I heard one radio commentator gushing on and on about the “mandate” (man I am sick of that liberal code word) Luke was given in his victory over write-in Republican candidate Desantis.

In a city where the democrats supposedly outnumber republicans by 5 to 1 how does a 2 to 1 victory over a write-in candidate equate to any sort of mandate?  Seems to me democrats weren’t energized at all to come out and support Mayor Luke in any appreciable numbers and the write-in candidate numbers were on the staggering side.

Only 42,190 votes were cast for Mayor Luke.  Pittsburgh has a population of about 350,000.  Mr. Desantis garnered 23,173 votes.  Both huge democratic party defections and huge democratic party apathy has contributed to the decline of Pittsburgh in general and the rise of Republican and Third Party politics in particular.

Maybe, just maybe, as the “party line” voters continue to die off the crushing stranglehold of democratic corruption on Southwestern Pennsylvania will diminish and we can finally enter the 21st century with the rest of the country.

I LOVED the beating, and almost felt sorry for the Ravens on Monday Night Football.  If anything could go wrong, it did, (and it’s name was James Harrison).  But subtract all the points scored from turnovers and it was a 10 to 7 game against the Ravens.

This got me to thinking… what have the Steelers really done this season and are they worth all the hype so far?

• Browns  (5-3) W
• Bills        (4-4) W
• 49s         (2-6) W
• Cards     (3-5) L
• Hawks   (4-4) W
• Broncos (3-5) L
• Bengals  (2-6) W
• Ravens  (4-4) W
• So far   (27-37)

So we have beaten only ONE TEAM WITH A WINNING RECORD through half the schedule.  We have LOST TO TWO TEAMS WITH LOSING RECORDS through half the season, and beaten 3 teams at 4-4.

The good teams are supposed to win the games they are supposed to win and the great teams are more likely to win the games they are supposed to lose.  The Steelers have never been a Vegas underdog yet have lost to teams they were supposed to handle.

The Arizona game I lay right at the feet of Ben.  He was clearly out of his mind all week leading up to the game, and he allowed Ken Whisenhunt to scramble his brains to the point that Ben could not manage the game at all.

The Denver loss was all on coaching and that is expected from time to time from a rookie head coach.

So the Cleveland game is a big big big test for Coach Tomlin and the Steelers.  Can they win a game against a team with a winning record for only the second time this season?  Can they beat the Browns twice in the regular season?  Are the Steelers as good as the hype?

Parallels Desktop For Mac

This is a GREAT product. I am a PC guy, a Windows guy, and I got the certifications to prove it. Back in the day when the Mac IIs were all the rage across university campuses, I worked on them in desktop publishing. The GUI interface, then a relatively new phenomena on the desktop PC, was vastly superior on the MAC compared to the MS-DOS 5.1 and Windows add ons.

But as the PC and Windows encroached more and more into the business field and M$ swallowed up more and more of the competition I left the Apple world to the Apple folk.

Today, with OSX running on Intel boxes and many cross over applications hitting the scene I got to install and run Parallels for Desktops and I love it. Essentially, it is a virtual Windows XP OS running as a separate process on a Mac.

It runs XP better than my Dell does! I still have to perform MS updates and install antivirus protection just like on a Dell box, but I can still have a fully functional Mac OSX running and any number of virtual XPs that my hardware will allow.

In a college environment where the official university OS is Windows the Mac user now has a powerful tool to allow them to access all of the software the university negotiates special discounts yet still retain the use of the powerful Mac platform.

A rare Win/Win in the PC vs. Mac arena.

Remember my first article on Vicarious Learning?

Here is an update:

It has been 4 months since the first installment and I have still not paid the $35.00 in late fees.

Red Flag Number 2.

Winter in Pittsburgh is always interesting.

Pittsburgh, situated in the Pittsburgh Plateaus Province of the Appalachian Mountains, has lots of rolling hills. Some of the topography can make for fairly steep and extended drop offs. So at the top of Lydia Street in Greenfield down to Greenfield Avenue that 200 foot downgrade can be pretty extreme in places.

At the top of another high point in the area, around Beacon and Wightman in Squirrel Hill, a small wave of atmospheric energy passed over the area around 8:30 AM bringing a quick burst of precipitation. It was snowing those little “pellets” of snow, like miniature snowballs. And it was coming down really quickly for a few minutes. As the bus I was riding descended down Forbes Ave to S. Bellefield Ave the precipitation had time to pass through more of the warmer atmosphere.

During the trip down Forbes Ave the snow pellets had changed to a wet snow about half way down the hill, and at the bottom the precipitation event had changed entirely to a wet drizzle. As the moisture was falling through the atmosphere in the higher elevation it was frozen but as it had more time to pass through the warmer air in the lower elevation it melted to a cold but wet rain.

As we passed the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh I thought of the fact that someone looking out of a 40th floor window would see snow yet someone else simultaneously standing at the base of the Cathedral would be rained upon.

Winter in Pittsburgh is always interesting.