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Mall of America Phase II Expansion
My life has always been close to the east side of Bloomington, MN. For the last 15 years or so, the People of Praise has had their headquarters there. I went to middle and high school at Trinity Schools in the same building. And now, I work just a mile away from there. Of course, though, the big presence in the area is the Mall of America, one of the largest enclosed malls in the United States. According to their press site, "With 40 million annual visitors, MOA has more visitors than all other attractions in the state combined and nearly 10 times more visitors than Minnesota's second biggest attraction, Cabelas® in Owatonna."
For years there has been talks about the proposed Mall of America Phase II. I recently found their new promotional website and it contains a lot of interesting information.
The expansion will be add 5.6 million square feet to the north end of the existing mall and will apparently be more open and let in more natural light than the original structure. The plan includes more parking structures and a skyway connection to the nearby IKEA. The expansion will integrate seamlessly with the current mall and connect to it on all four floors (including adding connections to the near-dead fourth floor).
A number of major structures are included in the mall plans. One of the main tenants is Bass Pro Shops, a major national outdoor sporting goods retailer. Major entertainment provider AEG will be building a 6,000-seat performing arts amphitheater. 
Some information says something about an NHL-size hockey rink, and I don't know where that's going to be located. The plans also leave room for an office tower and a couple hotels attached to the complex, including a family waterpark/hotel.
The new space seems to be designed to have different districts or areas of shopping, most of which look a bit more high-priced and trendy. The fourth floor seems to be devoted to entertainment attractions such as a movie theater, dinner theater, nightclubs, etc. According to the designs, there's also a "High Fashion District" and a "Home District". 
The main event looks to be a very open "Town Square" area, which looks like it may even mimic Times Square a bit. A central corridor of the new expansion is called "Canal Street" and is rumored to be a Venice-style center completed with gondola boats and everything. The plans also show an environmentally-friendly co-generation facility that will generate some heat and electricity for the building.
The annoying part is that there's no news as to when this will be implemented, although the mall's Wikipedia article says groundbreaking is supposed to happen in Spring 2007. The Wikipedia article also cites some concern from "outside forces" such as the city of Bloomington who are concerned about the ability for the $1.78 billion project to be completed. A state bill that aims to make the building construction tax-exempt seems to claim that construction will start in 2008 and finish up in 2011.
There are a number of improvements to the mall that seem to be a bit closer to reality and completed sooner. One is the reintroduction of a bar on the vacated fourth floor in the form of Cantina Corona, a Mexican bar/restaurant that is the first-ever place to bear the Corona brand. Also planned is the very high-end Klimpton Hotel near the south end of the mall. And finally, The Park at MOA will soon begin construction of a Gerstlauer Euro-Fighter type roller coaster, to be completed in 2008. These style of rides are some of the most cutting-edge and the mall says it will be the first upside down roller coaster at the Mall of America. Nice!
I always like the pictures and diagrams, so below are the floor-by-floor plans off the website:
Level 1:
Level 2:
Level 3:
Level 4:
Elevations:
Model Views (from the City of Bloomington site):
View from West:
View from East:
Drupal's Must-Read Sensation!
One of the major pet peeves of myself and many others who strive to use open-source software on a regular basis is the lack of documentation. Sure, installing it out of the box is well-documented, but modifying it besides downloading plug-ins/modules is rarely documented. Sometimes there's a nice API, but how does one get from not knowing anything about the system to just needing to know the exact syntax for a certain function?
I don't have the time to do the full book review, but let me just say that the brand-new book Pro Drupal Development by John VanDyk and Matt Westgate is really an indispensable book. There really is no way, short of reading through Drupal's code and asking a core developer what this file does, to find out the things you will learn in this book.
The book, published by Apress, breaks down the major functionalities of Drupal in easy-to-swallow chapters. I'm just on Chapter 9, but already I've learned tons about how to theme Drupal, how to write my own modules, and much, much more. There are plenty of code examples throughout the book. The book reads well but also works as a good reference.
In short, if you want to start using Drupal as your content management system of choice and want to make the most of it, get this book. You won't regret it, and it's not too expensive either. Also, props to Apress for giving free copies to the Drupal Summer of Code participants!
After this read, I think I'll be ready to finally make that kick-butt music site that I've been hyping up for years. It's going to happen.
The More Efficient Elevator for Skyscrapers
Joel on Software said he recently visited the new 7 World Trade Center building, which includes new computer dispatched elevators. Here's how he describes it:
Instead of having up and down buttons outside the elevators, there's a numeric keypad, where you key in the floor number you're going to. Then an LED display tells you which elevator to wait for. Once you get in the elevator, you don't have to press any buttons (and there are none to press).
Anyone who, like me, has played hours of SimTower knows that when people are coming or leaving in large numbers, the elevator system can be very inefficient. With this system, a central computer plans trips to neighboring floors instead of just going up or down. According to the Wikipedia article, these new elevators may reduce travel time by 30%. Sounds like some cool stuff.
Google Buys Majority Stake in Internet
OK, that's not exactly true. Google has announced the acquisition of DoubleClick, which has been the leader in Internet advertising as long as I can remember. Although most had valued the company at $1 billion, the $3.1 billion cash purchase will make Google, by far, the biggest player in the online ad game. Not surprisingly, other players in the Internet advertising market such as Microsoft and Yahoo! are crying foul.
