sparkfun's free day - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: charliex
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2009, 06:27:21 pm
content: all hell will break loose at sparkfun on this day i reckon.http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/news.php?id=305

author: desolatordan
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2009, 05:09:09 am
content: Well that's sure going to be a mess.I can think of a few scenarios...The $100k lasts for an hour or so and makes many people happy.Server crashes before it even starts and nobody gets anything.Server gets overloaded and thousands get promised free items by mistake.

author: septer012
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2009, 08:14:10 am
content: Seriously its gonna be the first 1000 people on the interwebs are going to get this deal....SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I dont need the competition!

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 29, 2009, 09:30:16 pm
content: where are they ? will they ship world wide, chances are I'll not get in but hey good for anyone that does

author: charliex
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 30, 2009, 07:39:44 pm
content: They're in colorado, USA. They do ship internationally, as noted on the free day you do pay for that.http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/static.php?name=customer_service#ShippingPolicy

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 26, 2009, 09:06:51 am
content: what does MST stand for ?

author: armandas
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2009, 10:14:36 am
content: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=mst

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 26, 2009, 10:19:12 am
content: right so its 7 hours behind GMT, perfect

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 07, 2010, 08:33:37 pm
content: I wish I can get those 3 hours of my life back.

author: desolatordan
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2010, 09:52:41 pm
content: Tried it for about the last half hour of the free day. I got to the final "Submit Order w/ Free Day Discount" button. But it always timed out...

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 08, 2010, 07:46:49 am
content: I completely forgot, chances are eith the amount of people on the system it probably crashed the site for everyone and only 1000$ worth was given away

author: septer012
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2010, 09:40:13 am
content: Biggest bust ever. I loaded up my cart the nightbefore and left it on the check out page. woke up at 7am for an 8am buy. And managed to load the shipping page twice in 2 hours of trying and then it ended. Hours wasted this morning 3.

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 08, 2010, 04:06:47 pm
content: Pretty much what I expected. Like trying to fill a tea cup with a fire hose.As a customer who has bought a lot of stuff from them over the last 3 years I would have preferred a deep discount day, instead of what they did.

author: septer012
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2010, 07:41:11 pm
content: Me too, I have been a long time supporter, I even wear a sparkfun hoodie.

author: adam1213
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2010, 11:33:19 pm
content: I stayed up to 3 AM to try get some free stuff and then spent 2 hours trying to get through 5 pages and didn't managed to get through. I am really unhappy that the chance of getting free stuff ended up to be 0.61% (1,035 orders / approximately 169,132 unique visits to the site) It was more like a loto than a way to give back to users.

author: johnmx
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2011, 06:22:49 pm
content: AHHHHHRRRRGGGGGGI was only able to answer one question in the last minute. I submitted the 2º question but it was out of time. The sparkfun server was completely frozen during the past couple of hours.$10 is not much but it’s better than nothing…Perhaps you guys have had more luck than me.

author: tyblu
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2011, 06:32:46 pm
content: LMAOYou guys are hilarious. So much stress; such small issues...

author: ColinA
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2011, 08:16:58 pm
content: Not impressed!!!!First off whats with the "out of stock" all the time...For fuck's sake stock your shelves or better yet spend some of that 10 million you made last year and hire a better warehouse manager. And the prices, what the fuck....35 cent for a standard led. Are you kidding, what the fuck is that. And 95 cent for a 555, who's making this shit up. The 3rd world quality of their stuff, just not going there../roles eyes"Free Day is OVER!" No shit Sherlock it was over before it began. How about next time you call it "Fanboy Day"On the other hand I am enjoying the fanboy comments on their front page.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2011, 12:20:44 am
content: Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately depending on who you are, the sparkfun freedays favour people with an understanding of how websites/http works.Most of the people trying to use the site keep pressing the refresh button not knowing that it's the exact thing you shouldn't be doing if you want free stuff. The refresh button doesn't get you anywhere because refresh loads the page you're on, not the page you are trying to get to.With the website being hammered that much you're never going to get through all the pages you need to without lots of timeouts at every step.ie, If you happen to get a page to load 1 out of 30 attempts lets say, and then click a button on that page you have another 1 in 30 chance of loading that page without a timeout and so on. So you need to keep retrying the page you're trying to get too instead of clicking refresh to reload the page you've already been on.There are a few ways to do this, you can copy the URL of the button your trying to click on and keep pasting that into the browser until it loads. Then find the url of the next button etc.. However this method doesn't always work depending how the website is setup.Another way, which I used on freeday last year, is to take the browser into offline mode when you get the page to load and copy/paste the page url into a new tab then click enter. Because the browser is offline it will use its cache and load a complete 2nd copy of the page instantly. You can repeat this to get lots of copies of the webpage, (say 10). Then go back online and try the buttons, you have 9 attempts before you need to go offline again and make more copies using the 10th .Once you do get the button to work and the page loads go offline again and make some more copies of this new page and the process continues.If you're now swearing at me for not saying this *before* freeday... I did say it before, I said it in the freeday thread that was created when freeday 2011 was announced a few months back.I didn't try to get anything in this years freeday. I got some good stuff last year and I didn't want to be greedy.

author: Hypernova
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 14, 2011, 03:25:11 am
content: I didn't set my alarm properly and woke up at 6:30AM when I was meaning to go at 4:40AM... By which time the home page won't even load.

author: vtl
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2011, 03:32:55 am
content: Waste of time, quiz page finally loaded but upon submitting the answer the page craps out. To resubmit the question you had to reload the page AND resubmit the question. Basically you had to win the lottery twice in a row.

author: TopherTheME
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2011, 03:11:57 pm
content: I got $40 for being a long term customer.Worked out great for me.

author: 8086
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2011, 08:00:28 pm
content: I could have got $20 but I tried to do the quiz. Then it kept taking me to the login page, and when it finally got to the quiz, I answered one question, but then it said free day was over, so I got nothing. Oh well

author: glossywhite
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2011, 09:34:02 pm
content: Quote from: tyblu on January 13, 2011, 06:32:46 pmIndeed. It always astounds me what sheer greed turns people into. So you didn't get a FREE present? Get OVER it!

author: firehopper
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2011, 03:45:06 am
content: I was only going to get $10, but chose the quiz, went in and finnaly got 3 questions. just when I submitted the answer to the 4th question it endedso I ended up with 30$ so I cant complain. now to figure out what I want to spend it on.

author: Gary Servin
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 15, 2011, 04:00:43 am
content: Quote from: firehopper on January 15, 2011, 03:45:06 amThe exact same thing happened to me! The only difference was that I wouldn't receive the $10 so my only option was the quiz and I made $30!