I would like to start by saying that we're working hard to bring you the new NGC and a new set of tools.
I'm actually in the middle of writing something at the moment and started feeling (strongly) that I needed to give some justification for our actions over the past 8 months.
I'm a strong believer in keeping personal and business issues separated. However, I don't know how to give justification without getting into the personal end of it.
Additionally, I'm not fond of the idea of admitting the situation with NG since people (generally) seem to think of us as a big corp. (that forgot about them). In reality, however, we're a 1 or 2 man operation with no corp. building that are continually thinking about our clients.
Before I get started, know this is not a sob story. I just want to show the logistical side of things so you can see why things happened the way they did. I will end by addressing where we're headed in development and how close we are.
We first announced NGC here I was fairly young, only 17 or 18. I was still with my parents. Things went well for awhile (with a cable connection). My Dad went cultish and crazy. My mother, my sister, and I all had to get out of the house and find a place to live (after he drained the bank accounts). The entire family sided with my Father and all our 'friends' vanished. We landed in a small house with the help of HUD. Then I designed on launched NN over my new dialup connection (14.4). A little time passed as we got some new NG projects up. Things started happening with the house (flooded basement, gasoline smells, etc..) and the landlord (and HUD) pinned it on us. My Mom's attorney told me I need to get out of Dodge before everything caved in (and they went after my bank accounts).
This puts us into Sept. of last year. I called around to find someone to stay with (I had no car either). No takers. The first person to say "yes" was in Alaska.
This sticks me in Alaska. NGC3 is written and released and the contract with TGC is signed. The person I'm with in Alaska starts wanting more and more money (taking advantage of the NG rise) so I gunned it, changed everything over to wireless, bought a car in Long Island on eBay, and flew to Long Island, NY.
I'm in LI, the guy with the car wants to know my story. He hears the story and thinks I might be a criminal (this is NY) and is afraid to let me drive the car away. (since he's between two police stations).
I stay the night in a L.I. train station in Dec. (cold) I reach one of my contacts in LI and he picks me up and takes me to the DMV so I can get the car up to par. I drive the car around the corner and my tailpipe curls up under the backend of my car almost clipping my brake line. I go and get a hacksaw and saw off my tailpipe. Later I find that the gas tank leaks too if you put more than half a tank of gas in.
I spend about 4 or so days driving from New York to AZ. I meet up with my 2nd in command and stay with him as we get back on our feet.
That's where I am now and have been since the beggining of Jan.
I'm 20 y.o now and surrounded by people that all want to see NG succeed.
Since that time we've redone the site and have been working on our new engine (we cannot survive off the NGC alone and everything got over-extended before). The engine floats somewhere around 30,000 to 50,000 lines in size currently.
My 2nd in command has been on a dialup connection all of this time. We're just now getting a DSL connection (within the next week or so) and will see the revivial of NN and all of our other tools.
In appreciation to all of our buyers (when we release all of our new tools) we're going to give all of you a chance to get the tools at half-price in addition to some possible freebies for waiting.
We're coming around the corner (finally) with our engine and the new NGC is on the horizon.
To put it simply:
As long as I'm alive, so is NG
If we're down, we're working on it.
If something is wrong with our software (and we know), you can bet we're working on it already.
With software we sometimes have a tenancy to get absorbed with making something work perfect and forget that 3rd parties are waiting to see updates. We're revising how we handle this so you all, too, can see that the balls are to the walls.
There you have it. I hate about 80% of the above text cause it's not saying "NGC has this now" and "NG is working over here to bring you this" and "We're doing this to resolve problems A, B, and C".
This is probably the only post you'll see like this. I hate the idea of looking like we're "whining" in place where we're to present ourselves professionally.
Now. Back to the a-bomb.
