I was checking my web-based, no-name, meant for junk email earlier today and right as I was getting ready to leave the page, I saw a familiar face. It was Cosmo, the BYU Cougar mascot.

They hooked me. I had to read the rest of the banner and find out why in the world our mascot was involved in some sort of online marketing stunt.

Luckily I was immune to their attack, but I just couldn’t help but wonder how much else about me is known by people out on the internet. My email provider is nothing special. Sometimes I even wonder how in the world they know what they’re doing with a web site.

I’m not going to go canceling my Facebook Account or anything. I just wonder if there’s a bit more coding research I could do to help get WishCraze off the ground in a few more months

Today I finally figured a way to do it that met my needs. Since the tools I wanted didn’t seem to be anywhere else online, I figured I’d do my part to get the word out. Who knows if one day some poor soul like myself will stumble upon this post and save themselves from a messy accounting ledger. I can only hope.

The task: Import PayPal transactions into Intuit QuickBooks Pro 2008.

I run a small, home-based business. Most of my business transactions are done in person, so I have yet to develop any type of online store. Occasionally I have a customer who cannot pay with cash or check, but would like to pay with their credit card via PayPal instead. Though I’m not excited about paying the PayPal transaction fees, I would much rather win the customer (I can use all the business I can get).

PayPal allows me to download my transaction history and import it into QuickBooks. That’s a wonderful tool, but it’s not dummy-proof. I have to know exactly which accounts I would like the Transaction Total, PayPal Fees, and Net Income attributed to. The problem is, I don’t know.

The Math
I don’t know accounting too well, but what I do know really helped me finally figure this out.

In general, Assets equal Liabilities plus Owner’s Equity.

A = L + OE

Whatever you do to the equation, the end result must keep it in balance.

Make a sale: Increase Accounts Receivable (Asset) and increase Revenue (Owners Equity).
Receive a Payment: Decrease Accounts Receivable (Asset) and increase Cash (Asset).

Because PayPal imposes a fee on a transaction, and I never actually see the money before PayPal pulls their share out, the increase in Cash is not as large as the decrease of Account Receivable. In order to keep the equation in balance there must be another adjustment. The PayPal fee is accounted for by increasing Expenses (which falls under Owner’s Equity, sort of, because it acts to decrease Equity).

The Method

I’ll spare you the steps I took to find this out.

When getting ready to download the Transaction History from PayPal, it asks what file type I would like. Because I’ll be importing into QuickBooks, I choose the QuickBooks (.iif) format.

I am then asked the exact name of the accounts I would like my information imported into. They are:

Name of PayPal Account –> PayPal – Business
Name of other Expense Account –> Merchant Account Fees:PayPal Fees
Name of other Income Account –> Accounts Receivable

If you are hoping to modify this method for your own use, allow me to explain what these accounts are.

PayPal Account
This is the account that receives the net income of your transaction. In other words, the total sale amount minus the PayPal fees. In my system, the PayPal – Business account is a “Bank” account set up to reflect the current amount of funds I have available in my PayPal account. This is an account I have created for this purpose. You can create one of your own and name it whatever you would like.

Other Expense Account
This will be the account which records the PayPal transaction fees. If this account only records the PayPal fees you can open it up and get a quick glance of how much you’re losing to PayPal. In my system, this is a Cost of Goods Sold account called PayPal Fess which is a subaccount of Merchange Account Fees. The Merchant Account Fees account is automaticly set up by QuickBooks to record credit card transaction fees. I am treating the PayPal fees much like those credit card transaction fees. Again, because I have created this account, if you would like to create one for your system you can name it whatever you would like.

Other Income Account
This account receives the gross total of your PayPal transaction (before the fees are taken out). In my system they are sent to Accounts Receivable and attributed to a specific customer. This gives the customer a credit which can then be applied to any of their outstanding invoices. For this account I am using the default QuickBooks Accounts Receivable account.

Once the information is imported, I apply the customers’ credits toward their invoices. The invoices are marked as paid and the totals in the various account remain correct.

I hope this helps.

Or maybe, somewhere far above my head, there’s an accomplished film director who cues the lights and sounds of my experience and displays this creation for a hidden audience of skilled dramatics.

I am so important – so special to have a skilled artist focus their attention on me. I’m not sure if there’s a lesson for me to learn or if I was meant to go through life unconcerned with the complexity of my surroundings. I am so small – to be here experiencing while someone else creates experience.

The rain was falling as I walked out the doors of the chapel in Kanarraville. The trees hung low, but were strong. The rain wasn’t for me, but the moment was. I walked a little slower. It’s supposed to rain for funerals, and someone took the time to make sure this one was done right.

That’s how I used to think of existentialism.

