Tube accident?!

A few days ago I ordered a bunch of IC’s (ATMEGA328P-PU, Yes!) from mouser.com, a rather large distributor, for the first time since I order from digikey often and they are close by. A small accident happened between perfect IC land and my home: one of the tubes was not sealed well. They cut the tube too short to hold 11 chips and a hole was punched on the end that ripped open on top and bottom because it was punched too close to the cut-off end. One chip is hanging half outside that open end since the rip narrowed the end to hold the chip there. There is no plastic pin to be found in the sealed antistatic bag indicating the plastic pin was gone before the bag was sealed, how unprofessional?! Saved $6 for 25 chips, compared with digikey, which always packs well. So I emailed them about this. In less than an hour, they corrected the issue by sending a replacement IC since the one hanging half outside can’t be trusted with anything serious anymore. Good work mouser! I’ll order more from them from now on!

The end of the tube with ripped open holes. Apparently someone needs a pair of new glasses after the holidays.

Oh, about tubes, I should probably write more about them, I mean, vacuum tubes, those that mostly emit electrons. They were the technology of the past century. Amazing stuff.