March 24 will mark the release of the second downloadable content pack for Fallout 3, named “The Pitt.”  It is set in a future, desolate Pittsburgh, but other than that, I’m completely unfamiliar with it, seeing as I’ve never played any of the Fallout games.

If you have an XBox 360 or the game for Windows Live, check it out.  The third content pack, “Broken Steel” is set to be released in April, no word yet on where it will be set.

Trailer after the break, click through to see it (mature content).  I watched it and saw a couple familiar bridges and I think I spotted PPG Place.

(h/t to Portland Mercury)

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Garmin’s new G5 is a GPS type device for golf courses.  It shows you each hole and all kinds of other stuff.  I really don’t understand much about golf, I’ll go mini golfing, and I’ve enjoyed the two times I’ve been to a driving range, but otherwise it’s just not my cup of tea.

Anyway, the new G5 comes with a whole bunch of courses pre-loaded, including PGA-famous Oakmont Country Club and Mystic Rock at  Woodlands, host of the 84-Lumber Classic (when it still existed).

For all you golf fans, here’s a list of Pennsylvania courses that come preloaded.

Last week you may remember that I decided to give RouteShout a spin, the public beta test of a new program for PAT.  Well, it didn’t work and I sent an e-mail to Deep Local.  I got an auto-response back saying it would be at least two weeks until I heard anything.

Well, either the out of office assistant lied or someone found my e-mail and fished it out of limbo and got back to me in a few days.  Last week and today, Deep Local’s customer service has been exceptional, tracking down my text messages and sending test messages to my phone.  I stepped out and lunch and retried sending the code for the bus stop and it worked!  Within seconds I had a response back with all the info I needed.  Granted, I wasn’t standing at the bus stop, but that’s fine, I’m happy to help out with the beta.

More thoughts about the service later in the week, but in the meantime, if you see the orange signs, give it a shot, it’s a great service, with fantastic people working behind the scenes making it work, I just hope it catches on!

Monday I had to work late, so before my evening meeting I walked down the hill to grab some dinner downtown.  On the way down, I figured I’d test out RouteShout, which I wrote about in an earlier post.  So I headed to Fifth and Ross and found the sign (a bit high in my opinion, but then again, I’m kinda short), nabbed the code and send off a text.

And I got nothing.

I figured I did something wrong, or that the powers that be were just taking a bit longer than normal.  So I walked down to Brueggers on Grant (which, by the way, I will be not going to again.  Your chicken salad might be delicious, but I don’t appreciate the snarky attitude when I used a coupon, so I’ll eat at Subway from now on thank you very much).  I still hadn’t received anything, so I tried it again, this time using all caps, just in case.

I tried a couple times while I sat and ate my dinner, adding spaces, playing with capitalization.  I found out that my phone was putting a dash after the first three numbers (of the five digit code), so I switched it over to “word” mode to get rid of the dash, tried it on that setting with different combinations, and still no luck.

Resigned, I walked back up the hill and when I got back to my desk, sent an e-mail to Deep Local’s support division.  I Just got a reply, stating that my e-mail won’t be answered until at least March 1.

I still really want RouteShout to work, it’s such a cool idea.  However, even more than it working well, I want to be able to use it in any capacity.  It may be my phone (but it’s a new phone, so it shouldn’t really be an issue), it may be my lack of texting skills, but either way, not working and then a two week wait for support is a pretty pathetic beginning.

This weekend, through a series of links (you know the drill, a friend sends you a link of facebook, you follow it, click something else, continue ad infinitum…kind of like how on wikipedia you start by looking up types of RAM and end up reading about the social structure of kangaroos) I stumbled upon DeepLocal.  I posted yesterday about their new project, RouteShout.  They also have another program called follow.

Apparently some huge number of pamphlets were distributed about the program, but I can’t seem to find any where to download a copy, nor did I ever see them.  And it seems like a cool feature (although a bit stalkerish, but then again, I started this post talking about facebook, and thanks to my mini-feed, I do occasionally feel like a stalker).  But anyway, the point is, our city captain, Lindsay, is one of the featured members that can be followed!  Anyone can be followed, as long as you have an e-mail address and a google calendar to link your account to.

The site did make mention of being able to follow others via e-mail, but I have not had luck getting that to work.  If this takes off, and I find it useful, I may bite the bullet and add on a text plan to my cell phone.  But then again, follow has to convince me that it’s more useful than the social media (which the media has fallen in love with, but has yet to impress me) service twitter.

Recently, Pittsburgh has been the center of drama for the Episcopal Church.  The bishop was deposed and the then presiding ‘standing committee’ led the diocese in a vote to separate from The Episcopal Church, USA and align themselves with the Anglican province of The Southern Cone.  [Note: I only use quotations around standing committee to help with grammar, without them I thought the sentence was unruly.  Anyway, back to the post.]

Having been the lone Episcopal student at a Catholic college, religious discussions were never hard to find.  In addition, those four years helped me to develop my own view of faith and religion, and it doesn’t necessarily fit easily into any pre-determined cubby hole.  But that’s ok.

