That is until I happened upon a radio control helicopter forum. Not sure why there particularly but someone had mentioned converting some R/C device from AAA batteries to Li-Ion rechargeables. You can actually find Li-Ion batteries in about the same form factor as a standard AAA battery, the only difference being the voltage. Your standard alkaline runs at 1.5V, while the Li-Ion is about 3.7V so you can't just plug in 4 of these Li-Ion in place of the regular alkaline batteries the remote expects. (Well you probably can't, depending on the internal circuitry you might be able to run such a high voltage and it will just work. But without pulling the remote apart to check or risking permanent damage with a test to determine I didn't want to go down that route.) Instead, based on the information I found, I bundled the Li-Ion cells with a "dummy cell". Simply a conductive battery shaped device that has no voltage or really anything and does nothing other than fill the space of a battery. Those dummy cells proved to be the hardest thing to find, it took a couple months to locate some. So I paired up one Li-Ion battery at 3.7V with a spacer, that combination replaces two alkaline batteries at 1.5V so instead of 3V, I have 3.7V. I took a risk on the little extra voltage assuming this wouldn't be harmful and would likely be beneficial since this remote appears to like to operate on higher voltages. Took a bit of a guess on the pairing of the batteries also since it might be possible to end up with 7.4V in place of 3V. But my educated guess said that the remote was likely trying to run off a series of 4 alkaline at 6V so it probably wouldn't matter the ordering. The only issue I encountered was the nub on the Li-Ion battery was bigger than an alkaline and didn't fit in every location, which was easily resolved with some juggling of positions. Well, success! I now have rechargeable batteries working in my remote. They last for months on a charge and work great. Cost worked out to around two times the cost of a single set of non-rechargeable batteries.

First, I noticed that PayPal sends me notifications in the language of the originating party, not in my language of choice. I've received emails in languages I don't understand at all and have nearly confused them as spam. Emails directly originated from PayPal, like a terms of service change notification, often arrive in French or French then English. None of this really makes sense, my account is set for English and that is the language all notifications should be sent to me in.

The next set of issues is all about the differences between the website, the emails and the iPhone app, all of which I look at. Between these interfaces there are some pretty substantial differences that add confusion and misunderstanding. The name of the sender or recipient listed is not uniform, bouncing between what I believe is the "Display Name", a contact name or a contact email. It can be pretty confusing and alarming when seeing some of the names and even more confusing as they change as you switch interfaces. Not only do the names change, but so do the amount of transactions, selectively including or excluding fees and extras. Further to that, the account balance also is presented differently depending on the interface. In some cases the balance is the sum total of all currency balances converted to your default currency, sometimes it is just the balance of your default currency.

Now in the iPhone app, add another layer of confusion, the app will frequently present stale, cached information and not the current list of transactions, even though it appears it has refreshed or you have re-logged in. It is especially confusing as you receive a notification but then can't find the transaction in the app.

I just found another transaction to add to the pile. I got notification of a payment, the email tells me it's there and I've received it. Doubling checking on the website, it says the payment is "pending". That is nice and misleading. Long ago I made it a point to double check everything I get from Paypal to make sure that I'm getting the right amount and that I don't have a spoofed email.

Now for eBay. I've long maintained that eBay keeps changing their website for the worse, each time it changes. From an end user point of view, it often seems untested and non-functional. Stuff gets removed, moved, broken and just gets more complex. eBay also suffers from similar issues maintaining dissimilar interfaces, namely the standard website, the mobile website and the iPhone app. It seems that because I use ebay.ca by default as I'm from Canada, I'm not allowed to actually make payments on auctions I win from the iPhone app. Ok fine, over to the website, and it defaults to showing the mobile version. No problem, proceed into payments and I'm scratching my head as it is showing my the wrong total and about to charge me more than is owed. On other auctions it leads to an endless string of errors. So I force it back to the full website and I'm off again.

Now eBay and PayPal aren't alone in issues like this. It seems like standard business practice now and one Google has long used. Get to market first with 80% functionality. It gets customers up and running fast and grows rapidly. But as time goes on, if you don't fix the remaining issues and add the missing functionality, it alienates the users and does nothing to support loyalty.

Total Extra Fees: $8.50 or nearly 30% markup on the base ticket price.

