A thank you to Peter for providing a place to escape and chat with other passionate soundtrack fans who understand that a difference in taste doesn't mean the poster is a bad person. I hope the store is doing well enough to keep the lights on and maintain your interest. The early packing problems have been solved but the delivery still needs work. I place my order, put my shoes on, get up from my computer, go out to my mailbox and there are NO cds there. Work on it Peter.

For the rest of you, it's been a pleasure seeing what is discussed and watching people on opposite sides of the political spectrum find common ground on a composer or score. I've been particularly impressed with the knowledge of our younger members and hope you appreciate what a good time it is for our mutual hobby. In the 60's, it was often a rarity to find a soundtrack in the stores. Now it's a rarity if a film doesn't have at least one soundtrack.

I'd like to single out Jeron Moore for his friendship, but I won't because he's been working for MGM and hasn't scamed me any Bond or Stargate SG-1 stuff (just kidding).

It will be a few weeks before the transplant, and Holly and I are looking for a laptop (Suggestions are welcome as to brands. You guys are more computer savvy than I ever expect to be and I'd swear my last computer had a Dorrito chip). The doctors encourage us to stay up with our hobbies and bring a motivational poster. Mine is a framed DIE ANOTHER DAY teaser poster with seems to fit.

This is far from goodbye. This is a fight I intend to win. And if you think I'm going to miss a new Bond score AND a new Star Trek score, you don't know me very well.

I'll continue to lurk and post when I'm up to it on the laptop.

My best to you all,

Jack

Laptops... I own a Sony that's 3.5 years old and I'm very pleased with it. I can't say I'm the most informed laptop guy on the planet, but the current Sony lineup includes the FXA series with the same great big 14.1" screen that sold me on them in 1999 and some fantastic AMD processors. I know many of my fellow computer science students at my school seem to find the Dell laptops to their liking and they appear to be built quite well. Unfortunately Dell refuses to put AMD processors in their machines, so I can't give them my seal of approval.

As laptops go, I can heartily recommend Dell Laptops. They are sturdy and provide all the computing power you might need. They also come with a plethora of ports so that you can add whatever peripherals you are comfortable with. (I hate touchpads so I carry a mouse with mine.) The cases are sturdy have plenty of room for carrying extra add-ons and work papers. The CD-Rom/DVD drives are hotswappable with the floppys and Zip drives. Their customer service is excellent and the quality of their construction exceeds that of Compaq and Toshiba (I did Tech Support for both)

I second MWR's Dell recommendation. I bought an Insprion 8100 last December and have been using it as my main computer ever since. There are two disadvantages: Crappy case (that's the laptop's own case, not the bag you can carry it in; it does feel rather cheap compared to other laptops), and awful speakers. That is, I think the soundcard is horribly slow, too, but my main complaint is that the speakers are really bad - but if you need better sound, you can always use headphones or external speakers. But everything else about it is top-notch, and it was the only laptop I could find that would replace a full-grown workstation for an affordable price. It's quite heavy (they have a low-weight product line, too), but it's got two batteries, a fantastic 15" screen, and a GeForce2 - no problems playing modern games on it. Plus it has a touchpad AND a stick, so it's pretty usable even if I'm not at home and didn't want to take the mouse with me (I hate those pads, but the stick works surprisingly well). Oh, and you can assemble your own combination of hardware components when you buy it, you can choose from different CPUs, gfx cards, HD sizes, amount of RAM etc. without having to pick a pre-assembled configuration that only somewhat fits your needs.

I wish you all the best, buddy!

We stopped on our way back from St. Louis and picked up the Buffy and CSI soundtracks to listen to on our three hour drive home. I wish there was more score on both, but the scoobies did a good lobbying job to get a Buffy cd issued at all.

Jeron: I'm not expecting an Aston Martin, but an Omega Seamaster would do.

They have a donor and I've passed all the tests, so the dates are set and a go. The cancer picked the wrong guy to mess with because I'm going to kick it in the butt.