OK, that might be a little harsh, but not by too much.

Authorities are on the lookout for an Alabama man who is a person of interest in the double homicide death of his parents.

Adrian Edward Glass is apparently in the area. We know this because he used his debit card at a store in Piedmont. He is supposedly driving a red quad cab Tacoma pickup with tinted windows and may be armed. He is considered dangerous.

More on this later at www.rapidcityjournal.com.

Working in this business, it’s easy to get a bit sensitive to the catcalls from those who are professed media experts.

It doesn’t have to be Limbaugh, Hannity or any of the ranks of the conservative talk show hosts. Even the occasional jab from letter writers or the neighbor about the media’s love for President Obama.

The common response is that: Hey, he’s the president. When he does something — anything — it’s news.

But this video from AP certainly tests the boundaries of that. Not that it isn’t, um, interesting to watch, but really, is this news? Apparently, it is.

The young cowboy from Mission’s Powerball win of — after taxes — about $88 million is the top of the charts not only for the local media, but nationwide.

A quick look from other news sites.

Of course, we’re giving it a little play, too. As one staffer asked, “Do you think he would be in the need of a really good PR person.”

There’s a couple dozen folks on the second floor of the Journal that are hoping so.

Buried deep in the heart of a promotional video on the Rapid City Rush’s Web page is the possible news that the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center Ice Arena will be hosting an NHL exhibition game this year. Heck, it even has a date — Sept. 17.

You have to wait through more than half of the video found on the Rush’s recruitment page, but it’s there. Click here to view it.

There’s been plenty of speculation in the Journal newsroom on what teams may be involved, but the current consensus is that it isn’t likely to be an Original Six squad. And if you don’t know what that last sentence is about, you’re probably not as excited by the possibility as I am.

But then again, we haven’t confirmed anything yet — teams, dates or even if there will be again. More to come on this story.

It hasn’t shown up on AP yet, but word out of St. Paul (and New York, as well as wherever today’s broadcast of ESPN is from) is that Brett Favre will soon be a Viking.
Now, whether that’s good or bad news depends on whether you are a Vikings fan, or even what kind of Vikings fan you are. Lenn Davis, the biggest Vikings fan I know other than my daughter, Sophia, is no fan of the Favre man coming to Minnesota. And I trust his judgment, generally speaking.
But the great thing about the whole Favre to Vikings story is less about how good he will be with the Vikings (and I, unlike Lenn, believe he would do great) and more about how it irritates Packers fan. My favorite image is of a mock Sports Illustrated. I’ve sent it around to a few Packers fans around the newsroom and have received a less than favorable response.
Here’s what it looks like.

First off, thanks to two other news sources:

– Scott Waltman from the Aberdeen American News for pointing me to the place where I could get a list of national closures by Chrysler.

– CNN, home to said list, via  a PDF. (Click on PDF to see the full list of dealerships nationwide, including the seven here in South Dakota.)

It includes dealerships in Rapid City, Hot Springs and Spearfish.

The early word is that it doesn’t mean full closure for Spearfish. And after getting off the phone with Hot Springs editor Curt Nettinga, the Hot Springs dealership, they offer a number of other services that could very well bode well.

No word yet on Liberty Motors in Rapid City, as no officials there were able to come to the phone to answer our questions yet.

Tough economic news for the region for sure. There are seven across the state that will be affected by the Chrysler decision. There are nearly 800 nationwide on the list.

News editor Pat Dobbs is furiously putting together a story on the Sanford Lab at Homestake in Lead finally hitting the 4,850 foot level of the mine.
They’ve been pumping water out of the mine since last fall, trying to reach the level where they’ll be able to put in their first experiments.
We’ve been covering it weekly with updates, and it’s been a long process. I went to high school in Lead and have lived in Lead or Deadwood a good chunk of my life. The mine has always been a part of the Hills landscape for me.
But even I was growing a bit weary of the weekly updates. So this is great news on a couple of fronts.
How tired of it was I? Not as much as several Rapid Repliers, who would regularly comment (and not get posted) about how inane the weekly updates were.
But I had grown a bit weary. It’s evidenced in the weekly chart I was responsible for marking the dewatering at the mine. Check out the last month in particular.
Just click on the photo of the lab site to see the chart.

Scanner traffic a little after 10 a.m. A transformer in west Rapid City over has blown and started a small grass fire.

The person who called it in said it was moving toward homes in the area. Those first on the scene, though, say the fire is small. They also, note, though, that there are power lines in the area, that could complicate matters slightly.

Remarkably, I heard on the radio the other day that we are slightly below our precip mark for the month. Could this be a more active fire season than last year’s non-existent one? Odds are — yes.