For the longest time I was never sure what existentialism was. I asked people in high school, but I could never get a straight answer. People either loved it or hated it, but no one could really explain it to me.

When I was first introduced to it, it was a style of writing. Some lady, doesn’t like her marriage, feels like she can never really find love, and drowns herself in the ocean. It didn’t seem that much different than other books, except without any dramatic tension leading up to her death and no follow up describing her family’s grieving. She just walks out into the water and the book ends.

Then I took a Philosophy course and had existentialism explained to me a bit more. It’s a way of thinking – of looking at the world and understanding it. It claims that any meaning in life is created by the individual. There is no purpose inherent in existence. People may go around injecting the artificial purpose and direction, but in reality we’re all just biding time until we die. That’s how I understood existentialism for the next few years. It seemed empty and dark. I didn’t like it.

We covered existentialism in my Psychology of Personality class last week, and I’ll be darned if BYU didn’t take something the world had colored black for me and highlight it’s bright, pretty parts. Yes, existence has no inherent meaning in existentialism, but the focus isn’t on keeping ourselves grounded to the fact that life is useless. The focus is on finding things to give us purpose. It’s about existing – really living life. It’s about making use of our lives, because one day we’re going to die and it’ll all be over. It’s about developing real connections with people around us even if they’re going to move away in a few months or get off the elevator on the next floor. That’s the kind of existentialism I can swallow.

I could still have this thing all wrong. I don’t know. Maybe Jon Howard will set me straight. Regardless, the last few days I’ve been jazzed about existing. I’m trying to real listen to what people are saying to me, and really open up when I talk to them.

Half the Ward is moving out before the week is over, but why should that stop me from cherishing the time I have left with them.

I started out looking for pants, but soon realized they have electronics too. I found a great USB extension cable (of which they had many) and soon uncovered what I consider to be a great treasure – an APC Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) – a electronic backup battery (generally for computers).

Not believing my luck, I found the nearest power outlet and plugged it in. The lights came on, and when I pushed the button marked “TEST” a buzzer sounded. I made it mine.

When I got home I performed one additional test. I plugged the battery into the wall and my cell phone into the battery. After about an hour I pulled the batteries plug from the wall. My phone stopped charging. I tried it on other devices with the same results. The UPS went into the closet.

Then along came WishCraze – the up-and-coming wishlist web site that’s going make giving gifts so much easier (I may be biased). A replacement battery for my UPS found its way onto my wish list and waited to be found.

Sometime before February 12 (my birthday) my wish list fell into the hands of some potential gift-givers (my parents). A short time later my friend Rick knocked on my door to deliver my new battery. It was the exact shape, size, and storage capacity that I was hoping for, yet I’d never said a word about it to anyone. I was thrilled! The UPS emerged from the closet.

Last night I stayed up late to work some more features into the official WishCraze web site. One particular page just wasn’t loading properly which caused me to search through lines of code to find the missing semicolon or mis-assigned variable. All at once, the lights flickered, the heater hiccuped, and a buzz pierced the stillness of the night. Lines of code still glowed on my screen.

Gifts do more than make people smile. Good gifts bless people’s lives. The gifts may be big and the gifts may be small, but the real value comes from the blessings they bring. I hope those who visit WishCraze will see beyond the material items that get put on lists and realize how wonderful good gifts can be.

A few people have pointed out that I seem to have fallen off the face of the world (my words, not theirs). While that not really an unusual thing (I tend to disappear at times), this time there was a reason.

Shortly before Thanksgiving 2007, lightning struck my brain. For as long as I can remember, my family has always put together gift wishlists before Christmas to share with one another. It helps take most of the guess work out of Christmas shopping. We don’t always buy things off the list, but the lists give us a guide to help figure out exactly what one of our family members would want.

As the internet became more and more popular and online retail became more and more accepted, some of us started turning our lists of items into lists of links. That way the gift-giver could find out exactly what make, model, color, size, texture, and flavor of item we wanted. I don’t know if anyone used those links, but I felt like I was doing a great thing.

So I decided to take the idea to the masses.

I got a proof-of-concept going over Thanksgiving break and then started designing the web site – something called “interface design”. That’s no easy task.

I don’t remember if it was me, or whether is was Mike (my partner in this project), but we started to realize the merits of a Facebook App. Facebook allows developers to build mini web applications that interact directly with user information on Facebook. Users can add them, remove them, and share them with their friends. A Facebook App, we thought, would allow us to build the basic web service and get people using it without us having to spend quite as much time with interface design.

We got to work. The Facebook code structure is easy, but the instructions are very poor. None-the-less, the Facebook App started to develop. As it neared completion I began spending more and more time in my room, more and more time on my laptop during classes, less and less time with friends, and less and less time on school work.

