Free Day at Sparkfun (Jan 7, 2010) $100 worth of stuff at sparkfun all you pay is S&H!

[justinmaurer]

Just saw this on sparkfun. Great deal!
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/news.php?id=305


From website:
You can blame it on Chris Anderson's book Free. After reading his
book, I started kicking around the idea of what we can do that's
'free'. Sure, we have free bits (open-source hardware designs,
available code, etc.), but we don't have free physical widgets. Now
combine that with our love of creating shear havoc (AVC, C&D letter,
Portable Rotary Phone), and you get Free Day.

Nobody gives away a free physical thing. There's always a catch. So up
front: you have to pay shipping. Other than that, it's open season.

* $100 max per household
* You pay shipping
* Limit of $100,000 in giveaways for the day
* Starts 9AM MST January 7th, 2010
* Ends 11PM MST January 7th, 2010 (or when we hit $100k, whichever
comes first)
* Rainchecks for popular items will be allowed

Why are we doing this? It's not that I want to create hell for the
shipping, production, and the IT teams at SparkFun. There's a
multitude of reasons.

First and foremost, we want to give back. We've had a stellar year in
2009, and it's all because of you. So please, have a beer (or a
Stepper Motor Driver) on us.

Second: We wish we could sponsor more groups but we don't have a sound
way of selecting appropriate projects. Because we can't afford to say
yes to everyone, we have to say no to everyone. It pains us every time
we have to do it. So this is a way for us to evenly enable all the
students and great minds of the world to pickup a $100 worth of free
gear. Go for it!

Third: Free Day will possibly create a maelstrom of site traffic, the
likes of which our servers have not seen. At the beginning of
December, 2009, SparkFun will be graduating out of its high-chair and
moving into a server cluster. We are excited to have the breathing
room, and Free Day will help us evaluate just how much breathing room
we're getting. We'll do everything in our power to keep the site up
but please understand that the site may go down.

Fourth: We turn 7 years old! SparkFun is now over 70 employees and is
the ripe old age of 49 (in business and dog years). We'd like to
celebrate our birthday with a party.

More nitty gritty details:

* There is no special code to type in. But you get only one order
on Free Day, so spend it well!
* Only one $100 credit per household. We ask that you respect this
limit and don't try to abuse this gift.
* There is no minimum or maximum order. You can spend more than
$100, the balance of which will be charged to your method of payment.
* Only Credit Card and Paypal orders will be eligible for the $100
credit. We don't want to have people tying up inventory with POs, wire
transfers, checks in the mail, or lost faxes.
* You will see whether or not your order qualifies for a credit in
the checkout process.
* Free Day does not apply to our distributors. Sorry!
* Every order isn't going to ship on Free Day, or for a few days
after. We've got extra tape guns on hand, but please be patient and
give us some time to catch up!
* We are ratcheting up inventory for Free Day, but backorders
(a.k.a. rainchecks) are allowed on most items (some items we simply
can't get anymore). We'll get you your goodies just as soon as we can
get them back in stock.

As we usually do things here at SparkFun, these rules are open for
revision. We may need to tweak them as our astute users point out how
silly we are. If we have to make any changes to the rules, we'll let
you all know here on our homepage. So mark January 7th, 2010 on your
calendars - it's Free Day!

[Joseph Teichman]

They are completely DDOSed.
LOL

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[Matt Kime]

ARG!

NO TIME TO TO STRETCH MY RELOAD FINGER!

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[James George]

i just got a page load!

they're at $175.00 so far!

--
- James

[Matt Joyce]

Duh.  Who isn't slamming the shit out of their site?

On Jan 7, 2010 11:03 AM, "Joseph Teichman" <jte...@gmail.com> wrote:

They are completely DDOSed.
LOL

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 4:27 PM, justinmaurer <justin...@gmail.com> wrote: > Just saw this on sp...

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[Matt Kime]

so did i! working on second page load!

[Matthew Sparks]

no joy here yet

[Matt Kime]

item in cart...

[c f]

I got as far as clicking "checkout" and then it froze up

[Matt Kime]

anyone know how to set the connection timeout in firefox? looks like
its changed over the years.

[Matthew Sparks]

my guess for the sellout time was 9:27...

[Mike Shapiro]

It wont matter they are getting so much traffic that you can set the connection time out for a year and not connect at this point
Mike 
LinearNe...@gmail.com

[Matt Joyce]

Yeah stuck on checkout too.

On Jan 7, 2010 11:28 AM, "Matthew Sparks" <mspar...@mac.com> wrote:

my guess for the sellout time was 9:27...

