Well, XBL maybe fixed, but COD4 is still having issues! WTF! Is there anywhere online that is posting updates about this issue? I see nothing on the Call of Duty 4 site. We have been trying to play these past evenings and we can't form a party and play online with random people. Hopefully they'll fix it soon. If anyone knows anything about the situation, or has links to places that are posting updates, please leave a comment.

I never liked the Power Rangers, but I was older when they became popular with the kids. Maybe if I was younger I would have liked it, I did like Voltron, but at least Voltron didn't have lame human actors, and stupid plastic toy models being pushed along a rocky surface with dust blowing around to look like some kind of giant robot.

Well, now my kids are into Power Rangers. It all started when my oldest son saw some cheap plastic toy cell phone in the impulse buy rack at some check out, probably Wal*Mart. The phone's theme was Power Rangers. Well, of course my son asked about them and then needed to know all about them.

With Christmas approaching my son wanted Power Ranger toys. At the last minute I broke down and went out and got each of my sons a Red Power Ranger action figure, it has a button you push and it talks, not too bad. The annoyance with these POS toys started Christmas Day. These toys come with "snap" on weapons, armor, etc. I say "snap" because they don't snap on at all; they just kind of press on, and fall off with the slightest bump, or just picking up the action figure. After pressing the Red Ranger's sword on for the 100th time I finally got smart and rubber banded it on.

Since Christmas I picked each of them up a couple more action figures because it's kind of lame to just have one Power Ranger, he had no one else to do battle with, etc. So a couple of the new ones come with body armor, or the armor can form a robot, etc. The problem is these items don't snap together either, they just kind press together, and some of the pieces just sort of rest on top of the others, what the fuck!? Are these things meant to be put together and then put in a glass display case so a slight breeze won't fuck them up? These are supposed to be played with. What is the point? You make your Zord robot, or whatever it's called, so it can fall to pieces when another Power Ranger figure brushes up against it, or worse yet, you just want to pick it up and its head and legs fall off, or the arms. What shit!

Maybe I should just Krazy glue these plastic disasters together, but then that defeats the point of making the endless combinations of Power Rangers, because the originals were so lame they had to come up with an infinite number of variations of the same stupid characters (Alien Rangers, Zeo, Turbo, in Space, Lost Galaxy, Lightspeed Rescue, Time Force, Wild Force, Ninja Storm, Dino Thunder, S.P.D., Mystic Force, Operation Overdrive, Jungle Fury, and all the Zords that become Megazords, or whatever, holy fuck! Thanks to Wiki for that list of shit, glad I'm not the lame fuck who had to put that awful list together). Oh well, I guess they will still have fun with them, but the extra pieces may sit in a bin somewhere and collect dust.

So who here has the balls to admit they have a collection of these toys? As long as you're 14 or younger, I wouldn't too embarrassed to admit to it, well, maybe I would be. Maybe some of you have younger brothers or sisters that have these toys. If so, what do you think of them?

I finally got the lights on our Christmas tree. We went out to Elizabeth Christmas Tree Farm in Brickersville (sp?), PA to find our live tree. They didn't have many to choose from this year in the size range we go for, 9-10 feet. I ended up taking down a 10 1/2 foot tree. This might be the biggest tree we've ever brought into the house, it's really wide. I have it pushed back into the corner of the room and the branches on the backside are smashed up against the wall and still it seems to be coming out into the room more than other trees we've had. So did I put enough lights up? I think I need more up top. :) I think I have around 1,400-1,500 bulbs strung in the tree. That might be a record for me.

Next step is to bust out the ornaments. Last year our tree fell over! It smashed some of our good ornaments, but it wasn't a total loss. I think what happend was I didn't have it perfectly balanced and after it sucked up 4-6 gallons of water it got heavier, and also with the addition of a lot of ornaments, it just went over. From that point on I now wire the tree to the cabinent that sits behind it, which is attached to the wall. I will never have another tree fall over. Nothing worse than seeing your Christmas tree (a big live one) smashing to the floor with broken ornaments under it, shattered all over the carpet. That kinda takes away from the whole Happy Holidays thing. :)

Here are some photos from the tree farm, last picture is our tree, before I sentanced it to a slow death by drying out: http://picasaweb.google.com/wadefulpng /TreeFarm2007

I'd also like to state that while I feel bad about cutting down a live tree, I do realize I am supporting a Christmas tree farm, which as long as they have paying customers, they will replant more trees and there will awlays be trees there. If people didn't come buy live trees and cut them down, they would most likely sell the land to be developed with houses, made into a golf course, etc. So when you buy a live tree you are helping to support tree farmers that will continue to grow trees on their land.

OOPS! I was deleting some old PM's out of my inbox and I accidentally cleared page 1 of my PM's. So if you sent me a PM recently and didn't get a response, feel free to respond, if it's important.

