So... Who Got There Noodlers Flex Pens Today?

[SamCapote]

I got a demonstrator. Excited to get my first flex pen.

 

Well, no doubt there is some flex but I would point out that achieving flex by slitting the tines almost to the back of the nib is FAR DIFFERENT in feel to a vintage flex that has been achieved by metallurgically tuning the actual metal to make it springy. "Noodles"" maybe but "Wet Noodles" these pens definitely are not.

 

I'm not trying to rain on everyones' parade here and I understand that for $14 or whatever it is a very cheap way to try a pen that gives line variation by tine spreading as opposed to italics (shaping) but don't be too disappointed when it doesn't feel like that Waterman 52 your friend might have!

 

No doubt about that....but quality wet noodles are not common, or cheap. I have three from Mauricio, and they are like little magic pens the way they work. In any case, I also got a cardinal & pumpkin just because $14 almost seems like they are free.

Edited June 7, 2011 by SamCapote

[gregamckinney]

I got a Pumpkin, but not from Goulet. I don't feel too bad, as I spend a fair bit of $ there, but just couldn't bear the slooooow site.

Regards, greg

[Ladynib302]

I went with the Cardinal Red along with some inks (Australian Roses, Brown #41, Mocasin Black, Kon Peki). I dont see why people love demonstrators so much? I'll be happy to get my order shipped this week at some point as I went with Goulet pens and I think they will be swamped.

 

 

Just wait till you try that #41 Brown! Really great color; my homo sapiens loves it; It's my new black. We reordered already.

[Pens Woods]

What a great day for the Goulet Pen Co.! I was able to get on the site at 5:15 after being unable to make my transactions at 1:00. I ordered the Cardinal Darkness and a bottle of Diamine Majestic Blue ink 80ml. So, everything worked out nicely. Never used a flex pen, looking forward to the experience.

[rroossinck]

I got a Pumpkin, but not from Goulet. I don't feel too bad, as I spend a fair bit of $ there, but just couldn't bear the slooooow site.

Regards, greg

Thanks Greg...we always enjoy hearing from you!

[Thornton]

I ordered the orange and got the confirmation. I have to say surprised about the situation I experienced today. I had my browser set to refresh every thirty seconds. When 1300 rolled around the page for the pens still showed them to be OOS. I would think in this age of the internet that things would be good to go at the appointed time. The pen actually didn't show up as being in stock until around about five minutes after one. After that the to be expected bog down of the browser kicked in. Don't get me wrong, I understand in this internet age (have I used that buzzword already?) about sites getting slammed with traffic. Anyone that has bought concert tix or sporting event have had this happen. The thing I am less tolerant about is the punctuality thing. Since a script can be set up in the system as to when to unlock the item it wouldn't require any human input to have the computer open the item for business so to speak. Well <rant off> looking forward to the flex experience.

 

I think you're being very unfair to the Goulets, without realising it. You're obviously forgetting to factor something in. You weren't the only one who was sitting there with your browser set to refresh. So, before 1300 hours rolled around, the server was already creaking and groaning and slowing down. Any script set up to unlock the item would have been impacted as well. (I don't know how the Goulets handle their backend, so I don't know if they used a script or some other method - but it doesn't matter.) There is no inexpensive way to set up a website so things will happen on time, even with a manic horde of people all hovering at one time. Big corporations with huge budgets can't even do it most of the time, so how do you expect the Goulets to pull it off?

 

I admit, their hosting company doesn't impress me - but that isn't the Goulets' fault. I presume there is some good reason they are using that hosting service; they obviously do what they feel they can to offer good customer service. A better hosting company might have reduced some of the issues - but with all those people checking in to the site at once, and periodically refreshing their browsers, I don't know of a single hosting company on earth that offers an affordable package capable of handling the situation. My hosting company - which is not for the technically faint of heart - is pretty good, and I can guarantee you there'd be a few minutes of lag in that situation. Maybe three and not five; but I don't think any of us would want the Goulets to hike their prices enough to hire an IT manager with some serious chops just to pare two minutes off that delay. And I'm not sure even my hosting service would respond that quickly in every instance, anyway.

