OK, i finally got Half-life 2 for xmas (just built a new gaming rig)... I never played Half-life, do i need to play the orig to understand/get HL2? Will I be missing much?

No, not really. To be honest I played HL through to the end guy and never really knew what was going on, and I just finished HL2 for the Xbox and never knew what was going on - I don't pay much attention to cutscenes/dialog.

And I had a blast in both games - I've never felt the story was what made HL fun.

You don't have to play HL first but I would. Both are great games and while HL is now a touch dated, there is still a lot to like. Also, there are story lines from HL that are carried on to HL2. Play HL then HL2 and be happy that you still get to experience these games for the first time.

There's some little details you miss out on if you don't play Half-Life first, but it's no big deal. Even if you've played HL there's still a lot stuff you just have to piece together for yourself as you go when you play HL2.

Check this out.

Half Life running on iPod

That's pretty damn impressive

Impressive, yes. halflife, no. It's the Halflife wad running on iDoom. Still neat.

Isn't there a Half Life Source out now? Why not play that and get all the goodness of the classic first game with all the pretty of the second?

I started playing Half Life Source, which came with the CE of Half Life 2, but as far as I can tell, I can't tell where they updated anything. I have played through the first level/area or so and it definitely looks nothing like HL2, looks like what I would imagine it looked like originally.

HL:S does not look as good as DOD:S and CS:S. I'm not sure why they didn't update all of the textures in that game like they did in the other two. It's still better than the original but, not by much.

The official Halflife: Source looks WORSE than the original Halflife with the official hi-res model pack installed. How they managed to bork that, I don't know. What even more frustrating is that a year later, they still haven't patched it to include them.