At long last, we have all contracted out pieces of the puzzle! These brackets and their brass cousins were the holdup, more or less entirely by themselves. If I had known going into it that they would take this long and cost this much money and effort, you would have had plastic everything, along with your beam, about two months ago.

Looking at the result, though, I'm glad that didn't happen, because these are everything we hoped they'd be. We're hoping you'll like them.

Current status: all domestic $8 pledges have shipped, of the people who have sent their address. If we don't have your address, we can't send you your stuff, so please get that to us! The $32s will be shipping this week. Once we've printed labels for the 32s and otherwise put that data into play, we'll be asking the Betas for their shipping information; we're doing it this way because the Kickstarter database back end leaves features to be desired.

We'll assemble as much as possible of the Betas over the coming week, and stage shipments starting as soon as this Friday. Alphas upgrade kits and institutional packages will go out once there's some space to work with the larger beams that go into the institutional kits.

Then there's the standard to polish up and publish. Whew!

This has been a game of new discoveries, hard lessons, waiting, and surviving as the weeks stretch into months. But with the arrival of the last piece of the puzzle it's become fun again. There will be updates in the days to come; more importantly, we're shipping boxes!

This could never have happened without you, and you have our profound thanks. Hang tight just a bit longer; the finish line is in sight.