Lincolnite

Did you go to last night's 2015 Vision community meeting? If so, be sure to share your thoughts in the forum. I am going to tonight's meeting at Lincoln East. Look me up if you're there; I'll be the bald guy in khakis and a shortsleeve red shirt. And in case you've forgotten:

• Today: Lincoln East High School, 1000 S. 70th St.
• Wednesday: Lincoln North Star High School, 5801 N. 33rd St.
• Wednesday, February 7: Scott Middle School, 2200 Pine Lake Road.

Omaha.com, the Omaha World-Herald's website, has finally gone live with its new look. (journalstar.com went live with its makeover a couple months ago.) On the plus side, it appears they dumped the stupid registration requirement, so now anybody can access their articles. (Bypassing the registration process was always easy, but still annoying, with BugMeNot.) Then there are the negatives. None of the in-page advertisements load for me, so there are a half-dozen "The connection has timed out" messages across the screen. Not that I would see the ads anyway, thanks to Firefox's Adblock Plus extension. I did fire up the site in Internet Explorer 7, only to be attacked by not one but two popups. Are web developers seriously still using popups? Give me a break. And now I'm seeing an error message when I try to load the site. Darn first day gremlins. I have just given the new site a quick glance, but so far I'm not impressed. From a usability standpoint, the designers made it difficult to see a whole bunch of articles at once. Instead, the user has to click or scroll to get a feel for his options. Contrast that with JournalStar.com, where the user can, at a glance, see many headlines and features. Additionally, portions of Omaha.com are inaccessible to many special needs users. Some features require JavaScript (e.g. search), and many features require a visual browser (e.g. the primary navigation). Those are big no-nos for the website of a major newspaper. Your thoughts?

Speak up about Lincoln's future:

• Today: Lincoln High School, 2229 J St.
• Tomorrow: Lincoln East High School, 1000 S. 70th St.
• Wednesday: Lincoln North Star High School, 5801 N. 33rd St.
• Wednesday, February 7: Scott Middle School, 2200 Pine Lake Road.

Doors open at 5:00, presentations begin at 5:30, and you'll be out by 8:30. Afterwards, share your thoughts in the forum. FYI, Mr. T and I will be attending tomorrow's meeting at East.

I ended up working all weekend, right up until 11:30pm last night. I even missed out on dinner at my parents' house last night. I don't particularly enjoy missing out on the family time that locking oneself in one's office requires, but I do love pushing myself away from the keyboard at the end and saying "I'm finished, and it's good." This weekend's project involved developing some website member management solutions for a client in Canada. (One of two clients from Canada, actually. Apparently the "Eh Team" from up north has a thing for Nebraskans.) The project was nice in that it was difficult but doable, and I learned from it some lessons that I can apply to future projects. As it turns out I underbid the project (by about 30%), but with just a little work I should be able to repackage some of the elements into a sellable product to more than make up the difference. I'm not crazy about working seven days a week, but it's going to take that kind of effort for a while if I want my web development stuff to go anywhere. And I do. I really, really do. I would love to be able to do this stuff full-time...

Was listening to one of the great podcasts out there this morning: filmspotting - and they mentioned seeing a movie at the ongoing Sundance Festival: The Good Life - which apparently takes place in good ole Lincoln. The filmspotting review, by the way, is not very favorable.

I don't know about you, but I'm excited about The Midway Sweets & Treats, a new restaurant opening just north of O Street on 48th Street. They advertise hot dogs, cotton candy, shaved ice, caramel apples, and more. If they have fried Twinkies, I'm soooo there.

This video, "A Girl Like Me", is making the rounds right now. It's a short (7 minutes) documentary by Kiri Davis, a high school student. There are a lot of things I still don't "get" about race and racial identity in the United States. I can't wrap my head around some of the girls' comments in the film, for example. But several parts of the film are intriguing, and I can't help but think about how it all relates to Robert.

TriAd is a simple game: I give you three adjectives, you tell me what I'm describing. All of the answers have something to do with Lincoln.

1. Pink. Cheap. Gone.
2. Left. Middle. Right.
3. Straight. Alphabetical. Wider.
4. Little. Stinky. Award-winning.
5. Red. Kinetic. Steel.
6. Artificial. Two-toned. Hallowed.
7. Colorful. Garage. Office.
8. Country. Hoarse? Green?