On Jan 7, 2010, at 8:24 AM, c f wrote:

> I got as far as clicking "checkout" and then it froze up >

> On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 11:22 AM, Matt Kime <matt...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> item in cart... >> >>...

[Joseph Teichman]

Probably gets stuck over there since the checkout process would need
to lock the records that track available quantity. Also, any other
write operations to the database will cause their system to choke at
this point.

[Matthew Sparks]

got a checkout screen loading slowly though

[Alpay Kasal]

i'm laying off the reload button but I do feel like my continuous servo motors are slipping through my fingers. gotta love sparkfun for the event today, but i think most of us knew this would be a big experiment in beating on their servers.

Alpay Kasal
Artist/Engineer
blog: http://blog.LitStudios.com
twitter: @alpaykasal

[Matthew Sparks]

they are up to 12,771.00

[Matthew Sparks]

they are up to 19,000 

got a shopping cart waiting for the paypal button to show up...

[shelby arnold]

be warned, people in the IRC are saying paypal isn't working so good.

"eusor: smgloser: don't try paypal, you'll get fucked like I did, it will timeout after coming back fro paypal"

[Matthew Sparks]

once you go through paypal the transaction is complete, no need to go back- 

the money will already be sent in.

[Rob Graham]

Up to $46k now.

---

From: Matthew Sparks <mspar...@mac.com>
To: nycresistormi...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, January 7, 2010 11:23:01 AM
Subject: Re: [NYCR:Microcontrollers] Free Day at Sparkfun (Jan 7, 2010) $100 worth of stuff at sparkfun all you pay is S&H!

once you go through paypal the transaction is complete, no need to go back- 

the money will already be sent in.

On Jan 7, 2010, at 9:20 AM, shelby arnold wrote:

be warned, people in the IRC are saying paypal isn't working so good.

"eusor: smgloser: don't try paypal, you'll get fucked like I did, it will timeout after coming back fro paypal"

On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 12:14 PM, Matthew Sparks <mspar...@mac.com> wrote:

they are up to 19,000 

got a shopping cart waiting for the paypal button to show up...

On Jan 7, 2010, at 8:59 AM, Matthew Sparks wrote:

they are up to 12,771.00

On Jan 7, 2010, at 8:58 AM, Alpay Kasal wrote:

i'm laying off the reload button but I do feel like my continuous servo motors are slipping through my fingers. gotta love sparkfun for the event today, but i think most of us knew this would be a big experiment in beating on their servers.

Alpay Kasal
Artist/Engineer

blog: http://blog.LitStudios.com/

[Matt Kime]

over@!

[Alpay Kasal]

I only got timeouts since clicking login at 11:01. breathe easy Sparkfun web servers, the worst is behind you...

Alpay Kasal
Artist/Engineer
blog: http://blog.LitStudios.com

twitter: @alpaykasal



Quoting Matt Kime :

over@!

On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Rob Graham wrote:
> Up to $46k now.
>
> ________________________________
> From: Matthew Sparks

[Phillip Lamb]

I will say this for them, it certainly is a good marketing move. Their prices seem quite reasonable, and they have neat stuff!

-pl

[echo]

its over btw.

[c f]

Sparkfun really is a great place. I'm surprised they don't have more competition.

[Sam Epstein]

Just out of curiosity did anyone actually get through? What did you get?

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach  - "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day."

[P Leiby]

Nope. One son in LA did, other son in Durham did not either.
Not really the best use of time!

[Matthew Sparks]

made it all the way to the checkout and then it failed :(

was going for weather sensors for my arduino.

instead went to ebay today and got a arduino sensor shield and digital temp sensor and a hall effect sensor,

I can make my own windspeed guage with that.

later will need to figure out rain guage 

[Rolan Yang]

On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 2:34 PM, Matthew Sparks <mspar...@mac.com> wrote:

made it all the way to the checkout and then it failed :(

was going for weather sensors for my arduino.

instead went to ebay today and got a arduino sensor shield and digital temp sensor and a hall effect sensor,

I can make my own windspeed guage with that.

later will need to figure out rain guage 

Several times a year, Costco stocks Lacrosse W2308 wireless weather stations for $80.
That model has a USB/serial port interface which connects to your computer (or arduino if you're handy).
The communication protocol can be found on the web.

Not bad for an anemometer, wind direction sensor, 2 thermometers, 2 hygrometers, barometer, and rain sensor + base station.

Here are the specs:
http://www.lacrossetechnology.com/2308/index.php

~Rolan