Ok, this has bothered me for a long time.

No spoiler warning, because it's been like a decade since this stuff came out.

So Voldemort has this grand strategy, when he's in like high school, that he's going to be "Super Bad Guy Who Punches Death In The Face, Because Bad Childhood I Guess?  Whatever."  He finds out that you can make a horcrux to hide part of your soul, but you have to kill somebody to do it.  "Sure, that's fine, I'm super committed to this plan," Voldemort says, "Hell, why don't I kill like a bunch of people, and make a bunch of them, as backup?"

"Yeah, that's fine, you can do that," says the rules of magic, who probably were just thinking that he maybe got a bit too smiley when killing people was brought up.

Voldemort does this, and puts a bit of his soul into:

• His school diary.
• Like his mom's ring, I think?
• The Slytherin guy's locket.
• The Hufflepuff lady's cup.
• The Ravenclaw lady's diadem.
• His stupid snake.
• Harry Potter (whoopsie).

He then hides these things in:

• Ginny Weasley's shopping cart.
• His family's crappy run-down house.
• That cave place full of poison stuff and zombies that Dumbledore and Harry go to in Harry Potter and the Fucks He Stopped Giving.  This is the only good hiding place.
• The goblin bank?  I didn't pay attention to how they figured this one out, but it's not a terrible idea either.
• The school where everything happens, wow, this is The Best Idea.
• Next to him.  I guess someplace sneaky before he returns to life?
• His actual main enemy.

Here's what I would do, if I suddenly had the chance to become immortal through a series of murders, and wanted to stay immortal, despite the obvious moral questions involved.  My horcruxes would be:

• A brick.  I'd hide this in a building made out of like, a bajillion bricks.
• A big heavy rock.  I'd hide this at the bottom of the damn ocean.
• A really big iron atom.  I'd hide this in "whatever, who's going to find one atom."
• Can I do a second brick?  Seems like the right option.  I'd hide this on the moon.  You can levitate stuff right?  Just be like "fuck off to the moon."
• The Sun.  Your move, The Good Guys.
• Anybody who is not actively my main enemy.  Maybe like a dog?  People like dogs.

Finally, I'd use my standard "I'm immortal" defense against my enemies: Live a long time, quietly, out of the way, until all my enemies are dead, and I'm long forgotten.  Then, you slowly take things over, realizing that there's no need to be flashy and loud about things.

Sunday: This stupid Harry Potter movie is going to be on until midnight, isn't it? Did we really need an hour in the last movie of R+H+H having a camp out and doing nothing? Seems like that would have been a good thing to cut, but I guess that's why I'm not in charge of making cash grabs to get an extra billion dollars.

I mean, I'm just saying.  Still, it's a three day weekend, and I'm committed to finally finishing this movie series.

I felt like pizza.

While eating it, I decided that I'm even more sure that Pokemon Go is fundamentally broken.  There was a gym there, and I figured I could defeat it without much trouble (although Blissey should be nerfed for being annoying).  However, while I was getting ready for the third round, which would actually start knocking things out, the GPS decided I wasn't close enough, so I had to exit and re-enter the gym.  In that time, some asshole had dumped a pile of berries, healing everything back to where I had started.  What's the point?  It takes me three minutes to battle the gym, and it takes an opponent three seconds to undo all of that.  It's ridiculously asymmetric.

Which is basically how to identify a bad game.  A good game should give all players an equal chance of winning, and shouldn't require vastly different levels of effort to achieve that.  Ideally, there should also be multiple equally valid strategies, so it's not just a matter of doing "the thing that wins."  A quick list, because I've been thinking about this all evening:

• Pokemon Go: The gym thing I mentioned above should be fixed.  Additionally, it'd be nice if they found some way to make more Pokemon useful.  There are so many that are basically just trash that get in the way of the same six everyone uses.  I know that the strength is based on the original games, but who cares?  Why not make it so that, occasionally, you'll get an insanely powerful Pidgey or something?  Randomness helps smooth out bad mechanics to make a game more equal, and therefore more fun.
• Spooky House Betrayal at House on the Hill:  Like I said.  The entire game is essentially random, and I have not yet had a bad time playing it.  The bad guy is overpowered, but I've only played one scenario in which it seemed overwhelmingly so.  I suspect they've worked out the balance by attempting to ensure that in order to achieve each side's goal, each side needs approximately the same number of steps.
• Train Game Ticket to Ride:  This also relies on a lot of randomness.  Getting the cards you need requires the deck to be sorted the way you want, and filling the ticket requirements is an issue of getting what you want, and not having someone screw you over.
• Machi Koro: This game needs more/better mechanics.  The PvP aspects don't seem balanced well, and the fact that the entire second tier of buildings is largely unneeded to win means something isn't right.
• Settlers of Catan: This one also has a lot of randomness, and has many winning strategies.  I think some of the randomness works against it, though.  Fully randomizing the tiles creates problem layouts, and I don't think the 1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1 placement completely equalizes this fact.  Having a set of pre-balanced placements (with probably something preventing brick/wood and stone/wheat junctions to maximize the necessity of trading) would probably help.
• Axis and Allies: I was surprised when I rebought this game, and there was so much redesign between the 80s version and the modern one.  But it's clear that this was done to fix the balance problem in the original.  In that version, the Axis has almost no working strategy to win, and this goes back to "there's one way to win": Russia dumps a wall of infantry on the border while the US and UK pour expensive units into Europe.  There is one possible counter to this, if the Russia player is cautious (Germany can invade and take out the UK on the first turn by dumping everything it has if they roll well).  The updated version added additional territories that make the old strategy invalid, and added new units that smooth out the cost/utility curve.
• Set Jr.: Sometimes you have to remember you're playing against someone who is five, and that you probably don't have to make all the optimal choices in the game to make sure it balances.

