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Mine arrived yesterday - on my 50th birthday, no less. Transforming it was an exercise in patience with pieces popping off left and right. The metal hinge assembly on what becomes the backpack in battroid mode was *incredibly* tight on my copy. I’m glad I had Scorched Earth’s transformation guide on YouTube to warn me what I was getting into. I’ll be surprised if I transform it even one more time.

How about Boeing? This tech could be the solution for when planes jettison "door plugs." If only they had hired Yang. 😉

Got the same notification, but I only knew to look for it because of your post. Many thanks! I went with DHL just to be done with it. With shipping rates being what they are, I think 2024 will be my year to shop for sale/clearance items rather than pre-ordering. I might even try to cancel one or two pre-orders. [I've had a Gigapower Dinobot pre-ordered since 2022. TFSource says the figure should be released around March. We'll see.]

It was a lot of work, but it's been wonderful having everything reside locally on a server. It was a good solution for us because with my AppleTV purchases over the years, we currently have somewhere north of 5000 titles (when you include TV and movies together). My only complaint is the cost: the initial server was thousands and thousands of dollars, and thankfully, we've had to upgrade only once due to storage limits. We've had to replace only one drive thus far, but because of how she arranged additional drives to serve as backups (don't ask me, I don't know the details), we didn't lose any data. I wouldn't recommend following in our footsteps because it's a slippery slope in terms of always having to buy additional storage space. I buy a lot less media than I used to, but with the release of 4K titles we're chewing through disk space even faster than before. I'm not looking forward to the cost of the next upgrade.

I wanted to but I just learned that with my turning 50 in a couple days, the gov’t is allowing me to play catch up on my Roth IRA by authorizing an additional $7,500 in contributions over the typical annual cap. I gotta max out to make up for the decades of neglect.

Amen!

A sexy beast below MSRP? Don't blame you a bit.

That’s my strategy at the moment. I tend to get up in the middle of the night to work a bit. I’ll play the refresh game and see if I get lucky.

That happened to me too! My longtime buddy, Ignacio Ocamica, said he was gifting me his YF-21 along with his YF-19 preorder! MW members are incredibly generous!

Same.

Just picked up one from Nin Nin. I don't like price, but I'll "dollar cost average" with ones I pick up later. The trouble I had last night/this morning when trying to order one was due to my credit card's automatic fraud detection. I buy a lot from overseas, but maybe I got flagged because of the odd local hour I was trying to make a purchase.

I noticed the pricing shenanigans and shifted immediately to other vendors.

Had one in my cart but I decided last minute to wait for it on Amazon. All of the recent DXes are still for sale on Amazon, even the YF-19, so I figure I'll snag a few from Tamashii a little later. If that plan fails, I'll pay the late tax. No bigs.

I noticed that too. Of all the pre-order sites I've seen thus far, Ami Ami is the only one I've used previously. I've registered new accounts with a couple alternative vendors, but w/o prior experience I'm a little wary. I've been in the game for over 30 years and I've been burned more times than I care to admit. If there's a silver lining, it's that credit card companies have been pretty generous lately with clawing back "scammed" funds.

This is the one I was waiting for. TY!

Send me the bill. I'll cover the connection fee: [Offer declined.]

Don't be a cheapskate. Pay for the in-air internet service. American Airlines offers in-service internet for about $15.00.

I've got a clock counting down for me: https://time.is/1600_10_Jan_2024_in_Japan

TY! I didn't realize there were so many options. My better half is the media expert so I'll ask her to help piece all of this together. [She managed a Blockbuster in college and ended up with something like 2000 titles when they finally shuttered the store. It took a year of on/off effort, but she finally ripped everything (Handbrake?), added subtitles and artwork found online, and put all of it on a media server to stream throughout the house. I think that's the first and last time she did anything remotely related to her engineering degree.]

I picked up a DVD copy (Japanese language with English subtitles) on eBay today for ~$40. More than I wanted to pay but asi es la vida.

My search here at MW didn't provide an answer to my question: where can I watch Macross Plus in its original language but subtitled in English? I *loath* dubs. Help a brother out. Thanks All.

Response from Threezero regarding release of VF-1J: ”We are sorry that there is a delay with the release of ROBO-DOU VF-1J Veritech (Rick Hunter) and the estimated shipping date would be in the 1st quarter of 2024. Best Regards, Threezero CS”

I’m not too familiar with the animated source material. In a word, it comes down to design. I love it. I own one of each of the previous releases and haven’t had an issue. If the new ones break, I trust I have the skills to fix them.

I love your take. Viewed one way, it brings a sense of reality to the universe: the companies behind the YF-19 and YF-21 are vying for a government contract that has very specific requirements. Additionally, we should expect some common design elements simply because both companies would have access to the latest "public domain" advancements in flight tech.

A DBZ reference here, of all places, wasn't on my Bingo card. Respect.