Regrets, I've had a few...

[doodab]

Can gyroscopic precession tell me when to buy that lottery ticket?

Oh that reminds me. £110 million this evening. Better get a ticket.

[TestMangler]

In 1993, I did some ecommerce web stuff which essentially meant finding a company to clear credit cards on the net. This was done via a company in the States as it was virtually (if not totally) impossible to get a Uk bank to do it then. Anyway, I put a couple of clients on this solution and was approached by the american company that they would set me up as a top level merchant and all the clients I got could have their payments cleared via My Co, and they offered a very small % on their side to make it work. I started doing this and took in a few clients with sign up fees, monthly fees and per transation fees. To sort this properly, I had to be able to differentiate between incoming client payments to know who was due what, which I did by using their email address in the secure message string.

Didn't see it at the time, but I (along with a business partner) had invented the concept of FU*KING PAYPAL !!

We ran into a legal difficulty with the American side and to get round this, we had to register a company in the States (Delaware I believe was the most 'lax' state for doing this). Anyway, we looked at what we would have to do and decided, ***** it, it was too much hassle and closed the operation down !!



Imagine how many times since then, I've wanted to kick the tulip ou of myself

[Doggy Styles]

I did electronic engineering, and worked in it for several years. But you develop and move on, don't you.

I get a bit nostalgic for chip and pcb design, probes and scopes, soldering, CAE, the component store, the Texas catalogues of my youth, the lovely Dawn, CAD/CAM, prototype circuits on Vero board, shift work... I blame that bloody lizard by the way, for repeatedly reminding me of it.

But I don't regret leaving it behind because I like what I do now, and I think I'm earning more money than I would have.