The most awaited movie of the year was releasing tomorrow and somehow I managed to get tickets. My excitement fizzled after swiping my credit card in the Ticket Vending machine in the theatrer. The ticket vending machine refused to recognize my credit card and displayed the message “please insert the same credit card used to reserve tickets” along with a pop up text box which advised me to contact Microsoft for help fixing the ticket vending machine!

The only alternative I had was to go back to the counter and wait in the queue to pickup my tickets, which I did and ended up missing the first ten minutes of the movie. I was curious to know how an ordinary looking ticket vending machine managed to affect my life.

At first glance, ticket vending machines like this are simple devices - all we see is a screen, a slot to insert the card and a slot  to collect the tickets. What we don’t realize is that simple device is actually a full blown computer with a touch screen interface, card reader,  step-by-step keypad programming, encrypted credit card processor, an alarm for security, possibly a built-in UPS (uninterruptible power supply) and other hardware and software working 24X7 to let us bypass the ticket window line-up. Even more astounding is that behind all of this lurks the ever present Microsoft Windows operating system!

Alas, all of this technology failed and I ended up in an old world line-up anyway. There are many reasons why a credit card swipe can fail, most of which are hardware related – for example the card reader is physically damaged or network connectivity problems made it impossible to validate the card.

However none of these reasons applied in this case.  The error message indicates that a custom-built ticket vending application or Microsoft Windows or a combination failed… and as a result Microsoft Windows crashed my movie going experience.

Moral of the story?  Computers are fantastic time savers (except when they aren’t…)