I hate my cell phone company. I have a prepaid cell phone, which basically means that I buy card which I can use to pay for the features, or I can use my credit card. The cost depends on the features I choose (in my case $0.75 a day) and calls cost so much a minute, an amount taken from the amount in my account. About 10 days or so, I put $10 on my phone and I'm good for a while.

So here's why I hate them. First, they send text messages (if you have that feature) to notify you when your account is getting low. makes sense and is nice of them if they sent it at around $3 or $4, but they sent one when my account had $11 on it once so it was basically useless. The worse part is they send these at 3 in the morning. For some people, like me, this isn't a problem because I'm usually up or just went to bed at that time. but for other people like Rae, this is bad because it wakes them up. why can't they send them at a time that makes sense, like noon?

Here is the really stupid one. Below is the exact text I got at 3 this morning.

You do not have enough funds for ur daily fee. Add $ today to restart ur service. Dial #pay, visit Alltel.com/myprepaid or buy a refill card.

First, you have to love the their attempt at being cool by using stuff like "ur" instead of your or the $ instead of saying money. but here is the fun stuff. Since there wasn't enough on my phone since I forgot to add some, I couldn't actually call the stupid number (even though calls to Alltel aren't supposed to cost anything, so it would be a free call) And since I was able to call it before I even added any money to it, I should be able to now.

So I had to add it on the website, which was just kind of annoying. But at least my account is active again. this isn't the only stupid thing Alltel had done since they bought Midwest Wireless a year ago. and I'm sure it won't be the last.

I realized something while going to the bathroom just a bit ago (because, as any guy will tell you, we do our best thinking while on the toilet. that is why we spend so much time in there when we go.) I realized that, for the most part, what I have planned and have written so far for Fantasy isn't very deep stuff. I set up story lines in previous issues, and then when Fantasy fights the bad guy it is more of a filler fight so I can do more set up. Int he first volume there are several stories I am looking forward to writing, but they pretty much are in the minority to stories where he is in a filler fight and the main story is the stuff going on while he fights the Bad Guy Of The Week.

Not that there is anything wrong with that, shows like Power Rangers have been quite successful with a Monster Of The Week style, but it's not the type of story I like to read or write. I look at what I have planned for Power Force, which started off as my attempt at doing a Power Rangers series (complete with the Power Ranger name before I had changed so much stuff that I dropped it) and I can't help but think about how I could do the same for Fantasy or other series work like it. Out of 50 stories I have planned for the first "season" there are only two that aren;t character development or advancing the main story lines. and one of those sets up character development and story line stuff. The other I ended up altering and using as a plot for Fantasy #7. (I liked that one a lot though, and will be using it in Power Force still)

So I'm thinking, for Volume two, I'm going to take a similar approach. Obviously with a bigger cast like in Power Force (5 Rangers and 2 main story lines and villains) it will be easier, but this way I can develop stories more, focus on individual characters more, and still do the "meanwhile" type stuff and filler issues. In other words more like I did for the Fantasy Trilogy that started all of this. There was a story I was planning on doing between Vol 1 and 2 that could easily be place in Vol 2 that will be 5 or 6 issues. I have another storyline, the main one for Vol 2, that will be about as long. That takes up almost half of the volume! And since a large portion of the stories in Vol 1 were developed as I was doing the outlines, who knows what I will come up with for Vol 2.

I'm guessing I can get it to the point where filler issues are the exception, not the rule, and still use allot of the villains I've introduced already, either in side stories like the 4 I have planned during Vol 1 and in story lines in Vol 2 (already worked Super Shift into the first story line, and I'm sure I can get Master Mage, the Cybernators, and the Hunter some screen time.) It's just a matter of getting Vol 1 done so I can start work on Vol 2.

A great indicator of how much WWE actually cares about ECW. They just showed an ad for tonight's episode, but it was LAST WEEK'S ad! So either they messed up and probably didn't care since odds are that as has been running since last week, or they are doing the same thing they did last week.

Someone who knows what they are doing really needs to take over that place.

Nintendo really needs to change the company it uses for the Wii Weather Channel. It uses Weathernews.com. I have no problem with the fact that the nearest place that I can get weather updates for is Mankato. That's only an hour or so away, depending on how fast you drive. What I have a problems with is the fact that it says that it is 72 and sunny in Mankato right now (last update an hour ago) Looking out the window, watching it lightly rain, with more then a 7 MPH wind (What Wii Weather says it is) and cloudy says maybe it's a bit off. Since it has been this way since I got up about 2 1/2 hours ago and should be like this in Mankato too tells me that this isn't verry accurate.

They need to switch to Weather.com.