So... after literally dozens of Lucy pulling away the football moments. I'm 95% done.
Nope, I didn't get a new GPU. Nor console. I took my money and blew it on H&B.
I had a Chrome bookmark folder full of all the search links - something like 30+ links that go directly to product pages. I did not get to the level of signing up for Twitch alerts or Twitter tracking though - I don't sit at a computer all day, I would just check when I happened to get at my computer, two or three times a day. That was my routine since about Thanksgiving, the list of bookmarks just grew over time. I would catch stock in about every 10 days or so just casually checking... but every time I did, it was nothing but broken web pages, items added to card to be removed, queues that sat in, only to get hung up at checkout, etc. The same exact story as the OP in this thread, dozens of times over.
So I didn't exactly need a tracker to tell me when there was stock - I was finding it on occasion, and did so many, many times. It just never would go through.
So I'm done. Mostly.
I'm still in the EVGA queues. I don't have any faith in that - it appears to be more lip service than anything. I know some of you have had success there. Great. To a guy who goes to sign up today though, you might as well go eff off. Most SKUs still aren't through the first few hours of signups... So while I'm in the queue, that ain't going to happen anytime soon.
I do still sign up for Newegg Shuffle when I can catch it. Since it pops up at random times, I don't catch it every cycle - maybe twice a week. After a dozen entries there, nothing. But it's probably the best shot I have at anything. Not everything there is a great deal - some are downright bad bad. Although now that I've blown my money, odds are if I do win anything I'll just turn around and see if anyone here wants to snag it for my cost.
And that's it. I'm done checking anything else for now - at least until another "take a deposit, sit in line" storefront comes up. I figure I've been fortunate enough in other areas that this one thing isn't going to hurt me - it's frustrating, but it's not a huge quality of life issue.
Good luck to the rest of you.