Lincolnite

The bird wins! The bird wins! The bird wins! ... Which is odd, really. Because weren't we assured by DMV Director Beverly Neth and the Governor's office that there was no way the initial results were incorrect? It doesn't bother me so much that they were wrong. What bothers me is they insisted they were right despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Sure it's a tiny issue, but that makes their obstinate attitudes even more puzzling. Why couldn't Governor Heineman step up and say, "You know what? This does look bad. My office will look at the numbers and consult some experts and we'll get back to you." Would that have been so difficult?

Raise your hand if you, like me, were shocked to see Pete Ricketts' mug staring at you this morning when you loaded up Lincolnite. Dammit, Mr. T, you've got to warn a guy about something like that!

Nebraska is often known as a flyover state, but we can also be proud to call ourselves a good drive-through state now that the National Motorists Association has ranked us #4 on their rankings of states by a variety of motorist-friendly policies. That's good news for those of us headed across the state to Fort Robinson later this summer, though I'm not sure Emiliano Gomez Gonzalez would agree.

A new Lincoln Parks and Recreation website went live this morning. I haven't yet had a chance to explore it in depth, but on visual impact alone it is oodles better than the Lincoln City Libraries site that Nirak panned a while back. I do have a quick nit to pick. (This is the web developer in me talking.) The background gradients? They're all wrong on multiple levels:

1. The gradients are blocky, in large part because they have been exported as GIFs. PNG or JPG should be used instead.
2. There are two background gradients. One covers the entire page, while the other backs just the main content area. I can't tell if the two gradients don't match on purpose, or if that's an accident. If it's an accident, make them match.
3. The two background images are way too huge in filesize terms (roughly 100KB total for the pair). The page background image is over 49KB. Export it as a 1 x 1000 pixel JPG and poof, you shave off 99% of the file size (down to 474 bytes in my test). Likewise the other image's filesize can be substantially decreased, though by how much depends on a few different factors. Regardless, you could easily shave off at least 30KB -- and perhaps as much as 50KB -- out of the image's 54KB.

But again, I'm being picky. I'm sure I could find lots of other things to be picky about, too. A large part of my job involves being picky about these sorts of things, so they jump out at me. Overall the site is a nice, clean new look for Parks and Rec. Looks good, folks.

I was browsing the Lincoln Convention and Visitors Bureau website this morning and I came across an annoyance: when I went to the calendar, it was difficult to tell what is happening today. It is difficult for two reasons. First, a whole bunch of the events have already ended. Don't show me those! At least, not by default. Second, ongoing events are listed together with one-day-only events. Although that makes to some degree -- both types of events are happening on any given day, after all -- I've always preferred the two types of events be listed separately, or at least be visually distinctive. Ongoing and one-day-only events tend to be very different types of events. Thus, separating the two is a valuable service for the user. Actually, that brings me to the LCVB's Friday Fast Facts document.. I don't know about you, but the name "Friday Fast Facts" is pretty meaningless to me. As it turns out, it consists of two parts. The first page is a very handy summary of "big" events happening on any given weekend. The rest is a chart of all the other events going on. Who knew? I get the feeling whoever named "Friday Fast Facts" was more worried about alliteration than actually telling the user that this is a really handy service. Naming aside, the user shouldn't have to download a PDF to get the weekend summary. That stuff should be available right on the website. Speaking of the calendar of events, is that data exportable in any way? It doesn't appear so, but it should be. Anybody and everybody should be able to pluck that data directly from the LCVB and insert it into their own website, or their calendar, or wherever they want. Along another line, I don't think I have heard of Lincoln 101 but now I want to attend. The purpose: "The mission of LINCOLN 101 is to educate front-line employees on what there is to do and see in Lincoln, that they can in return, inform visitors to Lincoln of the great attractions our city has to offer." I'm not exactly the target audience, but I'm close. I'll have to get in on that next time around. What tips or requests do you have for the Lincoln Convention and Visitors Bureau?

