Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Frustration Makes Hard Work

I think I have officially given up on Beckett.com. I have been able to work with my collection a grand total of three times over the past day and a half. While that may seem like a lot in under 36 hours, I had tried over thirty times to access everything. Beckett is broken.

I have even experienced lagging with the search feature. I tried to find a 1995 Roberto Hernandez Donruss Top of the Order card to confirm the number, since it is not on the actual card. It wasn't listed on the Roberto Hernandez player page. Strike one. I found the 1995 Donruss Top of the Order set page. Ball one. The page was stuck loading and never actually loaded. Strike two. I found the card eventually. Foul ball. 1 and 2 count. I found the information I was looking for. Deep fly ball. The whole process took thirty minutes. Caught at the warning track.

I have spent most of the day inputting my collection into Access by hand with six criteria. Year, set, card number, player name, numbered, and additional info. So far, I have 448 of my (rounded off) 5,000 cards. Not too bad for an afternoon.

Yes, this project is the reason I was searching for that particular card's number. I couldn't find it on the actual card, so I wanted to check it out against Beckett's list.

If this database idea is successful in making my collection more manageable, it will be a miracle. It's not the most ideal situation, but it's better than Beckett right now.

4 comments:

Jason T. Carter said...

I just logged on to check my collections and mark some things off that I got in the mail today. As it turns out, my collections are queued for migration...and I'm #5000-something on the list. I guess I'll have to wait to update my lists... :(

Steve Gierman said...

Most of the site is working fine right now, but the search feature for searching through your collections is still off. There is still a delay in loading, but it's nowhere near as bad as it was the past two days.

I had a feeling that the majority of the issues had to do with too many people logging on at the same time, but it seems to me that they could have been a little better prepared for something like that. Beckett knows how many different people subscribe to the site and how many people have signed up for the free content. They could have prepared better.

I was one of the first to transfer my collections over, so it only took a little over an hour.

capewood said...

I mainly use Beckett.com for looking up cards or sets in their database. Tonight was the first time I could get past the logon screen for about a week. I had 38 cards in a collection. It seemed to be there tonight without my having to do anything. I use a FileMaker Pro database of my own design to organize my cards. That way I'm not dependent on the Internet. I did a few sample searches (very difficult interface). The results of the searches don't display properly. It may be my browser, I don't know. It looks like I'll be able to do what I did before, but the jury is still out as to if it will be any better than before. The guy at Treasures Never Buried featured a picture of Jack Bauer with his post about his trouble with Beckett.com

Steve Gierman said...

I saw that earlier today. I can get more out of the site right now, but it's still mor difficult to use than the old method. And yes, I have watched the video tutorials.

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