Lincolnite

No seriously, I swear it's true. The new version of Lincolnite is nearing the point where I'll be ready to unveil it. Sure, I've been talking about it for months. But this time I'm serious. There's a new wiki-fied directory that's a little rough around the edges right now but should be fun to play with. Last night I set up the new Lincolnite forums. Hopefully many of you take advantage of that. And of course there's the spiffy new look. The events calendar will be there, but I'm working behind the scenes on a much (much) more advanced personalizable calendar solution behind the scenes. And the new classifieds aren't quite ready for prime time, but they'll be ready soon enough. Anyway, I want to thank those of you who have hung around here on Lincolnite to see where I take this thing. I can't wait to stop working on the design and really start focusing on putting together some quality content for you.

This Dreamweaver error threw me for a loop just now.

I always used to wonder how in the heck parents knew what their infants wanted when they cried. I would hear parents say "oh, he's hungry", or "he's just tired," or "he's working on a number two". To all of you future parents out there I say this: you'll figure it out. Seriously, don't worry about it. And don't worry if other people think you don't really know what your baby wants. They're probably wrong. We have run into this problem a few times. I'll pick on my parents as an example. A recent conversation between The Missus and my mom went a little like this: Grandma: He has been a little fussy this afternoon. The Missus: Is he hungry? That sounds like a hungry cry. G: No, I don't think so. He pushed the bottle away. TM: He may still be hungry. Here, let me see. G: No, see? [She puts the bottle in his mouth for half a second. Robbie doesn't immediately take it.] He doesn't want it. This continued for a few minutes, with The Missus becoming ever more agitated while her baby cried in grandma's arms. Eventually The Missus got Robbie, held a bottle in his mouth, and he took it. Over the next hour he downed a whopping nine ounces of formula, way more than he would normally eat in that period. Clearly he was, indeed, hungry. Now, I'm not trying to put down my mom here. She knows she goofed. It's not her fault she didn't read Robbie's crying correctly. I'm just passing on this anecdote to remind parents that although grandparents are a great resource and they know a lot about parenting, often maternal/paternal instincts are the best guide. You can't spend that much time around your child without picking up on his unique behaviors and quirks. More often than not your best parenting coach is your own child.

I know it's early, but has anybody had any experiences with Windstream yet? Is it the same old Alltel, or can you tell any differences?

A big congratulations to the Pinnacle Bank American Legion Baseball team from Lincoln Southwest, which made the American Legion World Series. I umpired for some of those guys starting all the way back when they were little squirts. Good job, guys.

Robert cracks me up sometimes. Among my favorite of his actions is his "wazzup!" face. He'll often do it when he hasn't seen me for a while and I enthusiastically say "Hi Robbie!" He'll turn his head toward me, open his eyes really wide, stick his tongue waaaay out, and squeal, as if saying "Wazzzzzzup!" OK, that was a really weak description. But it's cute. Really cute. Trust me. It is absolutely, positively impossible to retain any fragment of a bad mood after he does that.

All you commuters bummed out by the closure of 48th and O Streets can rejoice: 48th and O is reopening sometime today. That means O Street features six lanes of wide-open goodness from Perkins to East Park. Happy lane changing!

Using Speedtest.net I achieved an impressive 4,323 kb/sec download speed and awful 124 kb/sec upload speed on Road Runner from home. (I tested with the Chicago server.) Road Runner advertises up to 5 mb/sec download speeds and 384 kb/sec upload speeds in Lincoln. My upload speed seems pretty slow, but the download speed is about as fast as it's going to get, by the time you take normal internet traffic overhead into account. What's your best speed, and with what provider did you achieve it?

The Wilson house was sprayed with pesticide by the city just a few minutes ago. I don't know whether to be thankful that West Nile-carrying mosquitos aren't likely to thrive near our house, or annoyed that we'll be breathing pesticide all night. Oh well, I suppose the Star Tran buses that pass in front of our house probably belch out more toxic gases every day, so in the big scheme of things, a little pesticide won't make much of a difference. I don't think I should think about these things right before bed.

Lincoln made the national news today. I think you'll agree that an article about local serial criminal Kevin Holder's 226th arrest isn't really the kind of national attention we were looking for, though.

By the way, today is Oso Tuesday. I try to hit Oso Burrito every Tuesday at 12:30pm. "So what?", you ask? Well, until The Missus goes back to work, she brings Robbie Downtown to share in the Oso experience. If you ever want to meet Robbie, stop by Oso any Tuesday at 12:30 through September. Don't worry about trying to figure out which of the patrons is Robbie. He's the cute one.

Lincoln Police Chief Tom Casady, still stinging from the City Council's refusal to ban concealed carry, wants to limit who can possess a weapon in the city. Fair enough. It's not especially surprising that a police chief doesn't want citizens -- especially citizens with a rap sheet -- carrying guns. It makes his officers' job more difficult. But why does Casady keep harping on the importance of keeping guns out of the hands of those convicted of crimes like indecent exposure? I've asked this before, but the question remains unanswered so I'll ask again: are those convicted of indecent exposure more likely to commit gun crimes (or any violent crime) than those convicted of other misdemeanors? Because if not, Casady's proposal amounts to nothing more than feel-good legislation and is therefore a waste of time. To me, Chief Casady's "Peter" and "Robert" examples aren't notable for their combined 18 indecent exposure arrests, but for their 227 collective arrests overall. Why focus on the arrests for behavior that is offensive, but essentially harmless? Surely among those 227 there are some other anti-social behaviors that are much better justifications for Casady's goal. Are there any criminal justice pros out there who can shed light on the relative likelihood of a person convicted of indecent exposure later committing a violent crime?

Robert had another first yesterday. Unfortunately, it wasn't a first I was looking forward to. Yesterday marked the first time Robert let loose with an all-out, unexplainable, seemingly never-ending wail. The Missus said he had been cranky most of the afternoon, but things escalated through the dinner hour. He has cried with gusto before, of course, but never so loudly for so long. Even Daisy showed concern. I think The Missus and I handled the experience rather well. In large part I suspect that's because we knew it was coming. I mean, Robert is almost three months old and we hadn't had this episode yet. It was inevitable. To be honest, I'm kind of glad we got the first one out of the way. Still, it's frustrating that we never really figured out what his problem was. As parents you want to be able to fix everything for your child. An infant rarely, if ever, cries for no reason, so it's a bit of a game trying to become good at interpreting the meaning of each cry. In this case we weren't able to win the game. The good news is Robbie seems to have slept well, and he woke up bright-eyed this morning. When Daisy and I got back from our walk, The Missus and Robbie were sitting in the kitchen having breakfast. When I said good morning he smiled and babbled right back at me. What a welcome smile it was.

Wow, what an awesome morning in Lincoln. Clear skies, a beautiful sunrise, temperatures in the low 60's ... who can ask for anything more? I almost thought it was October when I first stepped out this morning. So is this Mother Nature's way of asking for pre-emptive forgiveness for something nasty she plans to do in September? 😊

Lincoln's Ronald M. Case suggests that Lincoln's impact fees have far greater effects (last letter) than we had anticipated. What do you think?