# Twenty-Two, Not Twenty-Three > My age was wrong in the only version that shipped. By MCAFax · Published September 9, 2026 · Updated October 2, 2026 Section: Markets & Main Street › Small Business · Series: Confessions (https://mcafax.com/notebook/series/confessions) Canonical: https://mcafax.com/notebook/two-human-acts Source: MCAFax, The Broker's Notebook (https://mcafax.com/notebook). MCAFax is not a lender or a law firm. --- My age was wrong in the only version that shipped. Not twenty-three. Twenty-two, the year everything started. Every earlier draft of that chapter had it right. The one that actually went out the door said twenty-three. I'm told that's a law of nature. The version you ship is the version with the typo. The chapter was a piece of the old career story, the one about how I fell into the funding world with a bad résumé and a borrowed suit. I'd been sitting on it for a week. Names stripped to brackets so nobody real could be found in it. That Sunday afternoon, at 3:41, it finally left my outbox. At least, I think I sent it. Here is the part I keep turning over. My records file that send as "inferred." No other system of mine was awake near a quarter to four. So the record reads the send as me, the way a detective reads a fingerprint. It is probably right. But I have built a life where my own actions need attribution analysis. This happens in my old industry all the time, and it never ends well. A merchant once called our shop, furious, swearing he had never signed a renewal. Never. He didn't even know what we were talking about. He had a deposit in his account he didn't recognize and debits he didn't authorize, and he wanted a lawyer, a manager, and an apology, in that order. So we pulled the e-sign log. Signed at 11:52 p.m., from his phone, at his home address, forty seconds after the document opened. He'd been on a late shift. He'd signed it in bed half-asleep and genuinely did not remember. He went quiet on the phone for a long time. Then he said, "Can you send me the log? I want to look at it myself." I respected that. Most people want to be right. He wanted to know. The day had one other human act, and that one I can prove, because I did it at a quarter past two in the morning, wide awake in the dark. I settled a question that had been sitting on my desk for a week: what our new team portal is allowed to see. Two rules. It reads from our records, one way. And nothing money-shaped ever crosses into it. No fees, no commissions, no balances. Then I went back to sleep. Five hours later the portal tried to run and couldn't, because it needed one human approval and the human was asleep. It did nothing, exactly as written. It obeyed its rule by refusing the job. So that was my Sunday: one decision made half-asleep and logged, one email sent and only inferred. I opened the chapter again that night, found the line, and fixed it in my own copy. The record noted the edit at 9:14 p.m. Source: confirmed. --- ## Questions readers actually ask ### How can I tell if a bad credit business loan offer is a scam? Check the sender's originating email address against the business name on the offer. Predatory funding outfits and scammers frequently spoof unrelated domains—like local contractors or repair shops—to bypass spam filters. A legitimate business lender will always send formal documentation and outreach directly from their own verified, corporate domain. ### What should I do if a cloud provider sends multiple past-due notices? Review your payment gateway settings before assuming an account disaster or cash shortage. Billing automation engines cycle through escalation notices on rigid schedules, even when the issue is simply an expired credit card expiration date rather than an unpaid balance. Updating the card details stops the machine from threatening account termination. ### How do small business owners stop unsolicited loan broker emails? Forward unsolicited merchant cash advance and lending solicitations into a centralized filter or spam folder to map the senders. Setting up automated email rules that blacklist the sending IP addresses, spoofed domains, and recurring opt-out phrasing will drastically cut down repeat solicitations over time. *Confessions is a series of stories from inside the MCA world. Names and details are changed, and some are dramatized.* ## Questions readers ask **How can I tell if a bad credit business loan offer is a scam?** Check the sender's originating email address against the business name on the offer. Predatory funding outfits and scammers frequently spoof unrelated domains—like local contractors or repair shops—to bypass spam filters. A legitimate business lender will always send formal documentation and outreach directly from their own verified, corporate domain. **What should I do if a cloud provider sends multiple past-due notices?** Review your payment gateway settings before assuming an account disaster or cash shortage. Billing automation engines cycle through escalation notices on rigid schedules, even when the issue is simply an expired credit card expiration date rather than an unpaid balance. Updating the card details stops the machine from threatening account termination. **How do small business owners stop unsolicited loan broker emails?** Forward unsolicited merchant cash advance and lending solicitations into a centralized filter or spam folder to map the senders. Setting up automated email rules that blacklist the sending IP addresses, spoofed domains, and recurring opt-out phrasing will drastically cut down repeat solicitations over time.