Lincolnite

1. If Lincoln had a theme song, what would it be?
2. If Mayor Colleen Seng had a theme song, what would it be?
3. If ex-Fire Chief Mike Spadt had a theme song, what would it be?
4. If the bison statue at Pioneers Park had a theme song, what would it be?
5. If Sunken Gardens had a theme song, what would it be?

I have long been interested in Star Tran's refusal to invest in smaller buses for its fleet. Even the Star Shuttle, the Downtown circulator route, uses full-sized buses. Interestingly, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln's shuttle fleet is being supplemented this year by conversion vans at off-peak hours. The reasons are obvious: cost savings and improved efficiency all around. It seems the advantages to Star Tran of smaller buses would be numerous and substantial. Greater fuel economy, lower training requirements, and improved public perception -- fuller, smaller buses appear more effective than emptier, larger buses -- are just a few. So why the "bigger is better" mentality to date?

UNL is never going to catch up to Texas in the party school rankings if LPD's party patrol keeps cracking down every weekend. *sigh* I guess that's another championship UT can hold over our heads. (I don't have to point out that my tongue is planted firmly in cheek, do I? Good.)

I set a lofty goal for Robert this weekend: to sit up more or less by himself by his fourth month. Now, in all honesty I don't expect him to reach that goal -- his four month "birthday" is less than three weeks away -- but the little squirt just keeps impressing us with some of his physical skills. He already sits up fairly well with just a little support, and he loves to stand. (In fact, standing is one tried-and-true method I use to halt certain kinds of fussiness.) But for all of his trunk and lower body strength, Robert still kind of has weenie arms. I guess he really takes after his mom and dad. Probably the newest big change for Robbie is that he has really started taking to his pacifier. Previously he was pretty ambivalent about his pacifier. Now, however, he really seems to enjoy sucking and biting on it. Plus, it is turning out to be a great way to help hone his muscle control and understanding of cause and effect. Yesterday, for example, he managed to grab a loose pacifier and place it correctly in his mouth. Hopefully we'll see more and more of that. As much as Robbie drools and enjoys biting on things, it seems apparent to me that he is in the early stages of teething. I haven't noticed any impending tooth eruptions, but he definitely feels something going on. This week we are going to try to up his intake of cereal. It makes mealtime more of a challenge for The Missus and me. I can tell that Daisy, though, is already excited that she will soon be on clean-up crew.

My first three college soccer games of the season passed without incident this weekend. I did two games at Concordia on Saturday, and one at Wayne State yesterday. I managed to keep myself out of trouble all weekend, and since the weather was nice, I don't feel nearly as tired and sore this morning as I could. Now if I could just get assigned to my first center...

I know August isn't over yet, and I know by saying this I'm probably just begging Mother Nature to strike back later, but I'll say it anyway: this has been probably the nicest August I can remember. After July ended with a heat wave it was easy to assume that August would show us more of the same. Instead, we have seen some very nice rain showers, mornings have been cool, and the humidity, more often than not, hasn't been half bad. All things considered, August felt a lot like September or October. Which makes me wonder: what will September and October feel like? Not August, I hope!

The Fair Board made a huge, daring, and, in my opinion, very intelligent, decision: all 80,000 ticket-holders to Nebraska's season operner against Louisiana Tech will receive free admission to the State Fair after next Saturday's game. If only they had made the decision sooner, they could have made other smart moves like letting game ticket holders in free all day, and offering free transportation to and from Memorial Stadium. But it's a start, and it's the sort of thinking that the Fair needs if it's going to survive.

It seems Nebraska Bookstore is now affiliated with Staples. Nebraska Bookstore also recently partnered with Blick Art Materials. Here's hoping the new partnerships serve one of Lincoln's landmarks well.

One of my favorite trumpeters, Maynard Ferguson, is dead at the age of 78. Maynard's energetic, high-flying trumpet playing was extremely popular with my peers and me back in high school. I only caught his show live once, when he was 69, at a high school auditorium in Council Bluffs. Seeing a 69 year-old fat man perform with that kind of energy and enthusiasm was a lot of fun.

Five things I plan to do at the Nebraska State Fair this year:

1. View the photography exhibits. The 4-H photography exhibits are especially fun.
2. Compare my garden veggies to the blue ribbon veggies and continuously nudge The Missus while saying "Ours are way better than that!" (Even though they aren't, of course.)
3. Meander through the local foods exhibit and stuff myself with free samples.
4. People watch, people watch, people watch.
5. Eat at least three foods on a stick.

Web developers don't like Internet Explorer. It's pretty much a rule; to be a hip web developer, you have to profess a hatred for IE. Some of the hatred is a bit irrational, but most of it is based on the fact that Internet Explorer is out-of-date software that should have disappeared three years ago. So it was with a sense of masochism that I downloaded the new release candidate of IE7 today. (The phrase "release candidate" means that it is 99.5% finished, but that the developers will still go back and fix a few bugs here and there before declaring the product finalized.) A few minutes and several warnings from my anti-spyware and anti-virus software later, and IE7 was running. The user interface is completely different from what users have come to expect from a web browser. I think it will confuse a lot of folks right off the bat. On the plus side, the IE crew fixed a ton of bugs related to how websites display. In my quick tests, Lincolnite, for example, displays pretty much as intended in IE7, whereas I have to feed IE6 a bunch of fixes to get the site to display passably. I'll keep trying IE7 over the next several days to see how it works out. Have any of you given IE7 a try? If you're brave, you can download it yourself.

Is anybody seeing either of the following two problems?

1. After submitting a comment or a post on the forum, you see a page listing a bunch of PHP errors
2. Even though you have subscribed to receive e-mail notifications whenever a comment or forum response is submitted, you are not receiving those e-mails.

Animal Control no longer offers services on weekends except for bats and bites. The department's budget and staff were finally cut to the point that weekend hours are no longer possible. Department personnel are making a big deal about the change, as is expected. But it will be interesting to see how much the lack of weekend services really affects us. Hopefully somebody plans to collect data about the quantity and nature of unanswered calls so we can decide if this is a change we want to stick with.

Did anybody else catch the 20/20 special last night on white nationalism in America? The portions I caught were remarkably even-handed. Almost too even-handed, in fact. The individuals they interviewed on camera were mostly well-spoken, clean-cut, normal people. Except they were unapologetic racists. I didn't catch the entire show, but the parts I saw seemed like they would make for an excellent introduction into a discussion on journalistic ethics and the limits, if any, of "unbiased" reporting.