I just need to let of some steam….
AAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH
Thanks. Sorry about that. For reasons that I can’t really go into, but mainly down to the fact that I volunteered to write a database, I seem to have been lumbered with overall responsibility for our company’s guest tickets to the V Festival in Chelmsford this year. Yes – it’s coming up this weekend, and despite a modest lineup, it’s proving more popular than ever.
But can I just say that my heart goes out to anyone who ever gets put in charge of ticketing a major event. It’s quite impossible to keep your sanity and do it. Juggling tickets is a full time job, and suddenly I begin to realise why Ticketmaster and their ilk charge you 2.50 to buy tickets through them. I’d hate to organise tickets on a professional basis.
The one good thing to come of it is that we have a barcode reader. Normally at these sorts of things it’s a paper list and if “your name’s not on the list, you’re not coming in”. But this year I got the company to invest in a barcode reader. I downloaded a barcode font, and printed a code number on every ticket. Then, when the scanner reads the number (which it does as a USB keyboard incidentally) it enters it into an Access database we’ve built and finds the invitee. How cool is that?
Slight problems include the fact that it doesn’t like direct sunlight to work, and that we haven’t finished the database. But I don’t need to worry about that until the weekend.
But there are also wild rumours floating around that there’s going to be a severe weather warning in the south east on Sunday. Frankly, I don’t believe any weather forecasts this far away from Saturday and Sunday, but it’s true that Hurrican Charley ripped apart Florida, and of course Cornwall and, tonight, Scotland have seen serious rain affected issues.
But I’ll worry about that at the weekend…