This is my immaculate room. I think my favorite part is the Christmas present on my dresser that I still haven’t delivered.

Prior to college I was obsessively clean, but one of my roommates had so much stuff that you had to climb a mountain of clothes, speakers, musical instruments, and booze just to enter the room. My room cleaning skills still haven’t recovered.

Even if you enjoy testing out sketchy online banks, I highly recommend staying away from VirtualBank. They stole my entire deposit. If I want them to look into the situation, they want to charge me $20 per hour, and of course it’s not known how long the investigation would take.

Great idea! VirtualBank stole my money, and now VirtualBank thinks I’m going to give them $20 per hour to investigate how they stole my money? I don’t think so.

Here’s what happened. I decided to give VirtualBank a try in late 2004 because they had a money market account with an APY that was competitive at the time (it’s not anymore). I made my initial deposit into VirtualBank from my First Hawaiian Bank account. Shortly thereafter, I closed my First Hawaiian Bank account because I don’t live in Hawaii anymore, and I had accounts with higher returns. I don’t necessarily need a physical bank location, but I want a higher interest rate for the tradeoff.

After testing out VirtualBank for about 8 months, I decided they weren’t worth it. I didn’t particularly like their website, and many other banks have accounts offering higher interest rates. I asked VirtualBank to close my account and mail a check for the remaining balance to my home address. Instead of doing what I requested, VirtualBank closed my account and pretended to transfer the money to my First Hawaiian Bank account, which had been closed for a long time by that point. If they couldn’t comply with my request to close my account and send me a check, then they shouldn’t have taken any action without my explicit approval. At the very least, they shouldn’t claim they transfered the funds to a non-existant bank account.

I’ve talked to First Hawaiian Bank, and their records don’t show any activity on the account since the time it was closed. It’s conceivable that First Hawaiian Bank accepted the transfer for a closed account and kept the deposit for themselves, but I doubt it. Regardless, since VirtualBank unilaterally decided to transfer my money from my VirtualBank account to a closed First Hawaiian Bank account, Virtual Bank should be the one to figure out where the money went. That’s why I’m placing the blame squarely on VirtualBank, even if the money is floating around in First Hawaiian Bank’s system somewhere.

In conclusion, don’t use VirtualBank if you don’t want to be cheated out of your money!

[The issue has been resolved. See the update.]

Why can’t I eat grass? Cows can do it, why can’t I? I waste so much time buying soup, opening the can, and sometimes heating it up. Think of all the time I would save if I could just step outside and chew on my lawn.

While researching the possibility of modifying my stomach so that I can digest hay, I learned something astonishing: cows are like microbreweries! A cow’s forestomach is a huge 50 gallon fermentation vat with 500 trillion bacteria. If I fed a cow malt, hops, and a bit of yeast, would it produce beer instead of milk? I think it’s worth a shot. How convenient would it be to pre-party by milking (beering?) the cow in the living room and downing a few cold ones from the cow’s 50 gallon tank? On second thought that doesn’t sound convenient at all, but it would still be pretty cool.

I have a long list of things I hate besides cows. I meant to post them all here, but I’m feeling a little ill. I just ate a full pound of Toll House chocolate chip cookies. Now I have to go curl up in a ball and try not to think about how all that warm doughy goodness will look if it comes back up. You’ll just have to wait for the next installment to find out what else I hate.

Love,
Keaka