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How the hell did you guys get through? You scripting something that retries 10 times a second or something? I managed to get to the shipping options, then timed out.
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Jan 7, 2010 18:13
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I can't get though at all. An hour ago I managed to load my shopping cart page, but nothing since then. It's 3am, and I am quickly running out of patience. It will probably be much easier to just pick up an extra day of work and pay full price in a week or two once the servers have stopped glowing red hot.
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Jan 7, 2010 18:16
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I just got a 'is temporarily closed' site. Did they just kill their servers?
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Jan 7, 2010 18:19
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Did fatwallet catch wind of this?
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Jan 7, 2010 18:21
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Looks like the right amount posted to my credit card, anyway, so that's a relief.Metajo Cum Dumpster posted:How the hell did you guys get through? You scripting something that retries 10 times a second or something? I loaded my cart up last night, and opened 5 browser windows at various points in the checkout process. Then once 9am hit, I made all the windows move forward in the checkout process. Eventually 3 or 4 of the windows made it past the "confirm with the $100 discount", and I kept timing out/loading blank screens. When one finally got past that, and I got the email, I killed all the other windows. I really needed those XBees.
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Jan 7, 2010 18:22
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I've got through the the payment page twice but it keeps timing out when I press continue. They should've put the end of the checkout process on a different server or something.
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Jan 7, 2010 18:22
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Half way to the end.
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Jan 7, 2010 18:27
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Metajo Cum Dumpster posted:Half way to the end. Three-quarters now... this poo poo is going quick. Still can't get to the checkout page 
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Jan 7, 2010 18:41
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It's over.
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Jan 7, 2010 18:47
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Wow, what a loving bad case of blueballs. Also, a big gently caress YOU to fatwallet.
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Jan 7, 2010 18:54
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Delta-Wye posted:Wow, what a loving bad case of blueballs. So I just bought a whole bunch of little cylinders with colored stripes on them. Not sure what they are exactly, but you can't beat the price!
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Jan 7, 2010 18:59
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#cobol's denizens had a 0% success rate between us I got to the checkout page, was told I qualified for the $100 off, and clicked the submit button on three different occasions (with many failed attempts to load the page between em) and none of them went through. A few other #coballers had similar poo poo happen The #sparkfun and #sparkfun-discuss channels on freenode were full of similar poo poo Oh well V  V
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Jan 7, 2010 19:00
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Delta-Wye posted:Wow, what a loving bad case of blueballs. An interesting way to do this would have been to only allow customers who had previously bought something from SparkFun prior to the original announcement to participate. But I guess they were also trying to load-test their servers. I just wonder how much of what was bought today was cables and adapters.
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Jan 7, 2010 19:02
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Exitlights posted:An interesting way to do this would have been to only allow customers who had previously bought something from SparkFun prior to the original announcement to participate. But I guess they were also trying to load-test their servers. I just wonder how much of what was bought today was cables and adapters. I'm excited to see the play-by-play that Sparkfun promised us tomorrow. It's too bad their new servers weren't up to the challenge, but I have a hard time imagining they were surprised by the load today. Sparkfun hurts me so much, but I keep going back. They are something like 90% of the way to being a great company. I love them, but they are always messing up my orders and stuff Even if the servers worked flawlessly, I'm sure there was a pretty good chance I wouldn't have made it in the first 1000 orders, but a guy can dream right?
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Jan 7, 2010 19:15
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Normally I'm all for sharing good deals, but seriously, I'm kind of pissed about this one. These are pretty niche products and we all got screwed because a bunch of people who probably will never know/need to know how to program an Arduino or solder a resistor brought these guys to their knees.
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Jan 7, 2010 19:18
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Skycks posted:Normally I'm all for sharing good deals, but seriously, I'm kind of pissed about this one. These are pretty niche products and we all got screwed because a bunch of people who probably will never know/need to know how to program an Arduino or solder a resistor brought these guys to their knees. Fatwallet is a bunch of fucktards who live to ruin good things for everyone, but it wasn't all them. The IRC channel had 2000 people in it this morning - even just the SFE customers were enough to piss in our cheerios. Also, any other goons feel like making an SFE wanna-be company with me? Good god their profit margins must be enormous.
