Android 6250 Text Message VZWNM

At the end of November I bought my Samsung Stratosphere Android phone. It's been working great. Over the weekend, I started getting a bunch of weird text messages from a 6250 number with a message of VZWNM:1;1. After a day of getting them all day long, I did some searching on the internet. The only useful thing I found was a thread in an android forum. Apparently, it is Verizon sending these messages every time your default email account receives a message. My phone came with a default email app, but I also installed K-9 mail. I have 3 email accounts added to both apps. My gmail account was set as the default account in the default app. K-9 is the app I mainly use for email though. I deleted my gmail account from the default app and the VZWNM messages stopped.
A couple of alternatives: I can re-add the gmail account to the default app, only use the other option rather than the add gmail account option.
There is a text messaging app called Handcent. It has a setting where you can block the 6250 number. That seemed to be a popular choice in the android forum.
According to the thread, calling Verizon is useless. They have no clue.
No one knows why the messages start either. It just suddenly starts happening. Some speculated the installation of an app may have triggered it. I did install Amazon's MP3 app the day before. I don't know if that triggered something, but it would be really strange if it did, since it has nothing to do with Verizon or text messages.
It is good to know there is a solution to making the 6250 VZWNM text messages stop though.


More Android Phones

Credit Card Processing

I've finally made the move to upgrade the source files of my magazine back issues website to be more dynamic. Before, the pages used only HTML and CSS. All issues were hard coded into each web page. I would have to manually edit the HTML page in order to add a new issue. For the 2012 issues, the issue data is now being stored in a MySQL database. It's then displayed using PHP. I have an admin piece where I can login and enter the info for each new issue to store in the database. The upside to that is I can use any computer with an internet connection to add a new issue, rather than being tied to the computer storing the source data.
I use PayPal to handle all payment transactions. It makes things much easier. I don't have to worry about bounced checks, counterfeit money, invalid credit cards, etc. I am thinking of looking into alternative credit card processing services though. PayPal takes out a lot of fees for each transaction. It's not much, but it does add up over time. A seamless, no fee system where I don't have to do any manual processing would be great.
Credit card processing seems to be able to be done from anywhere. A salesman from Southwestern Advantage stopped last summer and convinced me to buy a set of kids reference books. I put the books on my credit card. The salesman didn't have any POS systems with him. He just called a number, gave them my credit card information, and the transaction was completed. I was kind of skeptical it was legitimate, but it was. Southwestern Advantage turned out to be a company that hires college kids who would like to run their own business for the summer. They go to another state and sell books all summer. The guy who stopped at my house was from Minnesota and had been selling books all over the valley. He mentioned names of people I actually knew. He was very friendly, but a real smooth talker. Before I knew it, I was signing a paper and buying the books, while wondering to myself, why am I buying these. lol. They were nice books, but expensive, although he somehow convinced me otherwise.