Last week Luc found a page with Weird Al's eBay Song. It's been getting a lot of play in the office this week.. :)
Dennis also sent me a very cool link to a JK Rowling interview that answers some of my questions, thanks for that! I liked this bit:
Everything that happens has a meaning, sometimes in a later book. Do you have everything planned out in your head, or do you tie things in as you go? Yes, it's all planned out, but I still give myself room to have some fun if a good idea arrives while I'm writing.
Sometimes I wondered if it had all been planned out to some extent, as I'm sure it'd be harder to explain things that happened in previous books without some forethought. I also liked this:
I was wondering about Dumbledore's facial expression in Goblet when he found out that Voldemort had touched Harry. The narrative says that Dumbledore reacted with a look of triumph. Aside from the problem of interpreting triumph on someone's face, I was wondering if that is an attempt to throw question on Dumbledore's character, or is he triumphant, perhaps, that Harry can be touched by Lord Voldemort without being destroyed (or something like that)? I frequently look triumphant, I'll have you know. Well, I'm sure you won't be surprised that I'm not going to explain why Dumbledore looked that way. Well-spotted though.
I actually wondered about that myself. In fact when I read it in book 4 a year and a half ago I was thrown into doubt about Dumbledore, and whether I could trust him and how much of the entire series would be different if Dumbledore wasn't all he seemed. I couldn't wait the next six months for book 5 to come out so I could find out what happened next!
I also went through the majority of my USA photos, rotating them before I can resize them. It was just like revisiting everywhere, it was great :) Getting closer to getting everything online.
Found this little list of questions I put together while reading the Harry Potter books for the third time through.
The first list is questions that I'd like to see answered in the last two books:
Why does Snape not get the defence against dark arts job?
Why does Dumbledore trust Snape so much? What did he do on his "first chance", as mentioned in book four?
Where did Harry's parents' money come from?
Why is Voldemort so anti mudbloods when he is one himself?
What about making things work just by thinking about them? No wand or words like when harry blew up Marge or made the glass disappear at the zoo. Surely if he could do that powerful wizards could make things happen just by thinking them?
And the next list is more just inconsistencies (there's stacks more, some of which I've read on other sites)
How could the kids practise quidditch on their holidays if they couldn't do magic outside of school? What about Fred and George making joke stuff all the time? What about the floo network?
When do the kids bathe?
How did Tom Riddle's diary know Ginny was talking about him as Voldemort? - presumably she never would have written his name...
How did Dobby disapparate from the hospital at Hogwarts?
If Dumbledore and Moody were such good friends, how come Dumbledore took a year to recognise the imposter?
How come you can't apparate inside the grounds, but you can use unauthorised portkeys?
Why is there no mention of the thestrals at the end of book four as Harry is leaving?
And finally, one I may just have missed..
Who's the head of Ravenclaw?
I've been having a blast with my new camera. It's so damned fast it's scary. The picture quality is great. I'm able to get a shallow depth of field to photos, so I can actually take portaits and close ups with the background out of focus. Very exciting :) It seems to have some issues focussing things very close up (when not in macro mode - still haven't done much playing with that), and I'm still learning how to use it properly, but so far I'm very happy with it :):)
Dave found this useful site, that generates the html of surveys for you, so you don't have to remove your friends' answers to quizzes.. very nifty :)
| Have you ever hit someone forcefully?: | No, unless you count my little brother when we kids |
| Have you ever thrown anything at a moving car?: | No |
| Have you ever been in a fist fight?: | No |
| Have you ever laughed so hard you cried?: | Yes |
| Have you ever hit an animal on the road?: | Not me, but I was in the car once when Dad did |
| Have you ever seen a Beatles film?: | No |
| Have you ever cussed?: | Yes |
| Have you ever been on a subway?: | Yes |
| Have you ever taught a little kid to cuss?: | No |
| Have you ever cheated on a test/exam?: | No |
| Have you ever skipped school?: | No |
| Have you ever egged someones house?: | No |
| Have you ever gotten a computer virus?: | I got a word macro virus in 1995 once and thought it was a great novelty |
| Have you ever cried for no reason at all?: | Yes |
| Have you ever missed someone?: | Yes |
Have You Ever? brought to you by
BZOINK!
As I was thinking of this, the thing that kept popping into my head when thinking about "heavy metal" was the Sydney Harbour Bridge - a massive steel arch bridge. But alas, I don't have any good photos of the Harbour Bridge taken on my camera. Then I thought about making a mosaic of it, but it's not the sort of thing that lends itself to a small mosaic (96 pixels wide at most). So what to use?
In the end, I used a photo of a bobcat that has been digging up the back lane this week, and a photo of my friends' brand-new-second-hand car the same day they got it. Both were taken out the window of my car, and both are a menace to the roads in their own way :)
Got sick of waiting for "friends" to go swimming with (don't even get me started on that rant) so after a day of 35C heat I decided to go by myself. It was absolutely delicious. Even managed to get all my hair up out of the way so it didn't get all sticky.
