K-Squared Ramblings

…and the Wizard

After the “Weird Al” concert we explored the fair a bit, then left to go to Borders to pick up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Katie had reserved the book at the new one that just opened at The District. And by “just opened,” I mean Wednesday. Her confirmation number was 7. I kid you not.

We got there about 10 past midnight, and they were distributing books, but the line was already all the way down one side of the store. I ended up getting coffee at the in-store Seattle’s Best, talked to the baristas about just what’s open so far, and we both browsed a bit. Finally they called her wristband color, and we had the book in our hands by 12:50.

We went home. I went straight to sleep (despite the coffee!), while Katie stayed up to read the first few chapters.

Waiting for the Wizard

I walked over to the nearby Barnes & Noble at lunch just to see whether anyone was lined up for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows yet. At 1:00 there were two people sitting in front of the door with camp chairs, one with a book and the other with a laptop, but that was all.

It was nowhere near the level of the iPhone launch last month, but then there are many more places you can buy Harry Potter, and there’s little risk of the book selling out.

Fantasy Film Follow-Up

Saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I thought it was better than the fourth film, and up there with Prisoner of Azkaban, though Katie liked Goblet of Fire better. The main thing I would really have liked to see more of: Hogwarts in rebellion. “It unscrews the other way.”

We agreed that the preview of The Dark is Rising looks terrible. It looks like they’re turning it into an action movie. Will Stanton with magic powers?!?!? It’s sad, since Christopher Eccleston seemed like perfect casting for the Dark Rider.

Saw a second preview of The Golden Compass, though, and it looks even better than the first one we saw. They could still screw it up, but I at least have high hopes for this one. The visual look is dead-on (which was my first reaction to the very first Fellowship teaser), and it looks like they’ve stuck with the book’s concepts.

This isn’t going to last long

Did a Google search just for the heck of it. I wonder how quickly those numbers will climb…

Harry and Ginny

The webcomic “Punks and Nerds” comments on one aspect of the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Read that first… Read the rest of this entry »

There Goes the Hogwarts Express

Is this what he saved those mean girls from?

One Time-Turner to rule them all

I keep calendars displaying both the current month and the next month up in my cube at work. I figured I’d better post this configuration before it stopped being what I got to look at every day:

From what?

Bad Boys

I am thoroughly sick of the phenomenon I call the Draco Malfoy Effect. This is the process by which young (and not-so-young) women become convinced that not only are evil bad-boy types desirable, but completely reformable. Liking the maverick is nothing new for the Hollywood-hypnotized masses, especially seeing as how he’s so often played by a desirable star. However, liking the villain–the kind who has not yet been definitively shown to possess a heart–to the point that you believe he can be saved through sex with either a) you, b) your Mary Sue, or c) the ingenue of the cast is, to my thinking, simply bizarre.

I’d love to have a discussion on this. Please comment. (Even if you think I’m the one with her head on crooked.)

Sorting the Leviathan

I realized this morning what struck me as odd about the original crew of Moya: they’re not a crew, they’re a D&D party. Two warriors, a priest, a thief, and Ordinary Guy (who’d probably be classed as a bard). We started trying to categorize everyone else who shows up and realized that we’d need to know all the kits and extra subclasses to do it right. Then I thought of trying to determine alignments and couldn’t decide whether to use the D&D system or the TMNT system (which I barely know but seems to work better for actual people). It was at that point that Kelson said, “You know, it’d be easier to sort them into Hogwarts houses.” So we did. Read the rest of this entry »

Harry Potter computer viruses

Inspired by finding a list of Babylon 5 viruses earlier this week.

Harry Potter virus: Looks like the last file of a virus you just wiped out, until you try to erase it–then it wipes your drive.

Voldemort virus: You can’t get rid of it, only make it dormant. It can be reactivated by the Wormtail virus up to thirteen years later.

Dumbledore virus: Scares off all the other viruses but never seems to actually *do* anything.

Hermione virus: Fills up all available drive space with files of useless information.

Ron virus: Contains code, some of it buggy, from the author’s five previous viruses.

Read the rest of this entry »

OotP and LotR

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before, but recently I started to wonder if, given the prophecy stuff and plotlines of Order of the Phoenix, Neville could end up Sam to Harry’s Frodo. “Who are you? His bodyguard?” “His gardener.”

Peter David on Order of the Phoenix

I found Peter David’s review of the latest Harry Potter. I agree for the most part with his take on the high/low points, although the pacing didn’t bother me. I had made a comment the other day to Katie regarding Voldemort’s objective not being worth protecting. After all (spoilers) Read the rest of this entry »

Yup, it’s good.

We actually did brave the line on Friday, sort of. A line of kids running out of Borders at the Block just as we were trying to get in, around 10:30. We stayed to look at the entertainment, which the adults were enjoying at least as much as the kids, and then got some coffee for the drive back. One woman seemed very optimistic about the amount of stuff she’d be able to get done while waiting–I didn’t see it, but Kelson reported that she had a thick stack of things like Divorce for Dummies piled next to her latte.

Saturday, we went on our roughly trimonthly software spree and netted about 8 relatively cool things for about 40% of the original cost. Leaving Fry’s, Kelson said, “So, where to? Home?…Food?…Borders?”

“Borders.”

Three minutes later: “Crap! We don’t have the confirmation number!”

It didn’t matter. The petite witch in the corset handed me a ticket that said “Hufflepuff 707″ with no more ID than my name. I went off and picked up the Spanish edition of Prisoner of Azkaban that I’d seen the night before, which I got for 10% off. $30 for both PdA and OotP–not bad. And I only had to be in Hufflepuff for ten minutes.

I don’t remember where I left off Saturday night, but I picked it back up over breakfast on Sunday and didn’t put it down until somewhere around page 417, when it took me half an hour to convince myself to pick it back up again. Tenth grade is hell, and I know it intimately, but it was all just hitting too close. Maybe that speaks well of JKR, maybe it says she’s beating an undead horse. All I know is it very nearly lost me.

I did finish, about dinnertime on Sunday. And sort of went whaaaaaah at the sheer monumentality of 1) the book having been written and 2) my having read it.

I’ll be going all comp-lit on it in another post. Right now, though, bed.

One more day!!!!

It’s really too bad we’re not planning on braving the crowds of kids to go wait for Order of the Phoenix tonight. My hair’s really got its Hermione on.