jr conlin's ink stained banana

In order to get a 6%, 30 year refinance, i had to open an account with the local credit union. No big, thinks i, but it did mean effectively squirreling away a chunk of change, and while i greatly admire W.C. Fields as a comedian and entertainer, there are a few traits of his i'd rather not develop.

Suddenly, i realize that i now have a rather golden opportunity at hand. You see, i don't like paypal. Granted, not many folks really do, but there's a certain distrust i have over any service that wants to tie themselves to a bank account of mine within minutes of joining. Having learned lessons in the past, i had little intention of tying such an account to my main checking account, but now, i didn't have to.

So i sought about setting up a paypal account. Only to realize i had already. Quite some time ago, it would appear. At least seven years ago since my work phone number had changed and it talked about when i was renting an apartment in Sunnyvale. While i could guess the password fairly easily, i couldn't "verify" the account beyond that because (surprise) all the relatively ancient data on hand was no longer accurate. groan.

No worry, thinks i, it's not like there was any money in that account i set up a new mail account on my domain so i can sign up for a new account, enter my information, and find out that apparently, 6 years ago i did the same thing. i also, apparently, deleted that account because it was a spam magnet. Groan again.

Fine. Delete old new old account, set up new new account, reenter information AGAIN and finally set things up.

i'm still amazed that paypal accounts apparently never, ever go away, regardless of how fallow they lie. Apparently, they're crafted from finely honed plutonium with twice the half-life. One can only assume that had Hannibal decided to bid on a few elephants before heading across the Alps, he too would still have an active account showing a balance of .34 bits of electrum and possibly a slightly used pelt. (Yes, i know i can always delete a given account, and i did, but apparently it takes quite a while for that account to disappear out of their roster of used accounts.)

i can understand the desire to be properly paranoid about things, but honestly, if somethings sitting at a balance of $0 for more than two years, the owner hasn't checked on it in over three, and it's not tied to any existing account… i'm willing to say that i, the holder of said account, would not be shocked or surprised to note that PayPal decided to delete it in favor of recovering those bits.

Hell, with any luck, i'll have forgotten i even created the damn thing in the first place and will simply pick up and go.