As I watch the sun rise on another beautiful day in Lincoln, I've begun to think about 2007 and all the things that might happen this year. And so that forms the background for today's Friday Five. Here are five questions about the remainder of 2007. What are your answers?

1. The Star Ship 9 has fallen. Is there enough developer interest to give us the much-hyped 25-story high-rise? Or will we get something less?
2. Lincolnites love to complain about the weather. Will the groundhog see his shadow next week?
3. Who will be the next mayor of Lincoln?
4. Over at the Capitol, a statewide smoking ban is being debated. Will Senators pass the ban before the session ends?
5. How 'bout them Huskers? Where will the Husker basketball, baseball, softball, football, and volleyball teams end up this year?

Sure would be nice if Lincoln could play a role in the bird flu fight. It would make an excellent advertisement for the value that the University of Nebraska Technology Park brings to town, and it certainly won't hurt UNL's efforts to build a research corridor near the Beadle Center once the Antelope Valley Project wraps up.

Wow, 38 comments. That's a record. Sure, it's mostly the same few people going back and forth, but at least there's an exchange going on. To the participants: thanks for keeping it (mostly) civil. I'm glad to see that folks with *ahem* vastly different opinions make Lincolnite a destination.

The Omaha World-Herald has a good piece online about the financial impact of Lincoln's smoking ban. I also found an online version of the report (PDF) by UNL's Bureau of Business Research. I want to add a couple thoughts to my earlier post. Most importantly, I can't think of any good reason why the Journal Star would have left out of its article the fact that according to the analysis Lincoln "lost" over 600 jobs as a result of the smoking ban. 600 jobs is a lot of jobs. I put "lost" in quotation marks because it's not that our employment numbers went down, but that they did not rise as quickly as they "should" have, statistically speaking. You will have to read the report for yourself to decide if you agree with the methodology that arrived at that conclusion. Incidentally, Tobacco Free Lincoln regards the loss of 600 jobs as "modest". They have an odd definition of modest. The resulting financial impact of 600 fewer jobs is in the millions of dollars. I tried to calculate the effect, but the report doesn't define what a "job" is. For illustration purposes though, if a "job" is a full-time (2,000 hours annually) position paying $7.00/hour, the loss of 600 such incomes comes to $8.4 million. Extrapolate from there as you will.

Today's feature in the Journal Star talks a bit about the proposed high-rise for the former Star Ship location on Q Street. I'm skeptical about the likelihood of the project ending up as grand (pun intended) as the city's vision, but dang, wouldn't that be awesome? A new 25-story high-rise would be a huge boon to Downtown, and to Lincolnites' faith in the city's economic development efforts. Wash any skepticism from your mind for a second and think about it...

Am I a bad Nebraskan for not being giddy about President Bush's call in his State of the Union Address for substantially more biofuels? Nebraskans are supposed to be singing a happy song because ethanol is great for the state. But I'm just not sold on ethanol, or at least not corn-based ethanol. Ethanol is more expensive per mile, and producing it takes a ton of water. Plus, diverting so much acreage to energy instead of food (or from other crops to corn) will raise food prices on countless products. I want to be pro-ethanol. It's the Cornhusker-y thing to do. But somebody is going to have to convince me. Now, if President Bush had said "We need to make substantial investments in nuclear power to ensure low-cost, safe, environmentally-friendly energy for decades to come" I would have fainted. Then I would have applauded like mad.

In news that really oughtn't come as a surprise, a local study found that Lincoln's smoking ban caused a drop in income for many local businesses -- bars, in particular. The study's findings give lie to the claim by some of the ban's supporters that there would be no such drop. The ban's supporters will argue that the improved quality of life was worth every penny. And they are right, for their definition of "quality of life". Me, I include an individual's fundamental right to do what he chooses to his body under my definition of "quality of life", so I would argue that the costs far outweighed the benefits. If I had my druthers, the "ban" wouldn't have been a governmental ban, but one driven by consumers. The current rush by businesses to ditch trans fats is a good example of a consumer-driven ban that's working extraordinarily well. (Let's not get into the matter of whether it's a good idea to drop trans fats in favor of that scorn of the 90's, saturated fats.) I still believe a coordinated drive by consumers could have forced most local businesses to halt smoking on their premises within a matter of months. We were very near the tipping point at the time the ban was passed. Alas, we'll never know for sure.