Earlier this week I wrote about the limitations of PayPal. Interesting to read the following among PayPal’s SEC filings:

In late 2000, MasterCard indicated it would terminate PayPal’s ability to accept MasterCard cards for payment if we did not change some of our practices and procedures immediately. We and our credit card processor had a series of meetings with MasterCard to discuss how to bring our practices and procedures into compliance. As a result of those meetings, we made changes to our system that we believe resolved MasterCard’s concerns, but MasterCard has not communicated to us that its concerns have been fully resolved. In 2001, Visa informed our credit card processor that some of our practices violated its operating rules, and we made certain changes to our practices in response. In a letter dated January 25, 2002, Visa informed our credit card processor that three issues remain unresolved and, as a result, fined our processor $30,000. Our processor charged us for the full amount of the fine imposed on them. Specifically, Visa objected to our charging and immediately rebating international membership fees, and to our charging fees to international customers for payments that are funded using credit cards, but not for payments that are funded from balances in the PayPal system. Visa also objected to our practice of obtaining a card holder’s single up-front authorization, rather than authorization on a transaction by transaction basis, to charge that card holder’s Visa account if the card holder requests an ACH transfer and that transfer fails. We are continuing our efforts to resolve Visa’s concerns. Although Visa has not threatened to suspend, terminate or otherwise limit or restrict our ability to accept Visa cards, we have proposed to change our current practices to resolve these three outstanding issues. These changes include not rebating international membership fees, charging fees to recipients of cross-border payments rather than to international senders, and seeking authorization on a transaction by transaction basis to charge a card holder’s Visa account if a related ACH transfer fails. As is the case with any merchant that Visa believes is violating its operating rules, however, Visa could terminate our ability to accept Visa cards for payment or levy additional fines against us if we do not resolve Visa’s concerns.

Changes to card association rules and practices, or excessive charge-backs, could result in a termination of our ability to accept credit cards. If we are unable to accept credit cards, our competitive position would be damaged seriously.

We have limited experience in managing and accounting accurately for large amounts of customer funds. Our failure to manage these funds properly would harm our business.

We have a limited operating history, are not currently profitable and may not become profitable. If we never become profitable, our stock price would decline.

This venue is almost enough to make me up and move to Wayne, New Jersey. And I don’t even have any idea where Wayne, NJ is. Amazing.

I am a secretary.

In my case, I’m secretary to the Board of Directors of the L.M. Montgomery Land Trust. In that capacity I do just as the dictionary says:

A person employed to handle correspondence, keep files, and do clerical work for another person or an organization.

I don’t consider secretary to be a pejorative term, and I’ve always failed to see why others see it this way.

Which is why Administrative Professionals Day confuses me. For the unintiated, this is the new term for what used to be called Secretaries Day, and it’s celebrated this year on April 24, 2002.

While I can certainly understand the transition from stewardess to the gender-neutral flight attendant and the utility of their simply being actors, male and female, I can’t understand why a secretary is elevated somehow by applying this hackneyed new title.

While my own secretarial work involves only a few hours a week, I am the beneficiary of of the efforts of many other secretaries who are at it full time. They are, without exception, a hard working and invaluable lot.

So whether by secretary or administrative professional or administrative assistance or personal private executive chargé d’affaires, I salute you all.

I hate Government paperwork.

I never thought I would be the kind of libertarian “let’s get Government off the backs of the small businessperson and cut through red tape” kind of guy, but that’s what I’ve become. I hate the seemingly endless street of brown envelopes that come in the daily mail from some arm of the federal government: income tax, payroll tax, GST, mandatory StatsCan surveys. I simply don’t have the time. Not only the time to fill out the forms themselves, but to learn, each time anew, what each form means, when it is due, and so on.

And as a result I am often late with sending in forms. I blithely operate under the assumption that I “just sent that return in a couple of weeks ago” while months upon months of returns pile up on my desk.

This is how it came to pass that one of the businesses in my ouvre came to have twenty-one outstanding GST returns due.

Conventional wisdom would have it that this degree of tardiness would see the RCMP knocking down the door with battering rams, etc.

But in this case I simply got a call from a nice man named Leo Murphy at the GST office here in Charlottetown. He laid out the situation for me, and told me that if I emailed him the information that would have otherwise been sent in on the GST returns (basically how much we took in, and how much GST we collected), he would enter it directly into their system and that would be that.

He was helpful, pleasant, responded quickly to email, and was generally about as far from what we all imagine to be a GST enforcement guy to be like.

So, hats off to Leo Murphy. Thanks!

