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The Elemental druid is probably one of the most powerful dueling classes out there for Diablo II: LOD but only when properly built. Some of the reasons they are so powerful are as follows. They have an amazing cyclone armor that allows you to take a beating from even the most powerful elemental characters including other druids. Their Hurricane provides excellent defense against close melee attacks. Their oak sage provides a great increase in life and an extra target for those pesky arrows you might encounter.

However like any character they have many drawbacks. Without the ability to teleport they are very vulnerable. No way to quickly jump on top of an enemy or to flee when necessary. They also suffer from a lack of range. Quick fireball sorcs, bowzons, hammerdins and necros will be able to keep out of your attack range while they attack you.

—STATS—
Strength: 30-100 *much higher if you don’t have enigma*
Dexterity: 150 base
Vitality: 250 base
Energy: 20 base

—SKILLS—
Elemental
Arctic Blast-1
Cyclone Armor-20
Twister-20
Tornado-20
Hurricane-20
Shape Shift
None
Summon
Oak sage-20

—EQUIPMENT—

Helms
Shako
Rare skills helm
Jala’s
Nightwing’s Veil

Armor
Enigma
Vipermagi

Weapon
Hoto
Earthshaker
Earth Shifter *yuck*

Belt
Arachnidmesh
Gloomstrap

Gloves
Magefist
Trangs Gloves
Frostburn

Rings
Sojs
Bks
Casting Rings
Whisp

Amulets
Mara’s
Highlords
Seraphs Hymn
+3 Ele Ammy

Charms
Anni
Ele gc
Life sc

Other Items
Call To Arms

—STRATEGY—
Trap Assassins- Get a whisper ring and Tgods, recast cyclone armor alot
FOH Paladins- Get a whisper ring and Tgods, recast cyclone armor alot
PnB Necros- Tele on top of them before they manage to fill the screen w/ spirits
Poison Necros- Make sure you have way over max poison resist
Charge Strike Zons- Get a whisper ring and Tgods, recast cyclone armor alot

Well I got another recall letter from Chevy the other day.  This is the second recall letter I have received but it contains 2 different recall notices.  So, my Chevy Malibu LS has had 3 recalls since I bought it in February.  Here is each of them in order.

quote:

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April 2004
Reason For This Recall: General Motors has decided that certain 2004 model year Chevrolet Malibu vehicles fail to conform to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208, Occupant Crash Protection.  The air bag warning labels on the driver and passenger sun visors do not have everything required by the Safety Standard.

What Will Be Done: A new air bag warning label will be installed on both sun visors, over the current air bag warning labels.  Since the new labels can be easily installed, and to reduce your inconvenience, the labels and installation instructions are being sent with this letter.  If you desire, however, you may take the labels to your Chevrolet dealer for installation.  This service will be performed for you at no charge.

June 2004
Reason For This Recall: General Motors has decided that two defects, which relate to motor vehicle safety, exist in certain 2004 model year Chevrolet Malibu vehicles equipped with anti-lock brake system (ABS).  On these vehicles, the ABS controller may calculate a higher than actual vehicle speed if there is an erratic rear-wheel speed sensor signal.  This can cause ABS activation where it is not needed or cause needed ABS activation to be extended during braking as the vehicle speed drops to about 3 mph.  A four-wheel ABS activation could occur for a maximum of 1.25 seconds on a level surface or for up to 2.5 seconds in the vehicle is on a grade, resulting in increased stopping distances of up to 11.4 ft.  If this condition occurs where stopping distance is limited, a crash could occur.

Some customers may experience illumination of the ABS warning lamp on the instrument panel.  This can occur when the system detects erratic speed signals and it means that the ABS is disabled.  The brake system will perform normally in non-ABS mode until the vehicle is restarted and the ABS lamp is off.

In addition, a Malibu was tested recently in a government 38.8 mph side impact test.  Analysis of the results indicated that during a side impact the outboard anchorage of the driver’s safety belt could disconnect because of contact between the seat trim and the anchorage connector when the seat is adjusted to its lowest position.  If this were to occur, the driver will no longer be properly restrained, increasing the risk of injury.

What Will Be Done: To prevent the possibility of these conditions occurring, your Chevrolet dealer will reprogram the ABS controller and install a retainer in the front safety belt connectors.  This service will be performed for you at no charge.

---

That first recall was just plain silly.  I can’t believe they actually had to send out replacement visor stickers.  I should have taken pictures to show the difference because the only thing that changed was like 2-3 lines of text.

However, this new recall is rather worrying.  I haven’t had any ABS problems but I do normally have my seat set to the lowest position.  So for now until I can get into the dealer to get it fixed I’ve moved my seat just to play it safe.  Although I doubt I’ll be getting in a side impact accident anytime soon I’d rather be safe than sorry.

