• Embracing my Irish side by seeing “The Irish & How They Got That Way” at the Kimmel Center. Skipping V-Day and going right to St Patrick’s! #
• The show (The Irish and How They Got That Way) was really good. Fast paced & entertaining whether you’re Irish or not! http://bit.ly/cjs3Mp #
• That Ted Turner cooks up one tender bison filet. #
• Came home from Atlantic City with slightly more than I went with. What a unique occurrence. #
• RT @NBCOlympics: “After 2nd Olympic gold, Shaun White’s new goal-get new nickname: http://nbco.ly/bjR8Xw" – Flying Tomato was much catchier. #
• RT @rozsavage: “Americans born after 2000 have a 1 in 3 chance of early onset diabetes. Minority groups? 1 in 2 chance. How scary is that?” #

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.

Now that the Beijing Olympics are over … well, they were pretty much over after the first week really, but that’s besides the point … you’ve probably seen all that you want to see about the 2008 Summer Games. However, take a look at the Olympic website for a really cool archive of all past Olympic Games, both Winter and Summer. It shows all medals, torches, logos, major stories, number of participants and much more.

Check it out here.

I haven’t posted much about the Olympics this time around partly because the Summer Games don’t interest me as much as the Winter Games. Unless you live in a cave, you have most certainly heard about the most interesting story to come out of Beijing. Of course, I’m talking about Michael Phelps. Everyone hoped he would beat Mark Spitz’s record and win 8 gold medals at these games. Yesterday, he did it. Oh, and did i mention he also set a world record in every single race except one where he “only” set an Olympic record?

There’s not much I can say that hasn’t already been said too many times over, but if you want to relive all 8 of his exciting races, visit NBC’s site for video of each and every race.

What sites am I following to keep up with the Olympics? Mainly, I’m checking out www.nbcolympics.com. Besides Olympic news and updates, it also features a huge amount of streaming video. I’d rather be watching it on TV in HD, but it’s a good way to catch on random and more obscure events.

I’ve also been checking in on the official Olympic site at www.beijing2008.cn. It might not be accessible from some places because one of the side effects of the Olympics being in China is that the official site is in the .cn domain. The Chinese domain is blocked on some networks because a lot of hacking and attacks tend to come out of China.

Political, environmental and security concerns aside, the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics are officially underway. The opening ceremony was unlike any other. The scale of it was above and beyond a normal opening cermony. China has a lot to prove with these Olympics and they are certainly trying hard.

The ceremony was very impressive. I thought parts were a little boring, but the technology involved was very impressive. The 2008 drummers all drumming was really striking. Though, I thought the funniest thing about it all was that the drummers were told to smile so they seemed less intimidating. (I didn’t actaully see many smiling, and frankly they were quite intimidating!)

I’ve always been a huge fan of the Olympics. I like the winter games the best, but I follow the summer games too. This year as the Beijing Summer Olympics get ready to start (Technically they already started, but I’ll skip the confusion of the time difference.) I have to point out that no the fun and excitement of the Olympics are tempered by the problems that could dampen these Olympics.

As you can see in the picture, smog and pollution cloud the skies. There have already been complaints of the press not getting the unfettered internet access that they were promised. I’m sure there will be plenty of protests throughout the games.

I’m not sure what prompted the IOC to decide giving the 2008 Summer Games to China was good idea, but hopefully it will end well. I’m not getting my hope up though.

OK, OK, so you’re tired of the Olympics. I’ve been talking about the Torino 2006 Winter Olympics for 2 weeks or more now. However, I have to point out one more link that I thought was pretty cool. On the Bejing 2008 Summer Olympics site they have a page that shows all of the medal designs used in every Olympic Games and the torch design as well. You might not agree, but I thought it’s pretty interesting to see how the designs have changed.

View the medals here and the torches here.

It’s hard to believe that it was 16 days ago that I sat here in fron of a roaring fire watching the Opening Ceremony of the XX Olympic Winter Games in Torino. Now here I am sitting in front of a roaring fire watching the Closing ceremony. Lucky for the althletes and attendees of the ceremony it’s actually warmer there than it is here. It’s aout 40 degrees in Torino tonight, here it’s only in the teens!

If you’re looking for info on the next Winter Olympics, check out vancouver2010.com. If you want info on the upcoming Summer Olympics check out beijing2008.com or london2012.org.

In the meantime, I’ll still be watching the Torino Games for a few more days because I still have some left on my DVR that I haven’t watched yet.

While watching the Olympics over the past 14 days, I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I thought this year’s has been more interesting than some other years. The main reason that I could come up with was that this is the first time I had a DVR while watching the Olympics. It lets me completely skip over the really boring sports like hockey, figure skating and cross country.

However, tonight while watching the primetime broadcast I realized that there was something else. Jimmy Roberts mentioned during his nightly “Chevy Olympic Moment” that nothing has gone as predicted in these Olympics. He pointed out that there were no real sure things in these games. He also pointed out that so far during the Olympics, 26 different countries have won medals. There were some Japanese gold medalists, Croatian gold medalists, and many others you might not expect.

You can read/view tonight’s “Olympic Moment” on NBCOlympics.com.

Looking for a way to keep up with the latest from the Olympics in Torino without having to head to the web? I finally found a good way. You very likely already use Konfabulator (now known as Yahoo! Widgets.) If not, go get it and then continue reading.

The Turin 2006 Winter Olympics widget puts the current medal count on your desktop and continuously updates it. It also gives you all the latest photos from the games and the day’s latest news.

Get the widget right here. It works on both Macintosh and Windows.

NBC airs some of the Olympic curling matches live in the middle of the night on its cable channels. The beauty of having a DVR means that time doesn’t matter so I decided to record a few of them. It might not have the excitement and speed of the luge, but it involves strategy and careful consideration, etc.

After watching a men’s match and a women’s match, I learned something new about curling. It’s insanely boring! Don’t get me wrong, it’s interesting for an end or two but then it just keeps going and going and going at the slowest pace you could imagine. Oh well, I guess there’s a reason they show it live instead of saving it for primetime on the network.

Singles luge has always been one of my favorite Winter Olympic sports to watch. I’ve also always thought it would be fun to try. Not that I’d probably ever have that chance, but if I had to try one Olympic sport, I’d pick the luge.

After watching the women’s singles luge yesterday my opinions changed slightly. It’s still loads of fun to watch. But I’m not so sure about wanting to try it now! There were a few pretty fierce crashes, but the worst was Samantha Retrosi an American girl who got knocked out and slid down half the course unconcious. Read the details here.

Oh well, maybe trying the skeleton would be safer. What? Face first? Oh…