[FRC BLOG] The Great Registration System Crash of 2016

[Foster]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Having been in situations like this before (in a professional capacity), I can tell you that a 45 minute response time isn't actually that bad. Even if you have everyone needed to analyze the problem standing by, it does take some amount of time to pull the logs, find something relevant in them, and figure out what's going on, or even to figure out if it's a 5 minute or 5 hour fix. Add on top of that having to communicate the details and expectations from the engineers to management, get a decision, and get the communication out.

Exactly. And from experience that 45 minutes flies by in seconds. With something as complex as a multi connected, load balanced, multi system web application with a database, there is a ton of stuff to look at piece by piece.

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

This isn't life or death, waiting a few minutes, or even an hour, isn't going to be the end of the world.

Ummm, the last time I said something like this I got red dots from people saying how critical it was to be able to get into events for their season, so it was pretty close to the end of the world for a high school senior.

I agree it's not the end of the world. And while I feel for the many dozens of you that lost an hour trying to register, FIRST has said they will do a full reset and start over. So all you are out is an hour of time. As I always say "I've wasted far more on far less" (works both for time, money and robot parts, feel free to add it to your list of phrases)

As a per-emptive effort, begin to tamp down your anger now when the FIRST parts purchase website is slow and you can't get the "free" parts you want during build season.