madness

Colorful Wheel framed, originally uploaded by gurdonark.

I like the way that things on-line change as if by magic. I know there is some truism that the definition of something or other is that one keeps doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Yet the internet must be mad, because different results often obtain.

I'll offer as Exhibit "A' (marked for identification) my recent experience with a minor purchase. Julia Kotowski is a singer/songwriter over in Cologne, Germany. She performs as Entertainment for the Braindead. If you haven't heard her music, and you like quirky lo-fi acoustic music, you might enjoy her. Her work is available for free download at either last.fm or at the netlabel, Aaah records.

Entertainment for the Braindead did a charity CD to support a green cause. I signed up for the limited edition. Then I got a nice e-mail from Julia saying paypal the funds to me at [German address].de.

I dutifully went to my paypal account, and asked it to send x Euros
to [German address].de.

Paypal promptly told me "we don't do .de addresses", which puzzled me, because I was fairly certain that paypal did work with .de addresses. But I dutifully wrote to Julia saying "could you give me a dot com address?'.

Sixty days passed, and then Julia suggested "I don't know why it didn't go through. Try again?"

So I did.

This time payment went through.

The internet works like that.

Now if only I can work out the dimensions of a pretzel in the logo programming language.