 

Sure, paying for a dedicated server with dedicated bandwidth at capacities far above peak load would eliminate that five minute delay. But do you have any idea what that would cost, month in and month out? That's a cost that would have to be passed on. And I, for one, would much rather get a decent price and wait five minutes than pay a huge premium just for some theoretical ideal of punctuality. As for the other glitches - if you had any idea how a server environment behaves under the kind of load put on that site today, you'd be praising the Goulets for setting up a site that didn't make things a lot worse. Since that site is running on a server that is a bit creaky at the best of times - again, not the Goulets' fault, although I do hope they're getting a good deal on their hosting package, or they're getting ripped off - I think the fact anyone got their order in at all is a credit to how well thought out their site is, and their planning.

 

For those who don't understand what happened, it is really very simple. The site freezes, you click a button, you don't think the click went through, so you click again... and wind up with 245 items in your cart when the thread containing your personal link to the server is processed. And with the kinds of delays, feverish input, and so on, scripts go crazy, processes freeze up or fail to run, the entire site operation goes haywire. I wasn't on there today - I'm still saving up to get my Onoto fixed. But from everything I've read here, the Goulets deserve a medal for making things work as well as they did.

 

I agree with Wandering Author and I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt the initial post was unfair. The Goulets are the best of the best and if we had to wait an extra five minutes for the pens to become available, I think we can all deal with that.

 

Edited to remove my snarky comment. No need to go down that road.

Edited June 7, 2011 by Thornton

[PeppWaves03]

I don't mean to point out to obvious or be mean spirited. I love the Goulet idea of a small market shop putting their customers first and providing great service, but that doesn't mean we should not blame them when something goes less than stellar. By having less than stellar expectations for a shop like the Goulet's means that the majority of people will look elsewhere when buying their products.

 

The Goulet's do what they do to make a profit. We all know the products they sell can be found elsewhere for cheaper prices but as Brian Goulet says, "price isnt everything." Therefore, we dont do them any favors when we lower our expectations for smaller, mom and pop shops, like theirs. Could things have been better? Of course, so lets tell them.

[Ladynib302]

I ordered the orange and got the confirmation. I have to say surprised about the situation I experienced today. I had my browser set to refresh every thirty seconds. When 1300 rolled around the page for the pens still showed them to be OOS. I would think in this age of the internet that things would be good to go at the appointed time. The pen actually didn't show up as being in stock until around about five minutes after one. After that the to be expected bog down of the browser kicked in. Don't get me wrong, I understand in this internet age (have I used that buzzword already?) about sites getting slammed with traffic. Anyone that has bought concert tix or sporting event have had this happen. The thing I am less tolerant about is the punctuality thing. Since a script can be set up in the system as to when to unlock the item it wouldn't require any human input to have the computer open the item for business so to speak. Well <rant off> looking forward to the flex experience.

 

I think you're being very unfair to the Goulets, without realising it. You're obviously forgetting to factor something in. You weren't the only one who was sitting there with your browser set to refresh. So, before 1300 hours rolled around, the server was already creaking and groaning and slowing down. Any script set up to unlock the item would have been impacted as well. (I don't know how the Goulets handle their backend, so I don't know if they used a script or some other method - but it doesn't matter.) There is no inexpensive way to set up a website so things will happen on time, even with a manic horde of people all hovering at one time. Big corporations with huge budgets can't even do it most of the time, so how do you expect the Goulets to pull it off?

 

I admit, their hosting company doesn't impress me - but that isn't the Goulets' fault. I presume there is some good reason they are using that hosting service; they obviously do what they feel they can to offer good customer service. A better hosting company might have reduced some of the issues - but with all those people checking in to the site at once, and periodically refreshing their browsers, I don't know of a single hosting company on earth that offers an affordable package capable of handling the situation. My hosting company - which is not for the technically faint of heart - is pretty good, and I can guarantee you there'd be a few minutes of lag in that situation. Maybe three and not five; but I don't think any of us would want the Goulets to hike their prices enough to hire an IT manager with some serious chops just to pare two minutes off that delay. And I'm not sure even my hosting service would respond that quickly in every instance, anyway.

