I stumbled across this little gem while looking at Fark during lunch today. Apparently, the North American Restroom Association (NARA) is fighting for better toilets across the U.S. Thank God! Now I can sleep at night. It seems they'd like to put an end to "troughs" and construct floor-to-ceiling dividers between urinals. Frankly, I've never noticed the lack of dividers. Like most men, I'm only aware of what's immediately in front of my eyes.

Anyway, the hidden treasure in this story is the last paragraph:

NARA just started in September, but is already becoming a force in the world of toilet reform. Representatives will be presenting their proposals at the World Toilet Summit in Beijing Nov. 17-19.

New Group Fighting For Better Toilets

[Ears perk up] What's this? A World Toilet Summit? Surely not.

Yup, not only is the first annual World Toilet Summit starting this Wednesday in China, but it's being held by (ready for this?) the World Toilet Organization. The WTO (hmm, I guess they're related) is comprised of 17 members including Global Sanitet Club Finland (formerly known as Finland Toilet Association) and Paruresis Society, USA. The later is the group of shy Americans that are behind, or rather in front of, the NARA.

Now, I've given you more than enough links to help you, um, piss away the day, but let me highlight a few more:

• World Toilet Support Centre (boring page, but the name is funny)
• International Paruresis Association Online Store (I here "Bianca and the Bashful Bladder" really keeps you on the edge of your seat).
• Good Toilet Etiquette - Exhibit poster 8

Enjoy.

Lauren and I returned late Wednesday evening from five days in Las Vegas. I was there to attend Dev Connections and Lauren tagged along for some much needed R&R. The bulk of our stay was at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, a very nice Asian-inspired hotel. We weren't able to get a room there for our first night, so we spent Saturday evening across the street at the Luxor. Where Mandalay Bay had the feel of a beach resort that happened to have a few gaming machines, the Luxor was a Casino that happened to have 4,400 hotel rooms stacked on top of it.

Saturday was our big day on the town. We started by spending at few hours at Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton. ST:XP features a museum, two motion rides, shops, and a restaurant. If you're a Star Trek fan be sure to check it out; it's lots of fun. We spent the rest of the afternoon checking out the strip near our hotel. After a wonderful dinner we caught The Amazing Johnathan at the Riviera. AJ has been described as the Freddie Kruger of Comedy, not everyone's cup of tea,but I thought I'd die laughing. After the show we walked down to the Stratosphere to check out Las Vegas from 1,149 feet. Walking was a bad idea; the Casinos look like they're just around the corner because they're frickin' huge! The walk from the Riviera to the Stratosphere clocked in at just over a mile.

For me, the best thing about Las Vegas has to be the food. Lauren and I spent our first three nights dining on some of the best Asian food I've ever had. Luxor's Fusia, Mandalay Bay's Shanghai Lilly, an Paris' Ah Sin were all incredible. We were also surprised by an early dinner we had at the Harley-Davidson Café. Trust me on this: have the Macaroni and Cheese. It's the best I've ever had, and if you know me, you know that's really saying something. As for liquid refreshments, try the I Bar, Rio's ultra lounge. The bartenders put on quite a show, as do the waitresses, and the drinks were some of the best we've had in a long time.

One thing that struck both of us was that nearly every Casino we wandered into was running their heaters. It was a nice, comfortable 70 degrees, but I guess in a town used to 110 degree summers, 70 is practically arctic.

As you might have caught on, Lauren and I hit quite a few casinos. 17 to be exact (Aladdin, Binions Horseshoe, Caesars Palace, Circus Circus, Excalibur, Las Vegas Hilton, Luxor, Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand, New York, New York, Paris, Rio, Riviera, Sahara, Stratosphere, and the Venetian.) I think we hit the whole spectrum, from luxury casinos like Mandalay Bay and the Venitian, to dumps like the Horseshoe and Circus Circus. The best themed casinos were Paris and New York, New York, each doing a nice job of transporting you to their namesakes.

There's not much else to report. Loved the food, and loved the show, but I didn't care for anything else Las Vegas had to offer.

It's been a year since I had surgery to relieve the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in my right wrist. At the time I naively thought I'd be healed by Christmas, but in reality I wasn't back on my game for another couple of months. I still have occasional discomfort, but even then it's a cake-walk compared to the pain I'd been living with. I have a small, 1 inch scar at the base of my hand, but unless you know what you're looking for, it just looks like another line in my palm. Dr. Crawford really did a wonderful job.

I've been using the third-party billing service iBill for the last three years to pay for access to Usenet, a precursor to web-based message boards. As a third-party billing company, iBill would charge my credit card and then forward that money on to Newsfeeds.com, my Usenet provider. Pretty routine, right?