Always be sure to provide details, links, etc, so I can efficiently help you. If I have to ask you for informtion to figure out what the problem is I probably won't respond, as you should have provided it the first time. No sense going back and forth with tons of people all day just to figure out what the heck they are trying to get help with.

So who loves Call of Duty 4 for Xbox? Anyone playing online? If you kick ass at COD4, join up with me sometime, I'm WadeNG on XBL.

I just got to level 49 (don't have a lot of time to play, took awhile), and got the .50 cal sniper. Not sure how much I like it. I think I have more luck with the R700.

My kids have one of those John Deere Gator power wheel things. They like to drive it around in our back yard. I have always thought it would be cool to make LED head lights for it, so today I finally had some time to give it a shot. Now, I only built one head light so far, as a test. I may add a second head light some other time. The Gator has plastic head light lenses, but behind them is just a reflective piece of cardboard. So I went through my spare flash light parts and came up with a spare Cree XR-E P4 bin LED, an aluminum heat sink to mount the LED on, which then screws into a reflector. I used a LED driver circuit that powers the LED at 800mA. I wired all this to a 3xAAA battery holder (holds 3 AAA batteries), and wired a push button clicky switch from a broken flashlight (press the button, it clicks, flashlight stays on, click it again, flashlight goes off). So drilled a 1 inch hole behind the Gator's headligt lens, mounted the LED with reflector in it, I had put on a good foot and a half of wire so I could mount the switch under the dash board so the kids can turn the headlight off and on. Well, it all works. Now I need to look into building a second one. I may find a larger battery pack to power both of them from. So now my kids can drive around in the dark. :)

More pics here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/wadefulpng /Flashlights/photo#5131729656475121650

http://picasaweb.google.com/wadefulpng /Flashlights/photo#5131729712309696514

Anyone near the fires? Anyone have to evacuate, although if you did you may not have Internet access. Hope no one lost their home, the situation looks really bad and may only get worse.

This has always bothered me, but it seems to be worse these days. I don't know if it's because more people are on cell phones, or there are just more stupid people on the road. The problem is people and the turn arrow. Usually it's the left hand turn arrow. So there I will sit, maybe 3-5 cars back from the intersection. For me to get through the light I am depending on the people infront of me stepping on the gas and making their turn when they get the turn arrow. How is it than more than not only 1-3 people make it through the light and I get stuck? I will sit and watch the turn arrow go green, and then I will wait and not see anyone turning! WTF! MOVE! Finally they slowly start to make their turn, OMG! At this point the light is going yellow, going out, etc. One or two lucky people maybe are able to make it through after the first person. Or the first person will quickly turn and the people behind them slowly start their turn. For example, the turn arrow goes green, the 1st car takes off and is through the intersection and on their way down the other road, meanwhile cunt face in car number two has yet to enter the intersetion! WTF! Moron #2 should have been a few feet behind proper driver #1.

Another problem is the righ turn arrow, a lot of people don't see it! They just sit there thinking they have a red light while the right hand turn arrow is green. "HONK!!! HONK!!!" still they sit, wondering why I'm honking. Really bugs me.

The one good thing is if you just miss the turn and are the 1st car for the next cycle you can just pull way out into the intersection and when the light goes red, and oncoming traffic stops, you can legally finsih your turn since you were in the intersection before the light turned red. Some fools don't realize this and they pull out into the intersection (over the white line) and when the light goes red they don't finish their turn and they just sit there! In some situations this blocks traffic. To make matters worse, some people will pull out real far and other people will be behnd them, also in the intersection, and if they don't go, the other people are also stuck in the intersection cursing at the idiot who didn't finsih their turn so they could also finish their turn.

Learn to drive people!

I want a bumper sticker with a turn arrow on it that says "THIS MEANS TURN NOW!"

My wife has had this "cactus", it's actually not a cactus, sometimes called a false cactus, or more commonly Candelabra cactus. Anyway, she's had it since like junior high. So I decided to bring it down from our attic window and put it in the kitchen window. The whole I'm I'm moving it I'm getting poked, etc. Then I broke off some pieces to stick down in the dirt to form more chutes.

A couple hours later I start feeling funny. I start itching, everywhere. My scalp was the worst, thought I was going to tear it off from sctraching. Something wasn't right. I then see what loks like a bug bite on my left forearm, strange since I had on long sleeves. So I took some benedryl because I figured it was some kind of allergic reaction. Turns out it was the cactus! Things got worse though, I broke out in nasty hives, something I can never remember happening to me. They were worst around my pelvic area, har har, and around my neck, lower back, and my arm pits. My ears felt really hot and they were red. WTF!

The Benedryl may have helped, but it slowly went away. For awhile I was freaked out because I didn't know it was the cactus and thought it could have been from something I ate, or some strange bug.

So if you have one of these in your home, they are a some what common house plant, don't let it poke you, or don't let the milky latex sap get on you! Especially not your eyes!

Oh yeah, it gives you the shits too, and could make you vomit.

Not bad for a single LED flashlight eh?