Paperless? Clueless is more like it.

Just another morning in banking hell.

Eleanor gets paid on Thursdays. Usually it's on our online account to record the amount (it varies week to week) by the time I'm done feeding the aminals a little before 6. Today, though, no go. Not 6, not 7 nor 8. Then I remembered. Our "local" bank, First Niagara, acquired another bunch of banks and apparently merged into their electronic processing system. So the actual money changes hands on that gateway to the Niagara Frontier known as South Windsor, Connecticut.  It's been a little rainy there, as you may have heard.

Nothing on their website saying anything about delays- just a list of which branches were still closed. Fortunately, there was a relatively large balance in there to begin with, and just now, close to four hours late, it finally posted.

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Their website, like almost all banking ones nowadays, goes out of its way to be difficult to get into- even if you're the account owner. 

The flavor of the month in online security seems to be pass-pictures. Supposedly, the script kiddies who are phishing for your info won't know what picture you've selected. Problem is, half the time, you don't remember, either, because they go with choices that are never obvious (duh) and you therefore have to select a pass-phrase to go with your pass-picture before entering your pass-word.

It's enough to make you want to pass-gas. So I did just now- of the electronic kind.

Eleanor's health savings account (another putrid flavor of the month, this one in the health care industry) has been inaccessible for weeks. The login took, the weird pass-thing appeared ("if you knew sushi" with a picture of some raw fish next to it), the password entered, and, for over a week, it shot right back to the login page. No help link, no phone number, just unhealthy limbo. Then, as of yesterday, not even the login worked, and still, no help unless you went and found it on your own.

Wot I did.  After an interminable wait on their Legendary Customer Service line, I was told, oh, we switched from THAT website on October 15. We sent a mailing about it.

Oh yeah. That was probably the one with 1,024 changes that you sent in JULY. Would it have killed them to put a reminder on the actual login page? (Probably it would have, because then the old webhost would be plugging the NEW webhost, and we can't have any of that:P)

So he then walked us (Eleanor now being on the other line for our own protection) over to the new login page- where the old login wouldn't work. She'd need to re-register; and would need an "employer ID" I'd never seen before. Fortunately, since she still had a pulse after all this, he was able to give it to us. And I then went through the whole damn Wall of Weird again, picking a pass-picture and a new pass-phrase to go with it.

Would you like to see?



I actually had some dirtier ideas for that whisk than that, but if past history holds, I will be discussing this phrase with one of their IT professionals someday soon, and I didn't want to push it;)

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I won't even start with how much fun Key Bank is. Suffice it that "BiteMeKeyBank" is the pass-phrase that goes with THEIR pass-picture.

Lockoot foolies

The local sports station decided over the summer to drop a 2-hour syndicated midday ESPN show in favor of restoring "Sabres Hockey Hotline"- a beloved former component of the longlost Empire Sports Network, which died as a result of the Adelphia bankruptcy a decade or so ago.

While I'd prefer a 2-hour-long Emergency Broadcast tone to being subjected to Collin Cowherd, I feel for the guys who have to come up with two hours a day of content for this show when there's nothing going on in the NHL. The other shows on the station are also short on content, since the Bills (a) are coming off a bye week and (b) sucked, even when they were playing. So they have to resort to some creative stunts to get through the shifts.

Here was one from today, perhaps inspired by the tragic story of the home-invasion death reported earlier in the day of colorful former baseball player Pasquale Perez:


Boy, they don't make hockey players like they used to. Who do you think was the most colorful player in Sabres history?

Obvious choices quickly arose. Rob Ray, noted goon (and current once-and-future Sabres game-day analyst), known for his shirt-ripping brawls. Matthew Barnaby, another feisty one (more so in retirement, including earlier this year when he got busted for DWI after driving his luxury sports car several miles up the Transit with one tire blown off, leaving a trail of sparks in his wake). One they couldn't remember the name of (Al Smith, it turns out), a 70s goalie who literally quit during the playing of the National Anthem.

And then they got a call- about Brian Spencer. I'd forgotten about him, not even remembering him as a Sabre, though he played for the Islanders when I still followed them earlier in the 70s. The caller remembered him from his days working in a bar band, and after a late-night Niagara County gig, he saw a monster of a vehicle in the bar's parking lot. Turned out to be "Spinner" Spencer his own self, holding forth in a tank-like structure surrounded by a harem of pretty women. As he told this tall tale, the hosts were googling it- and it turned out to be true:

While off the ice Spencer was often found working on his vehicle, dubbed "The Hulk". He began with a 2½ ton Army convoy truck and removed the body. Next, Spencer installed a 651 Cummins diesel engine and placed the shell of a 1972 Dodge van and hood of a Mack Truck atop. The dashboard was taken from a DC-3 cockpit, and all the gauges were functional. Brian also had a small black-and-white television monitor in the dashboard, which was connected to cameras in the back "sleeping" area of the Hulk. The hood ornament was a horse's jawbone.

All they could say after that was, So, anybody still voting for Matthew Barnaby?

Sadly, Spencer died in 1988 at the young age of 38, in a drug-deal-gone-bad gunfight.  I do hope they settle this damn thing before the backstory gets even more depressing.