o christmas tree, o christmas tree

I cannot believe that I've actually purchased a gift for the upcoming season already. On general principles, I usually refuse to even consider buying christmas presents until after Thanksgiving - the official start of the gift-buying season, but I thought of something and found it on eBay and won it. Somebody shoot me.

OMG. That means I have two gifts already! I found one earlier in the year that was actually intended to be a birthday present, but I decided it was a bit much for a birthday present for this particular person. Maybe I'll just shoot myself. In the head. With a watergun.

paypal

MSNBC has a little article about the troubles paypal has been experiencing. As a paypal, uh, client (?) I have to say it's even more trouble than they are making it out to be. I got a call from paypal security this morning, to question a bunch of transactions on my debit card. Three authorizations at the QT pump? Yes, I did try three times, but it denied the transaction all three times. Did you actually make two payments to {insert cell phone company here}? Why, yes, I actually did. Did you get $100 at the ATM? Why, no, I have never been able to get cash at an ATM with my paypal debit card? So, you didn't try to get cash yesterday? Um, yeah, I did TRY, but it told me I didn't have sufficient balance to withdraw that much. Washington Mutual's ATM network, however, submitted three transactions for a $100 withdrawal. What a pain in the ass. It's fixed now. Except for that transaction at Subway tonight. My signed ticket says $15.27, and the authorization on paypal says $18.32. WTF?

Besides that, I could not for the life of me get onto the damn website yesterday. At. All. It appears to be fixed now, and my debit card is working again, but criminy!

My public service for the day:

Washington Mutual does not charge non WaMu customers to use their ATMs.

/public service off.