There are some minor differences in the general fee schedule with GoPayment offering slightly better rates for those who pay a recurring monthly fee but slightly worse rates than SquareUp for those who do not. GoPayment's American Express fee is also higher than that of SquareUp. In terms of fees, I think businesses with more volume that primarily this as their payment method would come out ahead with GoPayment.

However I strongly advise against any business actually signing up with GoPayment.

The GoPayment web site has a signup flow but it only works for individuals. It will ask for your personal social security number. I wanted to open a business account with them using my Federal EIN and business banking accounts. That's when things got ugly.

In order to sign up my business with my EIN there were two primary requirements which were that I own at least 50% of the business and that I am over 18 years of age. I'm not entirely sure how Intuit will handle some businesses where there are multiple owners. Maybe it won't be a problem as long as a majority stake signs some paperwork and they use the business' EIN. However that turned out to only be the tip of the iceberg.

First, even though I was opening a business account, they wanted my personal SSN. To do a credit check. Sorry, that's not okay. I told them I wanted to use my EIN and not my SSN for tax purposes. After the customer rep spoke to someone else he came back and said okay, but instead they would need additional documentation. That additional documentation turned out to be my profit and loss statements and tax returns for the past two years (or how long the business had been operational whichever is shorter). Sorry, that's even more not okay. I am not handing over my private company's P&L statements or tax returns to a merchant processing company.

I should close by saying I am so far very happy with SquareUp and it was extremely easy to sign up with them. I was able to do it from their web site, and I did not have to provide sensitive personal or business financial information to do so. And I have never had to provide that sort of information to any of the other merchant processing companies I have used in the past or for Google Checkout, PayPal, or Amazon Payments.

The first thing to fix was the NFS mounts. Obviously I cannot log in at all if my home directory is missing. I have always had a separate local administrator account, to perform system administration duties. This way, I can manage my computer without having any external dependencies like the network or my NFS server.

In OS X Lion, the way to add NFS mounts is via Disk Utility. There is an NFS Mounts... menu item and I simply added my NFS mount back. No problems and this uses automount whereas before I was using static mounts.

To fix the keychain problem, I simply restarted after my initial login. The file permissions were all correct, so I'm not sure what the original problem was. But it worked.

Now for the Trash. It took me a long time to figure out what was wrong, because my ~/.Trash directory existed and had all the correct permissions. Turns out, in /.Trashes on my Mac there was a directory named with my UID. Deleting this directory using sudo and then restarting restored normal trash behavior for my account. Previously it was always asking to delete files immediately. It may have worked as well without restarting but just logging out and back in.

There are two things to take note of. First, I ran Repair Permissions on Disk Utility and it found a lot of things to change. I'm guessing the directory structure and permissions have changed a lot in OS X Lion. Second, the auto-restore of application state, even for quit applications, can cause problems if your NFS mount is missing or flaky. For example, I had a few Terminal windows open and my shells were in NFS mounted directories. While debugging some stuff with NFS and trash, my mounts changed or were unavailable. Opening Terminal in this state would get stuck. (I probably needed my original NFS mounts to be soft rather than hard.)

The problem is that public figures and people associated with public service (and unfortunately all associating themselves with the Republican party) have been using rhetoric that probably contributed to today's shooting. Saying sorry isn't good enough. I hope they understand that what they say can have serious consequences and will try to change their behavior. I won't condemn someone for saying something in poor taste, that could be misinterpreted, or containing exaggerations. But after saying something like that, one should recognize that might have happened and clarify what was really meant. Because a lot of people aren't that intelligent or capable of in-depth rational thought.

Here's some of what I'm talking about:

• Sarah Palin posted a map with crosshairs targeting Giffords and wrote, "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" (Source: San Francisco Chronicle)


• Jesse Kelly, who was running for Congress in Arizona, promoted his campaign with the following words: "Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly." He was advertising an offer to recreationally shoot guns with him for $50. (Source: Arizona Daily Star)


• Judge John Roll (killed at the shooting) had received death threats, spurred on by talk-radio shows, in relation to an civil-rights lawsuit involving illegal immigrants. (Source: The Arizona Republic)

This is a pretty interesting situation because of the clear statement he said to the TSA officials:

“I am aware that it is policy, but I disagree with the policy, and I think that it is unconstitutional. As a U.S. citizen, I have the right to move freely within my country as long as I can demonstrate proof of citizenship and have demonstrated no reasonable cause to be detained.”

