Because he said, you know, I'm not doing musical chairs with all that shit, you know. Yeah, so I said, well, you know, I don't know if we are yet, and they've been pretty efficient. We really kind of, you know, we got the cadence of work, you know, the team meetings and all that stuff. Actually, today, Thursdays, the reason I was late coming on with you guys is Thursdays is the big team meeting day. And so Thursday afternoon, it's like back to back to back to back, you know. So you got, you know, you got Jack and Ellen and, you know, all the way down the line. and everybody's meetings. And so we've got the cadence down, and we know how to do it now. And so, you know, things have been, you know, knock on wood, great. Good. Busy is good. From a hobbyist looking in from the outside, it looks like the two main issues it's facing right now are demand and part shortages. And we talked a little bit about the parts. Let's tackle the demand because it's a fantastic problem to have, But I know that it's a problem for you guys because there's so much demand for your product. Yeah, so there's a lot of stuff to try to deal with that demand because, honestly, we'd love to satisfy it, right? It's a great business problem to have. So it's being attacked in a lot of different ways. Unfortunately, some of it takes a little bit of time, right? So if you want to expand manufacturing beyond the footprint that you have, you need a bigger space. And so we in the midst of finding a bigger space Oh good And then you need to staff that up And staffing manufacturing like staffing anything is you know there all these different layers And so you need at a very minimum you need the leadership layer is really important because that has to be there so that, like, you know, the people that run work cells and deal with all of the different areas, you need to expand that. And so it's a question of, you know, we've studied, we've done a lot of study on, you know, should we go to a couple of shifts? The issue, we don't believe that we would be efficient in multiple shifts at this point. Maybe it's a future date, and so that's one of the things that we could look at. But right now, we wouldn't be efficient. You know, we would be, it might be hurting us. And we have, look, when you ramp up production and you have material shortages and you have to hire a lot of people and bring a lot of new people in and train a lot of people and stuff, I'm very aware of the quality issues, right? So I want to tackle all that stuff too, right? So a lot of it can be done in design, but some of it, you know, it's kind of like we can specify the right screw all day long. We can test the crap out of something, but it doesn't get screwed together right with that screw. You know, and it manages to get out the door. Nobody catches it. Then you have a problem, right? So now the good news is the other thing that we're looking at is there's a lot of conversation out there, and it's wrong that we have fewer people in tech service. We actually have more people in tech service, but we also have tremendous demand for their time. So we're looking at, you know, fixing the call-in line issues and, you know, the people aren't getting a call back or people feel like they're not being updated on parts and stuff like that. So a lot of moving parts. I mean, really, literally and figuratively. You mentioned the staffing, that you're still building more staff. Are you finding it hard to find staff at all, like a lot of businesses are, or has there not been a problem? Yeah, we can get bodies. It's a question of are you getting the right bodies, right? So I think that, and honestly, every time we hire, it doesn't matter what area you hire into, whenever you hire, there's some ramp up for those people to learn, to train. So, I mean, I bristle at the notion that, you know, like when people say that we don't care or that we're being, you know, callous about stuff, that's like the farthest thing from the truth. I can't even begin to tell you because I've said it before, but certainly the guys in my studio are huge drivers of the sort of the performance expectations for the company to some extent. And because we are consumers of the product. So it's kind of like I've paid for my Stern pinball machines with my money. I brought them home. I've opened them up. I literally take notes and I either call over there and congratulate them. Hey, my Deadpool came out of the box and it was perfect. Or I say, hey, my Deadpool came out of the box and I had this issue. Right. So we care a lot and we're trying to fix the problems. We're not going to fix them overnight. And honestly, the demand for the product and the fact that we've had to scale up and that we have these material shortages. You know, when a vendor has a material shortage, sometimes, you know, and it's bit us. It bit us just recently. We don't have adequate time to analyze the substitution, right? That bit us in the ass in a rush, right? So, yeah, you know, on paper it looks like it's the right material. And it's like, oh, man, you know, what do we do now? And so, you know, it's like you're, like, trying to fix a problem on the run, you know, while still trying to satisfy demand and stuff. So, hey, that's the world we live in. We