Some commenters to the weblog have expressed dismay that its proprietor will sometimes change the timestamps of posts, often to 12:01am of the day following whenever it was posted. Awhile back I added a disclaimer about this to my sidebar.
Anyway, accuracy-in-timestamps agitators might be interested in the following comeuppance: Submissions for the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association were due today. Normally, the deadline has been midnight, or even "midnight somewhere." This year, the website provided a 3:00pm EST deadline accompanied by stern verbiage about no exceptions et cetera. Despite being someone who likes to work right up against a deadline--my profession is not one that regularly offers opportunities for the thrill of disaster narrowly averted, and I refuse to take up bungee jumping--I still wish I had discovered this change sometime before yesterday afternoon. In any case, I was part of two different submissions that went in after 2:30pm. For the paper I submitted myself, at 2:48pm, I received immediately a confirmation e-mail from ASA. Its timestamp was inexplicably 3:10pm.
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7 comments:
This was also oh-so-fun from an organizer's perspective given the emails that started landing in my Inbox just before 3pm EST with frantic colleagues whose submissions weren't getting through. ASA needs to go lighter on the strict lingo of no-excuses if they can't supply a system that works.
I didn't find this out until noon (a.k.a., three o'clock east coast time), as I foolishly was using the conference booklet thingy I got in the mail to plan my submitting, which I had planned to do around four-thirty or so today after making a few last minute changes to the paper.
Frick.
Brady:
I just looked, and the site is doing a good impersonation of still being open, so I hope you've submitted anyway. If they did really close the site, I would send an e-mail to ASA cc'd to the organizer complaining about how the deadline was not in the book.
Yeah, I'm gonna pop it over to 'em in a sec. This is what I get for not checking the ASA website for updates as assiduously (did I spell that right?) as I do, say, this one.
Also, I'm studying for prelims. Which start in a week and half. So, yeah, a little scattered.
I second eszter's sentiments...
The site was down as early as 11:00 a.m. (est) when I first tried to submit. When I called the ASA's membership line, they were unaware of any problems. It did go back up quickly after my call though.
I don't think the ASA's server is designed to handle a real heavy load; which makes the mandatory online submission all the more dicey.
If the confounded website is still accepting submissions, maybe I should put some more work into the terrible paper I submitted at 1:59 CST.
I got my paper in at 2:25 so I was all excited that I made the deadline without trying (I hadn't noticed the time deadline until I was starting the submission process yesterday at 2:14). Then I remembered that Mexico is central time.
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