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I was asked to make two simple changes to a PayPal store account this morning. I say 'simple' because, on the surface, they seemed non-trivial. I had to change the shipping charges for all items and update the email address where payment notifications are sent. Easy enough.

Easy enough, I say. . . not quite. PayPal has, surprisingly, an extremely un-intuitive user interface. My first task was to change the shipping charge for all items. My choices in the navigation for "My Account" are: Overview, Add Funds, Withdraw, History, Resolution Center, and Profile. Well, Profile is the obvious choice. It takes me to a screen with no less than 32 links for various settings. After scanning the links I see one that says "Shipping Preferences." Maybe that one. Nope. My next choice down the list is "Shipping Calculations." Bingo! I successfully change the shipping rate charges to $0. Not too bad.

Now I have to change the email address where notifications of payments are sent. This sounds like it will be a snap. Has to be the registered email address, right? Wrong. For some reason, all of the notifications are sent to a different email address than the one set as the primary account address. Hmmmmm. Well, of course I go back to the "Profile" page. I see an "Email" link and think that's the obvious choice. No, that's just the registered email, with no others listed. So, they only have one registered email, no secondary addresses, but the payment notifications are STILL being sent somewhere else. How very odd. So I go back to the "Profile" page and see an option below "Email" called "Notifications." Surely, if the "Email" option wasn't the right choice, "Notifications" is where I need to go. Nope, and don't call me Shirley. "Notifications" only control WHEN they send an email, not WHERE they send the email. Dead end. I scour the rest of the options under the "Account Information" heading. The only other choice that I can see as a stretch is "Business Information." Why not? Surprise surprise, right in your eyes, this is it!

The "Business Information" page has a value called 'Customer Service Email' with a helpful 'learn more' link out to the side. I click on the link to find out why this attribute is here. It explains:
'Your customer service email address is the address we will display to buyers in our communication with them about a transaction. If you choose not to identify a customer service email, your primary email address will be used.'
Who would have guessed. Either way, I was able to change the address and hopefully make the client happy.

Thanks, PayPal, for the giant headache!

Google recently bought the video site YouTube.com for a whopping $1.65 billion. So, what does this mean for rival companies like Yahoo!, MSN, and News Corp(Rupert Murdoch). They need to keep up, right?

How will they answer Google's surely inevitable rule of the world? Are they going to start acquiring thier own start-ups like Facebook or Digg just to try and combat Google for a larger audience? After all, they can basically buy a segment of users with each purchase of an independent start-up.

Will this be the beginning of an Internet arms race?

Well, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 Final today. It took me about 10 minutes to install it (and all of the required dependencies).

So far, I'm pretty impressed (despite the fact it locked up when I started it for the first time). They borrowed quite a few pages from Firefox with tabbed browsing, a built-in RSS reader, and a search box by the address bar. The main enhancements in the IE line are vastly improved CSS rendering and support for alpha-transparency in PNGs (both which have been a huge thorn in our sides with IE 6). They claim to have fixed all but one of the CSS bugs listed on Position is Everything.

Now if only Microsoft would port it over for other operating systems (wait! Windows isn't the only OS?) like Mac OS X, or Linux. I'm not holding my breath.

There are a million hypotheses out on message boards and fan sites trying to guess the overarching story behind Lost. They range from theories about the castaways having gone back in time to theories about them being part of a grand science experiment. Based on information that came to light this summer during the off-season, I've developed my own theory about what's going on in the Lost universe.

The numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42) have always been a hot topic among Lost aficionados. It was revealed over the summer that these numbers are, in fact, a complex equation developed by an Italian mathematician named Valenzetti. It determines the amount of time before humanity exterminates itself, either by warfare, nuclear holocaust, or pandemic disease. My theory centers around this equation.

I think that the DHARMA initiative (or whatever is left of it) came into possession the information that the person (or persons) responsible for the destruction of the human race would be on Oceanic flight 815. They somehow (I told you this was a theory) caused the flight to pass over their island, made it crash, and they are going through the remaining passengers one by one to determine who the person is.

Things that support my theory:

• In episode 1 of season 3, the DHARMA people didn't seem surprised at all to see a plane crash into their island. It appeared like they were expecting it. Ben (Henry Gale) sent Ethan and Goodwin out to pose as survivors and to bring back lists of the remaining passengers.
• Walt, who had been in their custody for several weeks, was simply released at the end of season 2. I think they determined that he wasn't responsible, so they let him go.
• The psychic told Claire that her child would be responsible for something terrible if he was raised by anyone other than her.
• Ben (Henry Gale) told Kate in episode 1 of season 3 that the next few weeks would be very uncomfortable. (interrogation)
• Jack seems to be getting psychoanalyzed/interrogated by Juliette.

Microsoft published a list of CSS fixes in IE7. They claim to have fixed every bug listed on Position is Everything except for the 'escaping floats' bug, which is planned for the future.

If these claims really are true, this could be a giant step for IE towards standards-compliant CSS.