Russell's Blog

New. Improved. Stays crunchy in milk.

UC Davis, meet the internet.

Posted by Russell on January 12, 2010 at 1:42 a.m.
One of the wonderful things about web applications is that they can be available 24-7. They can sit there and quietly do their jobs -- taking orders, billing credit cards, assigning work orders, or whatever -- even when the office is empty. That's one of the main reasons one would go to the trouble of putting a web front end on something in the first place.

So, the question of the evening is, does the UC Davis registrar know this?

Um... no.

This is a completely automated process. If you do this during the daytime, it just goes ahead and populates a table in whatever chthonic legacy database system that is swaddled in this blob of early 1990's vintage web programming. It's not like having the office open at the time actually helps.

Attention Amazon.com shoppers! It's 4:45 Central Time, and Amazon.com will be closing for the day in 15 minutes! Please complete your order before the site is disconnected for the evening. We will open again tomorrow at 8:30 A.M. Thank you for shopping at Amazon.com!

On the upside, at least it doesn't complain that my browser isn't supported. Yay.

4 comments, 0 trackbacks (URL) , Tags: internet grad school davis
Comments
Andrew on January 14, 2010 at 7:17 a.m.

This is more common than you'd think. UCLA's URSA won't let you do anything on Sunday, and I remember B & H Photo & Video would only let you check out during business hours. They had a big floating popup that covered every item SHOUTING IN ALL CAPS THAT YOU CAN ONLY ORDER DURING BUSINESS HOURS THANK YOU.

Perhaps the electrons at Davis are unionized.

Russell on January 15, 2010 at 1:49 a.m.

In the case of B&H, it's not exactly business hours. They're Hasidic Jews, so they shut down their transaction servers for Shabbat and most Jewish holidays. Were you trying to order something on Friday night?

Andrew on January 15, 2010 at 10:25 a.m.

Well, I suppose that's a good reason. In my defense, the screaming popup didn't say that.

Russell on January 16, 2010 at 7:51 a.m.

I didn't say it was a good reason...

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