are the biggest joke.. the only reason I have any are to buy things then just pay them off the next day.. in hopes to build up some credit. Not sure if that works exactly but oh well. I probably shouldn’t have a Best Buy card anyways.

So I will admit that I was a little excited to sit down and watch the debut of American Gladiators last night. I remember watching them all the time as a kid and thought the look and previews of the new show would be pretty sweet. Man was I wrong. I don’t even know where to begin with how horrible it was to watch. First there was probably 20 minutes total of actual challenges in a 2 hour segment. Then the Gladiators were probably the biggest tools I’ve seen. They act like a 3rd stringer that makes a tackle on special teams in the 4th quarter when their team is down by 40 points. Pretty pathetic.

Not saying I could hold my own against the Gladiators but the contestants made them look like fools more often then they made the contestants look like fools. One instance was during the joust, the Gladiator lost both times because his roided up body couldn’t balance and he stepped over on the other platform both times. The last time the contestant was cheering because he one and the douche bag just pushed the contestant into the water, then talked trash. I seriously think they just went to the local Lifestyles Fitness Gym and gathered up all the dudes they saw staring in the mirror calling themselves pussy’s. (Sorry for the vulgar language, but it’s based on a true story. Leeks has my back on that one.)

I used to be a big fan of the old school Gladiators but I doubt I’ll be wasting another hour of my life watching that.

I have been looking for posters to put up in the office for awhile. I was specifically interested in the ISO50 posters and was looking around for them for awhile. The other day I was dropping Tommy off at this detailing shop when right next door I notice these posters. They had boxes and boxes full of them, the exact same ones I was looking for. I immediately got out of the truck and took a look. Apparently, tucked away between a detailing shop and a auto repair shop is a place called Merchline.

Merchline specializes in online store fronts for bands, artists, etc.. They had all of the ISO50 prints right there. They also had hundreds and hundreds of t-shirts, stickers, hats, cds.. anything and everything. We talked for the guys running the place and they were awesome. There are only three of them that do all of the online orders, packaging, shipping, inventory, updating.. everything for the sites. They have a huge list of clients. I definitely recommend checking them out.