3 in a row??  Seriously guys…

About a week ago, you might have noticed (if you follow my little digg widget on the right religiously) that I digged a story about Joe ‘outing’ Dumbledore.  At the time, I thought, “that’s cool and seems to make sense.”  Then, today, I was talking to a friend, and she told me about how this thing has exploded in controversy on all the fansites (and many media outlets) – apparently there were many comments often to the effect of - “Think of all those times he and Harry were alone together. What if he molested Harry???!!!” 

Then there is this silly video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAhYPOoVrh – where the guys argument seems to be, “it is not good for kids…” because they might start thinking gay people can be wise and kind.  I think that by living out here, I have forgotten that things like this are still an issue in much of the country.   Ah well, I guess the crazies will now two reasons to hate Harry Potter (because the promoting witchcraft argument must have been getting dull even for them).  

Additionally, I have replaced the firmware (operating system) on my iPod with the open source firmware RockBox.  It is really awesome, something like linux for the iPod.  It is fully themable and open to a ton of 3rd party apps (games (chess, doom and 100s others), calculator, recorder, dynamic playlists creation etc..).  More importantly, it comes with the ability to play more file types .ogg and .mpg videos for example.  It is almost like I got a new awesome mp3player and it was completely free!  The best part is I don’t have to use iTunes to sync it; you can add and manage files either through libraries in many music jukeboxes or simply dragging and dropping files (you can also delete and move songs in the device itself now).  You should check it out if you want to reinvigorate your iPod.

In one day, Cal went from being #6 in the country to number #3, and another week later, we are sitting at #2.  Is this really possible?  Anyway, some friends and I bought tickets to the UCLA away game in two weeks.  So, I guess I will be heading down to LA for a day or two in two weeks.  Hopefully we can make it to a beach while we are there.

My Birthday was pretty profitable this year… Got free dinner, drinks, LOTR trilogy, new clothes and this sign from Darcy…

I have been trying to finish two papers at work in the last couple of weeks.  I think they should be good papers, but of course this is the time that the machine decides our codes have some sort of memory leak I can’t find…  Ah well.

It is the semiannual release season again – Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon and Fedora 8 both come out in the next couple weeks – is excited.

This is mostly spoiler free for the benefit of Lisa.

I’m glad that I read pretty slow, because it took me about 24 hours of reading to finish the book.  Which meant I had a fantastic weekend filled entirely with reading.  I finished last night at about 1:30 and am now very sad that is all over.  After reading each of the books multiple times and falling asleep listening to the audiobooks almost every night for the last year, I think I had come to think of the characters as real people and almost as friends.  However, it is always with the knowledge of there being more to come.  And now there is nothing more to come.  And I am sad . . .

It is good that LiveJournal exists for me to steal icons from…

After spending $10 for a 6 pack of Paulaner’s Premium Pils (the most I have ever spent on a 6 pack), I have decided I don’t like Pilsners in general, which is probably why I don’t like the typical domestic brands very much. My current favorites are the more modestly priced Downtown Brown and Sierra Nevada (I have to have a choice that I can get everywhere).

Yes, this is the level to which this blog has stooped.

I now belong to more forums than I can keep track of. I think I spent about 5 hours this morning/afternoon trying to keep up with my threads/questions on all of them. My favorites are in order: Linux Action Forum, Fedora Forum, OpenCompositing, NVNews, OpenWengo, Gizmo and Slashdot/Digg. Ah well, that is what Sundays are for. Perhaps we should admit that by community we mean a bunch of people yelling at each other online – which in my opinion is the best part of community. Now, if only politician’s were as blunt as Linus…

Now, after finishing that business, I am about to take Leaky’s ultimate Deathly Hallows quiz of 500 questions. So, that, when the book comes out Friday, I will have proof that I am the cleverest Harry Potter fan around . . . or, you know, a complete idiot. I am sure this will take me until the evening . . . feel free to interrupt.

And now, I think I should repost this countdown because I am so giddy with excitement and knocking around the book with the mouse is so soothing:

We must be getting close because the questions a getting harder! Who the bleep would know what Lilly’s wand is? Ok, I take that back…

It is now approximately 2:30 in the morning, and I just got back from the Fifth Potter Movie. So, there are some minor spoilers.

All in all, the experience was fun. To someone who has read the book many times, the movie was at least entertaining and somewhat amusing That said, it was mediocre at best and plain awkward at worst.
And, if you haven’t read the book, you will probably think it is the crappiest movie you have ever seen because, like GOF, nothing will make much sense because the producers again apparently took the random scene approach instead of the story telling one

Things that are good:

• Kreacher
• Luna
• Tonks (wishes there was more of her)
• The Order Arriving at the Ministry
• Azkaban looked cool. Actually, the whole newspaper theme throughout the movie was good and quite well done.
• Snape (as always)
• Filch and The Weasley Twins were funny

Things that are bad:

• Does Harry live on a farm now?
• All acting except the above mentioned characters and Dan.
• Harry Potter should not express himself in cheesy one liners.
• Why do you make Neville come out and express his feelings to Harry (he should be quiet, reserved and powerful) – coming right out and saying it ruins the elegance of Neville’s character.
• I already mentioned that nothing is properly introduced or would make sense in a stand alone movie.
• Mrs. Figg ? ? ? (raises eyebrow)
• The Dursleys bare no resemblance to the books or to any previous movie despite being the same actors.
• All the other plot changes . . . almost none would have saved any time.
• The Department of Mysteries is apparently a large bathroom.
• Grawps animation was mediocre compared to other recent movies, and his character was rather pointless in the movie (as was Hagrid for the most part – perhaps his tail will be useful in movie 7?)
• Give em hell Peeves??

The Really Bad:

• Dumbledore (Read the book you arrogant pr*$#)
• The final duel between Voldemort and Dumbledore was a great excuse for the movie makers to go wild and spend a good 5 minutes on fantastic effects and great spells… Going in expecting this, I was really disappointed that the scene in the movie was not very impressive. Ending with Harry saying, “I am better than you, I love … Nah Nah” – While in the book it is Harry at this time who questions Dumbledore about whether love isn’t useless. Good thing he didn’t in the movie, or Dumbledore might have tried to shake it into him.