One of the things I noticed about Forza and GT was that the front wheel drive cars suffered from a lot more understeer in GT. Supposedly Forza runs a better physics engine (technically), but it all comes down to which one feels better. As the video below shows, it is much harder to lose traction in Forza around corners with the Acura Integra. Note that traction control and stability control is disabled for both games. Having owned that car at one point, I have to say that I prefer the GT physics better in this case.

It seems my WRT54G has been giving some problems sometimes connecting to the Comcast cable modem so I bought an extra Linux version (the one I already had was an early version so it also had Linux, but didn't want to brick it and not have connection) and I installed the DD-WRT firmware and wow is it good. So far it connected with no problems, the menus are better, more options, can even function as a wireless bridge to connect an Xbox, etc.

Flashing was pretty easy, all I did was follow the guide which had me install the 'micro' version because of a limitation with the stock Linksys firmware. After that I upgraded to the 'general' version and after transferring some settings over manually from my current router, I plugged it in and was ready to go. It did slow down on me once but it was because the connection limit is set to 512 by default, I raised it to the maximum of 4096 and have had no problems since. This is one of the things I have to donate to, other than Dell's Plant a Tree For Me.

Just because, I added flash video to the list of site features. Xbox video shown as test.

Want to know how often each numbers are drawn in the Florida Lottery? Check out my Florida Lottery Statistics Site. Not yet sure how this data can be used.

A few days after trying the Battlefield: Bad Company beta for a few hours, I realized that there was nothing really drawing me back to this limited time experience. Something about this Battlefield game did not feel Battlefield enough. Sure we like companies to change their long running franchises to keep them fresh, but as a sum-of-all-its-parts this game feels average.

So let's start with this new Frostbite engine. This definitely improves the 'war feel' by adding destructible walls, trees and buildings. A giddy feeling comes over you the first time you clear a bunch of trees with a stationary machine gun. I noticed a few people not yet absorbing this new gameplay mechanic. A teammate and I were running toward a building, there was a wall just up ahead and he started to head around when I shot a grenade into the wall, then I see that he veered back into my direction and through the newly blown hole in the wall.

Sound was suppose to be another breakthrough feature, but with crappy TV speakers that has not yet made an impact on the experience.

Why does this not feel Battlefield?

The only mode playable in the beta is called Gold Rush. There are 2 gold objectives that need to be destroyed/defended depending on which team you are on. If they are destroyed the defending team moves back to another base with 2 new objectives and the attacking team moves up to their old base. The attackers have a limited amount of spawning to get the job done, but the defenders have a limited amount of bases to fall to. This objective based mode feels a lot like Call of Duty but the gameplay doesn't fit. The movement of the character is much too slow to be married with this everybody meets in the middle design. Some of us are that type of player, but some others want to take off and capture the flag which is not so heavily guarded.

The respawning screen has to go through some sort of overhaul. You get to follow a teammate but there is an overlay which makes the screen dark enough not to be able to see what is going on. Then you have to wait for a progress bar to fill, while you are not seeing anything and after about 20-30 of doing this you realize that dying is torture in this game.

So will I rent? Sure. Hopefully some of the other maps are more open, maybe some other modes of play. I liked Battlefield 2: Modern Combat even with all the bugs.

So we have been having some problems with one of the computers running Vista SP1. It would disconnect whenever we try to access one of the shared folders or connect via remote desktop. After trying a whole bunch of suggestions, the solution was to uncheck TCP/IP V6 from the network card's properties. Hopefully this is fixed before IPV6 takes off, or the computer becomes obsolete.