Sunday, August 7, 2011

Pottermore Early Access

Yes, we're gearing up for the big day. We've already printed our wedding invitations and are printing addresses onto envelopes as we get them. We hope to send the invitations out in September. John has ordered his wedding band, arrangements are being made for the cake, catering is pretty much taken care of, and things are generally falling into place at this point.

But what's REALLY exciting is that we both managed to win early registration into Pottermore and will be part of the Beta testing group.
If you don't know about Pottermore, watch the video here.

How it Happened:
First of all, our "friend" Trey was supposed to remind us when early registration was starting but he "forgot." When we saw on Facebook that he got in on the fourth day of registration, we berated him for not reminding us and he accused us of not really seeming that interested. ANYWAY, John and I decided that we were going to do what it takes to get in on the fifth registration day. Trey gave us all the tips we needed and we patiently awaited notification about the window of time between which registration would open. John and I both checked the site every few minutes starting at around 10:30 am because according to the MuggleNet, registration would open between 10:30 and 2:00. (Quite the work distraction.) When registration finally opened, I was working at the Ask-A-Librarian desk in the library. Right when John sent me a text saying "It's Open. Go NOW!" about five students walked into the library needing help completing the Chem Abstracts assignment that was due in one hour.

Luckily, Phil had come to the desk early to relieve me. Still, I was at a computer and registration was open and I wasn't about to risk losing the minute or two it would take to go back upstairs to my office. So while helping these students, I was frantically calculating the answer to the Magic Quill question, typing in the secret web address, and looking for that damn magic quill. Any time the students looked down at their papers, I was switching tabs to the secret web address. I couldn't find it. Phil told me that he could take over but in my head I was screaming "I have to find the magic quill, I have to find the magic quill!" Then I got a text from John. "It's in the ad! It's the glowing one!" So there it was; this glowing quill flying by in an ad at the top of the page. I had to click it as it flew by. I missed the first two times!

Finally I clicked and got to the registration page but had to stop for a while and help some students. I couldn't sit still. Why do these kids wait until an hour before the assignment is due? And why every semester? About ten minutes later, Phil volunteered to take some of these students upstairs and I volunteered to stay at the desk "in case any other students arrived." Luckily, they didn't and I was able to rush through the registration form. When Phil came back down I raced to my office to check and see if I got the validation email. I clicked the validation link in my email and was in! And just barely, because when I went back to Pottermore, registration had closed.

So we're both really excited about getting into the site early. We hope to some day see some of you there. :)

No comments:

Post a Comment