Online shopping is fun. Online shopping under a time limit is maddening.

This morning I woke up at 4:57 AM to try and grab a few Xbox Ones Amazon had left over. While the site was being hammered, it wasn’t exactly slow. You just got a glimpse into what Amazon used to look like in its early betas. Click the “Buy now with 1-Click” button and it takes you to an error page. Add it to your cart and it disappears. Reload the page and it’s unavailable. Reload again and it’s back in stock.

After seven minutes of fumbling I found it by going to the “More buying choices” section and 1-Click ordering it from there. Went to my orders page and refreshed a few times to ensure it stuck. And it did! What a relief.

But it turns out the person I was buying it for didn’t actually want an Xbox One. D’oh! So I advertised it on 343’s internal e-mail list and got a buyer in about 30 seconds. We are hungry for these things.

Can’t wait to jump ahead.