Side note: Why doesn't Harry just jump off the stairs, and do the thing to stop falling when he gets where he wants?  Wizards should really use more magic for simple things.

• People who make actual video games know that games are more fun if they don't always stick to the rules.
• Inequality.
• Marvel is selling a Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel costume.

Sunday: Cold.

It's super cold out, so I went to get something warm for lunch.

This was too much curry.

I did pick up a slice of WF pizza too.  In any case, I got home earlier than usual, and discovered that there was nothing on TV.  Except for a Harry Potter movie marathon.  So I've now seen part of the second to last movie, and I have no clue why they dragged this into two movies (yes, I do.  Money, but still).  There's this hour plus segment of Harry, Hermione, and Ron camping in the woods and doing nothing and I was able to watch an episode of Bob's Burgers without missing anything from the plot.  I'm also annoyed at how much of a jerk everyone is.  Ron storms off to go camp by himself or something, and when he returns, Harry is all "why did you even come back?"  Dude, he just pulled your stupid ass out of frozen pond.  Maybe start with "thanks for helping me not die"?

• An old story that helps explain why journalists are so bad.
• So Brexit is going to be a giant disaster, of course.
• Vaccines.
• Relaxed tiger.
• The other thing I saw when I googled this place is that right next door is like three resorts.
• Diana of Themyscira.

Tuesday: It's getting to the point where we need contingencies at work for "alien invasion" and "angry wizards"

And now I want a cookie.

• This is clearly collective punishment.
• I often forget that Harry Potter is the same age as me.
• Bunnies.
• In this post, I mention Patsy Walker, Hellcat.  Here's an ad for her earlier comic.

Saturday: Waking up early on the weekend is weird.

Why did I wake up early?  Mostly because some jackass in my neighborhood decided to power saw things at 9am.  Jackass.  However, I had errands to run today, so that did kind of work out.

First up: dropping off that shitty cable modem at the cable store.  TWC has their office in Ward Centers, which is actually close enough that I can see part of it from my lanai.  Next, since I was there, and today is today, I went over to the comic book store.  Why?

Because this was today.

 They had people doing cosplay at the store, but I got there just late enough to see them in the hallway.  I thought about trying to get a picture, but it felt like trying to make people work when their shift is over.  Even though they're volunteers.  Regardless, it didn't feel right.

So, what did I get?

Only one of these was free.

I looked it up ahead of time, and the kaboom anthology seemed like the best way to go, since the big two seem to perpetually fuck shit up.  My usual strategy is to get a trade or something, because you can't just go in, get a free comic, and walk out.  Well, you can, but it kind of makes you a jerk.  I grabbed one of the Adventure Time ones, number 4 because I couldn't remember which ones I already have, but I'm pretty sure I don't have 4.

Then I saw that someone at DC had decided to reissue/recollect the Harley Quinn (v1) series in trades.  I have the first volume from years ago, so it was nice to pick up the other two.

Lunch was next:

This is why I don't go to Nico's at regular lunch time.

It was super busy, but I was able to grab a table immediately.

Same as always.

 Boat time!

Wait a minute, I recognize you!

Final errand of the day: go to Amazon's local showroom, and play with tablets and see if I like them.  My comparison was between the kindle and the nexus 7.  I want something pocket-y sized, in the less than $200 range.  The kindle is too not-androidy.  It puts everything into categories, but that's dumb.

My phone is organized based on how often I use the app.  Top row of home screen is all my most popular things: email/twitter/etc.  The sides have less popular things: alarm/calendar/music identify stuff/etc.  The bottom row is things I look at when I'm sitting down to look at stuff: browser/rss reader/wifi manager/etc.  The center holds things I'll use, but not super often: calculator/google goggles/phone <-> computer sync.  The logic here is that I'm usually controlling the phone with my thumb, so things on the edges are easier to tap than things in the middle.

The kindle blocks everything into categories, and pretty much screams "you can buy stuff to put here from us!"  I get that that's what they're going for, but that's not really a big selling point for me.  So, nexus 7 then.  It's just a big flat version of my phone that claims 9-hours of viewing time.  I didn't buy it, partially because I was angry at BB for putting out like three "simulated screen image" versions, and hiding the usable one on the far endcap.  In any case, I still have lots of time to decide if I really want to get one.

I'm putting how I spent the rest of my afternoon after a break, so links go next.  Then dinner.  One problem about getting up early is that you can't use lunch as both lunch and dinner, so I need to figure out what I want to eat.

• Team Twerp.
• Today I learned about Nemrut Dağ.  You should too.
• Bunny.
• Bears.
• Do famous people not have handlers that point out how stupid things like this are?  In what way does this help build your fanbase?

How I Spent the Rest of My Afternoon.

I spent the weekend watching Harry Potter movies

This is like the only person who doesn't fuck shit up, and that's probably only 40% due to the fact that he's Gary Fucking Oldman. Gary Fucking Oldman makes any movie better.

(It's totally 60% "everyone else in these stories/book/movies sucks at making a real plan, and kind of just hopes things fall into place without direct action."  Sirius-ly. Dumbledore couldn't plan his way out of a paper bag.)