Ergo

I went and ordered an M-Audio ProFire 2626. B&H was blowing them out at $309 but I missed that sale by one day and so I ordered it at $399.

The joke is, of course, that my entire plan is to blow an astonishing $575 for a modification plus an additional $315 for the clock. But uh, those will come later. Maybe much later.
+++++
Why? Why do we (I) need multitrack recording capability? Three reasons:
1. I have many albums I need to make. I need to create the a.) Imaginary Opera. I have a mythical band called b.) Pleasure for the Empire which needs to be fed. Plus, I bet we could do things with c.) Tyrannosaurus Mouse if only we had a decent drumkit.
2. In order to prevent a certain level of screaming on set it would be nice to be able to throw wireless lavs on all actors, recording all of the talent as isos, and mixing later. It's maybe not so much "screaming" on set that's the problem as perhaps a general level of irritation because we nominally do not have a professional boom op on set.
3. There are occasions when tracking a musical group like the Russian Chamber Chorus of New York that a stereo pair of microphones is not adequate for. Such a multichannel solution would be very welcome.