Wow. Their session timeout value is somewhere between five to ten minutes, closer to five. I’m not sure if this is reasonable, especially given that their website isn’t that user-friendly to begin with and you may spend some time poring through the flight lists to get one that you want.

Anyway, I figure the credit card hasn’t been charged yet since I timed out while entering the CC details, so I go to try again. Search for the flight…wait, the one with the cheap rate was no longer available!

I figure that while I was selecting dates the first time through their Online Booking application, the backend marked the last seat on that flight as “Reserved” under my uncle’s name, but since I timed out before I could pay that seat may now be lost forever.

I figure they probably have some sort of cleanup if the booking hasn’t been confirmed (i.e. paid for), so I leave the website for a bit then come back later. I search again, and the cheap flight is there! I get my dad’s credit card and proceed to go through the steps again. I get to the credit card form and input the details and click submit. Yay, it’s verifying! Checking the status bar though, it seems to be verifying against a MasterCard URL…but the card I used was a Visa!I was in such a hurry I forgot to tick MasterCard.

Unbelievably, the credit card verification was being done from my machine (since I could see the mastercard URL in the browser status bar), instead of on the server where it could be done more reliably.

Okay, this time it was my fault. No sweat, I’ll wait for the website to fail the verification then re-input the credit card details. So I wait. Then wait some more. The website is taking forever and not doing anything. Firefox prompts that the website tried to show a popup. I right-click and enable pop-ups for the website, nothing though. I wait some more.

Damnit, I finally reload the page to find that “my session has expired.” Sure enough, I tried to search for the cheap flight and it was no longer available AGAIN.

I give up. I’m not going to try again. Seriously this time. I’ll give the credit card back to my dad and just tell him to book manually (and to double check that the card has not been charged.)

I always have a bad time with Airline websites - I hate the Cebu Pacific one as well. These companies need to get better web developers.

1. It uses Adobe Flex, a technology which I’ve been using for the past year or so. Any Flex developer knows it’s Flex just by looking at the widgets. (Click to enlarge the screenshot!)

2. The service allowed me to find an mp3 which I’ve never found before and have used as a benchmark for how good an mp3 search service is. The song is the Tagalog opening for Shaider! (Now I need to find a new benchmark)

My brother found out about it last night and lo and behold! The websites we’ve previously had trouble accessing, such as Yahoo Mail, Multiply, Flickr, etc. have become accessible and Youtube videos now stream well, etc.

The settings are:
HTTP proxy server: proxy.skyinet.net
Port: 3128

You can set these in the options dialog of Firefox, under Advanced -> Network -> Settings.

The spoilerless review:
Since Eagle Eye trailers seem to be everywhere, you probably have some idea of at least the start of the story. Jerry Shaw is an ordinary loser working at Copy Cabana when he comes into seven hundred fifty thousand dollars and a whole lot of terrorist hardware in his apartment, facilitated by a mysterious woman who contacts him via his cellphone. The FBI bust his apartment and suddenly he’s a fugitive on the run for reasons unknown to him.

For me, the gauge of how good an action movie is how difficult it is for me to see how it ends. For Eagle Eye, it started out a bit slow, then became action-packed without explanation then got to the middle where the plot was developed, and by that point I thought I had a pretty good handle of where it was going. Except I was wrong. And towards the end of the movie there were a few moments of “Oh, so that’s what it was for!” which was a pretty good indication. There was a bit of a cop out at the ending, but I guess that they want this to be a “feel-good” action movie so whatever.

If you’re not yet tired of Shia Lebouf and his half-dorky antics, the movie’s not a bad way to waste a couple of hours.