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Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

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Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#71

Post by exogeny »

Believe it or not, this is very similar to how we handled the guest list for our fraternity parties in the early/mid 2000s at CMU.

Everyone who wanted to explicitly invite certain guests (we actually had to keep a fairly strict door for a variety of reasons, not least of which was that a good frat party at CMU could have 300-400 people there concurrently) would have to create a text file in their public folder on Andrew, chmod that file to be read, and place with line separators up to 10 Andrew userIDs to be read and compiled by a script.

It worked fantastically, aided no doubt by the fact that our house was ~50% ECE, CS, or IS majors.

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#72

Post by mhh__ »

gnicholas wrote: post #67
mhh__ wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be a difference in jurisdiction, but I've never noticeably been caught out by this in the UK. Honestly, I think I'm seeing a lot of rose-tinted spectacles here because I can order a burger to my door and track it all the way in about 15s flat if I want to with the Uber eats app. I really don't see what the problem is.

How much more does it cost you than if you picked it up yourself? I'd also be curious to know how a burger in particular holds up through the delivery process. I understand the time/money tradeoff and would be happy to spend a few dollars to save myself a 20-30 minute roundtrip drive, but it seems like the cost of this convenience is much larger than I prefer, even though we only eat out occasionally.

The one I usually get is one of those delivery only joints I think but the delivery fee is usually a flat few quid tops (£3 at most, almost zero for the less popular ones).

The delivery has always been absolutely perfect to the point of actually needing the app to see where the driver is because it's usually early.

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#73

Post by dylan604 »

kaishiro wrote: post #60
nimbius wrote: post #45

compare this nearly 30 year old script with the absolute red hot hell of trying to order anything at all through toast,caviar,grub hub,uber eats or postmates and you'll want to check out the latest RCS and build it on X86 before the end of the day. im serious. compared to the relatively clean, coherent and transparent burrito script, the dumpster fire that constitutes modern online ordering is an unforgiveable traves…

I dunno - I always thought we had it pretty good now. Previously delivery options were limited to the handful of takeout menus you had stuck in a binder - not knowing if they were up to date, if they were running specials, etc. Now I can get a burrito made to order to my door in 20 minutes and I don't even have to hand over my credit card details to a minimum wage server. I'll take this Byzantine system any day.

v1.0 of anything is never perfect. UberEats, DoorDash, etc are not v1.0 of deliveries. Online ordering in the early 00s were atrocious. Modern day services should at least be v2.0, but it seems like we are only at v1.5 (v1.0 reskinned and more options). These apps also seem to be run in the style of the mafia in that they take as much from all of their "stores" until they bleed them dry.

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#74

Post by ac29 »

gerdesj wrote: post #26
Nextgrid wrote: 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.

Have you read the documentation for this beast? It is complete but I would not describe it as easy to use. To be fair, we could probably slap an API and a GUI on top of this nonsense: $ burrito -time +:30 b+g+cc+jf+jf+sf+sc-sc+i"Black Beans"+n:2/Ross \ b+v:cc+g+cm+sc+i"no rice"/Kathie ( sigh no double dash long options and a horrific base food specification thingie - yes it is complete and well formed but it is still…

There was a GUI... named, of course, xburrito: http://plinth.org/techtalk/?p=81

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#76

Post by nullc »

smarks wrote: post #54
randomstring wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During my tenure at Sun the burrito tool faxed your order to Burrito Real (good, but not the institutions that La Costena and La Bamba were). Maybe this was in the wake of La Costena turning off their fax machine. It was a dark day for Bay Area Burritos when they tore down the building that housed La Costena and La Bamba. There was some Burrito magic on that corner of Old Middlefield and Rengstorff.

La Costeña is now further down Middlefield in the shopping center at Whisman. They’re no longer a grocery store, more like a regular taqueria. They still make decent burritos and similar food.

At great prices too-- it's certainly one of the things I miss about living in mountain view.

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#77

Post by hamburglar »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #40
randomstring wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During my tenure at Sun the burrito tool faxed your order to Burrito Real (good, but not the institutions that La Costena and La Bamba were). Maybe this was in the wake of La Costena turning off their fax machine. It was a dark day for Bay Area Burritos when they tore down the building that housed La Costena and La Bamba. There was some Burrito magic on that corner of Old Middlefield and Rengstorff.

As I recall, (it has been awhile!) it was "El Burrito Real" as a play on El Camino Real but yes, it was a loss. Fortunately we've still got Super Taqueria which makes a decent burrito, but I don't think they have any franchises up where you are :-).

I do think you're right that it was a play on that phrase, but there was no "El" in the name. From their website: "La Costena & Burrito Real" [1]

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#78

Post by ChuckMcM »

hamburglar wrote: post #77
ChuckMcM wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I recall, (it has been awhile!) it was "El Burrito Real" as a play on El Camino Real but yes, it was a loss. Fortunately we've still got Super Taqueria which makes a decent burrito, but I don't think they have any franchises up where you are :-).

I do think you're right that it was a play on that phrase, but there was no "El" in the name. From their website: "La Costena & Burrito Real" [1]

I was thinking of this place: https://www.yelp.com/biz/el-burrito-real-mountain-view

It was further down Rengstorff Ave.

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#79

Post by gnicholas »

mhh__ wrote: post #72
gnicholas wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much more does it cost you than if you picked it up yourself? I'd also be curious to know how a burger in particular holds up through the delivery process. I understand the time/money tradeoff and would be happy to spend a few dollars to save myself a 20-30 minute roundtrip drive, but it seems like the cost of this convenience is much larger than I prefer, even though we only eat out occasionally.

The one I usually get is one of those delivery only joints I think but the delivery fee is usually a flat few quid tops (£3 at most, almost zero for the less popular ones). The delivery has always been absolutely perfect to the point of actually needing the app to see where the driver is because it's usually early.

That's great — I hope this sort of pricing becomes more common! I just checked, and getting UberEats to deliver a $14.99 Impossible Burger will cost me $10 in fees (not including tip or taxes). The restaurant is 3 miles away.

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#80

Post by technofiend »

perl4ever wrote: post #69
nimbius wrote: post #45

compare this nearly 30 year old script with the absolute red hot hell of trying to order anything at all through toast,caviar,grub hub,uber eats or postmates and you'll want to check out the latest RCS and build it on X86 before the end of the day. im serious. compared to the relatively clean, coherent and transparent burrito script, the dumpster fire that constitutes modern online ordering is an unforgiveable traves…

At least one of the better restaurants I know of in my area seems to have its own online ordering set up and functional, I'm assuming they have needed to cut out the cost of grubhub etc just to survive. Nice to see it working for them. Another one seems to be using something called ChowNow, which appears to have monthly fees instead of commissions, which I imagine might also make a big difference financially to its c…

I was just thinking the cost of a fax machine would pay for itself and the phone line if we could go back to ordering that way vs middleman services.
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