I've been sprung from PayPal jail!

Real people to the rescue! Thanks to "Haley" at PayPal's "Account Security" department, our new-yet-sorta-pending tip-joy.com micropayments account at PayPal is back in a standard holding pattern as we wait for our bank to respond.

The interesting thing about the experience was dealing with PayPal's automated voicemail tree. Their customer service number sounds really promising, but just walks you through the standard menu of features that you can find on the web site. Remember, if you want a real person, press "0" -- it still works.

(Don't abuse that; if the tree helps, use it. But in this case, I was in the odd position of trying to convince a computer that I didn't need it to ask questions that I had no way to answer. That takes a human to understand.)

What I loved (in the really freaky/disturbing sense of love) is that, as the automated system tells you it's going to e-mail you some information... you hear fake typing in the background! I'm not kidding! "I'm sending you that information now [tippity-type-type-type]" Really weird -- kinda cute, kinda engaging, kinda strange, kinda "wow, this is totally fake, and I wonder what other fake stuff PayPal is doing..."