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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 3853
A client wanted a donate button on her website. It was to send money to the kids cancer fund, a worthy cause, and so she went on to Paypal's website and used one of their little generators to make up a button, then sent me the code to post on her site.
Which, of course, I did.
But there was a problem. In firefox the button worked just fine. But in Internet Explorer the button takes you to a Paypal error page. "Sorry, an error occurred after you clicked the last link" .
There is no way to make the donation.
Now it is odd for a couple of reasons. Reason #1 - Paypal provided the client with the code. Provided the client with code that doesn't work on around 80% of the browsers out there.
I went and found other sites with donate buttons and tried to click on them. Same thing.
So they've essentially cut themselves off from 80% of the internet.
Now this is dumb. Beyond dumb. This is a company that makes it's living off of processing payments - a rake off and commission on both ends, charging the payer and the collector. And their own code doesn't work on 80% of the browsers.
Possibly it's just a temporary glitch, so I Google the error message.
26,900,000 results.
And I go to some of the forums, hosted on Paypal itself, reading tirades of customer abuse and threats of lawsuits, see for yourself here:
And the forums go on and on, with the paypal staff denying there's a problem, developers acknowledging there is a problem, problem not being fixed....
The developers propose workarounds, but for all the home based web authors who are not technically inclined they are absolutely useless.
Absolutely useless. Why should they troubleshoot something when it's Paypal themselves who provided them the code? Don't they want their money, or what? The 26, 900, 000 results, that's only the people irate enough to post, how many people quietly drop it, remove the code, don't complain, leave their money in limbo....? And how many posts did they delete from their forums with the excuse that users were using foul language, or not adhering to forum rules? One can imagine getting upset about this, something about a company illegally siezing or freezing your funds tends to raise your blood pressure.....
The forum? Read the dates on the posts. 11-17-2008 06:21 AM. Almost a year. And the issue is ongoing, they're still generating code that doesn't work, and even more remarkably, they're still in business.
In technical terms, this is an easy thing to fix. Come up with code that works across all browsers, even if it has to be a hardcoded URL. It doesn't get too much simpler than this. But they haven't done it. They refuse to do it.
Yet they're still in business. If you ever need to send me money, for whatever reason, use Canada post or Western Union. Never, ever, ever use Paypal.
The bathroom sink....
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2436
My mother is coming to visit and I've begun to clean. Begun to clean because I can imagine the comments and derision that will be the (not unreasonable) assessment of my housekeeping skills.
There's the carpet, less a carpet than mats of dust stuck to the floors with juice and dirt.
And the bathtub, a faithful replica of the mudpots in Yellowstone. There is the matter of laundry, which will probably need doing yet again before she gets here month end so perhaps it should be postponed, there are the brass candlesticks that need to be shined, my desk should be cleaned up and straightened, bills hidden and tucked away, stuffing gathered from the floor and repacked into the armchairs, candlewax scraped from tables, art projects to be packed away...And then there's the bathroom sink.
I'm not sure if there's even a sink there, at initial glance it's really more of a post-modern sculpture of a sink, held together with rainbow flavoured gobs of toothpaste, hair and whiskers, to clean it would be to assume that somewhere beneath this there is a sink, it requires a leap of faith, of imagination, I'm procrastinating by trying to recall the sink that might be beneath, back to the days when I first moved in...
Probably as it is it's worth money, to a connoisseur of the arts, I could rip it out and sell it on e-bay, clear up some outstanding bills...
Or I could clean it.
Miscellaneous Planes, Zombies and Moose Jaw
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 2270
Lately I seem to have been beset by strange dreams; many small and inconsequential. A few obviously related to topical news items.
What I can remember of them below:
A watch with yellow highlighter
I've rediscovered an old watch in my collection, round faced, you pull out the winding stem and when you turn it behind the numbers there's a yellow highlight that goes forward or back, depending which way you turn it. And I'm playing with it, wondering what it's purpose is, showing it to my daughter, when I look closer and I see that the "highlight" is created by a Q-tip dipped in yellow ink that draws the highlight on the dial when you turn the stem, and erases it when you reverse the direction. And I can see that the dial is made up of paper, frayed and torn at the edges, "it needs repair" I think to myself....
