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Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

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Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#12
post #10

There was a pizza hut franchise in Santa Cruz that would also do online orders in the same time period. The HDQ eventually worked with that franchise owner and made "pizza net". They still have the old page up: https://www.pizzahut.com/assets/pizzanet/home.html

This redirected me to my local pizzahut.com.au, and I get an Access Denied via curl :(

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#13
This brings back great memories! At the time I was a brand new CS grad living the dream at Sun in Mountain View and La Costeña was my introduction to real burritos. Their veggie burrito is still the best I've ever had.

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#14
post #10

There was a pizza hut franchise in Santa Cruz that would also do online orders in the same time period. The HDQ eventually worked with that franchise owner and made "pizza net". They still have the old page up: https://www.pizzahut.com/assets/pizzanet/home.html

This redirected me to my local pizzahut.com.au, and I get an Access Denied via curl :(

Works fine for me, but in USA. Cloudflare/conditional access does that... try archive or a proxy!

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#15
post #7

I wish we could have something similar in modern times. Instead, we have a handful of equally-shitty delivery platforms with terrible and bloated UIs and no API.

I was just thinking of this. I have a couple spots near my office (when that is a thing) that have this exact problem. Big lunch rush with long lines.

Everyone has a phone number. It's amazing what a regression the modern web is over 150 year old tech like Fax.

It's a totally federated still widespread platform. All you need is a directory and some idea of an order form. You can probably pick up a form the first time you visit, take a menu too.

The whole thing just sounds so lovely.

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#16

Can't help but wonder if receiving a professionally typeset burrito order by fax would have raised any eyebrows in 1992.

I wonder how the experience on the restaurant side compares to the delivery apps. Fax machines and printers in general are essentially designed for this workflow.

Do order app orders show up on a printer? Or is it some awful proprietary app and there's a dedicated iPad chained to the wall?

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#17
Related: Sun had a demo for NeWS (fancy desktop display system) called PizzaTool. Don Hopkins did a writeup: https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems...

(One question: that writeup says Solaris 2, but I think I might've used PizzaTool under OpenWindows 2.0 on SunOS 4.1.1 on sun4c.)

Inspired by PizzaTool at the time, but my employer having a gazillion dollars of workstations and servers, yet none with a fax card (and my group having daily ad hoc lunch outings), I wrote LunchTool for the Suns. It was a GUI with a database of local lunch places, which someone could choose to decide on a lunch location and time and such, then print a fancy announcement sign to hang where everyone would see it. (Not everyone checked email, and I liked typesetting and programming PostScript anyway.) I was most proud of the bitmap burger icon.

When Google first solicited third-party apps for Android (it might've been a contest?), I almost stole the idea of PizzaTool, since it still seemed like a fun idea, as a gimmick or experience. Not that one really needed to see composited pineapple bits, to know whether they wanted it on their real-world pizza, but I thought the visual made adding toppings fun, and not a bad early demo for Android.

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#19

Oh man, this is great. He even had a .costenarc file with the options, haha. If I was him, I wouldn't have added the "lengua" option. I have not yet met a person that likes to eat lengua.

I do, if cooked long enough. There used to be a place in Santa Barbara called Super Cucas that I think perfected Mexican food
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