Harry Potter and the Website Troubles.

June 27, 2003

Wow, I didn’t realize it had been nearly a week since my last posting. I thought I’d done one more recently than last Saturday night. Eh, oh well.

My court appearance went just fine. I had to stand in line and go to a window to enter my plea of no contest, and when the woman said that with my record she could bump the fine down to $55 from $109, I said I wanted to talk to a judge, just in case I could get a better deal. I sat around for about a half hour until the judge showed up, and then in the order we’d gone to the window, we went to the front of the courtroom and entered our plea for the judge to…well, judge. Some people got called in on some serious things: driving without seatbelts, running red lights, etc, and except for the two dismissed fines (driving without registration when the person did have it, just not the proof with them and driving without headlights at dusk in an unfamiliar car and only having the fog lights on), I had the lowest base fine of any of the people called up. People were getting their fines lowered to $250 or so, so even if I had to pay the base fine amount of $109, I still would have been getting off much easier than everyone else. The judge ended up offering me the same deal: $55 instead of $109. Not bad. I couldn’t get it completely dismissed instead of reduced even with my until-recently perfect driving record because that’s only done in extenuating circumstances or for brand new drivers that are then able to get sent to classes. Doesn’t work for me having driven for six years.

Today I’m reading through the new copy of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” that my Mom bought off Amazon.com, and so far I’m only somewhat enjoying it. I’m a good 200 pages in, but it hasn’t really gotten me hooked yet. I stand by my feelings that Harry is getting more and more annoying as he gets older. I mean, sure, he’s a 15 year old boy with some extraordinary circumstances, but man, he needs to learn some patience and tolerance. I have a feeling it’s going to bite him in the ass sooner or later.

I’ve been working again on retooling my website, but it’s proving to be harder than I initially imagined. I’m not working solidly on it, but I’m thinking off and on about some ideas for restructuring, that sort of thing. The general look of it won’t change, just the technology behind it. Speaking of my website, I’ve also been working on pictures from my trip and the last few weeks of school. I have a lot of pictures to go through, unfortunately. And you know something? I noticed quite some time ago that my monitor is getting dark. When I use dual monitors, I can notice the difference plainly, but when I just use my regular one, I don’t notice it since it’s all I’m looking at. That being said, I have to apologize if I’d made any pictures in my pictures section brighter than they should be–I just haven’t been aware that I’ve been doing it. It’s not a huge difference, but I’ve noticed that the right brightness on this monitor makes them slightly washed out on others. That’s slowed me down a little bit because I have to be more careful. In any case, I have about 50 done so far, and only another 100 or so to go from my trip alone. Then I get into other pictures.

And speaking of pictures, I took some up at the Washington Park Rose Garden yesterday. I went up there with a friend and we wandered around looking at the roses that are thankfully still in bloom, and I took some nice pictures that I think came out well. I haven’t downloaded them from my camera yet, especially since I’m still dealing with hundreds of others. It’s been hot again here in Portland, so it was nice up in the park yesterday, though the car ride back was a little sweaty. I went grocery shoppingh immediately afterwards, and the store I went to had a promotion out front with someone giving away free ice cream cones. Yummy. It was just the right amount of sun out that the ice cream was just starting to melt as you got towards the bottom. Mmmm…it’s been a long time since I had real ice cream, but since I”m still watching what I eat, I only had a little bit.

Well, that’s about all for now. I think I’ll get back to Harry’s fifth set of adventures. Have a nice day, all.