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Jan 7, 2010 19:23
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Delta-Wye posted:Fatwallet is a bunch of fucktards who live to ruin good things for everyone, but it wasn't all them. The IRC channel had 2000 people in it this morning - even just the SFE customers were enough to piss in our cheerios. The vast majority of these didn't get poo poo, some were vocal about it I'd be really surprised if more than 30% of the giveaway went to prior Sparkfun customers (none of the stuff in my cart had noticeably gone down in stock when I checked before emptying it) Besides the fatwallet fuckery, there will probably be a bunch of new posters on arduino.cc's forum in the next month or so, followed by a bunch of Duemilanove boards collecting dust
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Jan 7, 2010 19:34
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Delta-Wye posted:Also, any other goons feel like making an SFE wanna-be company with me? Good god their profit margins must be enormous. I'm in. I frequently buy parts in large quantities for work, and if they are getting even remotely good pricing, they are pulling it in. Edit: I am 100% serious on wanting to start a company like this. Hillridge fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Jan 7, 2010 |
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Jan 7, 2010 19:34
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Delta-Wye posted:Also, any other goons feel like making an SFE wanna-be company with me? Good god their profit margins must be enormous. Let's do it. Except I already live like 20 minutes from their HQ  But hey, a company started by a Mines student will own a company started by CU students any day so let's do this thing
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Jan 7, 2010 19:35
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Skycks posted:But hey, a company started by a Mines student will own a company started by CU students any day so let's do this thing If a company run by a CU grad can be successful, just think what a company run by motivated people could do!
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Jan 7, 2010 19:42
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Exitlights posted:If a company run by a CU grad can be successful, just think what a company run by motivated people could do! Is there some sort of explanation I should know for why every 5th box or so from SFE just has random loving items in it instead of what I ordered? they've always been great about fixing it, but still...
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Jan 7, 2010 19:45
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I treated the SparkFun deal like a contest, and I'm ecstatic that I managed to win. I can't wait to play around with a microcontroller (went with AVR). For a (noobish) electronics question: I want to power a device (an original Gameboy Advance) off of USB. It wants 3V and 200mA. Is it enough to just drop the 5V from the USB with a couple of diodes, or is this a bad idea and I should use a voltage regulator instead?
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Jan 7, 2010 19:48
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T.G. Chewbacca posted:I treated the SparkFun deal like a contest, and I'm ecstatic that I managed to win. I can't wait to play around with a microcontroller (went with AVR). You probably ought to use a voltage regulator, but I can't see why this wouldn't work if the drop is pretty close.
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Jan 7, 2010 19:56
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God drat I had exclusive access to not only an AT&T T1 but a 20/5 cable line and still couldn't get through (i restricted myself to two browser tabs refreshing at any one time). Still, it was fun to try. I still want to buy some microcontroller type stuff and learn on it, it just will have to wait a while =/
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Jan 7, 2010 20:01
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Cocksucker. I got to the last confirm page about 2 seconds too late. IT kind of pisses me off that a lot of the people just want to resell the stuff on ebay.... Oh well... ^ ^
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Jan 7, 2010 20:13
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Jonny 290 posted:I still want to buy some microcontroller type stuff and learn on it, it just will have to wait a while =/ Same here I was really hoping for a cheap arduino now ill have to pay full price which is still pretty cheap but it would have been nice to have for really cheap. I don't know that I feel like shopping with sparkfun anymore... they have always seemed kind of expensive and the way this was handled seemed to piss more people off than help bring people in.
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Jan 7, 2010 20:25
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Liquidware is a lil cheaper if you just want an arduino iirc
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Jan 7, 2010 20:30
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We could call it Awful Electronics 
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Jan 7, 2010 20:51
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I wish I could've gotten some expensive sensors for free. I don't know what others were doing to get through, but I sat there from the second it started till the end trying to get through with absolutely no luck. Sparkfun has a really nice layout, really nice customer service and offers almost everything you could want for doing microcontrollers. Too bad they overprice some of their stuff waay too much. Like their wire wrap tool, which is the same one you can get from radioshack for ~$8 now, for $16.
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Jan 7, 2010 22:29
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Skycks posted:We could call it Awful Electronics Seems like all you would have to do is find some niche market and start designing simple 90%-complete devices, which reduces a lot of your post-sell overhead. Effectively, SFE doesn't have to explain to end-users how their widget works, because they don't sell widgets, they sell widget parts. Something like novel and useful arduino shields, interesting home automation or auto components, robotics parts/kits; seems like there are lots of opportunities out there.
