By Zachary Roman
In early January, Ryerson students begrudgingly attempted to log in to the school’s dated my.ryerson web interface to access their new schedules. Unsurprisingly, they were greeted with the same old shitty system.
Students turned off their pop-up blockers so they could once again access RAMSS—which clearly must be some sort of spyware for requiring they do that. Students hoped that this semester would finally be the one they remember to turn pop-up blockers back on when they go to illegally stream Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa.
The bottom line is that no one seems to like my.ryerson, RAMSS or D2L. Maybe students are just sick and tired of it all after months and months of online school. Or, maybe, there’s another reason; a recent discovery which could change everything.
After I moved to the Swiss Alps for 13 years to train as a mountain climber and watch thief, I returned to Ryerson’s campus this month and successfully clambered into president Mohamed Lachemi’s office. I was on the hunt for anything that could fetch a pretty penny on eBay or be a hot scoop for a story at The Eyeopener.
What I found will shock you like a romantic bubble bath with an electric eel: Ryerson’s entire web presence was programmed by Lachemi himself on an old Tamagotchi. For the youthful folks among us, a Tamagotchi is a little pocket pet video game thingy that everyone had in the olden days. In a dusty old filing cabinet with the label “Budget cut your way to success in five easy steps,” I found records of Lachemi’s plan to program RAMSS on the same device that his virtual pet lives on.
Since Tamagotchis only have three buttons, Lachemi found the device easier to manage than those newfangled key-typer-board-pads that all the kids are i-Mailing each other on. Using forbidden Lego techniques (which I will not disclose here out of respect for those who have died practicing this sacred dark art), Lachemi was able to connect his Tamagotchi to his 1992 IBM Thinkpad 700C. He then opened up three books: Basic Coding for Dummies, Web Design for Morons and Advanced Coding for Idiots Who are too Impatient to Complete Basic Coding For Dummies (the last of which is just an exact reprint of Basic Coding for Dummies, minus the cover and back cover).
“There has never once been any updates or maintenance to [my.ryerson], except for that one time you actually needed to use it”
After five painstaking years of beeping and booping on his Tamagotchi, Lachemi decided that his new my.ryerson portal and all of its contents were ready to face the world.
“I was extremely pleased with how the launch of our online services went,” said Lachemi. “That’s why to this day, there has never once been any updates or maintenance to them, except for that one time you actually needed to use it.”
He went on to say that since he programmed RAMSS himself to save Ryerson money, it wouldn’t make sense to hire anyone to fix it.
“Although, there isn’t anything to fix anyway, so could you stop asking me loaded questions?” snapped Lachemi.
However, many current Ryerson students disagree. Students have reported experiencing a multitude of issues with Ryerson’s online services and now we know why.
“RAMSS was programmed on a what!?” said Tom Agatchi, a fourth-year computer science student. “I guess that explains why there was an unauthorized $3,000 charge on my credit card for the Ryerson Alumni Foundation after I paid my tuition.”
Many animal rights activists might be wondering: what happened to Lachemi’s Tamagotchi pet? Lachemi would not provide evidence as to where, but he assured The Eye that the Tamagotchi, named Rammy, was sent away to live on a farm with new owners who love it very much.
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