It’s a fun site, but the adventure is fairly linear and simple. It follows the narrative structure of the book pretty closely, so there are no real surprises. You kind of know everything that is going to happen before it does. But you do get to do all the cool stuff from the story, like obtaining your very own wand and being sorted into your House at Hogwarts as part of the sorting hat ceremony.

There are ways to interact with other wizards. You can earn house points and compete with other players in wizard’s duels. I think Pottermore will get a lot better when they release more of the stories, and perhaps allow you to deviate from the original plot a bit more. It’s supposed to come out of beta testing this month and perhaps more players will also make it a bit more fun.

Even more devastating is the loss of Whitney, one of the most impressive singers we’ve ever had. Her voice was angelic and powerful and she carried herself on-stage with a commanding presence. Off-stage was another story. She had a troubled life and turned to drugs and alcohol, which only made her problems worse. In the end, it led to her undoing.

So many singers and musicians, it seems, come to an early end at the hands of drugs and alcohol. It makes you wonder if the price that fame extracts is too high. Whitney was signed to a recording contract very early in her life and her success was meteoric. She knew nothing other than fame and fortune and through a combination of stress and bad influences, she went down a dark and lonely path, culminating in a sad and untimely death.

I saw the news this weekend while I was surfing the Web for some ideas on family vacation destinations for the upcoming holiday in April. One of the places I was thinking of taking the kids was to Beverly Hills. They’ve always wanted to see the Walk of Fame. I even briefly considered staying at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, which is where Whitney met her unfortunate demise, but it’s too pricey for non-celebrities like me. We may very well go to LA to see Whitney’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

My biggest accomplishment of the moment is that I found a great coach diaper bag on sale last week in NYC. I hope it’s genuine. It’s so hard to tell. But it looks good anyway and it holds all the baby gear I really need.