Bluetooth Bane

So my new Pebble 2 and Android smartphone (a G4 Moto Play) refused to talk to each other this morning. I wasted about an hour trying to pair, un-pair, and re-pair their Bluetooth relationship, but absolutely nothing worked. To add to the aggravation, every website that claims to have an answer to this seems to be blocked for some reason.

So the solution eventually came when I reset the Pebble to factory settings and completely uninstalled and reinstalled the Pebble app. Then it worked again, thank goodness, but seriously — how long has Bluetooth had this ridiculous issue? I remember a decade ago struggling to get a wireless mouse to work and then afterward simply using a corded one instead.

P.S. This happened a few more times, and each time the solution was something along the lines of un-pairing the phone and Pebble and repairing again, usually by "forgetting" the Pebble in my Android Bluetooth settings. A pain? Yes, but it usually worked (and isn't nearly as horrible as the FitBit Versa).

Unfortunately, process.my.sanity has stopped

So, I just bought a new (refurbished) Nexus 10 for the wife off of Groupon. And of course, it's completely unusable. After logging into Google and starting it up, it starts getting an endless stream of errors, always "unfortunately, google play services has stopped" or something. I went to Google to find an answer, and of course there are thousands of posts all over the place all with the exact same problem.

So what's the solution? There isn't one. Oh, there are lots of alleged solutions, but not a single one that works. If you hate yourself and want to feel the white hot pain or trying to make the piece of garbage you bought online work, you can try any one of the following:

1. Delete the cache
2. Reset app preferences
3. Uninstall the Google Play Store
4. Wipe the System Cache Partition
5. Reset to factory settings

When none of those ideas work, you can muck around with the firmware, installing a custom ROM or any number of things that will void your warranty. Don't worry, it's EASY!

Or your could just send it back and hope the next one will work. Which it won't.

Getting a PayPal API Username and Signature: an exercise in futility.

Every now and again and I need a reminder of how much I hate myself. That's when I decided to do something that should be brain-dead simple on WordPress using the pre-installed, already-configured WP eCommerce plug-ins — connecting to our business PayPal account for online payments.

Super easy, right? All I have to do is enter a few simple, little PayPal things into the settings boxes. Like these:

Why, an API Username, Password, Signature, and Merchant ID. I should be able just to click right over to my PayPal account and find those right under "My Selling Tools" on my PayPal profile, which is EXACTLY where PayPal's helpful help files says it should be. RIGHT?

WRONG! They're not there. They're not ANYWHERE.

So… what's the solution? Is there some magical account setting or special status that lets me have access to an API? After an hour of Googling, I can't find an answer. The WP eCommerce site says I just have to have a PayPal Express Checkout account, or a a Verified PayPal Business Account, or maybe I need to upgrade your account to a Business account. It doesn't matter, because no matter what I click, I just get bounced back to this page, which only lets me log back into my own account with no modifications no matter what I choose.

Of course, PayPal is also ridiculously impossible to get hold of, and I have to fight with their phone tree for hours just to get hung up on.

The Answer

Eventually I discovered one of the five different PayPal modules, "PayPal Payments Standard 2.0," did NOT require any API settings in order to work, so I wound up using that instead.