The medals being presented at the Vancouver Winter Games have the distinction of being “first” in several ways. It’s the first time they aren’t flat. These medals are of an undulating design. Basically, that means they look wrinkled. Personally, I’m still not sure if i like that feature or not.

They also are the first medals that aren’t all the same. Each medal is etched with a randomly cropped portion of a piece of Canadian First Nation artwork representing orca whales.

However, the part that most caught my attention is the fact that the Vancouver medals have technology in them, but not in the way that you think. They don’t have chips in them. They actually have old technology items in them! Some of the metal used to mint the medals came from recycled e-waste. E-waste is a huge problem. I deal with it at work and at home. Old computer equipment and electronics build up at an astounding rate. I know that recycling a small amount of gold, silver and copper and reusing it in Olympic medals isn’t exactly going to solve the problem, but it’s nice to see an opportunity to better publicize the issue. I’m just sorry that I haven’t seen more about this in the media coverage or even on the VANOC website.

You can read more about this on Bloomberg. You can also take a look at all of the past Olympic medals at the IOC site.

I’m finally catching up tonight on watching all the Olympic events that are recorded on my DVR. Some of the things I’m watching are the downhill which featured some spectacular crashes that hurt just watching them. Then I watched the snowboard half-pipe finals where the American women seem to keep crashing.

After watching these athletes work through injuries and wondering how they persevere, I then read about this German luger who broke a tooth biting his silver medal. I guess it takes a special kind of guy to hurtle down an ice track at 90 mph on a tiny sled. The type of special guy that would chomp into a hunk of medal.

It always seems that my blog gets more use when the Olympics are going on. Ironically, I’m very much not a sports fan except maybe for watching the Phillies. However, I’ve always enjoyed watching the Olympics, especially the Winter Games. I think it’s a combination of the fact that you get to see sports that you don’t see very often (many of which aren’t team sports that I find boring) and the fact that for a few weeks people from various countries actually get together and participate in something just for fun without political posturing and other such silliness.

So, get ready to see more blog entries over the next few weeks, and for the first time some tweets as well.

Apparently today is International Sushi Day. It sounds like a made-up holiday to me but do you really need an excuse to eat sushi? So go out and get yourself some tuna maki or something. Just watch the wasabe.

What happens when you hvae a president who’s from Chicago? Well, the same thing that happens to the Chicago River on Saint Patrick’s Day… the water turns green. Today, the white House dyed the fountains on the North and South Lawns of the White House green.

More photos and info here.

Oh the humanity! Apparently the Google Maps car had a run in with a deer and the car won. In true Google fashion, the entire thing was indexed!

Check it out at Gizmodo.

Over the past few days you probably have seen posts that consist of any “tweets” I’ve posted to twittered on a given day. Obviously, this means I’ve caught up with the bandwagon and joined Twitter. You can find me at twitter.com/megatti. I got the idea to have my tweets automatically cross posted to my blog from Leo Laporte. Like him, I don’t like the idea having anything I create hosted solely on a service that I don’t control. So, the result is that you can catch up with my tweets on twitter, but you can also check them out on my blog. That way they’re all saved for posterity. (Don’t take that to mean that you can expect anything profound from me! )

Happy New Year! Here’s to a happy, healthy and prosperous year! I’ll be spending today recovering from all the cooking and eating I did yesterday and watching the mummers parade. Hopefully, the parade will go on again next year despite the city’s budget problems.

I wish I’d seen this before the election. Ron Howard made this this classic video featuring some classic characters!

You’ve heard and seen the months of annoying campaign ads. You’ve endured constant polling calls. Now it’s your turn to impact the election. Whether you’re voting for McCain or Obama, just make sure you vote!

I won’t tell you who I’m voting for in about 6 hours when the polls open, but if you look closely at this post, I think you’ll figure it out.