After the successful purchase of my first pair of glasses online (Eyeglasses Online) I was looking for a set of prescription sunglasses. Unfortunately Clearly Contacts doesn't offer tinting on any lenses required for my prescription so I was looking elsewhere. After my initial research Zenni Optical seemed like the place to go for a prescription tint, but I just never pulled the trigger on a purchase there for some reason. Then one day an email dropped into my inbox from Goggles4U with an interesting sale (PS: when I'm shopping online I often find it useful to sign up for all the newsletters at places I'm interested in so I'm alerted to coupons and sales). Goggles4U wasn't on my list of vendors offering prescription tint, as in my research I couldn't find information on getting tint on the lenses required for my prescription. The website has an annoying pop-up live chat window, so what the heck I ask and sure enough I can order tint as required. The stumbling blocks continue though. The "Express Checkout" won't let me select my prescription and the "Wizard Checkout" won't find lenses tinted in my prescription. No bother says the support rep, just order and put all the info in a note and they will make it happen. With the sale coupon the total came out to $42. Zenni was in the $60 range and Clearly Contacts was about $160 for non-tinted. Note that I didn't get as high end a lens for Goggles4U or Zenni as compared to Clearly Contacts. I only ended up getting the emailed Paypal receipt and no other order information, which I dislike as I would like to have a copy of the invoice to store. About 12 days later I got this strange package in the mail. It was a cloth covered hunk of styrofoam, stitched shut and then sealed with wax. I had been waiting for some gadget doohickeys I had ordered from Hong Kong and I thought this was the package, but upon looking closer I noticed it had been sent from Pakistan. So I open it up and it's the glasses I had ordered from Goggles4U. Oddly they have an American address and are billed as American Eye Vision Inc. Oh well, the glasses work great and were just what I ordered, not at all bad for $42.

Swapped the Bridgestone winter tires on and I gave it a spin around the same block trying to push the limits, 60-70km/h is still comfortable and the traction aids weren't even kicking in yet. On the way home I looked for many of the same snow conditions that almost got me stuck the previous day, again, I can't even get the traction control to activate as the tires are gripping well. The deep lugs sure help with that. On icy conditions I've certainly noticed additional grip as well. Unfortunately I immediately noticed my driving style adjusting to the improved grip and negating some of the gain, but I'm still nowhere near the edge of these tires, while I would be driving over the edge on the summer tires constantly.

The modern debit/credit terminal has a few new features but runs at an abysmal speed. Forcing users to extensively wait, far longer than I ever remember waiting for the old terminals, even though current terminals are connected to a much faster network and have access to vastly superior hardware. The interface on a current terminal has exploded in both number of buttons and variety of different terminal styles and software. One of the most annoying and complex user interface traits of the modern machine is the variety of confirmation buttons used during a single transaction. It is not uncommon to use 3 different buttons to confirm actions during a transaction, often these buttons are small and have only soft labels. This is just plain stupid and a horrible interface design. The variety of terminal designs and operation is bewildering to a user. Every time I use a terminal I have to look at it carefully to figure out what to do, and I have to keep doing that for every step. Not to mention I have to continuously poll it to see if I should be waiting or if I forgot to push some button I didn't see. There seems to be very little in common between the various hardware and even less between the software on the same hardware. The other oddity is that these terminals need to be told to look for a credit or a debit card, I don't understand why they just can't read the card and then determine which it is. If they are told one thing and get a card of the other, they know it's wrong, so why can't they auto-detect?

Another two things have been bothering me lately about these terminals. On most machines when I use my Mastercard, I get asked what language I want to use and on every one the method to change and/or select a language is different. So not only am I wasting time selecting what should be a one time setting, I have to struggle to figure out how to do it each time. The other issue pops up on some machines and not others. Many machines just change the screen once the transaction is complete and remind you to remove your card. However, several varieties of these machines have an additional screen in between steps that indicates something is complete or ok and NOT to remove your card. Well, the message is entirely useless as I don't care what step the machine has completed, since as a user I just have to keep waiting. The message can easily cause problems as I might see the screen change and with it containing the words 'remove' and 'card', I might just do that. But once again I carefully have to study each machine and each screen carefully every time and react. None of them just work how I would expect.

I really don't understand how they have made these terminals worse. They are doing the same job they always have, albeit with one or two minor new features. Technology has skyrocketed ahead and these terminals seem to be left in the dust, forcing consumers and business owners to suffer.