Sergei Mutovkin’s Rumbling Mumbling

Okay, I guess 24th was a crazy day after all…

At 8pm Futureshop wanted to open their Microsoft Server + ASP (active server pages) online store for boxing “server crasher” deals. Unfortunately the same thing happened as always, only a few seconds after 8 the site was down. It resumed around 10pm. The two deals I was hunting for were almost in my pocket. I was hunting for PS3 bundle and HD-DVD Toshiba D3 player for $99. Thanks to a very nasty thing called Visa Verified, I’ve lost Toshiba deal. I had passed the queue and had both items still “in stock” clicked through the payment pages and in the end found myself on a Visa Verified page which expired in browser and once I refreshed it threw me back to the shopping cart. But Toshiba HD-D3 HD-DVD player was already out of stock. I guess, this is my last time I’ve used Visa online, thank you Visa, thank you TD Bank. I will be using only my AMEX from now on. I repeated the process and bought the Playstation 3 80GB + Blue-Ray Remote + 2 Games + 5 Blue-Ray movies via mail in. I’m still hoping HD-DVD player will return tomorrow for a short time, though unfortunately nobody knows when. But I’m definitely not standing in line for it at 6am in the morning (though it might be fun, I would say even extreme fun).

After all this experience I’ve also left a comment on Futureshop website that next time they should deploy their servers on Linux/Solaris boxes with some load balancers… instead of Microsoft crap they use. Rogers heard me and now they are powered by a very nice Java server. I always ask myself, why do I dislike Microsoft technologies so much, today I’ve got a new ground to stand on for my believes system.

All in all, congratulate me, I’m the proud owner of Sony Playstation 3, the machine that will change the future of entertainment.