Or maybe not. I hopped into the #Sparkfun chatroom on irc.freenode.net the morning of Free Day to check out what people were chatting about. To my dismay, hours before the event started, there were already almost 700 people in the chatroom. According to Sparkfun’s limitations on the event, only 1,000 $100 orders would be awarded. The numbers were already daunting. I pulled up the Sparkfun website to find their recently updated web servers were already buckling under the load of people preparing their shopping carts. Uh oh. As time neared 11am, the chatroom hit the 1,400 user mark and my hopes of free electronics started to dwindle.

Minutes before the event, I went to my shopping cart, and prepared to click the Checkout button on the hour. 11am struck, my finger punctually tapped the mouse button, and my order request was on it’s way across the ‘tubes to Sparkfun’s datacenter in Colorado… Minutes later, the page timed out and I sent the request again, and again. As the minutes went by, so did the time outs and blank white pages across my screen. Scanning the chatroom, I saw reports of people successfully reaching the shipping page, ready to submit their Free Day order; still nothing on my screen. After an hour of failed attempts, I finally reached the log-in screen. Gah, I logged in just before the event started to avoid this! After providing my account info, I waited another 10 minutes and reached the shipping page. The taste of success was on my tongue as many before me reported their completed orders shortly after reaching the shipping page. I gleefully submitted my shipping information.

And that was the last I saw of Sparkfun.com. As I watched the Firefox throbber spin away, my heart dropped as people reported the giveaway totals nearing dangerously to the $100,000 limit. Before I could reach the billing page, SparkFun announced on Twitter that Free Day was officially over. And so were lost my dreams of free electronics. Sulked, I returned to the chatroom to read the flurry of exuberant posts from those who had successfully received their Free Day orders.

This story ends happily, however. Once the rush of traffic to Sparkfun’s site died down after the event, I was able to trim my bloated cart of electronic goodies to only that which I needed for my project, and proudly submitted my non-free order.

Thanks for the experience, Sparkfun.