Hey, y'all. I'm feeling blue. Lucky you, to read my story of today's experience. (For those who remember, I drove my pimpmobile to the California owners meet oh-so-many months ago.)

Before holiday break, I finally had a chance to order a tuner. Please, wait for it -- yes, you, with your hand up, just settle back and let me finish the story. Why didn't I order one sooner? The litany of excuses is long, mainly consisting of "It should be ready in July" but wasn't, SonicBlue website being out of stock, my credit card being temporarily suspended, and a heavy late-year workload at the office.

So when I saw at 5:00am (Pacific time) on December 22 that SonicBlue would "not be shipping products from Saturday, December 22nd since our warehouse will be closing 5 P.M. PST Friday, December 21st and will begin shipping again January 3rd" I grudgingly abandoned my web access at work for the long break. (I've none at home)

Returning today, I discovered the *amazing* price drop, and hummed a merry little tune as I went about placing my order. Oh, those accursed three words, "Out of Stock." I had yet to see that shopping cart ever graced by any other phrase. "Hmmm," I thought to myself. "Self," I said, "that price drop is probably a bad sign. A very bad sign. I guess I'd better brave the BBS and see what's up."

You see, I don't come here very often. My fingers twitch every time I have to wait for that tiresome "Connecting..." message to be replaced with the b'board page I asked for. Yet even subscribing to the email digest is a wasted gesture; I really haven't the stamina to keep up with 200 posts a day, nor is there any useful system for panning the gold nuggets of useful bug reports, software enhancements, event announcements, and tips out of the onslaught of banter, irrelevant (to me) tech support, and gripe sessions. I really wish there was something between "General" and "Announcements" ... but I digress.

Wait, that's no digression, that IS my point. I'm writing this unhappy missive to share -- no, to vent -- my frustration at my failure to reap the gloriously promised benefits of being an Empeg family member. SonicBlue sports a black eye for providing a shopping experience comparable to an abandoned deli with a sign out front reading "Back at 1pm" at all hours. My second drive bay gathers dust beside its long-full 18GB brother, for Empeg offers nothing larger than a 20 (surely there are larger laptop drives nowadays), not to mention the not-mentioning by SonicBlue anywhere that such an upgrade is even possible. Or will such a thing even be possible for much longer?

I take comfort knowing that y'all are such a healthy, active community, and that if I ever find the Herculean motivation to absorb deeply the salty tidal wave of hobbydom, I'll likely find all I seek here. The funny thing is, I *am* a programmer by trade, I just haven't the inclination to touch-type the Linux kernel byte by byte into my home PC (I'm sure there's a circle of hell for that) just to hack on the Mark II. At least, not yet.

Meanwhile, add my voice to the small-but-earnest chorus of Tuner wanters. I'll just be weeping in the corner until the verdict is in.

- Sean

P.S. I'm curiously monikered for an Anonymous User, no? It was this element that prompted me to reply in this thread:
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The board is an invaluable source of current and archived information (you can lose yourself reading for ages:)