If you dare post replies here of those of you who were successful in participating in the Sparkfun Free Day.
http://static.sparkfun.com/images/congrats.jpg
Interesting crystal like crown he’s got there. 
Yes, I was successful on Free Day. I got $100 worth of “page load errors”.
I was successful at wasting my time on “free day”.
Are you looking to outsource your IT staff now?
IMO the free day was a nightmare. It took me 20 mins just to get my cart loaded, then over an hour of TRYING to checkout to only needing to refresh the whole time. The checkout page never loaded in over an hour. That is horrible, for a store. I do this for a living at my company and WE would be fired for that experience by any of our clients… shame for shame
Such nastiness for a give-away event. Do you all get this upset when you don’t get what you wanted under the Christmas tree too?
SparkFun, thanks for an entertaining way to spend my morning, rather than working like I should have been. 
And, er, thanks for knocking $100 off my order. :twisted:
I got mine. The week before, I had filled my cart and pushed it through to where I was two confirmations away from ordering. At about the 1:45 mark, I got through.
I’ve been wanting to get into electronics for SO long. I can’t wait for my soldering iron, accessories and metronome kit to get here. =)
Sorry to all those that couldn’t get through. Only ~1000 people got it, and I’m sure there were tens of thousands chomping at the bit. I know you think you’re more entitled to the discount than I was, but nobody was entitled to it. SparkFun threw the money up in the air and yelled ‘catch!’. Don’t try and rationalize why you should’ve been the one to grab it.
And to SparkFun, thanks so much! If I turn out to really enjoy this electronics thing, I’ll be coming back. =)
I had gotten up and sat at my computer watching the timer tick down, I had everything ready was on the page for the 1 item I wanted and my debit card in my hand.
Almost 2 hours later I still have nothing.
What a load, I wonder did they lose more customers they they got with this stunt?
esm:
Such nastiness for a give-away event. Do you all get this upset when you don’t get what you wanted under the Christmas tree too?
It was a wholly frustrating experience. I say cut people some slack - I don’t think they’re being ungrateful for the most part (especially not in this thread), just showing the results of fighting to get in on this deal and failing.
Congratulations to those who did get in on the deal. I hope you make some cool stuff with your loot!
I didn’t get anything, but I appreciate Sparkfun’s effort. I’ll probably still buy the stuff once I have the money for it (in a couple of months…)
Just remember that they were trying to do something nice for us (and did, for some of us). They didn’t have to do this at all, and i’m sure mopping up all that molten silicon in their server room isn’t going to be fun for them either. Hint: Wait for it to solidify, then beat it with a sledge hammer and sweep up the fragments and dust. :lol:
esm:
Such nastiness for a give-away event. Do you all get this upset when you don’t get what you wanted under the Christmas tree too?SparkFun, thanks for an entertaining way to spend my morning, rather than working like I should have been.
Success = entertainment.
After 2 hours of trying to make it to the payment page,and finally making it there about 30 seconds after the promotion has ended = complete and utter frustration
Thank goodness my cart (that I put together yesterday) was still intact during all these attempts. If my cart got emptied like some others, I couldn’t imagine how pissed off I would be! Would probably make me mad enough to punch my cat.
I didn’t get through despite loading my cart the night before and getting on before 9AM, but that’s OK. I don’t need the freebies and actually felt a bit guilty for even trying.
Sparkfun: I’d be interested in a play-by-play of how the morning went. Server loads, who got through and why. That sort of stuff.
How many people were actually trying to order this morning?
Complainers: Everyone knew the site would be hammered. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
-Scott
** int he: Happens to me a lot on this particular computer. It has an el cheapo keyboard **
ScottH:
Don’t look a gift horse int he mouth.-Scott
Man, I tell ya - of all the typos I make on a regular basis, “int he” has got to be the one that annoys me most of all when it happens to me… Sometimes I wonder if it’s a programmer thing…
SparkFun is pretty amazing for even attempting this.
Anyone who didn’t expect the site to suffer extreme loads isn’t the geek they’re pretending to be. You’re running encrypted traffic through SSL, thus considerably increasing the load of an already bogged down system. That’s just common sense.
If you didn’t get anything, deal with it, no reason to complain. It was a fun morning. Did I complain to Blizzard when I almost didn’t get tickets to go to Blizzcon because of the Blizzcon 2008 ticket problems? No. Because it was expected to be a high demand event. Just like a concert or anything else immediate and limited.
After an hour and 15 minutes, I got my free day. I am also a prior customer. Would I have never shopped at SFE again if I didn’t? No, because I’ve never had a company take care of me like they have. They have great customer service, it takes 30 seconds to get someone on the phone, it’s just great.
So anyway, thanks SparkFun, you’re epic. I’ll take my ATTinies and be happy and shop again in the future.
Even though I was unable to put in an order…
Thanks, Sparkfun, for hosting free day! What an awesome offer and a great marketing experiment. Truly a great idea. Hope you guys do this again in the future and I hope it was a success!
I will now return to my regular source for electronics fun - midibox.org. But, having visited the sparkfun site, due to this give-away, I have some future plans of playing with Arduino. I’ll be back, after I finish my midibox projects!
I got through…I got my free day item. I didn’t spend the full $100.
I am not going to resale it, I am going to develop a product with it, and probably give the item away next Christmas on the Unofficial Parallax Christmas Giveaway.
Can’t say why I got through and no one else did…just the way it is.
James L
Great idea and I knew that the web site would be almost unreachable. For some thing like this there are not many web sites in the whole internet that wouldn’t slow down. Even Oprah’s site got hit bad when she did a big promotion.
I just wish I could have watched the connection stats as the event was in progress. That would have been fun.
Got mine! $200 order, took 1 hour and 22 minutes of clicking “Try Again” and “Resend” my 4 cow-orkers were not so lucky.
Thanks SF for the awesome event!
P.S. no sour grapes from any of us!
atla57:
I’ve been wanting to get into electronics for SO long. I can’t wait for my soldering iron, accessories and metronome kit to get here.
I didn’t get anything, but I’m very pleased to hear that someone like you did. You’re going to love it.
I tried and tried but couldn’t get through either.
Now I have to put up with an inbox filled with whiney entitled brats calling me this, that, and the other thing because of thier displeasure of not getting free stuff. Here’s a small hint for those people: I don’t work for Sparkfun!
-Bill