A Ho-Ho-Whole New Batch of Weekly Features

Christmas is this saturday and it is time to update the weekly features. Our top five this week is the top five Christmas presents that i received as a kid during the 80s:

5. Q-Bert - For some unknown reason, I still vividly remember unwrapping this particular game on the Atari 2600 more than any other video game cartridge I ever received. Maybe it has something to do with wanting to tear my hair out later that day as I kept leaping of the side of the pyramid.

4. Laser Tag - The original version with the red chest target and the Knight Rider style light going back and forth was the best.

3. Lego Blacktron - The black outfitted minifigure is still one of my all time favorites.

2. Super Nintendo - All my friends had the original NES before we did, so when my parents surprised us with the Super Nintendo when it first came out my brothers and I were ecstatic.

1. The U.S.S. Flagg - G.I. Joe's 7-foot long aircraft carrier nearly tipped over and crushed me when my brothers pulled the blanket off that was concealing the enormous box. It then took up major space in our basement for several years...the best years of my childhood.

This week's cool-ass thing you will never own is a lightcycle. More difficult to obtain than the lightcycle itself would be a method of transporting yourself to "the grid." But wouldn't it be awesome to commute to work with a solid beam of light trailing behind you, destroying competing traffic.

This week's sign that you are a nerd is that you've drawn up plans to install heating elements beneath your driveway surface next year so that you don't have to worry about traction or even shoveling.

This week's nemesis is Dr. Mario level #18. I wasted two hours trying to clear it when I could have been doing something else infinitely more productive like sleeping or watching television.

This week's lesson learned is that bouncy house obstacle courses were not designed for grown men to try and maneuver their way through.

This week's equation is:

In order to determine the number of extra Nerf darts you will need to purchase for your kids (n), you need to multiply the area in square feet of your home (a), the number of Nerf guns (g) and the average magazine capacity of these guns (c), then take that product to the power of how many kids you have (k) and multiply all that by the average rate of fire in darts per minute of the Nerf guns (r). If you actually work this out, you'll see you need a lot of extra darts.

Finally, this week's Star Wars quote is, "Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is."

Happy Holidays. Hope everyone gets what they've been wanting, unless you've been naughty, in which case I hope you get the lump of coal that you deserve...sinner.