Pittsburgh Dish

Love for a Glove

How one woman's perseverance reunited a man with his clothing.

The situation was grim. Though the Steelers were giving a good and proper thrashing to the Browns that frigid Thursday night, not all was well in the city formerly justly known as the Steel City. As the wind whipped through the rapidly emptying mustard seats at Heinz Field, 24 year-old Jamie of Pittsburgh noticed something was amiss. Glancing into her purse, she saw the item that would sow confusion for days. A man's glove? "Now just what the hell is that doing there?" she thought.

As the days were Xed off the calendar, the confusion grew. Turning to the burgeoning, newfangled communications device, the Intratubes, she posted an ad on Craig's List. In essence, she told the public a glove was lost and would like to be found. She provided scant information on the nature of the glove or the section of the stadium in which she sat. Still, there was hope.

That night's attendance was shy of capacity, less than 60,000 souls braved the weather. Figuring that only 60 percent or so of the crowd was male, that leaves about 36,000 individuals boasting—give or take, considering the prospect of tragic chain saw accidents, hand-generating birth defects and the like—72,000 man hands.

Yes, it would be apt to employ the needle/haystack metaphor here. Dish shall not.

She heard no response from her cry into the web wilderness. She began speaking of the lost glove in her workplace. Paydirt!

Jamie, please tell the story:

"As I was telling my coworker about [Dish's] email [regarding the post on Craig's List], he told me that he lost a glove at the game and described the one he lost. It was the same glove. I met up with him to go home at the end of the night and somehow I ended up with his glove. Not as exciting as I had hoped, but still pretty funny that I took the time to post a craigslist ad and the glove belonged to someone I knew."

Huzzah! The glove is home! The hand is warm! An Aroundchristmastime miracle, indeed! No thanks to the lousy internet.

Jamie is a stellar example of Steeler fans' compassion for lost items. A source in customer relations at Heinz Field told Dish: "You'd be surprised what Steelers fans turn in. Hats, gloves, the usual. But people have brought in diamond rings and watches. We've even seen wads of cash."

So Browns fans, next time a Steelers fan pummels you at Heinz Field, he won't take your wallet and you'll probably get your Dirty Brown Towel back.

Seattle Bytes

Dish's embedded Seattle reporter uncovers a nefarious plot by Microsoft wanker/Seahawks owner Paul Allen.

by John Gallone, West Coast Bureau Chief and former Burgher

SCOOP: Seems Paul Allen, in conjunction with Microsoft cohort Bill Gates, has been working on a new super program: SEAHAWK 4.0. Unlike other Microsoft products this one promises not only to give the user a decisive edge but also to actually function.

They conjured SEAHAWK 4.0 by mixing an optimization algorithm addressing the Seahawks PASS routing problem with Windows based on Lagrangian polysymplectic structures utilizing the application of a metaheuristic for scheduling a Pass Option response. The metaheuristic uses a branch-and-bound procedure to generate information, which in turn is used to guide a genetic algorithm's search for optimal and near-optimal Pass or Running solutions. WE WILL CRUSH YOU! If it doesn’t crash or start smoking.

BETTER: The results indicate that the SEAHAWK 4.0 combined approach and its modified versions of the heuristic hop/malt based algorithm are superior to any of the strategies seen before and seem to work better than past systems which relied too heavily on guys running downfield, waving wildly and yelling I’M OPEN!!!

PROOF: But we all know the real proof of the value of any sports franchise is the amount of merchandising it spawns. In that rivalry Steelers lead 8 toques to 3. In the Hip-Hop Appropriated Apparel category Seattle lags far behind as well. Thus effectively tossing a green weenie into all of the above.

TIP: I’ve noticed the Pittsburgh coaching staff relies on an abundance of fancy electronic gear: headsets, monitors, telephones, flashlights, two-way wrist radios, nose trimmers etc. Mr. Allen might have a little virus up his port to disrupt things come game day. Blackouts for crucial replays, conveniently crashing playback units, loss of ALL data on Steelers fans hard drive. I’m not saying this will happen but there’s more to football than what occurs on the field.

Let’s just say if I were a Steeler I’d be very careful about sipping ANYTHING from Starbucks on game day.

Barista: "Roofie Latte for Jerome Bettis."

Phishing on the Mon

And we don't mean the Pop Some X and Mistakenly Hump Your Buddy's Leg Jam Band.

by Mike Gillis

I've been getting quite a bit of email from Steven Allison. Steve wants me to know that my IP address has been logged at over 30 illegal web sites. Now, normally, this would pique my curiosity, insofar as I know for certain, for instance, that the websites I visit are absolutely legal. In poor taste, maybe (www.tshirthell.com). Titillating, perhaps (www.victoriassecret.com). Obscene, sure (www.pittsburghpenguins.com). But not illegal. Maybe I ought to be concerned about this. Has my computer been hacked? Has somebody got remote access? Or maybe our wireless network is being accessed by our neighbors! But wait...I'm getting these messages at work.

Yup, at work, redundant firewalls, servers and all. This is a fairly recent development. I'd been getting email saying my passwords were all screwy n'at and that I needed to contact the network administrator. We have a total of eight employees, none of whom function as a network administrator, being as how the network barely exists. So we've identified these emails as suspicious for some time. But then Steve comes along.

As unnerving as it could be to be informed that, not only has your IP address been logged, but also at "illegal websites," it's just another potential worm or virus or whatever masking as a legitimate email, right? Then, upon further review, I see that Steven Allison's return address is Admin@cia.gov. OMG. What did I do? Was that story about The Golden Girls, Che Guevara and the bulldog that I read last week TRUE? Should I have passed the story on to 100 of my friends who I hadn't talked to in at least a week, NOW, OR ELSE THE CHAIN WILL BE BROKEN? Oh, God, what did I do?? Now the CIA is after me!!! There's a physical address, and Steven's phone number. A quick Google search, and, sure enough, the address and phone number are at the CIA. I feel light-headed, and begin a mental inventory of everything I've done wrong in the past 30 or so years. Which isn't as hard as you'd imagine-my mother is Italian.

I look again at my email, and there he is again-Steven Allison, IP address logged, OH GOD, 30 illegal sites-wait, what's this...Steven is now employed by the FBI?? Oh, this is bad. Admin@fbi.gov, physical address and phone number, check, what the...who is this guy, William Webster? Who works for both agencies, unless...it's another one of those Goddamn abominations perpetrated under the aegis of the Patriot Act, isn't it?! A further erosion of the bulwark of our civil liberties, the rising tide floating all boats, including the USS Cheney, volleying broadsides into our freedoms willy-nilly...illegal websites, indeed...illegal like CNN, right. HAH! And the Post-Gazette! Why I bet even Dish is on the list! Illegal my ASS...Steve is just telling me that if you're not with us you're against us, right? Why, I'll show you illegal!! www.aclu.org Hah, take that, Steve! www.nea.gov Come and get me, coppers!!!!

Whoa. Calm down. Think. That's preposterous, right? I mean, I look at the Trib site, too. Fair and balanced, right? RIGHT??? Jesus, maybe some decaf. And the Drudge Report, just to be sure. Oh, hey Steve-have you heard about W's new KFC franchise? It only serves right wings and assholes.

PS-If you don't have Todd Snider's East Nashville Skyline in your CD collection, you need to add it.