See this picture? This is a shot of Zellerbach Hall. I pass by this hall every day on my way to work at The Daily Californian. Usually, I wouldn’t give the place a second glance.
Today is special. People are lined up out the door. The entire plaza is filled with a snake-line of humans. These humans are happy. I am sad. Why? Because they hold the tickets to today’s Bill Clinton speech at UC Berkeley.
Let me talk about the events prior to this. Last week, I got an email from UC Berkeley about free tickets to a speech by a certain former President. All I had to do was wake up early the next day, log into my computer, make a few clicks, and I would be on my way to see Clinton in a week. Right?
Wrong. The problem was, there were only 1200 tickets available for students. And there are over 30,000 students at UC Berkeley. Waking up at 6:50 am and visiting a website that was no doubt being simultaneously bombarded by thousands of other people did not make for a happy server.
In the end, after the extended periods of constant refreshing and forcing myself awake, the tickets were gone. Only one person in my hall managed to get a ticket. Apparently, the server had crashed, and they fixed it at 7:40 am, so the minutes after that offered a narrow window for the tickets. Who would have known…
Now, I get to enviously glance at the people in line as I bike through the plaza and head to lecture. Next time, tickets, be warned. I shall defeat you.
Flood the servers at randomtidbitsofthought.wordpress.com.
HAHAHA. *sad face* but yea. tell me about it.