My apologies for today's downtime but due to circumstances beyond my control - a comedy of errors at the hosting facility - there was nothing for it but to wait out the storm. But with a bit of luck that is all behind us, so now we can resume the business at hand - MTM!. Again, sorry for the inconvenience.

In older news, mtm2online.com is now back, er, um, online ;-)

Wow, two outages in two weeks. I'll be glad when this month is over.

- Phineus

I've just gotten word that the "403 Forbidden" messages you may be getting from mtm2online.com and mtm2tournaments.com are the result of unscheduled problems on the server. News is that the hosting company is working to get all sites on the server back up and running as soon as possible, but delays have been caused by unexpected power trouble and a large numbers of server that are in need of similar attention. Not to worry, everything will be restored back to normal in due course. ShadowPricess apologizes for any inconvenience.

- Phineus

As announced previously, Cale's design was selected for the new Bigfoot 14, and today we finally see the outcome of that project.

Click here for the bigfoot4x4.com announcement naming Cale as the contest winner.

Click here for details about Bigfoot 14.

Once again, a big thanks to the Bigfoot team. And congratulations Cale on an awesome job.

- Phineus

From August 24th until September 30th, bigfoot4x4.com accepted design submissions for their new Bad Boys of Racing II slated for 2010. On October 16th they announced the winning design was created by our very own Cale Putnam. The contest carries several prizes, but the crowning jewel is that the new Bigfoot Monster will carry Cale's paint job!

To see a selection of some of the other submissions, please check out monstermayhem.org where you'll find some fine work, including some by other MTMers such as jetmonkeyj, RockStarCycle, Jordan Robson, RKM, Crazyman9, ChromeThunder, FlyinBryan, RyanRoberts, JasonMiller, JFR_Fan, Team Tweaked. Needless to say, the gang over at BigFoot had their work cut out for them selecting from those entries.

Thank you Bigfoot for years of great monster trucking. And congratulations Cale on a great design.

- Phineus

Having heard nothing but good things about radeon - DON'T BUY ONE - cards, I thought I'd opt for one in my new computer. Big mistake - DON'T BUY ONE! First and foremost, it doesn't render our game properly - so, DON'T BUY ONE. Instead of the wonderful-looking images you'd expect from a high-priced piece of state-of-the-art hardware, I get multiple bands of horizontal lines. It looks like crap and makes our game unplayable - DON'T BUY ONE. Of course, I can always use software rendering, but at the same time I don't really need to spend hundreds of dollars on a graphics card to do that. So, I headed over to the ati web site looking for drivers and support, but instead of improvements I encounter a convoluted mess of corporate run-around and NO WARRANTY! Apparently, AMD bought ATI a few years ago. I didn't know this but didn't let it bother me, at first. After trying updated drivers to no effect, I attempted to contact somebody there to report my experiences. Good luck with that. Eventually I sent a general contact form, waited a few days, and was finally told they had automatically registered/signed me up for their BS support system, through which I must now resubmit my problem report. To make a long story bearable, I was told (1) AMD does not warranty ATI video cards and marked the cased 'solved', and after pressing further was told (2) to use a specific ATI web address where I attempted to download the most recent drivers but which pointed immediately back to the AMD site. The card still does not work for our game, I have no means of warranty or refunding my money, and if my experiences mean anything, AMD/ATI could care less about delivering a product that works or providing a reasonable level of customer service - their website is a bad joke. And they certainly don't care about Monster Truck Madness 2 since it is NOT listed among the games they support, a discovery subsequently made during my quest for satisfaction from them. To call AMD/ATI lying thieves might be a bit harsh, in the strictest sense of the terms, but my Radeon card has not lived up to promise and I'm out hundreds of dollars on the purchase. Call it Fraud or call it theft, it's six of one or half dozen of the other from where I sit. For now, the best I can do is pass along my advice to avoid AMD/ATI in the strongest possible terms - DON'T BUY ONE! You'll regret it.

- Phineus