Early last week, the Lincoln Journal Star posted an article regarding a new arena for Lincoln and the new proposed taxes that will be used to pay for this arena (additional article). Lincoln has been crying out for a new arena for a long time because the Pershing Center is apparently too old. Honestly, I have no problems with the age of the Pershing Center and I think it is still a good venue. The age of the Pershing Center does show when you compare it to the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs. The problem I do have with the Pershing Center is the events they get, or it may be better to say the lack of events. My first question regarding a new arena for Lincoln would be why Lincoln is not getting events at the Pershing Center in comparison to the Mid-America Center. Is the arena too old for bands to want to come to Lincoln or is something else preventing bands from coming to Lincoln? Granted, an arena can be used for much more than concerts but that is primarily what I go to arenas for, so that is what I am focusing on. The last concert I went to at the Pershing Center was Evanescence with Julian-K and Sick Puppies. At the time, Sick Puppies was not even popular enough for the average person to know who they were and Julian-K hadn’t even release a CD yet. I can understand the Pershing Center not selling out for this show but the floor was probably only about 30 people deep, which was just sad. The Evanescence show at the Mid-America Center was close to sold out. If a new arena is just going to be used for UNL sports and our concert scene is still going to be pitiful, I will feel like the University pulled a fast one over on the city and then kicked the taxes payers to the curb. So, what is the real reason for such a pitiful concert scene in Lincoln?

One of the biggest complaints about the new arena is paying the additional taxes. They proposed a 4% tax on hotels and rental cars and a 2% tax on restaurants and bars. I enjoy going out a few times a week, so paying an additional 2% at restaurants and bars is not something I am happy about, but I realize the city needs to pay for the arena somehow. Omaha and Grand Island already have similar taxes to pay for projects to boost entertainment in their cities. These kinds of taxes are not unheard of by any means. The amusing part, some people seem to think they should not have to pay for an arena they never plan to use. Sports, concerts, kid’s events, and “giant liquidation” sales… I am sorry your life is so boring you will never attend anything hosted at an arena. If you never plan to attend anything at the new proposed arena, you should at least look outside of the tiny box you live in. Most people in Lincoln probably do not have to worry much about the additional taxes on hotels and rental cars; unless your spouse kicks you out of the house and takes your car. The tax at restaurants and bars is likely going to hurt the staff more than anything. I assume people will likely cut back on their gratuity to make up the 2% difference. The bigger picture, events draw people to the city and those people spend money. This creates additional revenue from shopping, dining, drinking, and paying our city’s taxes. It is not required to attend an event at the arena to benefit from the addition to the city. Plus, when the city decides to build the “Museum of Boring and Whiney People”, the rest of us will be too busy enjoying the arena to complain about it.

Another compliant revolved around the idea that the people of Lincoln will travel to Omaha but the people of Omaha will not travel to Lincoln. There is probably a lot of truth to that statement, but last I checked Lincoln and Omaha were not the only place where people reside in the state of Nebraska. People will travel to see the events they want to see. I personally have traveled to Kansas City and Denver just to see a specific concert. I think I need to explain something at this point to those that do not keep up with concerts. Bands do multiple tours. Bands are interested in making money. The average person is not going to pay to see the same band, at the same venue, on the same tour, more than one time. In the last three years I can think at least four bands I have seen four times in this area. None of these bands played the same venue more than twice. If they did play a venue twice, it was because one instance was festival they were involved in. It is common for a band to cross the US multiple times and they will hit our area multiple times if we provide them a place to play and an audience to attend. The Qwest Center is a nice venue but it is expensive. I have only been to the Qwest Center twice and I have seen well over 50 shows. Personally, I do not even consider it a viable option for most concerts I am willing to attend. The Qwest Center hosts very big names with fairly expensive ticket prices. If I was a country music fan, the Qwest Center would be about my only option for seeing a show. I realize country music is big in Nebraska, but country music is not the only music people enjoy in Nebraska. So, the proposed arena is going to be competing with the Mid-America Center for the most part, which is not even in Nebraska. Why would we want to keep pushing events across the river?

