Coyote Blog

I have been having problems for a while receiving Paypal payments to my business account.  Today, I received an account notification for someone else's paypal account.  I have received phishing and spoof emails before, but I was pretty sure this one was legit.  I contacted the other person whose account notification I had received (they were horrified at that security breech, by the way), and sure enough, they were honest enough to admit they had been receiving some mystery payments they could not account for, which we quickly determined were mine.  I asked them to check their email addresses on their account, and sure enough, for some reason neither of us could fathom, my email address was listed as a secondary address on their account.  This is the same email that is the primary on my Paypal account, something Paypal claims is impossible.

I asked the other user to not touch it for a minute, and said I wanted to try an experiment.  I called Paypal and got a real person (a slog in and of itself) and described the situation:  I had solid reason to suspect that my email address on my account was on someone else's account as well.  They said that was impossible.  I insisted it might be possible.  Eventually, the customer service agent relented and said they would run a search (I presume they search their data base for my email address and check for multiple hits, an assumption later confirmed by the supervisor).

Well, the customer service agent returned and said "I am happy to tell you your account is fine and no one else has your email address."  She actually said the "happy" thing in a chirpy voice.  I said that now I was REALLY worried, as I had definitive evidence my email is on another account, and if their search programs are not finding the issue, I have no confidence that it is not on more accounts.  After getting nowhere with this, I asked for a supervisor.

I explained all of the above, and the supervisor admitted the first agent did not tell me the whole truth.  She said, "yes, in fact we did find your email on one other account and eliminated it.  The problem was on just that one other account.  We have had this problem a few times and are still trying to figure out why it happens because it should be impossible."  Fine.  But why did the customer service agent feel the need to lie?  I guess technically it was correct for her to report that my email was not on any other account, as they had eliminated the duplications before they took me off hold.  It just seems to be in the institutional nature of organizations to cover their errors and not admit them.

I guess this sort of thing might work with the average computer user who is unsure of his skills and can be convinced that he misunderstands the problem.  And to be fair, all of computer and software customer service seems to work this way, trying to convince users it was their error rather than a bug.  But in my case, knowing for an absolute fact that there was an error, this approach only panicked me more, as I became worried not only with the security hole in their payments system, but with the fact that the company was apparently unaware of the hole and unable to detect it.

The other issue is that I actually think I know how this happened, but neither the agent nor their supervisor took the time to try to get any background information on me that might help them diagnose what is obviously a bug in their system they have been chasing unsuccesfully.  It is a bit like having a mystery epidemic where a disease is spreading via an unknown vector but no one is doing any research into the patients' histories.  Yeah, I know they can't put a priority on every bug fix, but I would assume that for a payments processor a bug that allows money to flow to the wrong person might be of some priority.

Postscript: Not that it matters to any of you, but here is my hypothesis.  I actually had done a transaction with this other user years ago.  This user did not have a paypal account at that time, but one can actually send money via credit card to someone with a Paypal account even if the person sending money does not have an account.  The other user sent me the money with her Visa card from a public terminal, but called me because she could not complete the form because she did not have an email address.  I told her just to plug mine in, and if I got any emails on the transaction I would mail them to her.  Years later, she was more sophisticated and opened up her own Paypal account.  My hypothesis  (really, the only explanation that works) is that at the time she signed up, the Paypal computer went back into its records, found her name from this old transaction, and automatically attached the old email address (mine) from that transaction to the new account as an additional email.  Since this email was not entered via the data entry screen, it bypassed the duplicate email name check which presumably happens at data entry.  It is a back door that allows duplicates in.  I strikes me someone intheir development group might be interested in this hypothesis, since this is one of those bugs it is hard to track down, but no one asked.

Sent to me by a reader, picture from this article.

Fortunately, there seem to be plenty of empty seats for him ;=)

In penance for that other game link, here is my favorite online flash game, called desktop tower defense.

