Global Handicrafts: A 16-Year Rails Ghost Story
A couple of hours ago, I got a Google security alert:
I created that Gmail address 16 years ago for my very first Ruby on Rails internship/job at Crossroads Foundation in Hong Kong.
I had written a small integration that synced inventory from MYOB to a Spree store. I can't remember why this needed a dedicated Gmail account, but I'm pretty sure it was for sending error notifications.
I initially assumed this meant that the integration had been shut down 2 years ago after running for 14 years straight. That's probably not what happened. Google announced in May 2023 that it would start deleting personal Google accounts that have been inactive for 2 years.
Ruth Kricheli
In reality, the Global Handicrafts store had been migrated to Shopify in 2017. (So it's still technically running on Ruby on Rails!) Shopify’s product JSON shows:
published_at: "2017-01-20T16:29:00+08:00"
So maybe Google just finally got around to deleting this old account, even though it hadn't been used since 2017.
The store is still live: https://www.globalhandicrafts.org
It’s a fair trade marketplace: goods from small producers around the world, with ethical supply chains, decent wages, and community investment.
Here are some of the many beautiful products that are for sale:
Meet Nzou, the little knitted Elephant from Zimbabwe. He and his other 'shamwaris' (which means friend in the Zimbabwean shona language) are handmade especially for you, each one individually knitted by a woman in Zimbabwe whose name and photo appear on the attached tag.
In Mongolia’s capital city of Ulaanbaatar, those struck by poverty seek shelter in the city’s heating and water systems below the streets. They emerge occasionally to pick through garbage heaps above for food, and some will scavenge for plastic or glass to sell to scrape a meal together. Mary and Martha Mongolia formed to offer relief to the poor by providing them with a place to live and a chance to learn marketable trade skills.
Sometimes you build a little thing, and it just keeps going for a lot longer than anyone expected. Long after you’ve moved on. A lot of software is invisible, and it just sits there doing its job until you get a random email and open a little time capsule.
Maybe it's an overdue account deletion. Or maybe my program was still running on a little server somewhere, attempting to sync products to a service that no longer existed for 6 long years, until it was finally switched off 2 years ago.