So I’m here today to announce that your online gift wishlist service is now ready for Facebook. We call it WishCraze.

- Build a list
- Share it with your friends
- Browse and shop your friends’ lists

So, if you have a Facebook account, go add my App and check it out.
If you don’t, there’s also a blog up and running so you can read up on the progress we’re making toward the next stage.

Next up is our full-featured web site which will allow anyone, anywhere to build lists. Then come RSS feeds, personalized links, a MySpace App, a Google App, and snippets of code which will allow yo to show off your list on any web site or blog you want.

This isn’t going to be easy, but hopefully it will be worth the wait.

I looked up actors on IMDB without getting up from the couch. I checked my email while walking between classes. I updated my facebook status multiple times a day. It was wonderful.

Then Peru ate my phone – long story.

Mike has been letting me borrow his old phone, and it’s been great. I have to collect all my old phone numbers, but I manage.

Today I fell in love with the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1.

The iPhone has been hot because of how simple and pretty it is, but it’s seriously lacking in the world of true smartphones (virtually no expandability, no 3G, and there’s something about actual buttons that actual people really like). The X1 is a beautiful touchscreen device that brings us everything the iPhone lacks. I admit, the iPhone may be a tiny bit more appealing to the eye, though that point is arguable, and only time will show if it’s as simple as it looks, but as of right now, I want one.

Check out the fancy product page here,
or the comprehensive product page here

At least I think that’s what it stands for. It’s all based on a chip that stores information and responds to radio frequencies. I’m not sure how it works (since the chip itself doesn’t seem to have any power supply), but it’s supposed to be pretty cool.

The chips are super tiny and super cheap to make, which makes them pretty useful in the real world. Retailers (like the one giant I don’t like to talk about) can use them to track inventory and employers can use them to track their employees. It’s a wonderful world.

The US government recently decided they were going to equip passports with the magical RFID chips. Some people love the thought of speeding through customs and making passports harder to fake. Some people jam radio signals and mutilate their passports to disable the chips at the thought of their vitals being accessible to anyone with an RFID reader.

I kinda like my new passport. It’s cute. I’m gonna take it to Peru.

I feel a little bit more like Jason Bourne. Who wouldn’t enjoy that?

I’ve compiled a wish list for the holiday season. There are some in my family who’ve been waiting for this occasion much longer than they would have liked. There are other who probably won’t even look at it

But this wish list is unlike any other wish list that’s come before it. It may not look like much, but this list wasn’t just thrown together and posted online. No, this list is not what it appears to be.

Behind this wish list are variables – countless variables waiting to be filled with dynamic content and deliver it to anyone who wants it. They pour through my database and scour Amazon.com to deliver exactly what I want, exactly how I want it (well, not really, but someday). They weren’t easy to train, but they’re hard workers deserving of praise.

One day these variables may be working for you to. They’ll scour the web, looking for exactly what you want, and they’ll show it to anyone willing to take a look. Won’t that be wonderful?

For now, though, I’m keeping them to myself. Feel free to take a look at my list though. And when you see the generic font and poorly-laid-out page, think of those variables hard at work. They’ll be growing, sub-dividing, and performing more duties over the weeks to come, so check back every now and then to see how things have changed. I hope you’ll come to enjoy them as much as I do.

The List: www.outsiderin.com/losttime/christmas

Outs allow us to withhold participation in any number of things while still retaining our respectability and potential for further invitations.

I love having outs – for those days when I don’t care to gather in a large group to play or participate in activity I really have no interest in. It’s wonderful to have that one small project to work on that I can always pull out of the closet to keep me “busy”.

For better or for worse, I have extended my respect of outs to dating. I know I’m horrible a picking up “signals” and sometimes a good out – taken, or left in the closet – says things much for clearly. For example:

Me: I’m going to be baking some bread this afternoon. Would you like to some over and help?

Girl: Sure.

Now what exactly is she saying? “[Is he finally getting around to asking me to do something with him? It's about time. Gotta play it cool though, so I'll just say . . .] Sure.” Or maybe it’s something more like, “[Oh, crap! I just told him how bummed I was that all my roommates left me alone for the day. Now he's going to feel rejected if I don't say . . .] Sure.”

There’s really no way of knowing what she’s saying. Does she go because she wanted to or because she felt backed into a corner? The question could be completely avoided with the addition of a simple phrase.

Me: I know you’re really busy with school work, but I’m going to be baking some bread this afternoon. Would you like to some over and help?

I’ve just tipped her off. If her mind was going to be scrambling for an excuse to say no, I’ve just fed her an easy way out – homework. What she does with that out tells me more than any “signal” ever could.

Girl: Sure.

And I think I detected a hint of happiness in her voice. I know there was in mine as we finished making plans.