The permalinks are screwed up right now.  That is the one problem I have had that keeps me from 100% satisfaction with WordPress -- the mod-rewrite stuff is pretty finicky and can lead any custom permalink structure to get screwed up from time to time.

Update: Fixed now.  There is some kind of bug that whenever I try to change the URLs of categories, I get a permalink mess.  So I am just creating redirects for all the old category locations and calling it a day.  This error may well be a host problem rather than a WordPress problem.

I'm not an affiliate, and I get no remuneration for plugging them, but I must say that Zappos.com is absolutely terrific if you are looking to buy any kind of clothes online.  Originally mainly a women's shoe and accessory store, now it sells all kinds of stuff.

Just as an example, my wife ordered some shoes the other day, and found them to be the wrong size.  She contacted them and got a shipping label for a free return.  Before we even got the box out the door to UPS, the replacement shoes in the correct size showed up at our house.

Guys, if you have not heard of Zappos, the odds are very high that your wife has.  In a feature that reminds me of the heyday of the dot.com bust, they are offering free shipping to arrive by Christmas for orders received before 1PST December 23.  That includes free shipping and overnight delivery of gift cards.

OK, I think I have finally, successfully migrated both my blogs from the Typepad ASP service to self-hosted WordPress, with the completion of Climate Skeptic last night.  Now I can get back to real posting.

As of this evening, the site migration from the Typepad service to self-hosted WordPress is mostly complete.  I have gotten a few emails about broken links and such, but I am fairly certain most are chased down now (though you are welcome to email me if you have problems).  The RSS feed is the last thing I need to test -- which I will do with this post.  For those of you who have been accessing this site via the feeds.feedburner.com/CoyoteBlog feed, I am hoping nothing has changed -- that should still be the primary feed in the future  (though you may experience about 10 duplicate posts from this weekend).  Folks who have been using other feed locations will have to migrate -- all those other feeds are now off (well, almost, I will put a few more messages on the old feeds to remind people to switch).  If you are seeing this post in your feed reader, you are good to go.

I have really tried to make the site more attractive, and I rejoiced in the much greater flexibility I had on WordPress.   Since several people have asked, I did all the design myself, though I paid a whopping $7 each for two stock images I used in creating the banner image.  Most folks read this blog via text feeds, but do me one favor and check out the new design just to make me feel better for all the work that went into it.

Actually, the vast majority of work went into migrating the site from Typepad without breaking hundreds of inbound links.  It is not impossible to maintain the permalink structure of the old Typepad blog, just hard, and I will post on how I did it soon.  On thing I will say now, though -- the new Typepad platform implemented for my site in October made it MUCH harder to migrate.  The last 50 days of posts took more time to migrate than the previous 4+ years.  That is one reason I have dropped a lot of my posting and really pushed up the priority of moving the site -- Every day I waited created a lot more work.

I have posted on my dissatisfaction with the new Typepad platform several times.  Suffice it to say that while the WordPress platform is a much better one, I would not have moved had it not been for three issues:

• Typepad eliminated the blockquote option from the editor.  Yeah, I know, this seems a trivial concern.  But it is telling that a blog software provider could be so clueless about their customers as to think blockquotes to be unnecessary to bloggers
• Typepad really screwed up the image functionality.  I have been on and off to customer service for weeks on images that simply would not post or would not post correctly.  Further, perhaps in an effort to make it impossible in the future for anyone to leave, Typepad implemented a new image storage system where it is impossible to actually access your image file.  What this meant for me was that, in blogging, the same images had to be uploaded over and over again, for every post in which they were used.  Further, it meant that my program that I used to scrape the old blog site and put all the images on my new site could not copy these images.  I had to painstakingly go into every post, right click and download the image, and then re-post it.  And I use a lot of images.
• OK, so Typepad would have been fine if I did not ever quote any other sites and used no images (lol).  But it had one more problem-- when switching to the new platform, they built a new spell check program which is awful.  Folks who read my blog a lot know I DESPERATELY need a good spell checker.  But the new Typepad spell checker did not have an "add to dictionary" or even a "slip all occurrences" option, and somehow it disabled the built-in Firefox checker.   Image spell-checking a 3000 word piece on global warming and having to hit skip 150 times for each occurrence of "CO2" in the piece.