 

Sure, paying for a dedicated server with dedicated bandwidth at capacities far above peak load would eliminate that five minute delay. But do you have any idea what that would cost, month in and month out? That's a cost that would have to be passed on. And I, for one, would much rather get a decent price and wait five minutes than pay a huge premium just for some theoretical ideal of punctuality. As for the other glitches - if you had any idea how a server environment behaves under the kind of load put on that site today, you'd be praising the Goulets for setting up a site that didn't make things a lot worse. Since that site is running on a server that is a bit creaky at the best of times - again, not the Goulets' fault, although I do hope they're getting a good deal on their hosting package, or they're getting ripped off - I think the fact anyone got their order in at all is a credit to how well thought out their site is, and their planning.

 

For those who don't understand what happened, it is really very simple. The site freezes, you click a button, you don't think the click went through, so you click again... and wind up with 245 items in your cart when the thread containing your personal link to the server is processed. And with the kinds of delays, feverish input, and so on, scripts go crazy, processes freeze up or fail to run, the entire site operation goes haywire. I wasn't on there today - I'm still saving up to get my Onoto fixed. But from everything I've read here, the Goulets deserve a medal for making things work as well as they did.

 

 

 

Nice explanation and defense of two hard working, caring young shopkeepers.

[Thornton]

I don't mean to point out to obvious or be mean spirited. I love the Goulet idea of a small market shop putting their customers first and providing great service, but that doesn't mean we should not blame them when something goes less than stellar. By having less than stellar expectations for a shop like the Goulet's means that the majority of people will look elsewhere when buying their products.

 

The Goulet's do what they do to make a profit. We all know the products they sell can be found elsewhere for cheaper prices but as Brian Goulet says, "price isnt everything." Therefore, we dont do them any favors when we lower our expectations for smaller, mom and pop shops, like theirs. Could things have been better? Of course, so lets tell them.

 

Maybe I would feel differently if I'd been one of the people trying to get a pen right at 1 o'clock. I just don't see the big deal. I just ordered a Cardinal Darkness and was in and out of the Goulets' online store in under five minutes. I didn't feel like fighting with a slow server and decided to wait until things cooled down. I was able to get my pen and was satisfied with my experience.

 

I really believe that Brian and Rachel do everything possible to give their customers an optimal shopping experience. I'm sure they're not happy with the slow server either.

[WanderingAuthor]

What frustrated me most was that when I went to check out I was not logged in and had to jump this additional hurdle. This never has happened to me when ordering any other time so that disappointed me.

 

My guess - and this is only a guess, since as I say I know nothing at all specific about the Goulets' backend - would be that this had nothing to do with their site architecture, and was only tangentially related to server load. Some web hosting companies will put automated strategies into play to reduce the load on servers that are coming under a lot of strain. What is one of the obvious triggers? A connection that is up for some time, with repeated, automated refreshes. This may appear to the system to be a bot, and thus a legitimate connection to drop, or it may simply be an obvious way to reduce server load. And when any secure connection is cut, for whatever reason - it may not even have been a deliberate break, but simply a function of server overload - the login automatically expires. There is no other way to make that connection secure.

 

Of course, things like this are frustrating. I've been on the wrong end of them and hated them as much as anyone. There are a few pens I've lost out on over on flea-bay because their setup is far from perfect (5 minutes left straight to auction over...) and some of those memories can still make me grind my teeth. But, at least for me, the best thing I can do is learn to understand what's happening, and try to work around it. Knowing connections that are putting too much of a strain on things tend to get cut, I'd say you'd be best to get set up as close to "zero hour" as you can. Even then, you'll be frustrated on occasion. And I'd be the last person to suggest you shouldn't be (I've worried that I might melt my computer's components with some of my invective ). My response was more from the perspective of knowing just what a miracle the Goulets are pulling off, considering they are a small, non-tech company. (Well, actually, there are a lot of larger companies in the tech sector that don't do as well, but it is even more impressive when it comes from people outside the tech sector. I do kind of expect it from the tech people, or else assume they don't know what they're doing.) As someone who understands in a very general sense what is going on over on their end of things, all I can say to Brian and Rachel is :notworthy1: .