Most days the services of my local Credit Union work very well for moving around my money. There’s not much that I can’t do at the Credit Union that I could otherwise do at a bank, and the Credit Union has better hours, friendlier staff and more flexible policies than most banks (interesting sidenote: a Charlottetown businessman of my acquaintance told me he’s going to save more than a thousands dollars a year in fees by moving his business accounts to the Credit Union from a major bank).

There’s one thing that neither banks nor credit unions do particularly well, though, and that’s letting you easily move money beyond their institutional boundaries. Of course there are cheques (or “checks” as I’ve had to learn to spell this word for my U.S. customers), and regular old cash. But while it’s easy for me to transfer $100 from my own TD Bank account to my mother’s TD Bank account, it’s almost impossible for me to transfer $100 from my local credit union account to my brother’s local credit union account in British Columbia.

I say almost, because I was quoted a scheme whereby my local credit union could sent a message to Credit Union Central of PEI, which, in turn, would send a message to Credit Union Central of BC, which, in turn, would send a message to my brother’s credit union in BC. This would take several days, and I would never do it, if only on spiritual insanity grounds.

Enter PayPal.

I thought PayPal was going to solve this problem once and for all, especially once they appeared to do away with onerous fees applied to international transactions.

So we did a test. I opened up a PayPal business account, and sent $700 to my brother in BC using my MasterCard as the vehicle for getting money to PayPal. He opened up a PayPal account, and prepared to withdraw what I’d sent. This looked like it was going to work wonderfully, and only cost us 55 cents to boot.

Then, clang, the idea imploded when BC brother was told that he had to upgrade to a PayPal Premier account to be able to receive the money and, in doing so, would be subject to a 2.9% fee (or roughly $20).

So while PayPal might be good for many things, it’s not good for this. In other words, PayPal ain’t no replacement for Western Union (which is expensive in its own regard).

Eight years ago when we were doing e-cash experiments at the PEI Crafts Council, I imagined that this issue — how to throw cash digitally — would be solved by now. Alas it’s not, and so to fling money across the country still requires traditional banking contortions.

Someday.

Way back at the dawn of time, when I first starting really seriously typing for a living, and started to develop the initial signs of repetitive stress injury, one of the corrective steps I took was to go out and buy a Microsoft Natural Keyboard.

It worked. And I typed probably millions upon millions of words on it, to the point where the labels on all the keycaps were worn off. Eventually I couldn’t use the keyboard any longer; I’m not a one-finger typist, but I’ve got to look at what I’m typing at least a little, and with no labels, I was making more mistakes than I could handle.

So I phoned Microsoft and asked them about buying new keys for the keyboard. They told me new keys weren’t available, and sent me on my way.

And so I want out to buya new keyboard.

But somehow in the years between my first Microsoft Natural Keyboard purchase and my new search for a new same they’d made some design changes that I couldn’t abide, chiefly making the arrow keys really really small. So I was forced to buy a knock-off Belkin keyboard, and that’s what I’ve been using ever since.

Today, however, I realized that I wanted to start using my iBook portable more, and to do that required a full-sized keyboard. Fortunately Microsoft has seen the error of their earlier ways, and now has a keyboard called the Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro. Not only does it have the full-sized arrow keys, but it also has a nice Mac OS X driver and both USB and PS/2 plugs.

So off to Future Shop I went tonight, and now I am typing this on said keyboard. And boy is it wonderful. Its touch is so much nicer than the Belkin; not approaching the original IBM-PC keyboard (which was Selectric-like and wonderful on a plateau that I fear will never be matched), but pretty darned nice. And it just plain worked with OS X, which is great.

If you earn your living at the keyboard, and want to take a small hands-preservation step, I certainly recommend this keyboard.

Here is an interesting page on the CBC website called Frequently Asked Questions about Freelancing for CBC Radio.

After a two and half day stay in hospital, Oliver’s safe and sound and at home. We’re all very relieved, and Oliver is very happy not to have an IV taking away the use of one of his arms. As anyone who’s cared for an 18 month old might imagine, the IV issue was not without its struggles, but Oliver got acclimated quite quickly, and ended up treating the IV like he did the Christmas tree, which is to say he acknowledged it was there, but didn’t bother with it otherwise.

Air Canada is starting up its own online travel agency, called Destina. I signed up to receive notice of the site before it launched, and today I got an email that said, in part:

Please come visit the website at http://prod.destina.ca and use it to reserve and purchase upcoming travel. The site will be available to you from 6:00AM-10:00PM EST daily, starting on April 15.