So, one blog down and one to go.    The second should be a lot easier with what I have learned.  My one screw-up on this one is I imported some old posts with Carriage Returns on each line so they don't wrap right, but I will just have to live with that -- I know how to avoid it with the next migration.  Expect blogging to be light, as I need to get my other site off Typepad before I post too many more items that I have to port manually.  I also still need to get the caching system up and tuned, so the site may be a tad slow for a few days.

Thanks to all those who complained about my site being the visual equivilent of nails on a chalkboard -- you gave me the final push to get this done.  In retrospect, an intervention was clearly necesary and I appreciate those who were forthright enough to provide it.

I run this blog mainly for my own enjoyment, so I mostly am just designing the new WordPress version whatever the hell way I want it.

But, I am split on the issue of fixed vs. variable width.  This blog currently is variable width.  Text expands and contracts to fill the screen width.  The pro of variable width is that it allows people with wider monitors to actually take advantage of the real estate they invested in.  The con is the site almost never looks as aesthetically nice as a fixed width site, where everything is a bit more in control  (example here of fixed width).

Any preferences out there?  Please comment.

I am switching over domain registrars as the first step in the porcupine mating ritual that will eventually lead to a migration of this blog to WordPress.  There may be short downtimes of the site or of the email associated with this blog as I futz around with nameservers and cnames and such.  But since I am unable right now to publish any content on typepad that includes a graph or drawing, I am willing to bear some problems to get on a new platform.

Something is wrong in the Typepad editor such that trying to include images is causing the system to hang.  This is the third or fourth time I have had to stop posting until Typepad cleans this up, all since Typepad introduced its new editor which is really driving me crazy.  As soon as I can get the site to migrate correctly with all links intact to WordPress, I am moving off Typepad.

My company has over 20 URL's for various recreation facilities we manage.  I do all the design and maintenance of these myself, generally using a shared core design with some color and content changes.  Since this is just a side job for me, I often put it off and unfortunately things get dated fast.

For a while now I have been wanting to experiment with a content management system to ease the maintenance of multiple web sites.  So over the past couple of weeks, I have played around with various CMS's.  I was intrigued for a while by ExpressionEngine, but the fact it was not public domain (ie it charges per site licenses that would be prohibitive for me) finally killed the deal.  I also looked at Joomla and Drupal. 

Eventually, I settled on what many will consider an odd choice:  WordPress.  Yeah, I know, its a blogging engine.  I know quite well, because I am in the process of converting both my blogs from Typepad to WordPress.  I chose WordPress for a few reasons:

• I understand the blogging paradigm, and so I have a good sense for how the content will be handled, and the limitations.
• I am, having messed around with my blogs, comfortable with the WordPress templating system.  Though certainly more limited than ExpressionEngine, it does what I need to do. I am moderately facile in CSS and PHP, the two real requirements to make a good template.
• Most of my sites are simple.  The only two API's I really need to plug in to are Google Maps and Flickr, and I have tested and am comfortable with the available WordPress plugins for these.
• I want to begin, carefully, to let some of my employees be able to add and edit some content (e.g. changing store hours).  I think the wordpress interface is pretty accessible to some folks who may be new to online content and gives me the amount of control I need as an editor.  For a noob content contributor, WordPress is far more accessible than other CMS's.
• With a static site, I have an advantage over a blog in that I can turn on full site caching to speed up the site (via WP-super-cache).  I also added an SEO plugin to make my permalinks and pages more SEO friendly, something I don't care that much about on my blog.

I think that the first site came out pretty well, and I don't think its obvious that it is built on a blogging engine (site here, for our Arizona snow play area).  The biggest internal debate I had was whether to go with fixed or variable widths.  I actually went the opposite way of most modern programmers, moving from variable to fixed rather than vice versa.  Most of my customers, as shown by my server logs, have slow and dated computers and monitors, so I think fixed width makes sense. 

