American Express, once known for offering exceptional customer support, gets a failing grade in handling a simple, human mistake. Here are the details: I own several small online businesses. Our VeriSign online merchant gateway was purchased by PayPal, so PayPal recently informed us that we needed to switch over using their API on our web sites. Last week our programmers finished rewriting EventMingle to use the new PayPal Gateway API. Credit card companies give us test credit card numbers to use when testing the gateway to make sure it works correctly. They test to make sure it rejects invalid credit cards,...

I must admit, I've avoided starting this blog for years. I'm not sure why, I suspect I just invested my time doing other things, like discovering Bend, Oregon which we moved to in 2006. Or maybe it's been trying to learn the game of golf, a game I had not played a lot prior to moving to Bend.  In any event, here I am. I've been wanting to get some of my thoughts down about my career and to share some of my stories and thoughts about being a founder of two startups: Mustang Software, Inc and Specialty Match Network, being...