Author Topic: Sparkfun Free Day  (Read 10432 times)

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Offline DBaronTopic starter

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Sparkfun Free Day
« on: January 10, 2012, 10:39:49 pm »
I looked, but didn't find an existing topic.  Sparkfun free day is tomorrow, January 11, starting at 9:00 AM MST and running all day.

http://www.sparkfun.com/news/780

No quiz this year, just pure random luck.  YMMV, but I've had good luck the past few years getting something (I took the easy money last year, instead of pushing my luck with the non-functional quiz).
 

Offline 8086

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #1 on: January 10, 2012, 10:41:54 pm »
4PM GMT For anyone in the UK  ;D
 

Offline Psi

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #2 on: January 10, 2012, 10:50:22 pm »
I got some stuff on the first free day.

I dunno if this will help for this years freeday, but a good tip is...  "The F5 key wont help you navigate a site under heavy load!"

Seriously, F5 refreshes the current page.
If you click a button and a page doesn't load so you hit F5 you are reloading a page your already had, not the new page you want.

So when a page does load, switch the browser to offline mode and copy/paste the url to 10 new tabs then go back to online mode.
Now you have 10 buttons to try and get to the next page.
Then repeat..
(At least, that's what i did in firefox for freeday 1 and it worked well)

« Last Edit: January 10, 2012, 10:55:35 pm by Psi »
Greek letter 'Psi' (not Pounds per Square Inch)
 

Offline DavidDLC

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #3 on: January 10, 2012, 11:47:05 pm »
I got some stuff on the first free day.

I dunno if this will help for this years freeday, but a good tip is...  "The F5 key wont help you navigate a site under heavy load!"

Seriously, F5 refreshes the current page.
If you click a button and a page doesn't load so you hit F5 you are reloading a page your already had, not the new page you want.

So when a page does load, switch the browser to offline mode and copy/paste the url to 10 new tabs then go back to online mode.
Now you have 10 buttons to try and get to the next page.
Then repeat..
(At least, that's what i did in firefox for freeday 1 and it worked well)

Dang it, I rather pay for the stuff.
 

Offline Psi

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #4 on: January 11, 2012, 12:22:13 am »
It wasn't that bad, free day 2010 was over in 1hour 24minutes.

But free day 2012 looks to be random $100 off coupons given over 7 hours.
So yeah.
Greek letter 'Psi' (not Pounds per Square Inch)
 

Offline 8086

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #5 on: January 11, 2012, 04:02:55 pm »
Well, its been 3 minutes. So far:





Looks like it's going to be a long day for them  :P
 

Offline larrwill

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #6 on: January 11, 2012, 04:19:47 pm »
Well Free Day is a nice idea / marketing gimmick, and I am a firm believer that you cannot complain to much about something free... but I wasted some time on this last year and only came away with frustration. I decided my time is more valuable to ever consider participating in free Day again. Need to plan regular orders not to be on Free day also.
In general I think SparkFun is really great. They want to portray this non-stop nerd frat party image that does make me jealous when I get to my stuffy corporate job but I think it's marketing more than anything these days.
 

Offline The_Penguin

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #7 on: January 11, 2012, 05:04:43 pm »
After about 5 captchas, I decided that it'll take more than $100.00 worth of my time to win, if at all, so I'm out.

I can't imagine Google is too happy about the extra re-captcha load is must be generating.
 

Offline ndictu

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #8 on: January 11, 2012, 05:12:51 pm »
I can't imagine Google is too happy about the extra re-captcha load is must be generating.

Trust me, that is just a drop in the ocean compared to all the recaptcha traffic they are getting... In fact I think they are happy for a little extra book digitalization help.
 

Offline slateraptor

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #9 on: January 11, 2012, 05:52:56 pm »
Any winners yet? No go so far...back to the grind.
 

Offline PedroDiogo

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #10 on: January 11, 2012, 05:55:06 pm »
Any winners yet? No go so far...back to the grind.

I won a $100 coupon after 15 minutes trying :)
 

Offline slateraptor

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #11 on: January 11, 2012, 06:03:52 pm »
Any winners yet? No go so far...back to the grind.