Yeah, I know that no one will ever consider me a l33t h4x0r for using WordPress, or even for using a CMS at all, but I was absolutely thrilled how fast the second site is going up now that I have built all the templates and functions I need.  More reports to come  (and hopefully this site will soon be on WordPress, but I am not holding my breath.  Still having trouble with brinking over the permalinks so they all work right).

Wikipedia is virtually useless as a source for anything controversial, such as global warming.  However, it is absolutely fabulous as a dictionary of pop culture.  Where else can you find 5500 words on h4x0r l33t speech?

John Scalzi writes:

I do get occasionally amused at being a poster child for Science Fiction's Digital Future when I live in a rural town of 1,800 people with agricultural fields directly to my east, south and west, and Amish buggies clopping down the road on a daily basis. It's, like, three cheers for cognitive dissonance.

I responded in the comments:

I would have had exactly the opposite reaction, that your situation is entirely representative.  For 500 years,  from the Italian Renaissance through the 20th century, intellectual thought moved forward mainly hand in hand with urbanization.  I am not really an expert in describing the ins and outs of this, but there is clearly a density and network effect to intellectual advancement, and given past communication approaches, this required physical proximity.  The promise of modern IT technology is that it may allow us to achieve this density without physical proximity.

I have criticized the new Typepad editor several times in the last several weeks, and I stand by those criticisms.  It is just daffy to have a spell check without a "skip all" or "add to dictionary" option, for example.

But Typepad has really come through for me in the last several days.  Their customer service folks helped me modify some of my archive templates so that they include even my oldest posts, and the archives now have a new navigation structure.  Also, I would add that for all the problems I have had with the editor, the new publishing platform I am on is much faster, and at least once has been able to help me recover unsaved material I was writing, always a pet peeve of mine when using an online editor. 

I am getting used to the new Typepad editor, but two issues still really cause me to question the sanity of the developers, particularly since this roll out has been going on since June:

• I cannot believe that a blogging engine -- not a generic text editor or HTML editor, but a purpose built blogging engine -- would eliminate the blockquote functionality from the editor.  Have these guys ever, you know, actually read a blog or two?  We bloggers live off block quotes.
• How long has the computing spelling checking been around?  A couple of decades?  About 10 minutes into that 20 year span, developers learned from users that in addition to a "skip" button, they probably needed a "skip all" button.  Because if you write a 5000 word post on the banking crisis and use the "Bernanke" in that post 100 times, it is going to be real boring hitting "skip" 100 times in the spell check rather than "skip all" or even better "add to dictionary."  But, the rocket scientists at Typepad did indeed only put in a "skip" option, a bit like Ford building a car in which the windows won't roll down.

The new Typepad editor is not at all ready for prime time.  I cannot find a single new feature in it, but it is rife with bugs.  Ones I have found so far:

• Certain images will not upload correctly into a post.  The Typepad folks do not know why
• Twice I had a crazy error when all of the text and buttons in the "add link" popup window suddenly were inserted into the post
• All my category setup was overwritten and I had to redo it all
• The spell checker is awful.  There is no "skip all" button.  I used "IPCC" 50+ times in one post at my other blog, and had to hit skip 50 times over and over
• The eliminated the blockquote editor option.  Good job on a blog editor!
• It is slow, slow, slow.

This is one of those enforced beta situations where all of use users are forced to do the beta testing they should have done.  This is the one downside to web-based applications, because there is no way I can do a rollback to the old version.

Update:  Also, publish is way slowed down.  Sometimes it take several minutes to be able to see new posts on my blog. This one still has not appeared after hitting shift-refresh now for 3 minutes.

Update #2:  They sent me an article to trumpet all the new features, but I could find not a single new feature listed.  And it is probably a bad sign they felt the need to put this up front in the article:

If you are seeing the new compose, please be aware that it is not a beta version, it's an upgraded editor that you should be seeing.

