Arisia fails again.

I tried to go to arisia today. Just for a couple hours to visit the dealers room and see a few friends. Their lovely and allegedly much improved registration system wouldn't sell me a day badge. According to the obfuscatory staff person who kept repeating platitudes right out of Dilbert when I was asking about getting a badge. They were unable to enter new names into the registration database or print badges because the hotel internet was being flakey. Plus when I asked about implementing the backup system, I got evasive answers that mostly consisted of quotes from bad IT practices training films.

Well shuck my corn. I've never heard of hotel internet connections getting slow and flakey when a science fiction con is at the hotel, except for about 90% of the time. Why would anyone with practical experience in the real world setup a system that depends on a hotel internet connection? That is just about a textbook example of bad design.

I don't know the details of their system, but I know that it failed with a very predictable problem that should have been planned for. No, I'm not interested in running their registration system, I've been there and done that. Arisia is no longer my convention and I am even less likely to try to attend next year.