A concept everyone invovled should be adopting

Really, it is a sad situation, but so often the debates and conflicts that play out in the Episcopal Church are precursors to what other churches will face and discuss.  So while there is a benefit to the church’s transparency, it is certainly something that will be faced not only by the Episcopal Church, but other communities soon as well.

But like I said above (two paragraphs if you want to take another look), what does this mean?  Well, to me, it’s been drama that I really haven’t wanted to deal with.  Yes, it is interesting, and yes, it is very important, but after a point, you just want to go to church, you know?  No drama.  No finger pointing.  No whirlwinds of rhetoric or semantics.  Just church.

So in that spirit, here are some links that I’ve come across, some fun, some informative, but maybe they’ll help us all out a little bit:

• What would heavy religious discussions be without baseball?  I’m not really sure either, but both are examined in this blog, check it out.
  
• Aside from the Sacraments, can an online church provide everything one made of brick and mortar does?  Check out this article to read more.
  
• And even though the Anglican presence in Second Life (as discussed in the article above) is much bigger, Church of Fools has been around longer, coming out of its predecessor, the online reality show, The Ark.  Also check out its parent site, Ship of Fools.
  
• And of course, bringing it back across the pond to the ‘Burgh, I headed over to Epiphany Catholic Church next to the Mellon Arena for lunch on Friday.  They have a fish fry every week of the year (barring holidays).  The food was great, and the price was amazing.  If you’re nearby Friday, head on over!

As always, I try to remain at least somewhat neutral, so hopefully I did during this post.  But hey, blogs are discussions.  So I have to ask, what are your thoughts?  Has this schism affected you personally?  Let me know in the comments below!

Google has begun a project to scan as many newspapers as they can (presumable to have a database to search and for history’s sake).  I was alerted to this fact via Lifehacker, who featured this issue of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette from July, 1969.

The scanning isn’t perfect so far, and on as small a monitor as I have, it can be a pain to read the articles, but it’s still pretty cool.  Also, page 16 ends up as page 1 due to how it was scanned, a small detail, but it bugs me a little bit.

Anyway, it could be a fun tool to use and compare not only layouts and typography (I know, I’m a dork), but you know, the news.

I’ve been working to cut back on my driving, which has meant that when I do drive, I’ve been paying more attention to the scenery. Lately, whenever pointed in the direction of Dahntahn, I can’t help but notice a certain towering monolith gazing in my direction and reminding me of my semi-employer’s success at global domination. Thinking about the “rebranding” of the old USX Tower made me realize that in a way, it’s pretty appropriate. Next time you’re down in South Oakland or the South Side Works, take a look at what’s sitting there on the old brownfields where we once had steel mills. When I was working down there, my daily drive took me past the Pittsburgh Technology Center, the UPMC Sports Medicine complex, and the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Even the former South Side Hospital is now mostly taken up by orthopedic surgery and rehabilitation. UPMC’s spent the past decade building a new biotech/medical economy on the same sites where Pittsburgh’s last economic engine stood. Is it any wonder that they’ve decided to proclaim their fame with that same industry’s skyscraper?

Of course, it does raise the question of how long we have before all the hospitals get outsourced to India the same way the mills were…

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’ve historically been less than a fan of our local Congressman, Mike Doyle, mainly because he seemed like someone who didn’t quite “get it”. Admittedly, some of that was bad experiences when I and some fellow CMU students went to Washington to ask for support of specific legislations, but there were also things like his Center for Manufacturing Technology — a focus on things that are dead and gone, as opposed to the industries that are likely to be the new lifeblood of our region.

I saw a glimmer of hope after the Girl Talk incident, and after this past Monday, I think it’s time to change my tune. The good Congressman flexed a bit of muscle and brought the entire FCC to Pittsburgh, so that they could hear from a combination of academics, entrepreneurs, and even neighborhood groups about why a free and open Internet is important to maintain. (Aside from supporting things like bloggers who want to run our mouths off, I mean.) Of course, it doesn’t hurt that with the world’s largest collection of super-geeks sitting right there in Oakland, a lot of the companies who make millions off the future Internet will start right here in Pittsburgh. That’s as good a use of legislative power as I’ve seen lately, and I hope we’ll be seeing a lot more of it.

Since I was up and working on email early this morning I decided to head to the Coffee Tree on Walnut Street in Shadyside for a cup of coffee. I had to cross quite a line of people to actually get into the Coffee Tree. At 8am this morning the new iphone 3g is going on sale and this is quite a line of people waiting to get the new iphone.

While waiting in line – the Apple employees are handing out free coffee from the coffee tree (thank you for supporting a local business) and there are 2 guys working the line with clipboards of voter registration forms (I think they are wearing Obama buttons but I am not sure).

I did a quick search of Pittsburgh bloggers – thus far the only other person blogging about the iphone is blindsquirel.org – he decided the iphone 3g isn’t for him yet.

It’s now 8:30 am and the line is still stretching as far as the Coffee Tree.