Is it time to leave? Again? Yup. The final days of my stay in Pittsburgh have come: My master’s thesis is more or less complete (by the way, it has the nice name “Transaction Management Challenges for Cross-Organizational, Workflow-Based SOA Applications” and spans 104 pages total), so it is time for me to take it back to Germany and finally wrap up that “Diplom” of mine.

It was a fun time in the “Steel City”, I’ve learned a lot both professionally as well as personally and I have met great people who I will really miss. Thanks for making my time in Pittsburgh great, you know who you are!

But I am not quite flying home yet: Before diving back into the “frozen tundra” of Germany, I shall visit warmer parts of this country. I promise I’ll feel a little bad for you, snowed-in readers, while I sit by the pool sipping margaritas!

(Pittsburgh skyline photo CC by-sa licensed by Ronald C. Yochum, Jr. on Wikimedia Commons.)

Recently, I got the following fortune cookie. How “nice”!

I find it highly ironic and amusing that a fortune cookie–of all things man-made, yes, the same kind of fortune cookie that has been “sticking its nose” in other people’s business ever since its inception–dumps its opinion about talking of things you don’t understand on me.

But I guess it’s better than this one of unknown origin (which has been floating around on the internet for about a million years and is most likely photoshopped):

(Yeah, I played with iPhoto there to give the photo up there the look it has now — a simple pic looked too boring.)

The Pittsburgh Steelers will play the Baltimore Ravens tomorrow — and apparently they have quite an interesting rivalry going on. But don’t we all want to see the Steelers play in the Superbowl?

In preparation for the game, my grocery store at the corner sold Steelers stuff today. Incidentally, soon I’ll move back home from Pittsburgh, so what better time to buy a little souvenir than now. I wanted to buy a Terrible Towel ever since I first saw it in one of the bars in Oakland. So I got one — Here it is!

They also had Steelers-themed food on sale, such as this cake:

I know, I know, this is a very, very hideous cake. I took a photo though because I got a kick out of it saying “Stillers (sic) Fever”. The local Pittsburgh accent has indeed a tendency to take long “i”s short. Examples? Well: Steelers/Stillers, of course, but also Bloomfield/Bloomfill’d, feel/fill and others. The first time I stumbled across this was when I watched TV and they mentioned the “Still City”. That’s not a nice nickname, I thought?… It took me a while to realize they were actually talking about the “Steel City”: Pittsburgh.

Here’s an “award” the city of Pittsburgh would probably prefer not to have “won”. According to the 2008 American Lung Association’s State of the Air report, Pittsburgh is the number one U.S. city most polluted by short-term particle pollution.

1. Pittsburgh, Pa.
2. Los Angeles/Long Beach/Riverside, Calif.
3. Fresno/Madera, Calif.
4. Bakersfield, Calif.
5. Birmingham, Ala.
6. Logan, Utah
7. Salt Lake City, Utah
8. Sacramento, Calif.
9. Detroit, Mich.
10. Baltimore, Md./Washington, D.C./Northern Virginia.

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s flyer “Particle Pollution and your Health” says about short-term pollution:

Short-term exposures to particles (hours or days) can aggravate lung disease, causing asthma attacks and acute bronchitis, and may also increase susceptibility to respiratory infections. In people with heart disease, short-term exposures have been linked to heart attacks and arrhythmias. Healthy children and adults have not been reported to suffer serious effects from short-term exposures, although they may experience temporary minor irritation when particle levels are elevated.

On the year-round pollution scale, the city ranks almost equally as bad: Trading spots with the “short term” number 2, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh was the second most polluted city in the country, year-round.

1. Los Angeles/Long Beach/Riverside, Calif.
2. Pittsburgh, Pa.
3. Bakersfield, Calif.
4. Birmingham, Ala.
5. Visalia/Porterville, Calif.
6. Atlanta, Ga.
7. Cincinnati, Ohio
8. Fresno/Madera, Calif.
9. Hanford/Corcoran, Calif.
10. Detroit, Mich.

Only in the third discipline, Ozone pollution, Pittsburgh doesn’t rank among the top 10.

Link to the condensed lists, or look at the stateoftheair website for nice Google Maps overlays, and to find out how your city is doing.

(Thanks, Tara, for the link!) — (Photo “Pollution”, CC by-nc-sa licensed by Gilbert R. on flickr)