Best way to test/kill your webserver?

[Crimson13]

On January 13th, 2011, Boulder-based SparkFun Electronics will give away $150,000 worth of products in the second annual iteration of the aptly-named event "Free Day." The event is open to anyone with the magic powers of the internet. Free Day is designed to celebrate current SparkFun customers while giving those unfamiliar with SparkFun an easy foray into the wonderful world of DIY electronics. To learn more about or participate in Free Day please visit www.sparkfun.com.

"Free Day is our way of giving back to our loyal customer base of innovative and passionate electronics enthusiasts, and to offer first-time folks an opportunity to get started designing and building fun electronic gadgets," said SparkFun Founder and CEO Nathan Seidle. "We love helping people turn designs ideas into reality and we look forward to seeing what our community members come up with as a result of this event."

In its seventh year of business, SparkFun hosted its first Free Day event, successfully giving away $100k worth of goods on a first-come, first-served basis. In the second Free Day, the stakes are raised with $150k (a max of $100 per person) up for grabs as users are rewarded either based on the number of years they have been SparkFun customers or their answers to an electronics-themed quiz. In addition to the prize funds, SparkFun will donate $2 for each correctly answered question (up to a total of $30,000) to a collection of three charities: The Gathering Place, The Hunger Project, and X Prize Foundation.

As you could expect as soon as 9am mst rolled around the servers were slowed to a crawl. Actually a crawl would be better than what its doing now... But if you have some free time today to keep hitting f5 its free stuff!

Now time for me to go back to spinning around on my chair ever few seconds hitting f5 on a few keyboards!

[Drum Thumper]

it's that time again already? Damnit. I think I may have missed out.

[SXRguyinMA]

yea it was over VERY quickly

[x88x]

Wow, I completely missed that this one was happening.

[Crimson13]

It lasted for about 2 hours. The first 50% of the 150k took forever to go, but the last 50% went by in about 30mins.

With the 4 computers I had on their site I was able to answer 3 questions for a $30 coupon!

Here's what I got:
6 - N-Channel MOSFET 60V 30A
1 - ScrewShield v1.5
1 - SparkFun Stickers
1 - WiiChuck Adapter
2 - ATmega328 with Arduino Bootloader

Only cost me < $4 + shipping.

I almost didn't make the event. I haven't bought from sparkfun before so I didn't have an account but when I woke up this morning to take my father to the train, I remembered and was able to make an account before the madness started.

[x88x]

6 - N-Channel MOSFET 60V 30A

Ooooh, what are these going in?

[Crimson13]

My led system for my car. linky

I bought some mosfets from radioshack but I didn't pay attention to their amperage and when I hooked one up to my bench power (old modded ATX psu) it heated up and released some magic smoke.

These should work nicely for my project.

[NightrainSrt4]

Blargh. So frustrated. Had this plastered all over my calendar and notes by the computer. Things came up and completely missed it. Blargh.

[Crimson13]

I would have missed it totally if I didn't see an ad for it last night. So I set my alarm to go off a few mins before it started.