I was reading this thread:

http://texags.com/main/forum.reply.asp?topic_id=1827147&forum_id=5

& it reminded me of what we mid-90's Ags had to deal with...the old phone registration system.

man that thing was a serious pain in the @$$.

this morning my wife (who is going back to school & is currently enrolled at A&M) set her alarm for 6am, got up, drank coffee & picked her classes leisurely on the web. oh wow how I wish I'd have had that luxury.

wake up early
start pressing redial while pouring thru crappy-newspaper printed list of classes
press redial 955x
sometimes "busy" sometimes it answers & gets your hopes up, only to SQUASH said hopes with the total bullcrap: "we're sorry, all registration lines are busy. please hang up & try your call again in one hour. four oh nine, eight four five." YEAH RIGHT ONE HOUR!!! all my classes will be gone then, stupid cow.
FINALLY get through
listen to the computer SLOWLY list every class. it takes her 2min to read one class:

"B..........I...........O..........L.........ONE........ONE.............THREE............SECTION..............FOUR...............ZERO...............SEVEN..........ONE............is not available. please choose another section.

B..........I...........O..........L.........ONE........ONE.............THREE............SECTION..............FOUR...............ZERO...............SEVEN..........TWO............is not available. please choose another section.

AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!

man that thing was a POS. I'd have rather stood in line in G. Rollie than deal with that POS worthless thing.

ok rant over. anyone else remember this system? yes, I'm old.


[This message has been edited by ag-i-doc (edited 4/21/2011 10:43a).]

260-3212

I remember. Pain in the ass.

I liked bonfire.

i was there yo.
98-02.. can't remember if by the time i left it was better.. but i started with bonfire and phone reg.


and they'd spell your last name! nor fair for a williams. wasting precious time.

I was up registering for classes when that salt dome/natural gas explosion killed the Blue Bell ice cream cows in Brenham. 92?

Hated pushing those damn buttons...over and over.

Female Voice "Enter an action code, Now."


"E- N - T - C Three - Forty - Nine.

Grade.

Of.

(longest pause in the history of telephony)







B"

That's when I discovered that my advisor was the greatest person on the planet. I'd go to her office with a list of classes I wanted, she'd enter them on the computer system and force me into the full ones. Dear God I loved that lady. That phone system sucked, but the free for all that was the Pavillion was even worse.

swc93,

I was a senior at Brenham HS that year. It woke me up in the morning, I remember my windows shaking. Then after lunch me and some buddies skipped school and took our old VHS video camera out to the site and filmed the site with the RedCross, News helicopters, reporters etc. all over the area.

Like the corners of my mind.

That sucked. I remember calling for hours and getting a busy signal. Until I figured out that if you called from one of the free campus phones in the MSC that you could get right through. You know, the ones with the signs that said they are not to be used for registration.

Smartest thing I ever did was buy a phone that had the automatic redial function.

DID YOU FORGET TO PRESS THE POUND KEY?


GOODBYE.

I had a friend who was a sloot who "knew" a bunch of fooseball players. She gave me a special number they used to register. It took me five minutes to register and I even got Venture Dynamics as a freshman. Venture Dynamics was awesome BTW!

you guys are lucky. ENG and Wombat had to go to the Registration office, look through all the stone tablets for what was left, and get their names etched on the rolls.

Man it must've sucked to be a student before '00. Or did the online registration start later?

The secret was to call a few minutes before they opened and keep pressing buttons to stay in the IVR menu and connected until it officially opened, then you were in,

My god that thing sucked. I started in 2000 and had to do that for Spring registration and for Fall '01 classes. Thank God they got things updated between my freshman and soph. years.

also http://texags.com/main/forum.reply.asp?topic_id=1826508&forum_id=12

I never had to stand in line at the Pavilion to register. Except maybe the 1st semester of my freshman year. I acn't remember that far back.

quote:

---

"The secret was to call a few minutes before they opened and keep pressing buttons to stay in the IVR menu and connected until it officially opened, then you were in,"

---

That's what I did and it worked every time.

I'd start calling about 5 minutes before phone lines opened and would enter one number of my social every 30-45 seconds. By the time I got to my last digit and pressed #, I was in.

I dominated registration on Bonfire.

I would always get all the way through the process, only to be told at the end that I'm blocked because of a parking ticket.

Sounds like maybe, at some point, you would have learned to pay your parking tickets first.

quote:

---

The secret was to call a few minutes before they opened and keep pressing buttons to stay in the IVR menu and connected until it officially opened, then you were in

---

yeah I finally figured this out, too.

my advisor was mostly worthless. she wouldn't help me do sh**. and you people with the "special numbers" for athletes can jump off a bridge.

worst thing was having a busy signal on the phone while you saw spots in a coveted class tick away on bonfire.

Or not parked illegally.

oops. i missed the thread about this a few days ago. sorry for the retread

CW...:P

The second time it happened it was because of a ticket my MOM got. I didn't know I would get blocked because she got a ticket.

quote:

---

ENG and Wombat had to go to the Registration office, look through all the stone tablets for what was left, and get their names etched on the rolls.

---

I hated those damn tablets.

Man oh man great memories here. 6:00AM and your arse was punching the numbers. Sometimes you'd get in fast other times it would take a while. No doubt the modern Ag has it easy.

you kids had it easy with phone registration! I registered for college classes using pencil and hash marks on a master list for the class/division!!!

Smelly old cotton tarps on the gym floor, HOT or COLD that place was the extreme of nature! Tables set up with Marks-A-Lot signs..Science, English, Math etc

You stood in line forever and witnessed several meltdowns in the process(students as well as employees)! You wanted Bio 212 and its lab and they told you you were in after hash marks to both sections. They physically initialed the paper you handed them, you moved to the next needed area.

The first day of registration opened with graduate students and graduating seniors and worked down by classification. By Wednesday afternoon most everyone was registered and most employees looked beat to heck! It was an experience!

A friend started at a lib arts college and all fr/soph took the same classes without exception so you showed up to register and depending on your name you were in class 1,2,or 3...it took 30 minutes MAX! Then she walked to another hall and got all her books and all the complimentary coupons......whole ordeal took her 90 minutes.

the secret was actually using one of the 4 phone numbers given to student athletes to register.

no waiting at all. Worked all the way through to my senior year.

-Manfre

How old are you mom?

OLD OLD!