strawberryPlease everyone, remain calm. I have shocking news. It appears that for the second year in a row major problems are being reported with online sales of tickets to this year’s Florida Strawberry Festival. Apparently, the online ticketing system has been up and down all day as the crack team of developers over at OmniTicket figure out precisely how to provide the service that makes up half their name. Note to self: name company first, learn skills second.

Why, whatever could be the problem? Let’s find out. To the Strawberry Festival online ticketing system at once! Let’s see, oh,what’s this? A yes, the ubiquitous domain name mismatch security error. Rad. The SSL cert is for websales2.omniticket.com, but I’m trying to buy shit from omniticket.net. Excellent first impression. Teh ecommercez are hard.

Let’s just click through that. Act like it never happened. Ahem. Alright, bring on the web form . . . wait, what in the balls:

In order for you to purchase tickets, you must have the latest version of both Adobe® Acrobat® Reader® and Adobe® Flash® installed and enabled. To better serve you, we have implemented a Flash Player and Acrobat Reader detection system that will tell you exactly what you need to install before you can purchase tickets. Please note that OmniTicket Network USA, Inc. will not install any software onto your computer under any circumstance.

Oh no you didn’t. I am sensing some fail here. Serious fail. Fail with whiskers on it. Why in the name of Jakob Nielsen would anyone need Flash and Adobe Reader to use an online order form? Why do you hate blind people, OmniTicket? Why? Blind people like strawberries, too.

I love how they’ve “implemented a system” to sniff for applications. That makes perfect sense if by “implemented a system” they mean copied a code snippet from Dreamweaver.

Well, gee; I’m on a Mac and don’t have Acrobat since I don’t need it to read .pdfs, why the fuck else would I want it? Ok, fine, I’ll go get it. I really want me some tickets. Ok, so one 23.8MB download later, I am ready to experience the assuredly interactive basket of fucking awesome that will be my ticket buying experience.

What the hell? It’s still telling me I don’t have Adobe Reader. Bullshit. Well, let’s look at the source. Oh, ok, we’ll just bypass the sniffer here by pasting in a link to the .swf page you’re supposed to end up at. Dear god. It’s a Macromedia Flex application. You deployed a Macromedia Flex application - poorly - for the Strawberry Festival? Seriously, there are two ticket options. Also, people in wheelchairs need to call the box office. No online tickets for you.  FAIL. Blind people still hate you. People with Macs hate you. And apparently sighted people on PCs can’t figure this shit out either.

Please note that this really shouldn’t reflect on the Strawberry Festival. The strawberries are just blameless victims in all this. *sniffle*