Lincoln seems to want to keep its “big city with small town charm”, but does that mean we need to prevent all growth? Taxes are required and they are not going away. I would be interested in seeing the projected taxes if we opted to find a different location for the arena. I understand the appeal of the Hay Market but spending $350 million to move the railroad tracks seems like an unneeded expense when so many areas of Lincoln are growing. I assume that area seems like a good place for the city so they can opt to charge for parking versus free parking. I also assume the University wants the arena as close to home as possible. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I am sure many people disagree with my opinion. I am just hopefully for a positive outcome and a new arena, especially if it draws better events to Lincoln.

Ah, four day weekends are wonderful until day five hits and you have to go back to work. Granted, last weekend wasn’t just for relaxing but it was still nice to have four days off even if the weather was horrible. My poor pepper plants would have loved to see a much later freeze this year, but the cold nights had pretty much stopped all their productivity anyway so the freezing weather gave me a reason to throw out the plants and the 80 or so peppers that were not ripe yet. I tend to never use those peppers anyway so I am just happy I had productive plants this year. It is just hard to believe we had a summer that wasn’t that hot and we pretty much jumped straight into November temperatures in the matter of weeks. I was out golfing in shorts two weekends ago and now I don’t even want to be outside. It seems like it has been forever since the sun has been out. Hopefully the weather gets a little nicer to get a little outdoor work done before winter really sets in. Last weekend gave me a little time to spend on the computer cleaning up some stuff I do not need anymore. I still have files from my last job that I saved, just in case. It felt good to delete testing notes, call logs, knowledge base articles, and documentation for procedures I had worked on while I was there. The funny thing, I came across quite a few items that reminded me it was good that I made the move to a new company. Seriously, who votes for themselves when it is time to vote for an Employee of the Month!

I did give myself one goal last weekend. I have no problem admitting I enjoy playing games. Even my Dad and Uncle spend one night a week racing online in the same racing league that I race in. Video games have changed over time and the audience is always getting broader. You may enjoy reality TV or sitting and watching movies all night… my form of entertainment is video games. Many games are designed to tell a story; just like a movie but the key difference is you get to take part in the story. Many games are designed to simulate reality; you get to be in the middle of the action. Maybe I enjoy games because watching television usually puts me to sleep unless I am doing something else at the same time. Maybe I enjoy games because I like the interaction. I play about everything; music games, shooters, and the racing games (of course). I’ll be honest; I can’t drive with my thumb and will never pretend to enjoy trying to play driving games with a hand-held controller. Using the Microsoft Xbox 360 steering wheel on the couch was always a challenge and not too enjoyable though. After many, many hours of racing online on the computer, I learned that if you tilt your pedals about 45 degrees and give yourself a base to rest your feet on, it provided a lot more realistic experience. In addition, my legs and ankles didn’t get tired during 2 hour endurance races because this was a more natural setup. This prompted me to build a pedal stand for my Logitech Momo steering wheel and pedals for my PC setup. After using it a few times I started recommending it to everyone that enjoys racing games. Last weekend it was time to build an entire wheel stand for the Microsoft Xbox 360 steering wheel that I could use while sitting on the couch. I had an idea in my head because I had been thinking of designs for almost a year. Lee found a design online that seemed more promising and would require less MDF and less cutting, so I decided to use that as my starting point instead and incorporate my ideas. I worked up my plans and I started by building a similar pedal stand I had been using for the computer. Then I just had to add the side arms and a top to attach the wheel. A couple braces for support and my creation was completed. Coming up with all the correct angles to keep everything comfortable and realistic was not easy and making sure everything was very sturdy was important. I have to say, I am pretty proud of my work. All that is left is filling the screw holes, sanding everything again and painting. I will probably have to add a beverage holder too. Before the wheel stand, I was using Cece’s TV tray and the pedals were on the floor. The pedals would slide around, there was no horizontal leg room, the TV tray was way too high, and the wheel made the tray top heavy. Now I have plenty of room, a better angle for the pedals and the stand is solid. It is amazing what a difference a wheel stand makes to your overall driving experience!