Falling from a jetfighter
I'm flying a highspeed jet but something's gone wrong and so I bail out miles above a tiny lake. The jet plummets into the water, I'm safely descending in my parachute. And as I descend I can see that the lake, small, very deep and set in a crater, has swimmers in it, 2 of whom were narrowly missed by the falling wreckage of my jet, it's lost, the lake is a thousand feet deep and I wonder how I'll recover it when someone on the shore tells me about a special line that has disengaged from the tail of the jet that will allow it to be hauled to the surface, diving beneath the waves I can see it, sure enough...
Of Zombies on the Bayou
And I've gone to search the bayou for bodies from the wreckage of a downed commercial airliner. There's no trace of it, just water and the large Cypress trees that circle the swamp. And there's a small rowboat boat that is drifting, intelligently it seems, towards the shore, I become aware of being watched by what I can only describe as an "alien" intelligence. It's dusk, I can't search any more tonight, and so I make my way to a cottage on the shore, as I pull up on the shore there arise from the swamp 3 bodies, victims of the crash, zombies and they are walking on the water towards me. I lock the cottage, my children are there, I go to send my daughter to bed and then I realize that she shouldn't be sleeping alone in another room, not when we're under seige from the undead, so I bring her into the living room by the fire and snuggle with her while I keep vigil ...
Moose Jaw, The Salvation Army, 2 Ugly Stepsisters and Lisa
I'm in Moose Jaw, a house, family & strangers. I'm talking to 2 girls, one is a brunette, the other a blonde, both in that pretty-ugly zone, not ugly proper but certainly not attractive. The blond is wearing a green satin prom style dress, they're both a bit thick in the bodies, they're the kind of girls you settle for when the girl you really wanted at the bar tells you that the only reason she was talking to you was so that her friends could meet you. So I'm talking to them and somehow they recognize that we grew up together, I tell them they must be wrong, they're too young, I grew up in Moose Jaw, but they begin telling me details and they grew up in Moose Jaw too, and, heck, we're in Moose Jaw right now so why is that strange and somehow they persuade me that I used to cover for their childish misbehaviours. My father discreetly leaves the room to allow us to catch up.
Then I'm in the Salvation Army. It's in a giant old warehouse, light dimly streams through dusty windows, I'm in the book section, high shelves, there are all these vintage 1930's, 40's children's books in french, "Tin Tin" and the like, with the torn and faded paper dustcovers, I take one down to flip through it and in the center I find these deep blue pages covered in signatures of famous people, Walt Disney and the like, and I think that this is a bit of a treasure but there isn't time to be looking at books here, there are greater treasures here, I know it, and as I walk out from the shelves a slightly overweight french man with a charming accent takes the book from me, pressing a loonie into my hand, I'm amused and offended that he thinks I need the loonie so badly, the book was worth more than that but then I rationalize it by thinking that he obviously wants the book more than me....
I look through the store, there are sporting goods, climbing ropes in good conditon for a couple of bucks, nothing I want but deals nonetheless, there are windowed rooms in which there are children playing, the daycare, with all of the children's stuff inside as well, another room with mats on the floor and women doing arobics, the women's stuff is in here but I don't want to go in and interrupt their class to look, there's a hallway that leads to more sporting and recreational areas....
Walking through the warehouse, looking at all the treasures I have a realization, I recognize something (?) - and I'm walking behind a cute, perky brunette who's talking to me:
"Yes, this store was set up in memory of Lisa _____, she lived here for quite a few years you know..."
And I didn't know, didn't know at all.... I chase after her and tell her that I'll buy her lunch if only she'll tell me more....I'm on the verge of understanding something important, vital....
She agrees, still walking in front of me and talking, looking over her shoulder and smiling with big white teeth...
"The thing you have to remember is that Lisa was a sociopath....."
And at that moment it all makes sense.
Too afraid to leave the house
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 2372
I have to confess, I occasionally read the news. The online version, it's a way of postponing work that needs to be done, of procrastinating the endless list of chores that will devour my day. I rationalize it by believing it "Keeps me informed".
It doesn't really. But on that note here's a summary of todays headlines in the Calgary Herald:
It's kinda tough to read, so feel free to enlarge it by clicking. It'll still be tough to read, but bigger. My notes in red....
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