The Last Week in Review

It's been a while since I have posted, in fact it's been over a week. That's because this last week has been a busy one. Just so that you know why I haven't been posting, let me give you a quick recap on the previous week:

First Weekend
The first weekend was pretty fun. It was my wife's birthday, so we went out to eat and see a film without my son (who was with Grandma). We went to the Brazilian restaurant at Jordan Landing, which was excellent, if rather steep. The meat was great, as was the salad bar. Would I go again? Not if it wasn't a special occasion. The price was a bit rich for my Scottish blood.

The movie we saw as Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. For those of you who have been regular visitors to this blog, you may have noticed that I am a Potter fan, as is my wife. I like it because of the plots and side plots, the puzzles that are placed intentionally by J.K. Rowling, and the general story parts that make the whole. As such, I have read the entire series several times to get ready for each new book or movie that comes out.

Now, The Order of the Phoenix is perhaps my least favorite book because of Harry's attitude. He's whiney in this book, to the point which I would like to smack him up side the head. Yes, his life isn't fair, but neither is anyone else's. Harry forgets that he isn't the only one that has lost family members to the Death Eaters. Regardless, it's an important piece of the story, because it start's to clear up the unanswered (and unquestioned) questions that have existed from the beginning of the book.

The movie, on the other hand, is now my favorite movie of the Potter saga. It was done better than even Prisoner of Azkaban, which was my previous favorite. Harry was angry, but not whiney. The death of Sirius Black was handled touchingly, and gave us a lot of time to grieve with the characters. All in all, I would highly recommend it.

Server Essentials, Again
This last week covered the Mac OS X v.10.4 Server Essentials course again, and I taught it in the Sandy campus (by the Sandy City Hall). That campus is by far my most favorite campus to teach in, because the classrooms are huge, clean, and relaxed. My second is Murray, which has a lab that's cramped, but the classrooms are well organized. Then comes the Annex building (where my office is), and then Bountiful.

Anyway, the class went really well. I had a student from BYU, one from OC Tanner, and one from an airforce base in Texas. The mix was great, and with such a lightly scheduled class, we had plenty of time to shoot the breeze and still get out early. As usual, the best part of the class was the sand box time at the end, where we put together an iChat server, and tried to incorporate the servers into an Active Directory system (which was limited in it's success).

The Last Weekend
This last weekend was consumed with the last book in the Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. To be honest, I got an advanced copy on Thursday evening, and finished it on Friday. That being said, I won't say anything that may spoil the plot for those still engrossed in the book, but I will say that a lot of my theories were correct, and I'm quite happy about that. That, and all the people I really wanted alive remained living.

So, that is what kept me from posting. Now that I am all Pottered out, and there are a load of things new about the Apple TV and the iPhone to write about, I will be posting regularly again.