FIRST Server Issues

[SparkyMark]

Originally Posted by nixiebunny

They accomplish the venting of STEAM.

Steam venting... lol. Water games confirmed, eh?? Has anybody else checked out the event site(s) specifically? Apparently all events this year take place in the middle of the week. All those I looked at begin on Tuesday and end on Friday.

My boss isn't gonna like this

[Aren Siekmeier]

Everything looks to be back up. No teams registered. Still waiting on the date and time for next week to be announced (I'd assume 9/29 at noon EDT).

[iyportne]

...case study continued....

Here's an interesting observation. Nearly everybody here was undoubtedly logged in and looking at your dashboard at T - 500ms. From the conversation here, we also all figured we would have our registration choice clicked and secured at T + 10,000 ms. Generously allowing for those with slow reflexes and internet speeds below 1 Mbps, let's say that the expected lifecycle of the registration product to be...Oh let's say 60,000 ms. We know it and FIRST knows it.

IT FAILED...AND we all knew that at T+ 0ms as did FIRST

Given the life cycle and failure mode which is somehow well researched, documented and proven on this thread within 5 product life cycles, one could conclude that waiting more than 10 life cycles (that would be 10 minute for anyone lost in the math) for the product to suddenly start working again, or needing FIRST to state the already obvious is, well, curious.

[Conor Ryan]

Too bad we can't give green dots to the IT team.

Anybody have ideas for a crowdsourced solution? I'm sure districts will want to move their own process in the future.

[TJP123]

Originally Posted by Tim Sharp

I'm getting a 503 error

You'll have to be more specific. I can recall many, many 503 errors.

[guniv]

I had to get somewhere earlier when this whole debacle was happening, so I watched as long as I could. Then I got to my car, put my laptop in the passenger seat, turned on my mobile hotspot, and f5'd the page nearly the whole commute.

Anyways, a shame it's postponed for a week. I hope it's early next week. Our team has enough going on.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by iyportne

Given the life cycle and failure mode which is somehow well researched, documented and proven on this thread within 5 product life cycles, one could conclude that waiting more than 10 life cycles (that would be 10 minute for anyone lost in the math) for the product to suddenly start working again, or needing FIRST to state the already obvious is, well, curious.

The problem is this isn't unheard of FIRST. It's often been a problem with demand and the system has come back up at some unannounced later time during the day. Without official announcement of a postponement there is no way to know if we should continue with our lives or stay glued to the screen waiting for something to change. Assuming the former for some teams means losing out on their preferred event or more money spent on travel or not being able to do two+ events at all.

[EmileH]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

Too bad we can't give green dots to the IT team.

Anybody have ideas for a crowdsourced solution? I'm sure districts will want to move their own process in the future.

Let districts host their own registration system(s) and manage the required IT? Like events?

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

My hope was to transition the thread towards a more positive tone (and as Marshall said, more empathy towards the IT folks who are surely very stressed at the moment). I see now that my attempt was only mildly successful, at best.

CD being CD.

[David Brinza]

I don't want to take shots at the IT team at FIRST, I'm sure they work hard and are understaffed for the job at hand.

The IT team's consistent struggle with rolling out website upgrades, server capacity, etc. is a byproduct of the way FIRST is operated. I've seen these struggles many times in the 14 years I've been in FIRST. The decision to not invest in the kind of workforce needed to develop and adequately test their IT environment before rolling it out comes from the very top of the organization.

Unfortunately, we teams (i.e. their customers) pay the price of wasting valuable time and having unnecessary stress injected into what should be a relatively straight-forward process.

I hope Frank and Don recognize the importance of having a reliable IT interface between teams and the program. I hope they are able to convince the top guy to make the decision to fix this problem permanently. I'm just hoping things do change...soon.

[Jardanium]

I was wondering why my phone blew up with notifications about a half-hour after registration opened. Oh well, here's to hoping that next week goes a lot smoother!

[Banderoonies]

Originally Posted by Trying to Help

We postpone work, schedule lunch early, have someone cover for us, etc. We will now have to do it again for next week. And for those of us in district competitions, not too long again after that.

.

Took the words out of my mouth. Now i have to get coverage and reschedule work around this again.

[nuclearnerd]

Has this been suggested already?

Why the heck can't we submit a ranked list, and have the machine choose who gets where based on their chosen priority and a random draw? You could even do it in multiple draws if you want to give teams the chance to adjust their second decision based on the results of their first result. We already do this for FIRST choice, and it works perfectly well.

What use is forcing people to all click refresh at the same time when we already have an alternative system that is easier on mentors' time and server load?

[ScoutMom700]

Did anyone see that regionals are listed as Tuesday through Friday instead of Wednesday through Saturday in tims? Part of the glitch?

Edit - I just looked at the calendar and the Tuesday - Friday dates are for the 2016 calendar, some one didn't put in the 2017 dates for regionals.

[Jimmy Nichols]

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

Has this been suggested already?

Why the heck can't we submit a ranked list, and have the machine choose who gets where based on their chosen priority and a random draw? You could even do it in multiple draws if you want to give teams the chance to adjust their second decision based on the results of their first result. We already do this for FIRST choice, and it works perfectly well.

What use is forcing people to all click refresh at the same time when we already have an alternative system that is easier on mentors' time and server load?

This would alienate a lot of teams that only attend 1 event and its the closest/least expensive/local event. I know several teams that a system like this would effect.