[79spitfire]

Got a Lapis, tried for the demo, but they were gone as fast as the browser on the phone got to the page!! :bonk: Should have bought a demo the last time, they were some of the last ones in stock last go around! I'm gonna go back and get a Raspberry, I'll regret not getting it!

[WanderingAuthor]

I don't mean to point out to obvious or be mean spirited. I love the Goulet idea of a small market shop putting their customers first and providing great service, but that doesn't mean we should not blame them when something goes less than stellar. By having less than stellar expectations for a shop like the Goulet's means that the majority of people will look elsewhere when buying their products.

 

The Goulet's do what they do to make a profit. We all know the products they sell can be found elsewhere for cheaper prices but as Brian Goulet says, "price isnt everything." Therefore, we dont do them any favors when we lower our expectations for smaller, mom and pop shops, like theirs. Could things have been better? Of course, so lets tell them.

 

I have to presume that you really don't know a lot about servers, web hosts, site design, and all the other technical aspects of setting up a site such as they have. There are people who know a lot more than I do, but even I know enough to say that from my perspective your comments seem incredibly unfair. A day like today, from the perspective of the functioning of the Goulets' web site, is about as catastrophic as a minor disaster is to a brick and mortar business. Sure, there are companies that could easily handle that amount of traffic - but they're set up for it, with server farms. And when they get unusually heavy traffic - for them (that's what matters; is the traffic disproportionate to what your site usually sees) - they struggle, too.

 

Yes, you can get lower prices. But along with the terrible customer service, you'll either order them from a site that does not work as well as theirs does, or from one that pushes the boundaries when it comes to tracking you. Or both. There are also places that sell the same things the Goulets do for more. Some of their sites don't work as well, either.

 

Unless you are a programmer and set up your own server, design your own server side environment, then code your own site, you're going to have problems. The only other way to avoid them is to pay for a dedicated server, and dedicated bandwidth. On the scale you'd need to do that to be ready for a day like today, most large companies wouldn't find it affordable. The exception would be a company whose business involves emergencies, and whose prices reflect their capability to stay up through almost anything. And even then, Google, with all their server farms and all their coding geniuses, has had a few sticky patches here and there. So have many other lesser companies.

 

What most people fail to understand is the fact that it is that last hump, the occasional glitch or the problems under exceptional load, that is the most difficult and expensive to eradicate. If I thought the Goulets were doing less than they could, I'd agree that someone ought to point it out to them. But I've had problems at least as bad as the ones reported on their site today on sites run by international corporations so huge that they could buy up the Goulets' business out of their petty cash and still have enough left over to buy a few small towns somewhere. To get rid of every problem of the minor nature mentioned in this thread, it wouldn't cost them twice as much to operate their web site, or even ten times as much. It would cost them dozens or hundreds of times as much, or perhaps even more than that. (I don't know just what they're paying right now, or have access to all the stats on how hard their site was hammered today. Dozens to hundreds of times as much is the low end of the estimate.)

 

These are minor problems. They happen on every single site across the internet, most especially when the server running that site is under abnormally heavy load. Sure, the Goulets weren't getting a fraction of the visitors Google gets in a day - but they also don't have the extensive server farms that Google has. And when Google's systems get put under an extraordinary load, they creak and groan, too.