I won a $100 coupon after 15 minutes trying :)

Pic or it didn't happen :)
 

Offline vis1-0n

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #12 on: January 11, 2012, 06:05:23 pm »
I gave up ( for now) and went on ebay and lucked onto a decent deal.

Um, also I fail their human test
 

Offline PedroDiogo

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #13 on: January 11, 2012, 06:11:29 pm »
Any winners yet? No go so far...back to the grind.

I won a $100 coupon after 15 minutes trying :)

Pic or it didn't happen :)

Sure!

Had to delete the code for obvious reasons :)
 

Offline slateraptor

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #14 on: January 11, 2012, 06:14:02 pm »
Fair enough.

What kind of nonsense was SF talking about geiger counters determining rate of distribution?! :-\
 

Offline Dagon

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #15 on: January 11, 2012, 06:54:13 pm »
Just got one to! Took about an hour an a half, on and off. Luckily I'm on a late shift at work with time to kill. Wasn't far off giving up though.
I saw Elvis. He sat between me and bigfoot on the UFO.
 

Offline ndictu

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #16 on: January 11, 2012, 08:06:05 pm »
What kind of nonsense was SF talking about geiger counters determining rate of distribution?! :-\

Somewhere in comments they said that if it detects something during your request you win. Not sure how sensitive it is, how long the request window is etc... I wish someone would walk around with U-238 in their pocket...

I've been trying on-and-off for a while now, watching a movie on the other monitor but no luck so far.
 

Offline Chet T16

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #17 on: January 11, 2012, 08:25:13 pm »
Winner  ;D

Well that took f'in hours!
Chet
Paid Electron Wrestler
 

Offline kripton2035

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #18 on: January 11, 2012, 08:36:00 pm »
sparkfun is really not fun ..; that soooo boring...I really prefered last year with quiz
you feeled like somewhat more intelligent after it
but this year ... baaah.  :(
 

Offline ndictu

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #19 on: January 11, 2012, 09:23:59 pm »
sparkfun is really not fun ..; that soooo boring...I really prefered last year with quiz

Yup. I would like to do a quiz, at any point today (but only one chance per account, also you need to have an order on that account or provide CC number or something to prevent people from making many accounts). After that the winners are chosen randomly, but each correct answer increases your chance. It's fair, random, simple and much less frustrating...
 

Offline gregariz

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #20 on: January 12, 2012, 12:01:10 am »
sparkfun is really not fun ..; that soooo boring...I really prefered last year with quiz

Yup. I would like to do a quiz, at any point today (but only one chance per account, also you need to have an order on that account or provide CC number or something to prevent people from making many accounts). After that the winners are chosen randomly, but each correct answer increases your chance. It's fair, random, simple and much less frustrating...

A random draw would of been nice. I just checked now after its over.... there are so many comments from pissed people... who spent 6 hours typing characters. Kind of Hilarious in a way... but somehow I don't think its the outcome they were hoping for.
 

Offline 8086

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #21 on: January 12, 2012, 12:04:18 am »
Every year there's a load of pissed off people that didn't get anything for trying all that time. I've been participating since they did the first one 3 years ago, and it's been frustrating every single time. I think they had a good idea last time, with the quiz, but their servers couldn't handle the load, so it became a lottery. This time I think they should have beefed up the servers and gone with another quiz or something similar, but not a random draw. Maybe next time...
 

Offline Hypernova

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #22 on: January 12, 2012, 02:03:18 am »
3rd year of nothing for me. Gave it half an hour before I gave up, it was almost 1:30AM so staying up and look like shit at work in the morning simply wasn't an option.
 

Offline george graves

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #23 on: January 12, 2012, 03:23:39 am »
I *hate* CAPTCHAs.  I would have liked to see them use something(anything) else...

Offline slateraptor

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Re: Sparkfun Free Day
« Reply #24 on: January 12, 2012, 04:15:35 am »
After ~6 hours of trying with a quick 15 minute break for lunch, I officially called it quits at $174k. :( That's the first and last time I'll ever participate in Free Day.
 


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