As I’m sure many of you already now, today is January 7th. While that might not have any real significance normally, today this means that our favorite hobby supplier, SparkFun, is giving away up to $100,000 of electronic goodness. We know we have our shopping carts filled to the brim, and we’re sure that most of you do too. With the start of Free Day being roughly 10 minutes away, we recommend that everyone man their shopping carts…. This should be interesting…
http://poweredbynerd.com/rambles/sparkfun-closed-on-free-day/
Glad to see I’m not the only one who got this..
haha, i just found out about this today too and i got my stuff, you guys need to get off the dialup
well, ive been trying non stop since 6:30am their time, and never even made it to the login screen
I will refuse to give sparkfun any more thought, their prices are high, their products at best are questionable and often just down right junk
and this horse shit today just tells me how much they value my business, If they rather give away 100k of free stuff to clone accounts and ebay leeches just to artifically inflate their numbers thats their deal, but dont expect me to ever go back to pay full price *3
I suspect most people are more upset at having wasted so much time (our own fault really!) trying. IF it was all over in 10 minutes there might be less whinging?
The contest should have been for those who have purchased from sparkfuck before
I finaly understand that after the confirmatio button there is a page where you can click on “try for free order” but this one ever loaded beacause SF crashed. So i will pay full price f… “There is no special code to type in. But you get only one order on Free Day, so spend it well!”
“You will see whether or not your order qualifies for a credit in the checkout process. ” they meaned after check out, so it was like order something and you may be the one in the lottery” how stupid I am … Is there anyway to cancel the order because of this ?
Anyone know how long it takes for sparkfun stuff to ship to the UK? I want my Arduino starter kit already.
Didn’t work for me i’m afraid. I got an Arduino starter kit which I happily paid for anyway.
lol how many people got arduino starter kit
Bill is 1
im 2
The Only time I got a good page, was a Page that said “Something Broke…We logged the error.” Sounds like they should have “Beefed up” their servers some more. I mean they know it is going to be pandamonium when they do this.
I guess they got the server stress test they wanted, but they could have done it cheaper and with less pissed off people by doing it another way.
Looks like I do nto get to be a Sparkfun customer. and I had way more than $100 in my cart to order.
Thanks SparkFun. Unfortunately had it in my head that this was next week, though sounds like I may have saved myself some time. I will be back to make my purchases next week when everything is back in stock.
Arduino kit FTW!!!!!!!
YEAH, I WON!!
Who didn’t try for one?!?!?!
From a SFE employee: Thanks to those who understand the loads we get when you become the #1 search on Google. To all those loyal employees who didn’t make it, sorry…what can I say? When Van Morrison came to the US, I had five machines ready to rock on ticketmaster and struck out. To any script kiddies or other creative backdoor operators who triumphs, great for you. The rest of you should stop talking **** about hackers on a hacking website.
…Amen.
Wew, Good thing I made it. Dont worry guys ill be selling the items at ebay for half the price shown in sparkfun. Wait for it by then. This is good coz you get it for halfprice.
Ahh… well, this was their challenge, to test out their new hosting/cluster. :) Too bad it means that they/their sysadmins have failed. Better luck next time, maybe it means they’ll offer yet ANOTHER free shopping spree! :)
Tried the whole time, got to the payment page and could not get further because of the server issues.
@Edward
Post your e-bay user ID, I’ll come buy from you instead of sparkfun.
I didn’t get anything for free :(
hehe… oh well… struck out, but then saved $20 over at NKC on the exact same order. SFE has great stuff, but they’re not always the best deal without the discounts (re: freeday). Seems to be the main reason I end up not buying from SFE most of the time. SFE prices their stuff just that much more than the rest (at least on the things I’ve looked for). The item in question is the oscilloscope kit made by JYE. 49.00 at NKC and 59.95 at SFE. save 10.95 per unit. Next time we’ll see if SFE comes out good with price, though I doubt it.
W00t! Free stuff!! :-D
Hmm
let me see… free day.
I didnt get a thing.
now Im gonna sit here behind my computer and slag
sparkfun. Or better yet Im gonna blog about how lame their products are and yadda yadda yadda.
Do me and everyone else a favor and GO KILL YOURSELF!!!!!!
That way the next time (if ever) there is another
free day you wont take up some of the bandwidth
needed for the people who like sparkfun to get something for free
you RETARD!
And I just read the last comments about ebaying stuff. I know that it was inevitable for some sh*t pile a**holes to get on and take stuff to sell, but really to brag about it on this forum like its ok, and taunt everyone else (“stop whining, us “douchebags” got all the credit fair and square”). Really taking a charitable gift to the community and trying to make a profit is shameful. Absolutely wrong. It’s akin to taking gifts out of the Toys for Tots box, or stealing the salvation army kettle. Some of us can’t easily afford the products we were looking at.
Once again I mean no offense to those who received goods for themselves. Really I’m excited to see what will come of it. But to all the resellers: GO TO HELL. If any of you think they’ll sell things cheap on ebay, think again. Arduinos and parts and tools will all cost the same as any other seller.
I’m a loser. I didn’t get any free stuff. Wah
Didn’t get free stuff. :(
Oh well, guess I’ll go ahead and order anyway.