 

I can only say so much, because I still have a Non-Disclosure Agreement, but I've worked in the tech sector, not on the server side of things (thank God!), but in a position where I had some idea what was going on. And one reason I dare not get into specifics is what I'm about to say: I worked for a tech company, a pretty decent one, with a dozen software engineers, and for what they had to work with, I don't think they did quite as good a job as Brian and Rachel are doing. I'm not saying they did a bad job. I'm saying they were maybe in the top five percent - but things still went wrong. Even with a dozen engineers who sometimes lost a lot of sleep, things went wrong. There were reasons for that, and if I explained myself fully, I don't think anyone would have a reason to look down upon my former employers. But they did have a lot more to work with than the Goulets, controlled their own servers (a very big difference) and they were in the tech industry. The Goulets are not, and they can't hire the kind of talent we had. For what they've got to work with, the problems you're seeing are minor glitches. Sure, whenever their contract ends, if their domain name isn't held hostage (a lot of hosting companies do that, even when they're not supposed to), I might suggest they look for a better hosting service. But even if they get one, things just aren't going to get that much better, not on the bad days. Even a slight improvement might make a difference for a few people, and it is worth thinking about. But don't expect miracles

 

(Edited to add a missing word.)

Edited June 7, 2011 by WanderingAuthor

[myyrkezaan]

Even Yahoo has had that happen a time or 2. There is a site http://slashdot.org that runs news stories and has a lot of subscribers. When the subscribers start going to the linked story it can bog down those servers. Its happened so much they have a term for it called 'slashdotted'.

 

Here is one of Yahoo's server farms http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/09/23/yahoo%E2%80%99s-energy-efficient-server-farm-modeled-on-a-chicken-coop/.

[orfew]

Got confirmation on the Vulcan's Coral.

[kirtar]

I don't mean to point out to obvious or be mean spirited. I love the Goulet idea of a small market shop putting their customers first and providing great service, but that doesn't mean we should not blame them when something goes less than stellar. By having less than stellar expectations for a shop like the Goulet's means that the majority of people will look elsewhere when buying their products.

 

The Goulet's do what they do to make a profit. We all know the products they sell can be found elsewhere for cheaper prices but as Brian Goulet says, "price isnt everything." Therefore, we dont do them any favors when we lower our expectations for smaller, mom and pop shops, like theirs. Could things have been better? Of course, so lets tell them.

I don't think anything short of a dedicated server or at least a fairly nice VPS would have been sufficient. I'd guess that the majority of pen stores wouldn't handle that level of traffic very well. Those that could are more than likely far simpler sites (e.g. isellpens.com) that don't look as nice. Honestly I don't know what you were expecting. Plenty of big sites go down when extremely popular things come out (some video game consoles come to mind). There is no reason that they should need to pay for a web service that in 99.99% of cases will handle the traffic. Probably only special releases are going to bring it down, and that's not unexpected even with large stores.

[Anke]

Had no problems logging in and going through the process at about 1600 West Coast time. Got the Pumpkin and Black Swan in Australian Roses.

[WinBagel]

I think the website performed admirably. It didn't crash and stay down for hours or days, it slowed down under extreme traffic, or as WanderingAuthor said, under extreme reloads. I ordered my pens at around 3:30 and the site was only maybe a tiny bit slow but I had no trouble ordering. There would be no point for Goulet pens to have enough bandwidth for extreme days like today, all the time. It wouldn't be cost effective or logical. Frankly I was surprised at how well it went having seen disasters with specific time sales on other sites. Plus, for the most part we all got pens even if we didn't get our first color choice, so I really don't see anything to complain about. I, for one, am a happy customer.

Edited June 7, 2011 by WinBagel

[Cyanide]

I ordered a Poltergeist Pumpkin, and like everyone else, it took AGES. But of course, this happens when 500 people all try to click "Add to Cart" at the exact same time; bandwidth isn't infinite.

 

I wanted a demonstrator, but the pumpkin was extremely tempting...I added some Noodler's Lexington Gray, and ordered

[Cyanide]

And if anybody doesn't like their color choice, they can PM other members and trade!

 

Yeah...I nearly added 5 Oranges to the cart because I kept clicking. xD

[ThirdeYe]

Those are some neat colors. Since I already have a demonstrator Flex Nib Creaper, I'll save them for those that have yet to experience one. They're really a lot of fun, but the ink tends to evaporate fairly quick.