Warcraft III - Back to a classic

Azure Tower Defense rocks!  That Warcraft 3 mode is tons of fun with four players.  We played about 6 time over the past weekend and on the last try made it to level 39!  I will have to check to see if there are any other maps similar to that one.

I think that finishing it (level 40) will be very tough.  39 was insane!

My Love/Hate Relationship with Call of Duty 4

There is no denying that Call of Duty 4 is a great game.  Why then does it frustrate me to the point of yelling out loud?  CoD4 get soo much right, nice maps, quick pacing, good incentive to level up, fair selection of weapon variety, etc.  Where then, does it falter?
1) Too many time are you shooting someone over and over, only to have them turn around for the one shot kill.  It sure seems like certain people are faster than others...  connection speed?  I have a decent connection and have not noticed this as much in other games like Halo 3 or Gears of War.
2) Team balancing.  Is there any?
3) Live-Morons.  You know the type, out to annoy and ruin other people enjoyment with the game.  This is not specific to this game though.  I know you can "flag" players so you shouldn't get them in the future, but often it is easier to switch parties rather than track down which player it is and then go through the flagging process. 
4) The dreaded "Host Ended Game" message....
5) $10 for 4 new maps???
Ah well, maybe they will get it right in CoD5....   :)

World of Goo

On a whim, we picked up the Wii Ware downloadable game World Of Goo.  What a great find!  I have played it more than several of the "store bought" games in shrink wrap.  For 1-4 players, WoG is a puzzle game at its heart with cute graphics and an odd story thrown in for good measure.  I hope Nintendo will release some expansion levels for this one.

One irksome thing with Nintendo that this game brought to light is the inability for my Wii to get completely out to the Internet.  Apparently I can get Web stuff and Machine updates but it is no go on game play for Mario Kart and some of the Network features of WoG.  I just recently changed my firewall from IPCop to Smoothwall to solve similar problems with XBox Live!  Nintendo apparently wants me to reduce my protection even more, sigh.  So if anyone has had any luck getting their Wii *fully* connected to the Internet using a free hardware based firewall (pfSense, maybe?) please let me know...