[skatanski]

When Covid started I wasn't able to buy any facemasks, I've had a newborn and was quite stressed to get them from somewhere. I didn't want to use eBay like website, which sold them with a huge markup. I've cobbled together a scraper that would check many of the biggest home depot-like stores in my country. It'd then sent an email to me, with how many facemasks were available in any given store along with contact information. I've configured my phone to notify on email arrival from that address. I've run it as a job on my NAS. It was interesting to learn that even though I was getting information on these masks arriving to the store few seconds after they have been inserted into the system. When I called the shop - masks were already gone. In the end I did manage to get some using this approach, and I was happy it worked.