So just a recap… These notices are for the ‘04 Chevy Malibu and you should contact your dealer ASAP about getting the repairs done.

Well Google must have dumped a load of invites onto everyone this morning because message boards across the net seems to be swamped with people offering free invites to signup for GMail.

A friend sent me an invite and just as I had finished the signup process another invite came into my inbox.  I’ve posted in request threads all over the place so someone sent me an invite.  Thanks to both of you!  I’ve only used the one invite so far but I’ll use the other one soon as the GMail service shows any life.

I was able to signup and create my account, I think.  Well I filled out the signup page and hit submit and it seemed to work except I got a nice

quote:

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Server Error
GMail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.

---

Now I tried to start over but it says my invite has already been used so I figure that means the account is created.  I’ve tried logging into my account for the last 4-5 hours and been completely unable to.  I believe Google gave everyone a bunch of invites and they’ve just become swamped with the new signups.  Hopefully this is only a temporary thing.  There’s been such a high demand for GMail accounts and I’m afraid Google underestimated their hardware needs and just don’t have a large enough system for the loads. 

Actually, now that I think about it perhaps this is all planned.  Google dumped all the invites in order to see how far they could push their system.  They knew they would have a huge influx of users.  They could watch to see how many it takes to bring the system to its knees.  They will then be able to calculate how much more they need to scale out in order to handle daily usage when it finally does go live.

Well either way I guess I’ll just keep trying to get in like probably millions of others are.  Soon as I can with my first account I’ll create a second email account.  If I get any invites I’ll be giving them to friends and family so don’t bother asking because I have at least a dozen plus people that will get an invite first.

**UPDATE** (06/21 at 05:30 PM)
Sorry, my normal policy is that I don’t edit posts and I only make one post a day.  However, I was just reading the UserFriendly comic strip and thought it was funny since it pretty closely shows how I reacted this morning with I got my first GMail invite.

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20040621

This is for all you developers out there.  How would you like a free copy of Visual C++.net for free?  Sure you would!  Well Microsoft is giving it away.  Isn’t that crazy!?!

Basically, what you get is the Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 which includes:
* Microsoft C/C++ compiler and Linker
* C/C++ libraries
* .NET Common Language Runtime
* Sample code

Ok, so it’s not the full version of Visual C++.net.  Still, they are giving away the Visual C++.net compiler and linker.  So you can write and build C++ programs but you just don’t get the fancy Visual Studio editor. 

Now I have Visual Studio.net so I haven’t bothered to download it but I’m sure there are plenty of people out there that would love to get their hands on this so here is the link…

http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/

Have fun!

I was bored the other day so I decided to crank out a few new themes for the ExpressionEngine control panel.  No offence to the people at pMachine but the default blue is rather boring and the other black and gold is just hideous.

So here are four new ones for EE users to try.  Basically, these are just color replacements of the default blue theme.  Fonts, layouts, styles, etc are all the same.  There is green, orange, purple and red to choose from.  I’ll admit I’m not exactly the artsy type but I’m going to try to create a few more original themes sometime just because variety is nice!

Download: ab_green.css

Download: ab_orange.css

Download: ab_purple.css

Download: ab_red.css

Well you may have noticed that there are ads on my site.  I decided to go ahead and apply for the Google Adsense ads program.  I’m not really sure if it will make me any money but I really think it’s time to make this site pay for itself. 

Not that it costs much to run this site but I do have to think about covering my ExpressionEngine yearly renewal fee now.  When you buy (or get a free copy in my case) of ExpressionEngine you get the software along with a year of free updates.  After the year is up, you can either just use the version you have which will become outdated and possible have bugs and/or security holes in it or pay a small license renewal fee for another year of updates.  The renewal is only $19.95 so it’s not like it rocks the bank.

Plus there is the cost of hosting.  In reality I currently have free hosting on a friends server.  This friend runs a hosting business, ArsHost.Com and is gracious enough to give me free hosting.  However, a few years back we went in together on renting a server, before he started the business and we split server rental expenses.  I won’t say actual costs but suffice to say I spent a decent amount of cash during that time so I would like to see this website work to recover those back costs.

So anyways, I just think I’ll give the Google ads a try since it seems to be the best program out there.  They only use text ads so don’t worry about popups, giant flash ads or other obtrusive types.  I promise to try to keep them as low-key as possible so they don’t bother you the readers.

I hope you all understand why I’m doing this.  I’m not trying to be some evil money grubber.  I would just like to see the website pay for itself instead of being a money sink hole.