Should you, as a consumer care? Probably. Besides Google, DoubleClick has the best profile of what sites you visit and your purchasing habits through their DoubleClick cookies. Of course, there is the possibility of Google trying to use this data to better target and identify you. Of course, DoubleClick quickly tried to destroy that rumor. However, a full acquisition from Google, a merging of systems, and/or a change in their terms of service could easily change that.
While Google by no means has a monopoly on Internet advertising, they're quickly becoming the evil empire of the Internet that we somehow just can't help but love. And, heck, as long as my Google stock keeps going up, I'm OK with it, I guess. ;-)
Communal Life Through Thick and Thin
Life in the People of Praise is so amazing. We had a fun weekend with a big party for J-T Kelly's CD release - it was a great time with the house full of friends. But it's more the daily things that make life in the People of Praise so great.
For example, I'd not been feeling that great towards the end of the weekend through Monday. I had a bit of a headache and was kinda feverish, it seemed. Plus, there was a pain starting in my leg and I didn't know if it was that I had knocked it against something. Anyways, it wasn't an easy day at work, but about 3:30pm I got a tap on my shoulder. (Most of my coworkers don't tap me on the shoulder; they usually IM me or just yell "Dan" until I hear them over the music in my headphones.) I look up and it's my sister Catherine, who goes to school a mile away. She brought me cookies and Hershey's Kisses along with a nice note! It was great to have a bit of encouragement, and those cookies made a good desert on Tuesday too.
The pain in my leg was getting progressively worse, so I called my mom like any good post-college kid who doesn't know what he's doing. She recommended calling a doctor who I'm not sure I've ever talked to but was also a People of Praise member. I called her up and she offered to stop by my work that afternoon and take a look at my leg! From what I hear, this busy mother of two serves her brothers and sisters in the People of Praise in ways like this almost daily. Thank you, Lord, for such a rich and abundant life, in the glamorous times and the hard times.
Real-Life Mario Kart 64 Achieved!
The folks at ThinkGeek.com, of course, have done it again. Not only are they providing useful things like the RFID Blocking Passport Billfold, but they also have a large remote control go kart with Mario sitting on top of it. And, if that wasn't cool enough, the zany minds at ThinkGeek have even provided us a snappy video of it in action, complete with plenty of Nintendo sound effects and drama.
Now, all I need are some of these M.C. Escher Japanese toys.... Weird stuff.
The Solution
It's really easy to get down about tragedies like what happened at Virgina Tech last week, but, thankfully, there is a solution to all those problems. Here my friend Rus lays out the answer for a group of students in Indianapolis:
Summer 2007 Movie Preview
I wrote a post on inReview.net about this summer's movies. Check it out:
Summer is fast approaching as the last couple days have been in the 70s even here in Minnesota. No doubt, as there is every summer, there will be lots of fluff to keep us entertained, not the least of which is the end of the movie hat trick. With new episodes of Pirate of the Carribean, Shrek, and Spider-Man, Hollywood hopes to bring everybody (and their friends) back for another million or so. Plus, I'll outline the others not to miss this summer. Here's my thoughts on this summer's movies.
To be honest, last year I went to some blockbusters just to get into an air-conditioned building (well, and to hang out with friends). We'll see what actually happens in this summer's movie watching.
What's New?
Well, that snow that came last week only lasted a couple hours after the sun came up, but it was fun. This weekend was in the 60s and 70s most of the time, so it was perfect. But first, let's go back a bit further. (The next paragraph is geeky, so if you don't want to do that type of stuff, just skip it.)
Just after Easter I purchased a cheap, old computer from the University I live near. It's an old Dell OptiPlex that they sold new about 4-5 years ago and was nice and thin for putting under your monitor. I set it up on its side under my desk and hooked it up to my KVM switch. I installed the generic Debian distribution on the machine and, for the first time ever, have a working Linux desktop with Gnome. It can browse the Internet nicely and I'm working it into being a Linux development server. I have MySQL, Apache, PHP, and Subversion set up on there and I got Eclipse running on the desktop as well (although it seems like it might be a bit sluggish). I'm looking forward to really digging into a couple more personal projects on this machine. It's definitely an upgrade from the old IBM Aptiva that was originally purchased in 1999.
This past Friday we kept our household night plans mostly unscheduled, and that meant some spontaneity. We ended up hiking 6.7 miles from River Ridge all the way to Kevin's house. That, of course, included illegally going over the old Cedar bridge as well as getting the short tour of the Blackdog power plant. Fun times. Oh yeah, and you can't forget watching Chain Reaction after that. Keanu Reeves, as usual, was, welll.... his usual character. Rachel Weisz had a really bad haircut. Oh well, it was 1996, I guess.
This weekend there was also a wedding and a car on our street spontaneously combusted. (OK, not exactly.) Plus, there was Chipotle, lots of walking, and three hours at a bar to celebrate Joe's birthday. (I would mention the bar's name, but sadly even though it's the best bar in the state, it has a terrible website.) It was a very good weekend.
Enjoy the Snow!
Seriously, the state of Minnesota should start revoking state IDs from people who are complaining about the weather. It sure beats rain anytime of the year. I love it!