Oct 13

A plea for sanity on HD news graphics

The background behind the anchors or the text does NOT have to move. The images do NOT have to rotate. Chyrons/text elements do NOT need a lens flare around the borders, much less a moving one.

KWWL, you did it first, and KCRG copied. WHO, I see you’re following, and one-upping both of them with occasional video in the background.

Please, enough with the shiny distractions.

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Oct 12

Wait, what? (Sport crossover edition)

On the football schedule for Saturday:

NAIA: Lindsey Wilson at Campbellsville

I knew the former ISU women’s basketball player was tough, but taking on an entire football team singlehandedly?

In other news, Lindsey Wilson College is a thing.
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Oct 12

Progress in Bremer County

Assorted construction news around the state:

  • Count this as another “de-clinching” of US 218 for me: New 218 around Janesville opened today, with an interchange at C50 and a closed intersection a mile south at the county line. The entire roadway has been shifted eastward to accommodate the interchange and has something new for Iowa: Roundabouts at the ramp intersections. (Boooo!)
  • The last remaining gap in US 63 between IA 3 and IA 93 will open to four lanes Monday. This will be good enough for the “official” opening date while there is some construction cleanup afterward.
  • The soon-to-be-former north end of IA 196 at soon-to-be-former US 20 is being converted to a four-way stop Oct. 22.
  • The first part of I-29’s reconstruction in Sioux City fully opened earlier this week. Hamilton Boulevard to IA 12 is the oldest stretch of the interstate in the state and might have been signed only as US 77 at first. (This requires more research.)
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Oct 11

Happy 10/11/12!

That is all.

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Oct 10

License Plate Countdown — ZZL

The odds are pretty small that I’m going to be the first person to spot the rollover. The AAA assignment is likely completely random and I bet has already rolled off the prison manufacturing line.

Keep an eye out and let me know when you see the change.

UPDATE: ZZN

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Oct 09

Old Iowa City bridge to be replaced

The Rochester Avenue bridge, called the most structurally deficient in Johnson County, will be replaced next year.

When the bridge was built in 1934, Rochester Avenue carried IA 1 on the way to West Branch. IA 1 was rerouted at the end of 1963 shortly after I-80 opened north of Iowa City.

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Oct 05

Class distinction

When the IGHSAU said it was creating five classes and using “5A” as the top designation instead of adding “A” for the smallest, I thought there might be the potential of a school designated A for football but 2A for some other sport. I was right.

Despite being in Class 1A for softball this summer, North Tama is now one of the smallest Class 2A volleyball schools. The full BEDS list is here. North Tama is seven students above the cutoff. The first opponent in the postseason? Hudson, which had grown too large for play against NT a while ago. On the boys’ side, the football team is doing quite well this year in Class A.

The makeup of each sport’s class can vary based on what programs are sharing. It will be interesting to see if the girls’ class split stands for basketball season as well, in which case it’s a good thing the girls got to the state tournament last year. Being a small fish in a big pond takes getting used to.

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Oct 03

They call it progress

“My father had a farm in eastern Dallas County…” — “Progress,” Robert John Ford (from the musical “Utopia”)

The sight last week was so incongruous I couldn’t pass it up. Three bins, one tractor, one cornfield, just like so many other places in the state — except for the background. The harvest scene was surrounded by suburban multi-family units and buildings for the fastest-growing school district in Iowa. In the past the land was along what used to be a gravel 300th Street in rural Dallas County. Now it’s beside the four-lane-with-turn-lane concrete of University Avenue inside the Waukee city limits.

Cornfield in Waukee, across from Prairieview Middle School

I don’t know who owns or farms the land; it’s unlabeled on this map of property owners in the area (PDF). I don’t know if the owner has been offered money, and if so how much. Farmland in Dallas County is worth more than $7,500 an acre, but here in the middle of it all that would be an ultra-lowball offer. Its time as farmland, though, is certain to be short. Continue reading

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Oct 01

A history of gas prices around Oct. 1

Since I travel a lot, I have steadfastly kept a table of gas prices since college. Mostly, this was to calculate my mileage. However, as time went on, the chart became less of a personal measurement and more a log of just how insane the price increases were. I am also able to “control” the variables by filling up at the same gas station most of the time.

Here’s what the list price was for super unleaded (10% ethanol blend, 89 octane) at that gas station the past eight years on the date(s) nearest October 1.

  • October 1, 2004: $1.829
  • October 7, 2005: $2.769
  • October 1, 2006: $1.939
  • October 2, 2007: $2.499
  • October 3, 2008: $3.099, down from $3.459 three weeks earlier. But by November 1, as the economy came crashing down, it was $1.899. It’s astounding to see both the rising and falling “in real time” from this year’s chart.
  • September 26, 2009: $2.199 / October 14, 2009: $2.329
  • October 1, 2010: $2.529
  • October 1, 2011: $3.149

Today, it’s $3.699, which by my data set is the highest price ever seen in October — twice as much as 2004 and 55 cents higher than last year.

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Oct 01

The worst part about the Texas Tech loss

It’s not that Iowa State’s path to a bowl is now much harder, or that there’s another quarterback controversy, or the fear that West Virginia is going to imitate the Nebraska teams of the ’90s and drop 70 points. It’s that ESPN Big 12 blogger David Ubben is vindicated in his dismissal and disdain of Iowa State, and there isn’t a single thing that can be said in rebuttal.

Sigh. We’re still Iowa State.

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