Ok, so many maps that I like have a few textures I REALLY want to use... my question is, how do I do it... I just read that having too many wads (I now have over 20) is BAD... is there a quick and easy way to combine small wads into one big one?

first of all you should ask yourself if your really, really need them. And then if nothing else helps, you can always create a new one for your map with the textures in it, which you only need. But don't forget to give the credits to their original creators and make sure you have the permission to use them.
For a wad file creation you need a program called Wally. http://www.telefragged.com/wally/ get it there and be happy

Yes, you can do it with Wally.
Download and install it. Start it and then open the wads in it. Then click file/new and choose half-life package from the drop-down menu and press OK. Now go to the wad you want to copy a texture from. Select a texture and right click on it and choose copy. Then select the new wad you created, right click over it, and select paste as new. Now you are prompted to name the texture and that's it. When you have all the textures in your wad select the your wad window and choose file/save as and save your wad.

edit: [sorcerer] was faster than I. Well, I hope both posts 'strenghten' each other. Tried to be as clear as possible.

Ugh, all the links for Wally are DEAD

Anyone have a DIRECT dl link?

FilePlanet. Yes, it's FilePlanet. Yes, it's evil. But there is NO wait on either public server at the moment (and wasn't a few days ago when I downloaded it).

If you still need the file, here's a link that you can use because queues suck.

Thnx!