Summer has arrived with a vengeance, and as every year, the municipal pool pass sold out in just 72 hours. Residents who missed out are now demanding an urgent restock, just as the thermometer exceeds 40 degrees. Demand far outstripped supply, leaving many with towels over their shoulders and nowhere to cool off.
Online sales system and servers under strain 🖥️
The city council's digital platform, designed to manage the passes, crashed during the first hours of sales. The servers, with a limited capacity for 500 concurrent users, received peaks of 2,000 simultaneous requests. Logs show constant 503 errors and timeouts. A technical solution would involve horizontal scaling with load balancers and request queues, but the municipal budget does not include these improvements. The legacy code, written in unoptimized PHP, doesn't help either.
The city council suggests using the garden hose as an alternative 🚿
In response to complaints, the sports councilor has recommended cooling off with a garden sprinkler or taking a cold shower at home. The proposal has been met with laughter and some choice words on social media. Meanwhile, the lucky ones with passes enjoy the pool, and the rest discover that a bucket of cold water on the balcony isn't such a bad option. Maybe next year it will be time to get up earlier or have a friend with a pool.