signed up for it. We're in it. We're going to do the best we can. And in this stuff, obviously, people know that this stuff will happen. It's how you respond to it as a company that matters, not so much that it happened. Yeah, where are we with that? I mean, the rush, I think you're referencing the outholes. Yeah, and honestly, you know, Borky, this is no secret. And I told Elliot, I said, you know, let's be truthful. He did a podcast, I think, with the Marco guys. And as I just told the story, I mean, it's like, honestly, we developed most of the game, the entire development cycle of that game, there was no protector on there. And, you know, he's got, I can't tell you how many games, countless games, where he's had a scoop that close to the flippers. I mean, you go back to his old Data East designs, and that existed in those designs. And that was pre-anybody putting a protector on anything, right? So he developed that game, and we don't have a policy that every eject hole, every fuck, there is no policy that mandates that they get a protector, because protectors are a double-edged sword. And protectors are kind of like those dudes that rip their playfields apart and put a piece of plastic on them. It's like, okay, yeah, you're not going to damage the wood. I think your game plays like shit, but okay, you don't have at it. So protectors have been sort of designer's choice, meaning I like the way it feels. I'm getting too many rejections out of the hall. I don't want that, whatever. And so if you notice the promotional photos of the game, the promotional photos that went out, none of them had a protector on them, right? And the community reacted to that. You know, we started getting emails saying, hey, you guys are going to put a protector on this, right? Yeah, yeah. So my fault. I called Borgia and said, hey, make sure you guys put a protector on that game. Okay. 11th hour, it's not any, you know, protector design. So we've done a billion of them. There's nothing exotic about it. In this particular case, the hole for that particular block was smaller than anything he's ever done before. Okay. And when the ball whacks the back of that thing, it comes back and it hits that edge. And it has a lot more energy than when, you know, I mean, I have a very similar design in Deadpool. It's further up play field. The ball has less energy. I never had a lick of a problem on a protector. I don't hear anybody talking about a Deadpool protector problem. You know, very similar design, you know, similar material. That's a situation where the vendor did substitute a material, and we didn't have any test time on it. And honestly, if you look at the specs on the material, I told those guys, I said, I think if we had the right material in there, it wouldn't have survived the fact that the edge is so close to the back of the scoop. I said, I don't buy it for a minute. So here we are, and we've got to fix it on the fly. This isn't the first thing we fixed on the fly. What's interesting is that when we fixed it, then a lot of the guys are going, hey, I can backhand the shot now. And so it actually, as ugly as it is, it actually makes the shot easier. What is the fix, George, just for people who may not know? Yeah, so there's a kit that you bolt on. I believe there's two components to the kit. There's a part, the other problem that they ran into is there's a switch in the trough that sometimes was creating a ball trap, and so the ball would be in there lost. So there's a fix for that, and there's a fix that basically puts a couple of blue rubbers. So that blue rubber material is, it's an energy-absorbing material. It's an elastomer. We'd use it. So it was a standard material at Williams. And I'm the first guy. I did it on Johnny Mnemonic. If I know Johnny Mnemonic, I'm the guy that turned it on edge and put it on a ball guide. And basically, I did that to buy a little bit more space because I had a couple of tight shots on Johnny Mnemonic. And that became a thing, right? Now, the material I used was 316-6 back at Williams. And now it's been adopted by everybody. And everybody uses it in different ways. I myself, I've watched somebody in the building took it all the way down to like an eighth of an inch or something in thickness. And I did that on Deadpool and regretted it. I'll never do that again. But that 316 thickness is fine. The material thing, again, bit us in the ass. The material started coming in really thick. And the people on the line started putting it together just like they always did. So to add insult to injury, if you will, there was some portion of those things with the new design that went out. and the thick material, you know, basically they tightened it as they always do, and the edge of the metal, because the material was thicker than the bracketry was designed for, cut into the material. So now you've got a bunch of guys. I think it was on the Canada podcast. I still have that image, you know. And then, you know, he wrecked me over the coals. He does to everyone. Yeah. What a dick. But the reality was, like, the minute I see this, I'm, like, calling the engineering team going, what the hell is this? And so they would go out to the line and was like, oh, my God, we found a box of these things. So a bunch