Last weekend was a relaxing weekend! That was the first weekend in months that my calendar was completely empty. Summer is a busy time of year and now that the summer is drawing to a close, I am looking forward to a calm and peaceful winter. I still have some tasks to get done that require nice weather. The plants need to be trimmed back, which seems pointless because I want to pull them all out next spring and redo all the landscaping. The garage could use a quick cleaning before winter sets in and all the normal outside items like planters and hoses need to be packed away for the winter. I realize I will put those tasks off as long as possible, so why even put them on the to-do list. It seems like I have hardly had any time to work on the computer this summer unless I was on call and had no other choice (and that’s the wrong computer I want to be on). I used to spend all my free time on the computer because I had nothing better to do. It seems like these days I have to take a day of vacation in order to have time to sit down just to edit a few pictures. I suppose that is a good thing but it gets overwhelming to try and manage all your important computer data when you let it get away from you. I am hoping that is what this winter will be for. I know I sound lame but when you have spent the last 14 years in front of a computer you always have something to do on the computer.

If you hadn’t noticed, everything looks different here. I spent a long time working on my old layout and I really liked it. The problem, somewhere along the way I edited something that posed a display problem with Internet Explorer. I probably spent two days attempting to fix the old layout and finally decided it was time for a change. Over the years I have put together and worked on a quite a few websites but I have to say Wordpess has been my favorite interface so far. I would appreciate a little better integration with Gallery, but Gallery is awesome as a stand-alone web application so I can’t really complain. Switching over to this new layout went pretty seamlessly. My biggest issue was finding a good image for the top that I think represents me well and fits well above a blog without using up too much real estate. Finding something that isn’t too tall and very wide is very difficult. For now, I guess the Xterra will have to do. I really wanted to use another sunset but it I didn’t have anything that worked well so I decided to change my site logo while I was at. That let me bring the symbolism of the sun back in to my website. I also added a rating system for posts to allow people to interact without registering. One major issue with websites is human interaction is key but allowing anonymous interaction is a scary idea. People will spam any website, even an insignificant personal blog like this. So the ratings can be used by visitors but comments still require an account (which is free, simple and easy to use). Since I was getting random spam accounts registering there has been captcha added to the registration process. The only other major issue I had was the width of the posts is now smaller, so I had to go back and edit my videos to a little smaller footprint. Why spend my time mentioning all of this you ask… human interaction. If you happen to notice some issue I missed, please let me know. There are a few things I still need to work on but for the most part I consider the update complete and really like the new look.

A new online racing season started not too long ago and I was pretty excited to get started. Last season I missed a race but for the most part I had a really good season but missing that race killed my standings. I was excited to get back in and try to compete for a good place at the end of the season. The number of new drivers joining the league is pretty high which means there are a lot of new guys that you have no clue how they will race against you. I knew the most important factor to have a good season was not missing a race… so far, so good. The next important factor is good finishes. Unfortunately that is not going well at all! After four races my average finish is 18th and I don’t even have a top 10 finish in any of the four races. I sit 16th in points overall and I haven’t even seen the checkered flag in a race yet. I have only finished 55% of the laps and one race I only completed 3 laps. For the record, I have not once wrecked myself or another driver. I have been a victim for four weeks in a row and it is frustrating! This week was Daytona, which is one big pack racing fender-to-fender at 200 MPH. I knew I wasn’t going to make it through the race because if you want to be a fair driver it is not possible to hold 1st place and someone always causes a big accident because of poor driving. I decided to post the video of the accident. The accident would have never happened if one driver would have opted to drive in a straight line. You have to pick a lane and commit to it and change lanes only when the time is right. I avoided this guy all night and knew driving beside him was dangerous, but I still got bitten. In case you were wondering, the 24 car is my Dad and I drive the 96.

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