Enter GKard

An hour later I received this email from iBill.com:

Previously, your credit card has been charged with the descriptor ibillcs.com for your subscription to an Internet website. Going forward, gkbill will now be the new billing agent. During your next billing cycle, your credit card statement will contain a new descriptor, gkard load*gkbill.com. This change will be effective on your next billing cycle. As an added feature of this change, you now have a gkard, Visa Electronic Card, which has been loaded with the appropriate billing amount for your subscription.

By the time this last email arrived I was pretty hopping mad. I immediately cancelled my re-occurring billing through iBill and contacted my Usenet provider to inquire about alternate payment methods.

Screwed by Porn

I knew VISA had recently changed their policies and were beginning to pull merchant accounts of third-party billing companies that dealt primarily with adult websites. I also knew that the bulk of iBill's business came from adult sites, and that they were in serious financal trouble having just lost their merchant account, so I figured GKard was their solution. A quick Google search confirmed my suspicions:

DEERFIELD, Fla. – The ongoing saga of iBill's attempts to remain in the online adult transaction processing business took a surprise turn Friday when customers began receiving email notifications about changes to their subscription status.

As a part of these changes, iBill began issuing customers who subscribed to recurring membership sites a Virtual Visa debit card under the "gkard" label, which comes pre-loaded with the full amount the customer initially charged via his/her Visa.

"We're really IBill, but without Visa," a gkard representative told XBiz. "As for the mechanics of the process, if you want to use Visa to pay for a membership, you have to first load the funds onto the gkard using your Visa, then use your gkard number to join the site. This helps security by limiting the number of people who have your Visa number."

Stephen Yagielowicz, IBill Adopts Virtual Visa'

Customer Service usually helps, right?

With this information in hand, I called the number listed on GKard's website (877-283-1863). Call the number, it'll sound like every other credit/debit card toll-free number out there. I had five goals:

1. Express my outrage over having a credit card account opened in my name without my permission
2. Clarify the relationship between iBill and GKard
3. Discovered how and why the credit card I used with iBill, which had expired last month, was still being used but with a new, and incorrect, expiration date
4. Find out why they sent my name, address, credit card number, expiration date, pin code, and CVV2 number in a plain text email message
5. Close my GKard account

Call #1: I spoke with Troy who insisted the GKard is "not a Visa card". I pointed to the VISA logo on the GKard website and read the opening of their first email to me ("Welcome to gkard, the international VISA pre paid card from gkbill" ). He maintained that the GKard was not a Visa card. I was told that iBill was GKard and he confirmed that my account was closed when I cancelled my reoccurring billing with iBill. He then suggested I speak with a supervisor, put me on hold, and disconnected me.

Call #2: Andrew answered and while I was explaining what had happened with Troy I suddenly heard a message stating "Your call time has expired…goodbye" and I was disconnected. This message did not come from my phone system. It had to have been generated on GKard's end.

Call #3: I entered my GKard number into the automated phone system, just as I had the previous two times I called. This time, however, anytime I pressed a menu option I received the following message: "Your account's credit limit has been reached. Please contact your customer service representative." I received this response to every menu option I was presented with. Clearly, my account had been flagged as a "trouble maker".

Call #4: This time I started off with the option for those who'd "forgotten" their account number. I reached Andrew (who had the fakest Hispanic accent ever) who was firm that he could not send me to a supervisor without first trying to assist me. I described my previous calls, suggested that I was about to call VISA International, and suddenly found myself speaking with Claude, a "supervisor". He said the GKard _was_ a Visa card, confirmed that my GKard was closed, and explained away the false expiration date as a "customer convenience" measure. He then went on to say that they choose to email my credit card information to respect the privacy of their customers who were using them to view porn on the internet. He then said he was sure their use of two separate emails to send out the card details was "perfectly legal". He then started into a round of "don't shoot the messenger". Clearly I was dealing with the head weasel. The only other information he'd provide is that iBill and GKard were two separate companies, despite what I'd been hold by Troy and what I read on the Internet.

You just knew they'd be based in Florida

At first glance, iBill and GKard appear to be separate companies. The domain name iBill.com is registered to the Internet Billing Company, LLC of Deerfield Beach, FL. The domain name GKBill.com is registered last month to Muscato Corp. of Maitland, FL. Wow, a Florida-based credit card company that's been in business for less than a month. No, this sounds perfectly above-board.

I've got calls into my original merchant, my bank, and to VISA.

I've voted, have you? Remember, due to the high turnout expected today, Democrats will be voting on Wednesday, November 3rd.