of people got these. So, you know, so what's the fix? The fix is call Stern, get the free kit, install the kit, and that'll take care of your problem. I'll tell you that I'm looking at some of the aftermarket solutions, if you will. So it's, you know, some of the guys in the business, you know, some of the guys in the aftermarket designed a bunch of stuff. And I was like, okay, I told the guys, I said, buy all that stuff. I want to bring it in and put it in life test. I want to see if it holds up to our life test on things. right? Maybe there's something to be learned there. Maybe not, right? People have been clamoring forever to get Cliffy, the guy who makes those Cliffy protectors, to get hired by one of these companies. Yeah, I'll tell you that in this particular case, what Cliffy does is what, you know, protectors very similar to what we do. In this particular hole, his aren't going to fare any better. But I know there's some interesting elastomer solutions and some 3D printed solutions out there that I've looked at and say, okay, so, you know, we would never do that. We would never a 3D print the thing, but we would mold something if it made sense, and maybe we can optimize that material. I don't know. Yeah. You know, if somebody does something better than we do, we take note and we say, okay, you know, maybe we learned from that. If somebody doesn't, you know, it's like the one thing that we do do is a lot of that stuff, when we have the time to test it, in this particular case, we didn't have a lot of test time on that thing because most of the game was developed without it. When we test it, we test the crap out of it. We'll test it to failure just to see what we learn. Right. Okay, let's shift towards games in general that may be releasing this year and into the future. Normally there are three cornerstone games as well as a few other smaller runs like contract games, vault additions, and things like that that you release every year. So with demand being so high and supply being limited, Stern made a difficult decision to alter the release schedule this year. Can you tell us how that changed your plans for this year and why you made that decision? One of the big drivers was the fact that the number of back orders is so high, right? So there's such demand that you introduce a new title when, in fact, you've got a bunch of people waiting for titles. So, I mean, that was a big driver. There were some other issues. You know, Steve left, and his game was kind of, like, at that point, dead in the water. So you say, okay, you know, what do I do with this? So it's like, okay, so that needs a little bit more time. So it was a combination of things, you know, basically. But I think that the high number of games, high demand for games, the backorders, was a big driving force. Also, the material shortages, we talked about that. So we're really fortunate that the back catalog is so strong and there's such demand for it. And what that does is it allows you to make those kinds of decisions, right? Like you say, okay, I got parts for Deadpools, short parts for Jurassic's. Okay, put off building Jurassic's, build some Deadpools, right? So it's kind of like, you know, it's like you take a look, you know, sometimes there are parts that are common, like Spike 2 stuff, right, that's common. Well, okay, that's in every game. When you're short those, you're making decisions basically across the board. It doesn't matter what title a node board goes into. It's a node board, it's a node board, it's a node board. It's the same thing with a CPU, right? By the end of this year, do you think you guys are going to all be back on track, or do you think there's still potential that this sort of thing could happen? No, I can't speak to, you know, are we going to make a decision to do two games next year as opposed to three. But I think that, I don't know if we'll be caught up, if you will, with the demand. Because the thing about the demand is we've had a string of hits. So it's like I was shocked at the demand for Rush because historically a blockbuster, it almost doesn't matter what you have following a blockbuster. So Godzilla has been a blockbuster. So in my history, like all the way back to Williams, it didn't matter what it was, whether they were video games or pinball machines, if you managed to hit one out of the park, The following game, almost didn't matter that it was a good game or a great game, it went unnoticed because the demand for the previous game basically buried it. And here on Rush, oh my God, the demand has been through the roof. So you say, and I gamble to say that they may be different customers, which is great. You know, we've tapped into two different veins of customers. But, you know, if you've got a bunch of guys clamoring for Godzilla, guess what? You've got a whole bunch of guys clamoring for Rush. So that's an amazing best-case scenario that, honestly, when those sales guys told me, you know, like, as much as I love Rush, I love the band, I love the game, I think those guys did a great job. But I kept referencing, dude, you're on the back end of Godzilla. Are you kidding me? You know, you're not going to sell as many Rushes because there's so much demand for Godzilla. And, wow, was I wrong.