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Jan 7, 2010 23:03
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Metajo Cum Dumpster posted:I wish I could've gotten some expensive sensors for free. I don't know what others were doing to get through, but I sat there from the second it started till the end trying to get through with absolutely no luck. There's a shop in my city that has an agreement with Sparkfun to sell their stuff locally but most of their things are still overpriced even if you don't have to pay the shipping costs I guess I shouldn't be so upset because I'm past the point where I'm using newbie kits, but some of their wireless modules seem okay. BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Jan 7, 2010 |
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Jan 7, 2010 23:07
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BattleMaster posted:There's a shop in my city that has an agreement with Sparkfun to sell their stuff locally but most of their things are still overpriced even if you don't have to pay the shipping costs I've spoken with a guy who sells Sparkfun stuff locally and he said it's almost not worth it. The dealer discount is almost nothing and they make you buy in quantities of like 500 to get even that.
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Jan 7, 2010 23:57
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I highly doubt it's a lucrative business. There are lots of similar businesses that sell most of the same stuff with roughly the same business model and competitive prices. The only edge sparkfun has is a few unique products, a decent community, and a good image. And I don't see tons of room for improvement. If you want to do what they do, just sell them designs and skip the nitty-gritty business poo poo. I've considered selling designs to them, but if my school found out they'd probably throw a fit because anything I develop with their resources is somehow partly their property.
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Jan 8, 2010 00:10
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Well, I still need a lot of damned expensive sensors. Has anyone used the Parallax sensors? They offer a what looks like a nice sensor kit for $150 (would be ~$200 total without), though I don't understand why it includes a 2-axis and 3-axis accelerometer? http://www.parallax.com/Store/Senso...e%2cProductName
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Jan 8, 2010 01:09
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ANIME AKBAR posted:I highly doubt it's a lucrative business. There are lots of similar businesses that sell most of the same stuff with roughly the same business model and competitive prices. The only edge sparkfun has is a few unique products, a decent community, and a good image. And I don't see tons of room for improvement. If you want to do what they do, just sell them designs and skip the nitty-gritty business poo poo. I've considered selling designs to them, but if my school found out they'd probably throw a fit because anything I develop with their resources is somehow partly their property. The business world is no different in software engineering. We don't even have to use their resources and they can try and lay claim! Count me in for starting a business like theirs though. I got an order in too! 3 steppers and 3 controllers plus some miscellaneous stuff. Now do some cnc nonsense... To continue discussions about my module, I haven't had much time to work on it due to ... work. They don't mind working you overtime if you are a salaried employee. It only has one vin pin, so ANIME AKBAR thanks for pointing that previous comment out. macpod fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Jan 8, 2010 |
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Jan 8, 2010 01:15
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Beginner question; Why on my cheap MM on the 10amp setting does the current reading continually drop while taking a reading? I tried it on a 9V battery, got .8amp that kept dropping all the way to like .6 before I took it off. Then I tried a regulated wallwort that went from 2.7 and dropped down to 2.36 before I stopped.
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Jan 8, 2010 03:46
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Metajo Cum Dumpster posted:Beginner question; Why on my cheap MM on the 10amp setting does the current reading continually drop while taking a reading? Are you just putting the probes across the terminals of the battery or wall wart? If so, don't do that. You are just (practically) shorting the battery when the meter is in ammeter mode.
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Jan 8, 2010 04:45
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Metajo Cum Dumpster posted:Beginner question; Why on my cheap MM on the 10amp setting does the current reading continually drop while taking a reading?  turbo sex bat 4000 is right, you are just shorting the battery/wallwart unless there is a load involved (doubt it). I would guess the 10A setting isn't fused, and sees a significant amount of heating. It's resistance went up accordingly, reducing the current as you measured.
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Jan 8, 2010 05:21
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Metajo Cum Dumpster posted:Beginner question; Why on my cheap MM on the 10amp setting does the current reading continually drop while taking a reading? You're draining the battery and the voltage is sagging as it heats from a dead short. "Regulated" wall-warts aren't, particularly. It's probable that the voltage on that didn't sag too much as the amperage dropped, but those are usually rated in VA and regulation range, which dead shorts usually drastically exceed.
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Jan 8, 2010 14:39
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Oh crap, so it has to be inline with the circuit?  Told you I was a beginner. Thanks.Another quick question. So I ordered a 10k Thermistor from SF and they forgot to include it so I emailed them and they shipped me another for free, except instead of sending my a cheapo thermistor they send me a Thermocouple Type-K Glass Braid Insulated, which is nice because it's worth 7x more. But do I need the associated thermocouple amplifier IC to work with it? I haven't tried anything with it yet.
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Jan 8, 2010 16:22
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