At the crux of things is a question of whether or not the new backscatter and "enhanced pat-down" procedures are a violation of civil rights. One side argues that these measures are necessary for safety purposes. The other side argues they are a violation of civil rights and the fourth amendment which protects against unreasonable search and seizure. This is the same reason law enforcement officers need to establish reasonable suspicion (which can be used to obtain a warrant) before engaging in searches. Failure to do so allows any evidence obtained through an illegal search to be thrown out of court.

Anyway, apparently local news has picked up this person's story. I am looking forward to how this plays out.

I'm a little suspicious of their weekly "winners" of cuts. Apparently, you only have a few choices each week. You cannot vote to not cut a program. And the voting is by text message. This means, if 1 million people don't want to cut something, but one person does, that suggestion could be the week's winner.

The way the cuts are worded is fairly biased as well. And it doesn't matter what the impact of the cut may have been, voting against it is always used to negatively label that congressman.

I strongly recommend everyone take a look through the articles and reports The Guardian has put together. Given the size and depth of the information contained in the leaked documents, only a very small portion can be covered an summarized when presented for general consumption. But I believe it is important to know and understand the situation in Iraq, the activities that are taking place there, and the level of involvement and acceptance or tolerance that the U.S. government is engaging in.

For a quick overview, you can start with their Iraq war logs: An introduction. There are a bunch of jumping off points from that page. The New York Times and SPIEGEL have also put up special sections to cover the newly revealed information.

If you missed the earlier coverage on Afghanistan, also from documents leaked via Wikileaks, check out The Guardian's Afghanistan: The war logs site.

ITRR's activities were exposed in relation to surveillance over civil protest groups in Pennsylvania. The Al Jazeera article focuses on the group Peace of the Action which was founded by Cindy Sheehan. But the leaked documents also explicitly mention the recent UC tuition protests and suggest law enforcement start "coordinated responses" to control this "Anarchist movement."

ITRR states it is "an American and Israeli nonprofit corporation."

I really do hope the ACLU does something with this case. I disagree with the recent 9th circuit ruling that states it is okay to initiate tracking of a person without a warrant, so long as the object you start tracking is publicly accessible (even if on private property). In other words, the FBI is allowed to place the tracking device on Afifi's car if it was parked outside his house, or at some other location, without a warrant. I believe in due process and the checks and balances between the executive and judicial branches of our government. A warrant should always be required for law enforcement agents and agencies to engage in surveillance.

I've grabbed the background song and image in case the site ever goes away. (Make sure to hit play on the song.) But definitely check out the site as it is several orders of magnitude better to interact with it in its native form.

There She Is!

Cake Dance

Doki & Nabi

Paradise

Imagine

I kept my eyes closed as much as possible, during the performance, so that I wouldn't get distracted by the visuals they had up. They played pieces from a variety of Final Fantasy games, including one from the upcoming FFXIV online game. I know Roger Ebert is skeptical about the artistic nature of games, but having played the games added a lot of emotional depth to the music I was hearing. I have a much deeper understanding of what the music is trying to convey, and an emotional attachment to the songs. I got goosebumps during Aerith's Theme, JENOVA, as well as a few other songs. (No goosebumps during One Winged Angel because that was played sort of like karaoke&emdash;I chanted but the choir was a little weak.) The music from FFXI and FFXIII didn't have the same effect on me, because I didn't really have any context for it. There was an older couple sitting in front of me that didn't even know what Final Fantasy was, and I don't think they got much out of it and were somewhat confused by everyone else's enthusiasm.

One thing that I was confused about was clarified for me last night. I'd picked up the FFXIII soundtrack while in Japan, and although I haven't taken the time to listen to it (on purpose) I did listen to a few songs. And my immediate thought was that this is not Final Fantasy music. It didn't sound right. Sounded much more like a typical classical soundtrack. I thought perhaps Nobou Uematsu was doing something different. But, the FFXIII soundtrack was entirely composed by Masashi Hamauzu.

After getting back to Alla's place, I ordered both Distant Worlds CDs. (The Symphony Store was selling them for $20 each so it was cheaper ordering off Amazon.) I really enjoyed some of the new compositions, and want to be able to listen to them at home.

I did find it a little disappointing. It was a little small, and didn't have a whole lot to see or do. There was a food court, which had a lot of regular-type Japanese and summer food, although there was a taiyaki stand. Unfortunately they were shaped like English muffins rather than fish. But tasted decent.

The one thing I did really enjoy was the Taiko drumming. A few different schools and organizations showed up to perform. The one I was able to attend for the entire duration was the UC Irvine Jodaiko group. Their performance, which also included some fun play between members, kept a big smile on my face.