MOTM

a) I am in the process of kitting up *all* of the remaining VCO, MOTM-510, 
MOTM-380, MOTM-850 and MOTM-890 orders. These will start shipping Jan 28th.

b) I'm having more connector boards wave-soldered this week (for the 900/950 
supplies, MOTM-960s).

c) As predicted, real 'work' has most of my Jan. bandwidth. However, I am 
doing what I can as time allows. I have to do my taxes this weekend (takes 
about 12hrs). Always interesting to see what the postage costs (usually 
around $8,500).

d) My 10th MOTM anniversary will be Feb. 14, 2008! I hope to have module 
#8100 shipped by then. I guess the next milestone will be #10,000. That 
seems "out of reach" but then again I never expected to see #5000, either :) 
I suppose Doepfer is pushing #20,000 by now, which is about the same *sales 
dollars* as I am now. Not shabby as a part-time hobby out of the spare 
bedroom. Plus I've sold ~70 Frac modules and ~90 blank pc boards.

e) 2007 Video Game Report follows:

a) if you have ~$270 sitting around, and you want a 2-3X jump in graphics 
performance, get an nVidia 8800GT card. I started with nVidia, been an ATI 
fanboy the last 5 years, but this card is *blazing* fast. It is 40% faster 
than my *2 card SLI* nvidia setup it replaced. Sold the old cards on eBay 
for $185 to boot.

b) went back and replayed some older games with the details cranked to max. 
Company of Heroes still hard to beat for the RTS stuff. Tried to replay the 
new patch of C&C Tiberium Wars, the patch *ruins* the game completely. The 
'Normal' difficulty is damn near impossible, and as the game progresses gets 
silly to the point of I uninstalled it.

c) got the Orange Box (HL2/Portal/CS2) and replayed HL2 (again) just because 
I love the "look" of the engine. About 50% through Episode 1, put it aside 
and played with Portal a bit. Was OK, didn't think it lived up to the hype 
but the running commentary from the computer was cute.

d) for recent stuff, loaded and played 1hr each with Crysis, Call of Duty 4 
and Gears of War. Crysis looks really good, not as 'spectacular' as the hype 
but it has that 'Far Cry' feel to it. The gameplay is just Far Cry which is 
not bad but not a leap forward. Call of Duty 4 is the most visually cool of 
the new games, but it is hard on the Normal setting. My 14yr old played it 
all the way through in 1 day on Easy. Gears of War I just ran around a bit, 
it is an XBox port so it had a certain "console feel" so the jury is still 
out. I have loaded but not patched up/played World in Conflict and UT3.

Paul S.
no longer playing video games....sigh......