I've been playing Team Fortress 2 alot. It's a great game. I enjoy playing just about every class on the game. I play Engineer most of the time, although at times I've been known to completely devour the opposing team as a Sniper.

As I was playing earlier I realized that most Engineers place their teleports near the upstairs spawn point in the 2Fort map (I play 2Fort almost exclusively). It really drives me crazy when I get in some teleporter and it takes me to my teams flag room and not to the enemy base (where all good teleports should go). I decided I needed to make it easier on my teammates to know where my teleport takes them, so I made a spraypaint.

I just made it in MS-Paint, set the canvas to the right dimensions, downloaded the TeamFortress2 Font Pack and voila! I has-got custom spraypaint. So here it is, my simple teleporter label.

Grendel sez: I also enjoy these treats. The Sentry Gun decoy (red, blue) and the crouching sniper decoy (red, blue).

Well the presents have all been opened (mostly) and the trash is all bagged up. Gifts lay on the coffee table and piled around various rooms of the house - it's that cool time of the year I like to think of as Christmas Afterglow. It's not quite New Years and you have so many new toys you haven't even been able to play with them all yet.

Like when you grew up and ran outside to check out what Santa brought your friends, I'll ask the question, "So what did you get?"

What I got:

8Gb black iPod Nano
    - universal dock
    - iPod armband
    - JVC iPod Car Stereo Dock

Nike Air Pegasus 2007
    - Nike+ iPod adapter

Stihl Farm Boss Chainsaw

Crest rechargable electric SpinBrush

Smith's Jiff V knife-sharpener

Burt's Bees cologne + Old Spice cologne

some cash money and a Best Buy gift card

update: Grimlen got me the "perfect gift", as the box describes it. An imported "gem tree".

Tell us about your Christmas loot in the comments.

It's probably a bit too late to order one as a Christmas gift, but it's still a cool idea nonetheless. The website is OneShare.com and they sell single shares of a stock along with the certificate of ownership (something that you usually must pay extra for after you purchase the stock.)

Granted, you can't choose from just any stock (i.e. GOOG, AMD - which is a bargain right now), but there's a healthy selection of some of the more popular brand-names available. It's a neat idea, especially for someone that may be a big fan of a company. If I had thought of it sooner there are a couple of people I would have considering a certificate for.

It's a neat idea and thought I'd pass it along. If you know of any similar websites (preferably ones that are maybe more flexible in their stock offerings) please share.

update: Oh yeah, there's also GiveAShare.com which does have Google stock for sale, but it's rediculously priced.

After reading about them for several months and an overall curiosity in the subject, I have finally purchased some honey bees. (thus adding to my collection of rather disjointed interests.)

Rather than bore you with all the details, in short, I began reading and studying beekeeping for the past few months and found them truly fascinating. There's still alot that is unknown about the honey bee, but their behavior has been documented for centuries. Most recently is the plague of the mysterious CCD (colony collapse disorder). To help fight this, Burt's Bees is giving away free wildflower seed so you can aid the dwindling honey bee population. To read more on the art/science of beekeeping, here's the link to the Beekeeping article on Wikipedia.

For some pictures of my setup and me in a goofy hat, I've created a thread in the forums. I'll probably post future pictures in the forums, and post any updates to the project here on the main page.

update: Pictures are here.

"If your warrior of love is too small, you will lose this war."

Spam is, if anything, just as prevalent as it ever was. However, instead of the random strings of characters, someone is apparently trying to insert some humor into the equation. I received a spam message this morning with the above phrase as the subject.

Effective or not, at least it is slightly more entertaining. Post some of your favorites in the comments.

Update: "Banana Necklace Kitchen Paintbrush Rifle" - I gotta get me one of those!