My "position" at cia is looking ever more shaky. They're looking for a person to take over the nt admin role, which would take away most of my reason for being :(
I happened to get stuck in the bus lane on Fitzroy St today, and there also happened to be an easy parking spot, so I made a split second decision to stop and take another photo of the desperate tree. Normally there are no parking spots there, and even if there are I'm usually in the wrong lane to stop. So anyway. It really hasn't grown at all in two years..
Think I'm going to leave Rove early and go to bed.
..for this weekend is to tidy this place up once and for all. The situation is getting desperate. Maybe I should have just taken a photo of the place for yesterday's theme thursday..
Friday Five time (yay it's back this week!)
What was...
1. ...your first grade teacher's name?
Well "first grade" was Miss Rees. Kindergarton was Mrs O'Hare. I think. I could be wrong. It's been 25 years.
2. ...your favorite Saturday morning cartoon?
I always loved the Bugs Bunny cartoons
3. ...the name of your very first best friend?
Donna Bonnefin.
hrm.
Dave was just commenting on people's presence (or lack thereof) on the internet. I just did a Google search on Donna Bonnefin and the second entry was a previous entry in my blog.
/me stares in blank amazement at the screen.
4. ...your favorite breakfast cereal?
Was or is? I used to only have corn flakes and rice bubbles, but since I've been able to buy my own cereal I buy something with more substance that I won't be hungry again after an hour.
5. ...your favorite thing to do after school?
I honestly have no idea how I existed before I got a computer. I didn't spend much time with friends. I think I watched a reasonable amount of tv, but not ridiculous amounts. I think I mostly just wasted time.
The thought popped into my head tonight that I haven't talked to Todd Sinclair for a couple of years. So I thought I'd do a quick search for him on the net to see if he's still around. I totally freaked out over this page though .. although it hasn't been updated since 1997, all the people I used to know from #relax were there, including Guy and myself! Scary stuff :)
I pack of 12 poster paints I got from Kmart when I was in high school. I was going to be all creative with them, but in the end only used them a couple of times. Then they all dried up.
Two "cylinder" pencil sharpeners - you know the ones that keep all the shavings in a little cylinder, then you unscrew the lid to empty it? I had two - one with a cracked lid and one that didn't sharpen properly because the sharpener wasn't lined up with the hole properly. I never use them because I have a much better sharpener. I've had them since primary school and I think it's time to let them go :)
A couple of exercise books that I used to document my finances when I was at uni. I had all my expenses colour coded by whether they were uni stuff, entertainment, church, food, miscellaneous stuff etc. I could tell you to the cent how much I spent on everything while I was at uni. Pretty obsessive really. Also in there was a chart of when I'd written to penfriends and when they'd written back, and a list of all the Bugs Bunny cartoons when they were on tv in the early 90s before I typed them all up onto the computer.
A 1995 planner diary, that I used for a while when I was doing my Bible readings to write down my thoughts on the passages. That only lasted a couple of months though.
Some old notebooks and school planner diaries. I couldn't bear to throw out a whole bunch more though.
Piles of Christmas cards - a stack of impersonal ones from work, and a bunch I'd gotten off mum one year to do crafty things with but never did
You have just won one million dollars:
1. Who do you call first?
maybe luc
2. What is the first thing you buy for yourself?
I'd go to Europe for a holiday
3. What is the first thing you buy for someone else?
Good question.
4. Do you give any away? If yes, to whom?
Prolly. Prolly to family and maybe a few close friends. There's always then the difficulty of how much, and who'd get jealous. Would have potential to get rather messy.
5. Do you invest any? If so, how?
Sure. Property.
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Very long and frustrating day. Gonna chicken out of writing anything meaningful and just go to bed.
ok I have not heard that song in 13 years. In fact I didn't even remember it existed until just now, as I was cleaning out a drawer, and found the lyrics that my brother had written out for me :)
So I've rearranged my study yet again to fit in the filing cabinet. But in the process I decided not to put things back into the shelves/drawers unless I had a good reason for keeping them. All was going well until I got to all the letters I'd gotten from penpals, and then to a collection of "letters" that Jacqui and Chris and I used to write to each other on the outlines in church. I only read bits of a few of them, but they had all sorts of miscellaneous crap on them, including talk about boyfriends and people I might ask to the year 12 formal. I know I should just throw them out, but just think of all the memories I wouldn't be able to dredge up if I did that.. hehe
I also dug out my music books from when I had keyboard lessons in primary school, and worked pretty much all the way through it in a couple of hours! Then got totally frustrated because the chord keys listed were different to another book I have, so I have no idea which is correct. Must ask Sami.