In case anyone reads this post (so many comments!), I was going to and still am going to order a few screens, a DS touchpad (might be fun to play around with), and some wireless transmitters.
The last time I could reach the website was about 25 min. before the event started.
HAHA, why not rub it in faces of those who didn’t get any?
Check E-bay in a week for arduino starter kit. $10 off teh sparkfun price.
Go eat your sour grapes somewhere else.
Thanks, Sparkfun! That was very “refreshing.”
Brilliant marketing campaign and a show of generosity to boot.
BTW, I got an arduino ethernet shield and an EL sequencer!
@timotet
It wasn’t about not getting stuff for free you ass. It wasn’t even about missing out on the offer.
It was the fact that a ton of people couldn’t even get the damn website to work even though they had everything prepped and ready to pay. Quite a few of them buying MORE than $100 worth of stuff.
If the site had sold out in moments it wouldn’t have been an issue because that’s how the game is played. But when the servers are too weak to handled the load that’s something else altogether.
I gotta agree that I don’t mind that I didn’t get anything for free but I do mind that I wasted 45 minutes refreshing a failing page to fail to get anything for free.
i had my cart all ready to go from days ago and when I went to checkout it kept showing me the last page I was on or failing. I understand that they were getting hit really heavy, and as with most things it is a first come first serve. but had I known that it would be “fair game” to write scripts to get what you wanted then I certainly would have participated in writing a script. I think alot of people were of the understanding that it was to be a fair attempt for everyone. Dont know all the details so I cant fully have an opinion.
@nimitzbrood
Oh is that what you where whining about! The servers not working?
“the #1 searched site on google”
I think I hear the whaaambulance coming
Once again RETARD
Im gonna make a masturbator with the stuff I got. Then Kill Myself because Im a Retard.
You people are all wankers.
Figure it out already.
You wasted your time.
Stop collecting welfare and get a real job, then you can afford to PAY for your stuff and not whine about not getting something for free.
@timotet
Whatever “trollotet”.
If you think it’s okay for a company to advertise something when they know they can’t handle the load then that’s your call. (Note: I find it hard to believe the admins at SparkFun don’t know the terms DDoS or Slashdot-Effect or how to prepare for that.)
FUCK YOU ALL RETARDS. ACCEPT THAT YOU LOST! SPARKFUN FOR LIFE. SPARKFUN RULES!!! YEAH!
Well if he’s representative of sparkfuns community, I definitely don’t think I’m interested. Work with enough ignorant sods already.
@nimitzbrood
Go back to mastubating in your mom’s basement.
You people have no lives, if you did you would not have wasted your morning by trying to get free stuff. $100? really? I make that in 15 minutes.
to be fair i’d have added a captcha to stop the script kiddies and their ilk in their tracks.
site was down for three hours before, came up briefly then went down again at about 9.03
finally recovered around 12….
will still be placing the order once the checkout page resumes working.
Hahah keep whining about free stuff. What’s worse is that everyone here had to be old enough to have a Credit Card. Which means someone is giving out credit cards to BABIES.
Seriously it was a contest, you lose, some win. I just hope at least a couple cool blog posts come out of it.
they could have arranged a competition / draw instead. if they wanted to give away stuff in a “fair” way..
They wanted a serious loadtest / self inflicted DDOS attach. This is what they did. and
this is what they got!
i didnt get any free stuff. either!. but ill take credit for my 0.000001% of their server load ;)
So i go home for lunch, look up sparkfun and have zero issues getting to the site or loggin in (to clear my cart)
come back to work and I am STILL getting the same error messages, I SMELL BULLSHIT
and I am not happy
Does anyone know the cheapest place to buy xBee stuff? I was gonna get some from sparkfun along with a crap load of Arduino stuff, but without the $100 their prices are a bit on the high side.
HA HA
thats funny now there is multipe timotets
the clones live!!!
oh I must be able to kill mass amounts of kitties now
I got through at 9:15am without any problems at all!
I’m going to sell the 334 free green leds I got on ebay for 100% profit!!
I intend on going ahead and paying for some of what I had in my cart, but spending the $200 in one go for parts that I was intending to purchase with the discount is a bit much for me. I would have also preferred a raffle for $100 gift cards so that it would be a little more fair, but no use complaining.
And to those just being A-holes and telling people to kill themselves and wasting time whining (we all know who) gtfo HAD, we don’t need comments like that here.
@troll
If you mark up your free green leds 100%, you’re still giving them away. So, put me down for 300.
Thanks!
Testing… My comments don’t appear to be showing up.
I guess you can’t post websites. That’s a shame.
Well, this sucks,
sparkfun really let down MANY MANY loyal customers with thier crappy servers.
oh well, not to mouser!
Oh well I didnt win, but I still like SF.
these comments are a crack up!
Funny, the one electric item I bought, was a BlinkM I’ve wanted to play with, but didn’t really have a need for. (It’s like a sample from BlinkM.)
Guess what the rest of my order was? Sparkfun swag, so I can help promote them. (And I barely broke 50% of the available $100, to try and help spread the love a little further.)
To the fools complaining that they now hate sparkfun because they didn’t get something from them for free today….
Did you hate them yesterday, or the day before?
!c