And I thought no one read this blog!!

Wow, I honestly thought no one besides a handful of people ever pointed their browsers and my little blog here on blogspot. But I get frustrated by a bad shopping experience, decide to vent here and what do you know... I get all kinds of people leaving me messages... I find it amazing really, particularly since two out of the (formerly) three posts left by others to my previous post came from sources not immediatly known to me. So I guess there are some people out there in the world who read this, some of whom I don't know and probably think I'm quite the irate silly person, which I certainly can be at times. So I guess I should say a few things...

#1: I keep this here primarily for me and keeping the people I care about up to date with what's going on in my life. So if I don't know you (directly), please keep that in mind while you read.

#2: Any post contain language like "you're stupid" will be deleted. If ya wanna point out some silly mistake I made, cool. If you want to just post to say I'm stupid, well.. don't you have anything better to do with your time than browse through the online journals people you don't know keep just to make silly comments?

To follow up my previous message, I'd like to make it clear that I do realize I made some very silly mistakes to get my self in the situation to begin with, this is why programmers try to design computers to prevent this the best they can. Personally I feel there's a few changes PP could make to help along these lines.

Edit:
Oh yeah, I did finally get my money back from paypal this moring. So thankfully, the whole ordeal is over and done with now.

Paypal is evil, and ebay troubles :(

Well, the other day I decided to pick up a 5.1 surround sound system... Given that these days these systems are fairly cheap, and of good quality, figured what the hell. So first I went on ebay, and found a nice JVC 5.1 surround sound reciever (this is where I went wrong), then I went to best buy, and got some decent for the money yamaha speakers for $187, even picked up speaker stands for the rear speakers.

Well, this is all about paypal horrors, so here's the story...

As it turns out, I completely forgot to update my information on paypal after moviung to north carolina. This ends up meaning two things... First of all, the bank account associated with the paypal account is closed, as is the credit card is actually a check debit card tied to the closed checking account!!! So I go to make my payment, enter my paypal information, and guess what... Paypal approved the transaction!!!!!!!!!!! Yes that's right boys and girls, paypal has no issue approving transactions against closed bank accounts!!!!!!!!!!!!! You see, here's the issue... First they tried charging the debit card, this was declined then they AUTOMATICALLY rolled over to the checking account. Problem here is, they won't know for 3 days that that's going to be declined as well... Keep in mind, paypal chooses not to tell you your credit card was declined... because well, I guess that would be overly complex or something...

Now, for the first day, I don't know any of this, I don't realize it until i get my fedex tracking number and find out my package is being sent to OHIO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At this point I realize my shipping information was not updated... and then, I also realize that my payment methods must not have been updated either!!!!!!

So, being a good boy, I get in touch with the seller (audio solutions), and explain to them what happened. These guys are actually pretty good. They were willing to work with me, and for a $10 charge they got the package rerouted to NC. Really can't ask for more than that! So that's it right? happy ending right? No, oh no it can't be that easy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You see, paypal, put a hold on the payment. When this happend, the audio solutions accouting department recalled the package back to NY!!!!!!! So I called them, to get the package routed again to NC. Low and behold, I got sammy, the dude that helped me get this figured out in the first place. This guy is awesome, and he worked to get the package straightened out. Apparently, some one beat him to it though, when he called fedex they told him that it had be routed back to NC again and that he didn't need to call. So I guess they caught thier mistake. So end of story right? happy ending? OH HELL NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You see, there's still the question of this $134 dollars sitting in limbo with paypal... You see, because the bank accounts are closed, the money couldn't come from anywhere, and it couldn't go anywhere... So what's paypal's solution? Let the seller and buyer get intouch with them and just cancel the whole thing out? OH HELL NO!!!!! What I had to do was pay paypal $134.00, this covered the debt. Then I had to call their freaking claims department, and get the stupid sons of a bitches to release the god damn hold on the money, so it could be transfered to the seller. Then I had to call audio solutions back, and have them refund the money... so I get the money back on my credit card and happy ending right? NOPE!!!

You see, unlike every retailer in america, it turns out paypal can't refund money to a credit or debit card!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But that's ok, they have a brillian solution.. THEY'LL JUST DEPOSIT THE MONEY INTO MY CLOSED CHECKING ACCOUNT!!! ISN'T THAT A GOOD IDEA???? Well, I had to remind them, the account is closed, you can't transfer money into a CLOSED ACCOUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So what's their solution? I have to request a check, wait several days for it to come in the mail, deposit it, then wait 7 to 10 days for the check to clear so I can get MY MONEY BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No, that doesn't work for me... So what did I do, I went on their stupid website, and I gave them my checking account... It a couple of days I'll see some deposits from them, and confirm the account, then I'll have the money transfered in... not a speedy process, but at least it takes care of the time it would take to clear the check....

So after all of this, all I have to say is that paypal is an extreamly bad company to use for ecommerce... these people are a bunch of retards... I read not long ago that ebay (owns paypal) recently instituted a policy banning the up comming google pay as a valid payment method on their online auction site. Apparnetly they're afraid paypal will be eaten alive... gee.... I wonder why.... Well, I"m not usig paypal ever agian.... If I ever use ebay again, sellers will have to be willing to accept an alternate form of payment, I'm not going through this again!

If you have a paypal account, I highly recommend you close it immediatly! Do not ever send any moeny through their system, these people suck. Find some other way to do business on ebay, or where ever.

AJAX...

Well, I've been aware of AJAX since the last job when The Bear and Phil first found out about it. Back then I was pretty skeptical about the idea of using JavaScript to post to a webservice and do cool stuff with the results but....

Recently the current employer asked me to write a couple of systems that just screamed for AJAX. Both projects relate to different aspects of patient scheduling. And you know what, it's been a resounding success!! These systems were acting pretty smart with just a little AJAX, finally over the last week I decided to go totally nuts with it. I wrote a validator XML exchange that uses a factory to determain the validation type, kind of reminds me of the good old days writing factory based webservices for the previous employer. Then I wrote several other little XML exchanges, relating to scheduling and other things. The system is totally kicking butt!

While I was demoing it to our sales guy for his big show he actually got up at one point and exclaimed that he wished he could redo some old shows with the new system! I'm pretty happy about that. I'm writing a new system that's going to be extreamly tightly integrated with AJAX... I'm using the new AJAX thing as my OOP fix... Since for most my normal code I don't get to write real objects.