I know I shouldn't feel this way about a locally-owned business, but I can't help but feel a tinge of schadenfreude any time something negative happens to Amigos. In this case, the Downtown Kopeli Coffee is closing. That follows last year's closing of the 33rd & Highway 2 Amigos et al. location. Why the enmity? Part of it has to do with what I perceive as a series of bizarre business and management decisions over the years. The chain has virtually no brand identity thanks to the gradual schizophrenic dilution from Lincoln's most popular Mexican fast food to Lincoln's most mocked place to get a burrito, donut, haircut, and oil change. Rather than focusing on what they were good at -- and Amigos was good at something, once -- they have tried to be mediocre at a lot of things. Sorry folks, success doesn't work that way. And to be honest, I'm still ticked about the disappearance of the candy ladies who used to walk around and socialize with diners. Anyway, thus ends another of my periodic "what happened to the Amigos of the good ol' days?" rants. Thanks for putting up with me.

I realize we aren't given a lot of context, but Gene Carroll's response to a question about the 2-to-1 match for city employees’ retirement plans seems a little odd:

I cannot respond until I see what the Republicans are saying.

Is he saying that the only opinion he can form on this controversial issue must be relative to whatever the opposing party says? That sounds an awful lot like "I don't know what I believe in, but I know whom I disagree with".

Ladies and gentlemen, the winner: This "professionally designed" (gag!) plate received 41,000 of 109,000 votes. The meadowlark design -- the only acceptable choice, in my opinion -- finished second with 34,000 votes. I foresee a run on Husker plates in the near future.

Not long ago Lincolnites were pitching a fit about how much cheaper gas was in Omaha than in Lincoln. You could often fill your tank for at least ten cents per gallon less in Omaha than in Lincoln, and frequently for 15 or 20 cents less. Having made several trips to Omaha recently I've noticed that prices are now more or less equal. The price near my house is the same as the price at the stations I passed in Omaha. And am I mistaken, or is there less price disparity between north and south Lincoln right now? Speaking of gas, I just realized I forgot to fill up my wife's car after all but emptying the tank. I hate it when that happens.

Lincoln's newest City Council members were sworn in yesterday. Jayne Snyder, Gene Carroll and Adam Hornung pushed out Dan Marvin, Robin Eschliman, and Ken Svoboda. What does that mean for us? We now have four Democrats and three Republicans on the nonpartisan Council, rather than the previous three and four, so in theory there may be a shift in trends in local public policy decisions. Practically speaking, however, I don't anticipate any huge changes. The new Council's first big task will be figuring out the City budget. Good luck with that! Hopefully they don't spend too much time fighting about libraries and are instead able to deal with the larger challenges presented by this and subsequent budgets. Other big upcoming decisions include: the proposed arena, toward which we have already invested many community resources; and major core infrastructure needs, sidelined too long in part by the Antelope Valley Project. What changes do you expect we will see under this City Council? What will be their largest challenges over the next four years?

We love the Lincoln Zoo, but sometimes you've just got to get out of town. Yesterday the full Wilson clan headed up to Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo. We usually make the trip once or twice each year. The big hit of the zoo for Robbie was the train. He loves trains, thanks in large part to Thomas & Friends. Yesterday he got to ride in the caboose. Other big hits were the polar bear and the sharks. We didn't make it onto the Skyfari, which I think Robbie would have loved. Oh well, maybe next time. That's not all that happened this weekend. On Saturday, Robbie turned 3. We kept the celebration relatively subdued because he's having a party next weekend. Still, he got to open presents from some family members. They included a scooter, games, a computer, and the surprise hit of the day, a baseball and bat. Time to clear out some old toys to make room for the new. Saturday also marked my last two high school soccer games of the season. Nope, no finals for me this year. No worries, though; the folks doing the games today and tomorrow are very deserving. I'm down six pounds over the last two weeks of the season. I think I'm going to use that to my advantage and try to run a couple road races this summer. I wonder if I could break 19 minutes in a 5K? I haven't done that since high school. It sure would be fun to try. How was your weekend?

Summertime is almost here, and that means there's a very good chance you will soon find yourself on one of Lincoln's many baseball and softball fields. Can you identify these ten ball fields?

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10. 

Hint: Up is north!