Countdown to Harry Potter 5 and 7

My wife and I have a date scheduled for Friday night. At 10:00 PM we will be at the Fort Worth Science Museum to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in IMAX. Afterward, we will probably go to the bookstore, which should still be open, and pick up our copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We both enjoy the books, and will be going out of town for the following week to Lake Murray for SWUUSI.

In preparation for the movie on Friday, we have been watching the previous movies, one a night. In some ways, I love the anticipation it is building. In other ways, it is just making me want the week to be over so I can "get on with the good stuff".

Update July, 22 2007 12:19 AM: Well, in the last 26 hours, I have seen the movie and read the book. All I can say is Wow, what a way to start my vacation. I'm sure I'll reread the last book in a few months, and undoubtedly read it slower that time, but I really enjoyed it. As to the movie, I can only say that my standard complaint regarding turning books into movies stands. With only 2-3 hours to capture 700 pages of vivid imagination, of course the movie is going to suffer by comparison. I did like it better then the Goblet of Fire.

"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?"

Friday the 13th

Last Friday, the day starts out with the VP walking around asking all of the men on my side of the building if we are the one who is tossing paper towels on the floor.

I get to lunch and pages start immediately coming in to tell me that apps from our parent company are not making it into our system. This turns out to be due to a DNS issue which takes 4 hours to completely get the issue resolved.

When that issue is resolved, the Citrix Environment web server goes down. This prevents access to a key piece of business functionality. A workaround is instituted about an hour afterward.

And this afternoon, I find out that the old building, the one with about 8 more critical servers, has been running on generator since Friday, the 13th, at 9:00 AM. This is because the power company followed the original shutoff date instead of the revised one.

The Road Not Taken

I recently got an iPod. One of my favorite uses of it is to download podcasts for listening to on the drive to and from work. One of the many subscriptions that I set up is for the 2007 National Poetry Month Selections. For the month of April, one poem was read every day. Today on the way home, I heard Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken". It really resonated today, and so I thought I would quote it here.

Robert Frost (1874–1963).  Mountain Interval.  1920.
 
1. The Road Not Taken
 
 
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, 
And sorry I could not travel both 
And be one traveler, long I stood 
And looked down one as far as I could 
To where it bent in the undergrowth;         5
 
Then took the other, as just as fair, 
And having perhaps the better claim, 
Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 
Though as for that the passing there 
Had worn them really about the same,         10
 
And both that morning equally lay 
In leaves no step had trodden black. 
Oh, I kept the first for another day! 
Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 
I doubted if I should ever come back.         15
 
I shall be telling this with a sigh 
Somewhere ages and ages hence: 
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— 
I took the one less traveled by, 
And that has made all the difference.         20

New Cell Phone

My new work cell phone arrived last week. Just in time, too, because my old one wouldn't charge from the USB connection. I had to remove the battery to charge. I could power it via USB, but the battery wouldn't charge.

The new phone is a Blackberry 8830. It does the standard PDA job well enough. I even get notified of email on this before I see it in Outlook. Unfortunately, they took the USB cable because they don't want ne syncing this to my computer directly. I like the over the air sync, but I would still like to use the phone as a modem, which requires the cable. I turned in my old cable with my old phone, and the spare that I had broke, so it will probably be a while before I test it.

Of course, I am already doing something I had not done with the old one, and that is posting to Blogger.