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…
Arghhh, got to last page of checkout but no dice. My order doesn’t qualify… why?
15k now.
It is hard to complain about sparkfun when they are giving out free stuff. They didn’t claim that it would be easy or not time consuming.
I got through after 1.5 hrs of constantly clicking the reload button after each network timeout, that is I only was able to load the 4 or so pages over the course of an hour, better have had those carts preloaded or you’re goin no where.Patience is critical!Good luck all.
So, if the site is down for tons of people, how are people still able to get checked out? Cuz there is like 150 people already checked out? How did they get in? Is there internet super fast?
I got the page, but no” continue” button. I loaded it in another tab, but I had to reload :(
ffffff AAAAA I L
f A A I L
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f A A I L
f A A I L
f A A I LLLLL
17020.34
I clicked the button to try for a free order!
crap blank page nooooo
ffffff….AAAAA….I….L
f………A…A….I….L
ffff……AAAAA….I….L
f………A…A….I….L
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On the upside, while waiting I got my hackintosh install to work…
At least their $100,000 advertising campaign seems to have worked in so far as that a hell of a lot of people now know about them.
“afari can’t open the page “https://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/checkout_shipping.php?refresh=1” because the server unexpectedly dropped the connection. This sometimes occurs when the server is busy. Wait for a few minutes, and then try again.”
server busy? GEEEE YOU THINK, and this just in, FIRE IS STILL HOT!
NOOOO
THEYVE REACHED THERE TOTAL!!!
im just kiddin, seems the only way to have fun is to joke about SF
forget this sheiss. I am going to go play with my unicorn collection.
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PSYCH. I am sitting right here betches, refreshing like a madperson on behalf of my boyfriend who is dutifully making me pancakes for breakfast!
$17,220.34
After an hour of trying I finally got the page to load…. keep this up an I may actually get somewhere… by dinner time anyways.
“”So, if the site is down for tons of people, how are people still able to get checked out? Cuz there is like 150 people already checked out? How did they get in? Is there internet super fast?””
no it seems the UK is not having any trouble getting in
I wonder if the people who live really close are even getting through…i could probably drive there and jack into there server before this even ends lol jk, that’s way too far to drive…
I even layed out of school for this haha
20k
im on the last step of the check out process thats meant to click through to paypal!
argh, been stuck here for an hour
i keep loading white pages when i click on see if u qualifiy click hear
@Ph1l don’t bother, I live in a neighboring town and am having very little luck
time to go watch blue clues and eat some hearty cheerios, might as well go clean up the 6 inchez of snow that fell overnight!i was like, this is going to be a SECOND white christmas!
Their ISP is having problems. It seems that most Comcast traffic is blocked, I connected via VPN to a customers site and used thier T1 to get access.
Its over 9000!!!!!!! $18,015.64 so far
I only live 1 timezone off, and ive been trying to get in for over 3 hours now, I finally saw the homepage but have yet to get logged in
so no distance has nothing to do with it
GOD I JUST HAD A SERVER RESPONSE!!!!!
Well lets see 12:15 eastern time, and still down. There goes my dreams of servos. But good luck to everyone else! That’s if there’s any money left anyways.
Truthfully i do wonder if they knew the would launch a DDOS attack against themselves…maybe they’ll put it up tomorrow that they planned it..
**** GOD I NEED A BEER! WHO WANTS ONE!!!????!!!???************************8
$20,763.94 as of the last time I got a page to work.
instead clicking reload, you canon pay-per-click ads
The connection has timed out
The server at http://www.sparkfun.com is taking too long to respond. Yay Bresnan.
SparkFun Electronics is Temporarily Closed!
SparkFun Electronics has been temporarily closed while necessary upgrades are installed and configured.
Please be patient and check back soon. We’re working tirelessly to make this down time as brief as possible.
I’m on the free day button… there’s still 80k left… maybe I’ll get my produino?
******* BREAKING NEWS****
HOW THE EFF IS THIS UP LIVE?????????
http://forum.sparkfun.com/viewtopic.php?t=18975&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=195
First off, why would they just give $100k away? To get more business? They might have shot themselves in the foot and lost several days of business …
they just had to restart apache…..GFD
Sparkfun is now the #1 most searched thing on google. Heh, $100,000 is actually fairly inexpensive as far as huge advertising budgets go, so I think this was a success on their part.
http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?q=sparkfun&date=2010-1-7&sa=X
Even the google cache sparkfun page is slow :P.
Screw it. Digi-Key will take my money.
7 replies in 1 hour….
Just got a page saying “sparkfun is closed temporarily while upgrades are being installed”. Guess they finally decided to up the hardware or simplify the website to weather the storm.
Ken
there not losing 100k the items cost them alot cheaper i think maybe 30k they spen
SparkFun Electronics is Temporarily Closed!
SparkFun Electronics has been temporarily closed while necessary upgrades are installed and configured.
Please be patient and check back soon. We’re working tirelessly to make this down time as brief as possible.
Order submitted, but yields a blank white page with “Done” at bottom. Was it submitted?
maybe if they quit allowing their servers to “reset” things “might” improve
NOT ONLY ARE THEY WORKING TIRELESSLY, THEY R PROBABLY CRAPPING THERE PANTS RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!
GOT IN 39 thousand as of 11:22 am ct
chain smoking has begun
May have indeed been a savvy advertising move, but also a good way to screw old customers though too.
Paypal login worked, paypal is now on the callback to sparkfun…. waiting again
$41,000