autopsy

[Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>]

Hi guys,

Thanks a lot for all your help last night, and for your perseverance with
my hokey little auction program.  I also apologize for bringing in so many
plants.  Kathy and I haven't really done this big of a cleanout in the
3 years we've been married, just because we've been constantly moving to
more and more tanks until last year.  I promise it won't happen again.
And if it does, I'm going to pack things in sublots of five so they'll go
quicker.

I have no idea if you think we should use the computers again for the
general auction. I actually think it went pretty well, barring some
initial snags and when the cable came loose from the wireless base
station.  On the upside, checkout was relatively painless; We got some
half dozen people checked out early without disturbing the recording
process.  On the "needs to improve" side, read the tome below; feel free
to add your own. :)

  - Erik

-------------

Autopsy of 2/2000 Plant auction:

  [General]
* Remove unnecessary help text in grey boxes - took up space, not helpful
* Move major mode buttons "REGISTER", "BID", "CHECKOUT", "List Items"
  to top rather than bottom. Reformat to take up less space.
* Try and scrape up a 486 laptop with a network card for the server, 
  and possibly a more compact printer.  Not having a monitor on the
  server made a very scary
  few minutes when we had to stall the auction to figure out why everything
  stopped responding (it was a cable that wasn't quite plugged in and worked
  its way out on the computer table).
* Get real crossover cable instead of kludgy telephone junction (that was
  the part that gave us the trouble).
* Looks like two touchscreens and two laptops is a good number.  If I could
  get batteries on the other laptops, we could actually use them in the front
  during registration next time.
* Dispense with login screen -- just have the database name.  This held
  us up for a bit during bidding.
* Run DNS on the server with fake domain so we can just type in "auction"
  as the URL on the laptops.

  [Registration]
* Educate all volunteers in advance; problems entering seller items.
* BUG: Do not let seller register with undescribed item; the clickable
  link is keyed off the description field.
* BUG: Use ints for seller numbers.  SM 01 was considered separate from SM 1.
* Need ability to delete seller item.
* Need ability to delete bidder.
* BUG: When editing a bidder, the check for duplicate bidder number should
  be turned off... the bidder's own record was coming up.  Oops.
* Make new item for seller the left side of the table, not the right. Or 
  perhaps at the top of the page with the items below.  Was having trouble
  with sellers with large numbers of items taking a while to display. 
* Make sure bidder is registered before giving them a number (this
  part actually worked very well; I didn't see any unregisted bidder #'s
  come up).
* Need to have all sellers registered before they put their bags on the table.
  I dropped the ball twice on this.

  [Bidding]
* Educate all volunteers before auction begins.  Run through a fake bid or two.
  Laurie had trouble with the system because of its differences with the
  traditional odd-even-bidder-record-at-the-end-of-the-bid system.  I had
  trouble figuring out that this was the trouble! :)
* Start bidder numbers at 100 so that they don't get confused with the auction
  price.  I entered one item as $77 to number 30.
* Having the two people on the computers worked much better than having one.
  Sam kept up fine when I had to leave to check people out, but it was
  more of a relaxed pace with two to take alternate lots.
* Kathy thought it worked well with one person entering all bids in a notebook
  next to the two computer geeks, not just for the crash protection, but also
  when one of us forgot the numbers.
* Steve noted we need an Undo Bid key in case the wrong bid was entered.
* The bid lookup for seller should have the seller ID as a dropdown
  instead of a text field.  Makes it quicker to select.

[Checkout]
* Educate all volunteers before... yeah yeah, actually this worked out
  pretty well.  Sam, Scott (I think?) and myself were all checking
  people out at the end.  The bottleneck was back in the item room, where it
  should be! :)
* Have total printed at top next to the pay button, so it's easier to find.
* Have the pay/print dump you into the list bidders screen so it's quicker
  to check out the next person.
* Option to deduct split from amount paid, perhaps if all their items
  have been bid on.
* Likewise, have option to print out a page for each seller.
* Investigate why it shows $99.99 for Mike Cowsert when he really paid $145. 
  Bug?
 


-- 
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com