Editor, Daily Nexus,

The UCSB Housing and Residential Services promised students 1,000 spots for those interested in continuing to live in the residence halls in 2005-06. However, as I dutifully awoke before 8 a.m. in order to be one of the first and avoid the subsequent feeding frenzy, I, in my naíveté, did not believe that anything more than slow servers would be a problem. Boy, was I mistaken. Not only were the servers down, but if one were fortunate enough to get to the gray background, the Internet would promptly dash all hopes with a flash of white and a “Page Cannot be Displayed.” Or, should one see a hint of color on that bleak backdrop, the next step of the application would again be dogged by that heart-wrenching “Cannot Find Server” message. The best, or perhaps worst, part of the wait was the blue screen before one would supposedly see the application itself, which boldly proclaimed: “Apply Online. Applying for housing has never been faster or easier!” Wow. That is definitely a blatant lie. Any computer system I tried has been unable to assist in my quest for on-campus residency. Not the UCen, library, nor my own room would connect to this Holy Grail. I would strongly suggest that Housing and Residential Services debug their system before it goes online and enable their servers to handle the huge influx of students attempting to access their site. They need to stress the system before it goes online, not the day of. As always, thank you for your continued devotion to the students of UCSB and making the housing process efficient and painless. Let me emphasize, that was a whole lot of sarcasm.