MOTM

a) if you're going to be snarkey, please use your real name. Handles are 
so.....1997 GeoCities.
b) anytime you want to 'chime in' with more worderful and thought-provoking 
insights, please go elsewhere.


Paul S.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "martyschnooker" <martyschnooker@...>
To: <motm@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2012 10:56 AM
Subject: [motm] Re: Update: 2011 sucked!


> Wow.  Lots of excuses.  Do Paul and Cynthia share the same ghost writer?
>
> --- In motm@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Schreiber" <synth1@...> wrote:
>>
>> Wife & I wore all black to protest 2011. Only positive thing: grandson 
>> Noah who turned 4 months yesterday. Did I mention he is the world's 
>> cutest baby?
>>
>> Yes, 2011 was just miserable on all fronts: personal, family, 
>> professional, MOTM, you name it.
>>
>> Let's talk a bit about MOTM 5U.
>>
>> The format was always intended to be DIY first. However, I had no idea 
>> when I started how popular it would be. This may sound odd but the thing 
>> just snowballed on me.
>> I decided to get 'outside help' but no one locally was interested in 
>> through-hole insertion and my "low volumes". I tried to hire local 
>> tech-school graduates but 3 out of the 4
>> I hired quit < 10 days after they started (gee, it is sort of boring to 
>> count resistors into little plastic bags).
>>
>> I was lucky to have Paul Haneberg offer vitrually free assistance, which 
>> came when I was out of work for 15 months (and non-working wife with 2 
>> kids). But shortly thereafter Paul
>> suffered a massive stroke and I had to take it all back on. So in 2006 I 
>> decided to stop the full kits and go "MOTM 2.0". I then offered a 'last 
>> time buy', thinking *maybe* another 75
>> kit or so would be bought. Nope, it was 916. That is over $200,000 in 
>> *parts*. Then, 2 unrelated by unforseen things happened back-to-back:
>>
>> a) my wire provider, who did all the nice colored, tinned wire/coax 
>> closed down *without any warning at all* when I had very little left in 
>> stock
>> b) Vishay decided to move all my pc board pot production to France. This 
>> caused me to not receive a single pot shipment for 16 *MONTHS*. Then they 
>> raised the price from $1.83 to $7.90 (wtf).
>>
>> Well, after all this was resolved it was 2009. I still had piles of 
>> backlog, and piles of kits to ship. I was able to find a pot replacement 
>> vendor while roaming NAMM (BTI). I was able to locate a Taiwan company to 
>> make me wire for a $900 "batch fee" (I got a shitload of wire). But here 
>> came the "copper shortage" and prices started going up up and up. Tyco 
>> started charging $2.83 for a knob that in 1998 was 47 cents. But I 
>> stumbled along and got the backlog down somewhat. Then here came the end 
>> of 2010/2011.
>>
>> 1) I was fired from my nice, $130K/yr, work out of my house job because 
>> my 33 year old boss "just didn't understand engineers" (direct quote). I 
>> was replaced by a 40yr old BSET sales droid making $80K/yr.
>>
>> 2) I got a decent paying job at RIM designing the audio circuits of the 
>> new Blackberries. The job was ~35mi away through heavy traffic. I decided 
>> to move closer and the wife wanted a 'nicer house'.
>>
>> 3) so I packed up and moved to a new house that was only 11mi away. I 
>> made exactly *one* house payment. RIM laid off 2,000 people, and I was 
>> one of them.
>>
>> 4) We wait 2 months to see if the "old house" sells (we own it outright, 
>> thanks Maxim stock options). Nope, no sale! Wife decides to move BACK to 
>> original house.
>>
>> 5) Then baby Noah is born, daughter & boyfriend break up, daughter + Baby 
>> Noah are now moved back.
>>
>> 6) So, I pack all the stuff up AGAIN and move back. I am about 95% 
>> unpacked/located all the stuff.
>>
>> In the "glory years" of MOTM (1999-2002) I shipped around 900 
>> modules/year. This year I shipped 64. Yep.........64 (cough). I sucked at 
>> MOTM in 2011.
>>
>> ++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>
>> 2012 will be *very different* than the way things have been. I will start 
>> 'announcing stuff' after NAMM. Some people will rejoice and others will 
>> not be happy campers. But things cannot drag on and on and dribble out 
>> like they have been for the last 4 years or so. The death of JH put me 
>> into a 3 week funk and I still get depressed some days.
>>
>> I want to thank everyone who has stuck by me all this time, almost 13 
>> years now. Don't panic: MOTM is not 'going away'. It's just going to be 
>> ..........+++CARRIER LOST++++
>>
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