LOL

Update #3:  Getting good comments about WordPress.  I may have to check it out.

I have for quite a while been a big supporter of OpenOffice 2.0 as an alternative to MS Office.  It is free, and it tends to be quite compatible with MS Office file formats.  In fact, I use the Open Office spreadsheet to open and fix Excel spreadsheets that Excel corrupts and cannot open.

I have not yet read the release notes, so I don't know what has been updated, but version 3.0 was released the other day.

Thanks, folks.  I still remember the first month I blogged about four years ago, when I wrote and wrote and was fairly sure not a single person was reading.  Like performing to an empty room.

Via ZDNet:

I'm reading lots of complaints about the new iTunes 8 update causing
horrific problems on Windows machines, including widespread reports of
STOP errors, aka the Blue Screen of Death. My colleague Adrian
Kingsley-Hughes has asked readers for reports and Gizmodo has a sketchy post as well.

The author goes on to blame some extra software Apple is "sneaking" into the download.  I tend to doubt there is some deep conspiracy here, but you can read more if interested. (remember Coyote's Law: 

When the same set of facts can be explained equally well by

1. A massive conspiracy coordinated without a single leak between hundreds or even thousands of people    -OR -
2. Sustained stupidity, confusion and/or incompetence

Assume stupidity.)

I think I will wait a while before updating, though.

Update:  Apple has a new version of iTunes 8 for windows

Seven years ago today, my wife came down to my hotel breakfast meeting at a midtown Manhattan hotel and told us that there was something we needed to see.  We went upstairs to one of my investor's rooms, which had a balcony, and watched the disaster unfold.  Several of our friends died that day, though we wouldn't know that for weeks.  In between was a bizarre cross-country drive from Manhattan to Seattle.

I am on the road again today, and will observe that the airport is pretty empty today.  I don't know if this is an anomaly, or a general reluctance to fly on 9/11.

PS- Ironically, I was making a presentation that morning to potential investors telling them that the commercial airline business, on which our small company depended, was due for a turnaround.  Oops.

These are really expensive and the performance is limited, but hey, what else would a bleeding-edge buyer expect?   They are super-small LCD projectors to take on the road for presentations and such, and they are barely bigger than an iPod.

My son and I like to play Guitar Hero together, though he kicks my butt, of course.  To show him that I was cool and "knew stuff," I showed him this YouTube posted by Megan McCardle showing a guy scoring 100% on "Through the Fire and Flames" on expert.  (If you don't know what this means, just trust me that Neo from the Matrix loaded with amphetamines in full bullet-dodging twitch reflex mode would struggle with completing this level of the game).

About 5 seconds in, my son says "It's a bot.  He's faking."  And then he walked away.

"Huh? Really?"  I stared at it for a while, and realized that he was very probably correct.  So when did I become more credulous than my teenager?

I am blogging from my mom's MacIntosh.  Apple has done a lot of good things with its electronics of late, but their absolute refusal to adopt the two button mouse is just absurd.  Sorry, but cntl-click is just not the same. 

By the way, I think the iPod may be one of the best bits of industrial design in decades, but I am not about to join the Apple worship.  Microsoft gets dinged all the time for silly instances of proprietary over-control, but to my mind Apple is often worse.  However, I may not be entirely unbiased in this judgment, as I spent an hour the other day waiting in some zoo of an Apple store line just to buy a new video cable for my iPod Touch, since Apple added a chip in their latest iPods to cause third party cables to no longer function.

I am headed off to Wyoming and my family's ranch for a while:

Since data rates go down substantially when the cows are chewing on the phone line (really- the phone line is draped for miles on a fence) I am not sure how much I will blog.

In case I am offline for a while, I would like to offer this serious thought for world improvement.  We don't need more progressive taxes, or larger government, or more wiretapping, or more government control of mortgages, or mandatory service.   All we really need is ... more cowbell.