Dude, where's my shirt? (or why I should check email more often)

Right out of the blue, Sun Microsystems decided to send me a mail today announcing the "opening" of Solaris. Wow, that was so nice of them do it - both the "opening" and the mail.



Such promo mails stay in my inbox only for a few seconds. They are then lost into cyberspace forever. But this mail was special. There was this cool image of a T-shirt and below it were the words "Free T-shirt".



You've guessed the rest of the story by now, but it has a few twists.

The folks who were so kind to send me a mail probably forgot to add a link to the T-shirt image. There were some other links on the page - get the source code, read the blogs, participate in the community etc. But hey, where's the T-shirt?

I immediately followed one of the links, it took me OpenSolaris.com. One more form on the web, and my lone password (and I have only one password for everything) was shared with yet another server. Some checking, validation and verification through email - all the while I was pegging the probability of wearing that cool T up by one percentage every second.

The formalities completed, and Sun getting enough proof that Vijay Krishna was indeed Vijay Krishna, the same old screens were brought up. Read the blogs, participate, get the source... Hey, where's the T-shirt?

I even used the search on Solaris's website, and the results were pathetic - more blogs, more promos, more useless links... Finally I decided to drink the milk from the cow itself. I went to Sun's website, and ran a search for "T-shirt"!

All the while I was thinking that I was the only Indian on the planet (as in scurrying and scouring for the meanest of freebies). Relief was at hand. Someone had already posted this stuff on the bulletin board. Five replies down the line, I got the link, but it warned the prospective beneficiary that there were only 5000 in stock and stcoks would run out soon, if not already.

To stop your mouth from watering too much, here is the link to the free T-shirt - and your guess is as good as mine.



I say, let boys be boys! Who wants it anyway?After all, you see, I don't run after freebies...