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- OOC First Name
- Nick
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- Curly Oak/Wenge 16" Essence of Feng-huang Tail Feather
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Your Bi-Weekly update (which, from early results of the site poll, looks like it's here to stay). A fair amount of things have happened over the past two weeks on HNZ - and now it's time to catch you up. 
So, without further ado, your update! P.S: I've decided to steal Kaitlyn's purpley headers.
Character Spotlight!
A very warm and big congratulations to this fortnights spotlighted character, Hogwarts NZ's own Professor Melodie Lowe! We've highlighted her because of her organized and creative biography.
Graphics Competition #22
The conclusion of HNZ's 22[sup]nd[/sup] Graphics Competition has come at last! Unfortunately, the winner wasn't the one I expected. (
) Fortunately, however, a very excellent avatar won. Congratulations to Rue Undersee for winning that competition. The winning avatar can be found here.
Summer Raffle
Interested in having your account warmed up for the summer? Perhaps you're from the southern hemisphere and you'd like to see your username become a bit of a winter wonderland? Whichever way you'd prefer, we invite you to sign up for the Summer Raffle for a chance to win nifty stuff.
Two New Applications Pages
As I outlined on the Site Blog, I want all forms to eventually be handled via webpage. This weekend, both the Hogwarts Staff Application and the Ministry of Magic Application forms have been moved to webpages.
Site Poll: Another chance to be heard
You are always free to post feedback and suggestions in the forum for that purpose, however there are several issues that Livvy and myself, (and I suspect the whole site staff) would like to know your take on. So, we created a HNZ Site Poll. It's long, but it should help us get a feel for what you guys think as well as what direction you think we should go in the future.
Global Moderator's Appreciation Day
Also called "GMAD", this day was celebrated on June 1[sup]st[/sup] in this topic in order to thank our Global Moderators for all the hard word they do around the board. Did you miss GMAD? I'm sure the GMs won't mind getting a belated glomp from you!
Deal With a Death Eater
This game started with HNZ's birthday celebration, and while it was difficult having everybody post on time, it was a fair success.
Unfortunately, we couldn't get through all the people who signed up and the game was still ongoing. I have decided that the two games going on now will be the last two. Prizes have been warded to Hilde Lindstrom, Alexis Richarde, and Arianna Tipley. Melodie Lowe will be receiving her grand prize as soon as soon as the game fully concludes.Apologies to those of you who signed up but didn't get to play.
Your consolation prizes are here. *hands out 'I signed up for DWaDE and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt' t-shirts*. ENJOY! 
Sorting: Closed
It was a long and tiring process, but sorting has been successfully concluded at last!
Over 150 students were sorted in to the four houses this year - and only a handful of them managed to irk the Sorting Hat so much that he ranted at them and/or put them in the opposite house from what they wanted in order to teach them a lesson. That's pretty amazing.
The sorting breakdown looks something like this:
A fairly even split,.
Thank you all for helping make sorting über excellent.
The next date assigned for sorting (which will be for the HNZ year of Y11) is September the 19th, 2010. We'll see the sorting hat again then!
Week 3 of Classes
A quick reminder to those of you who need help counting - today is the first day of week three for classes!
Half way through the first semester! 
Woot!Flying Professor
Flying lessons, as first years know, were moved to semester two as we sought out a new flying professor. Well, we have decided at last and would like to congratulation Professor Rais Hussain on being hired.
Brightstone Weekend
Today marks the first Brightstone weekend of the school year. The Brightstone forums will be opened later today (as well as the mall forums to all third years and up). Your characters can then enjoy their weekend away from the school and spending all those galleons they've surely saved up.
Unfortunately, no plot highlight recommendations were sent in this fortnight!
Now, if it were any other staff member I'm sure they would have sought out some amazing plots to highlight of first years being bullied and seventh years weeping with nostalgia (then the occasional Death Eater's mid-life crisis). But I'm not like that.
This section of the BWU should be entirely community supported. Do you want to see some amazing plots that perhaps you wouldn't have read without them being highlighted? Would you like to see your plots in the update? Whatever the case, this section cannot continue without your help! So send in your plot highlight requests and know that you're helping keep this section of the Bi-Weekly Update alive!
~ Continued awesome school year
~ The Halloween Feast
~ Results from the site poll
~ (Real Life) Exams being over and HNZ getting some awesome people back from their holes in the ground (where they study for exams)
~ The conclusion of Deal With a Death Eater
~ The election of a Minister for Magic
~ The conclusion of the Summer Raffle
~ Plenty more!
So that's it for this update.
I hope I got everything. I think I did, but you never know.If you have any questions/comments/concerns, as always, feel free to post here.
~Nick
(On behalf of the HNZ Site Staff)
I love that avatar and am tempted to steal it for myselfzorz.
(oh wait.. that one with the perverted babies is pretty epic