I just got back from playing a holiday concert at the Mall of America.  What a waste of time.  Why?  Let me explain.  First, my fellow musicians and I have invested more than 6 hours of our personal time into rehearsals.  Second, most of us made sacrifices to leave work on time in our holiday attire and get to the MOA 30 minutes before showtime.  In an instant, our concert is cut short after 30 minutes because a few fools chose to throw some Tic-Tacs and pennies onto the band from the rotunda levels above us.  Nobody was seriously hurt, but a few people actually ended up with some bruises. 

Our director made it clear in the weeks before that if anything was thrown on us, we would immediately leave.  So we did.  And we're never going back.  I wasn't with Medalist last year, but I guess the same thing happened last year.  Nice job MOA security, and nice job parents. 

When I got up today, I took a few snapshots of what is allegedly the first snowfall of 2004.  Not very much snow, and it will probably all melt today, but it looked great.  These pictures were taken at about 7:00 a.m.  To view all of them, click here.

For those of you who play a lot of Halo 2 Multiplayer, you'll find this interesting statement on Shadowpanther.net:

Q: In multiplayer, does the Elite character model have any advantages or disadvantages compared to the Master Chief model? A: Yes. Although the Elite deals and receives the same amount of damage with all weapons as the Master Chief, they have differing melee attack speeds. In the case of most weapons, the Master Chief has an equal or slightly faster melee attack speed. However the Elite model can melee attack faster with the Brute shot (0.7) and the Sentinel Beam (1.0). The Master Chief can attack significantly faster with the Plasma Rifle, Brute Plasma Rifle, Shotgun and Needler, attacking 0.4 seconds faster with the former two and 0.3 seconds faster with the latter two.

I had no idea - I thought the two character models were identical.  Bear in mind that it is only this person's observation and not a hard fact from Bungie.  

This statement came from Halo 2 weapons spec and weapons ranking charts:

http://shadowpanther.net/halo2weapons.htm
http://shadowpanther.net/halo2rankings.htm

Anyone else see the northern lights (a.k.a. Polar Aurorae) last night on 11/7/2004?  Living in Chaska, MN, I never thought I would have seen them after moving from Duluth.  I'd always thought that the Chaska/Twin Cities area was too far south.  But, they were very spectacular. 

I you saw them, I'd like to hear about it and where you saw them from - Minnesota or otherwise.

Just showing off the pumpkins that Nikki and I carved this Halloween.  Full visual documentary.

Bungie has put out a number of videos including teasers, previews, and a behind-the-scenes look at the multiplayer features in halo 2.  The multiplayer features video blew me away, and so did the longer preview.  This game is going to change the face of gaming.  Check these videos out:

• Multiplayer features (44 MB)
• 60 second trailer( 2.1 MB)
• 30 second trailer (1.1 MB)
• Cinematic Teaser (2.8 MB)