Thursday 02/05/2026
Fun day. Off an on during the day I worked on the video of the book talk that I managed on Monday.
I walked over to CVS and got the different prescription that my cardio had set. I worked on a couple of other projects as well. I collected a couple of graphs that will go with my book talk in May.
About 2am I conceived the idea that it would be fun to do a talk on the Kessler Syndrome, which I recently read might be more imminent than previously thought. So for that, I went to Claude.ai and had Claude look up the relevant scientific papers, and then to help me find websites that show a good visualization of satellite traffic around the earth. (This is a good one.)
Finished the video and uploaded it, and checked my email and AHAH here was the notice from Stanford Live that the Paul Simon ticket pre-sale window was open! Two days ago I donated $250 to Stanford Live so I could be a “supporter” and get in on the pre-sale. And here it was!
So I clicked the link and entered The Worst 40 Minutes I Ever Spent With a Computer. Here’s the email I sent to Stanford Live 2 hours later. AXS is their unspeakable rubbish ticket vending web page, which is completely paranoid about preventing sales to ‘bots.
I just want to tell you — avoiding expletives with an heroic effort — that the experience of buying Paul Simon tickets was the worst 40 minutes I ever spent on a computer, and I’ve been using them over 50 years.
And it isn’t over yet.
I tried to get AXS to acknowledge me as human using two different computers, and three different browsers on each. Oh, and two different wifi networks. So, about 14 different attempts to follow that link from your email. EVERY TIME it gave me its chipper message about “are you a real fan?” and point me to its useless help page.
Finally I noticed a coy little remark about “change to mobile data”. OK! I go to my phone, turn off wifi, and using Safari over cellular, it let me in right up to the point at which I actually selected two seats.
Then it said I needed to sign in. Sign in to what? Not Stanford Live, no that password won’t work. By the time I had gone through the AXS password reset process — which of course included an email confirmation code and a text message — when I did sign in to AXS it no longer knew about the tickets I had selected. No cart.
So I repeated the ticket selection process and finally actually managed to pay you the $550+. Huzzah! I had made it!
Haha, not so fast, humble consumer! You don’t really have tickets; you have bought the right to download them into our so-special app that you must use instead of, oh I don’t know, Apple Wallet, like every other venue on the planet?
So I go and get the GV app from the app store. OK. And guess what? The GV app wants me to sign in. Oh, ok, reasonable — but when I enter the AXS email and password that I just reset 15 minutes ago, it blocks me with “Are you a real fan?” On my own phone!
Dear Stanford Live — THIS IS MY DAMN PHONE, I HAVE A RECEIPT FOR MY DAMN TICKETS. WHY IN HELL WOULD AN APP ON MY OWN PHONE THINK I WASN’T A HUMAN?!?!
Stanford Live — AXS is a reeking pile of garbage and I hate you.
Dave Cortesi
Codgerville 