19 Oct 2009
We signed up for a PayPal account ages ago and never got around to using to process payments (we’ve got a merchant facility with CommBank so there was no great urgency to the situation) – and since setting it up the person responsible has moved on.
Our unverified account has never processed a single payment, and yet with the amount of ID they require for something as simple as a contact name change you could get a passport in some countries.
Business Contact Name Change
To process your name change request, you need to fax in additional information. Please provide a current photo identification and one of the other following documents:
- A copy of a valid photo identification showing your new name.
- Acceptable forms of photo identification are a driver’s license, passport or any other state or government issued photo identification.
- A copy of a recent utility bill showing your new name and address exactly as they appear on your PayPal account.
- A copy of a recent bank statement for the bank account listed on your PayPal account (if applicable).
Please include a letter on company stationery indicating the primary email address, current name, address and telephone number on the PayPal account, the reason for the name change, and the new business contact name.
So that we can process your request efficiently, please ensure that your documents are valid and legible. As always, any personal identification information that you submit to PayPal will remain secure and will never be transmitted to any third party.
PayPal have never had a rep as a particularly customer friendly organisation, but this isn’t even beneficial to them! With no transactions in the past and less documentation than this required for establishing a NEW account it doesn’t pose any credible threat so far as hijacked accounts/money laundering/whatever goes, and they need to spend time reviewing documents sent in a thoroughly nonstandard way. The bank account verification process is pretty good in terms of automation (albeit risky – you’re essentially giving PayPal license to do whatever with all funds in that account) – this is most certainly not.
Anyone have any good, low % fee or cost/transaction way of hooking into CBA’s Evolve system? The application doesn’t warrant us spending heaps setting it up just yet, and PayPal are good at making things way too risky and difficult. Grumble.
12 Oct 2009
From Tori
Tonight while driving me home, Josh and I stopped at Maccas and bought a chocolate sundae. He asked me whether there are McFlurries in China and I said yes. He was glad, and joked that this isn’t something he’d be willing to give up for Jesus. We laughed, because this isn’t true. We both would give up much more than McDonald’s icecreams for Jesus. I love this boy.
12 Oct 2009
Note to academics. Just read an article that uses the word “situatedness” without any good reason. Stop inventing words when you don’t need to. Especially if you’re in a scarcely established field that already struggles to justify its existence as a unique discipline. Inventing words doesn’t aid your cause – if anything, your weak attempts at establishing a jargon for yourselves serves only to highlight your tenuous existence outside the parameters of established fields. Praxis is where this all falls apart on you, so stop making up words and go do some real research to back up your mediocre methodologies. When you’re beaten to the punch by both commercial / non-profit utilities in developing not only methodologies but also tools for the same analyses you’re flogging as your own, it’s time to go and fold back into the disciplines from whence you came and stop pretending to be something new.
*ahem*
Well, that feels better. But I still need to write about it :(
23 Sep 2009
Sydney’s covered in a dust storm this morning and everyone’s talking about it. It’s pretty funky coloured and unprecedented in recorded history. Tori says Thank God in her new blog (at least, that’s the blog’s focus :)) – others say more amusing things. Here’s a sample.
“”UFO?” – my brother, “no, dust storm” – me. He looked upset.”
“[name] proudly welcomes you to Sydney Ranga Day. You can’t see us, but you know we’re out there.”
“[name] would hate to be holding a climate change deniers press conference in Sydney today.”
“Apparently you shouldnt go outside if u have asthma” [sic] – stating the obvious award
“[name] wonders if, due to global warming, jesus will return on a cloud of orange dust?”
“[name] is wondering how he got inside a sepia photo?!”
“[name] wants it to rain so she can make a mud pie on her car”
“Hey guys i had this big bag of red dust that i left outside, but how [sic] can’t find it. Would anyone know where it is?”
16 Sep 2009
I periodically freak out when reviewing emails that I’ve sent, particularly to printers, using Gmail’s (hosted apps) webmail interface. It has this habit of converting CMYK JPGs to RGB thumbnails really badly – but without apparent corruption.
The blue in the image above is actually a deep red!
Accordingly, while the colours are totally out of whack, there are no other artifacts in the image. Normally this just looks weird – sometimes, in the case of logo variants, it looks plausible but utterly incorrect! My guess is they’re using an older version of PIL (we all know how much Google loves Python) prior to this March 2009 patch. Sounds like the same phenomenon.
Still, those people emailing CMYK JPGs has to be a little bit niche, so I’m not heaps hopeful of this getting fixed too soon! The main reason I care is because web interfaces are so much faster than retrieving large attachments from IMAP stores.