Well hello! I’m Kris, Doer of Many Things here at NE. I’m co-founder here and as my title suggests, my days are varied with lots of tasks. My biggest job is that I design hardware here: I do the schematics and route the PCBs (but we come up with concepts and layouts as a team). I do lots of other things, too: module repairs, customer service, business stuff, marketing…I dabble in almost everything.

But I’m going to be stepping away for a little bit. I was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

If you’ve been following us for a while, you may know that I have a background in biology, much of which is directly relevant to what I am dealing with. This isn’t really the place to go into those details, so I’ll just say that I am going into this with my normal twisted sense of humor, a lot of information, an incredible care team, the support of an amazing network of friends, and knowledge that it was caught early and that outcomes for people of my demographics are extremely good. Which is to say that so far, all signs point to this being a good cancer to have…you know, if you have to have cancer. That’s weird to say, but it looks like I’m pretty lucky as cancer goes. 

Another thing I’m grateful for is that the NE team is…gosh I’m out of superlatives. Awesome, incredible, wonderful…really, the exact team I could hope for in the midst of this.

So here’s the scoop.

We’re still determining my treatment, so I have been and will continue to be out of the office a substantial amount. Surgery is in my very near future (no date set yet), but what comes after remains to be seen. Obviously, since NE is ostensibly “run” by a married couple, this is going to take both of us out for a bit as Stephen shuttles me to various treatments. 

We’ll post when I get my groove back and I’m at my desk again. I am not afraid of talking about this, but most of you are here for the synths, not that. I have other places to soapbox, and soapbox I will…but there, not here. Suffice it to say, if you care to join me in my chant of “no chemo, no chemo” and hope that whatever powers that be may hear it, I’d welcome your assistance; I’m quite hopeful that isn’t in my future, and there’s a reasonable chance I won’t need it.

We ask for a little patience as we sort all of this out over the next few months: this is new territory for us and if we drop a ball somewhere, please let us know and we’ll work to make it right.

That said, we are working hard here to make sure that most of you won’t even notice I’m (we’re) gone. We have set up an alternative system for repairs, and the illustrious Markus already answers most of your questions by email, but will step in and answer all customer emails (I’ll probably check in here and there as I’m able, because I can’t help myself). They have the full support of the team though, so if they’re stumped by something, they will ask; which incidentally is what I do too. So please do drop us a line with your questions (or just to say hi!), and you’ll still get the same banner service you always have.

I am in charge of hardware and making/ordering PCBs and while I can’t reveal anything, we’ve been working our butts off here to get some really amazing things in the pipeline before they cart me off to carve me up…and we’ve project managed the heck out of essentially the rest of the year – the team knows what to do even if I were to be out through the rest of the year (which is highly unlikely)!

Noise Engineering will be attending Knobcon this year, but Stephen and I will stay here. This year, Markus and Patrick will be staffing the booth. So if you plan to go to Knobcon, please stop by and see them, chat, get a demo, and hang out!

We’re bringing Noiseblast back, too, with some great events planned for this year (starting THIS SUNDAY with the incredible Megan Leber!). How exactly all of it will run is still a little in the air, but we’ll make it work and we can’t wait to see everyone back in the chat.

We also hope to get back to more public events in general this year, as things become safe (if they remain so). I’ll probably sit most of those out for now, but we hope you’ll see the smiling faces of the team a bit more this year.

The ONLY people who might notice I am gone are those grammar sticklers who may want to fight me for my title of Hyphenator in Chief. I suspect blog posts may miss a few hyphens in my absence, and perhaps even make a couple of stylistic choices I wouldn’t make…I’ll just have to live with it. I’ll consider it a great motivator to get better.

Thanks to all the amazing customers out there who have supported us, and thanks for your continued support while we work through his weirdness. Until next time…