I’ve gotten less and less interested in sports as I’ve gotten older, but one pretty much constant in my sports-viewing life is that I don’t give a rat’s ass about the Winter Olympics.

I dunno, just not my bag. Especially with all the new “sports,” like the snowboarding and so on (note: I feel the same way about ping-pong in the Summer games, and curling [that’s a sport?!?] in the Winter Olympics.

I don’t watch much TV, either, so the impact on my viewing pleasure is little, but, still.

Why?? I just don’t get them. Power to those who compete, however, I don’t mean to diminish that. They probably wouldn’t want to watch me code…

Update: This was originally posted Friday, Feb. 17, but Blogger has had issues. Reposted for the third time.

I’m seeing more and more of this recently: Different online sources with different facts.

Right now – 9:50am 2/11/2006 – Front page teasers re: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s recent surgery:

• CNN.com: Hospital: Sharon in ‘no immediate danger’
• MSNBC.com: Emergency Surgery: Life of Israel’s Sharon said to be ‘in danger’

OK…

Dave Sifry (Mr. Technorati) has a State of the Blogosphere report online.

Interesting, with few surprises but some interesting insights (spam pings and other such deviations of blogs, which is expected but interesting).

The figure that stood out to me, however, was the staying power of blogs. Sure, blog creation/posts and so on are way up over a year ago, but the – as Sifry neatly phrases it – “there’s a reasonable amount of tire-kicking” with blogs going on.

While the number of blog has increased dramatically, the percentage of folks who stick with it is staying roughly the same:

• February 2006 Technorati tracks over 27.2 Million blogs; 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created (50%)
• October 2005 Technorati tracks 19 million blogs, about 10.4 million bloggers were still posting 3 months after the creation of their blogs (54%).

So – overall – while more blogs are created, the same percentage die quickly. While this means – overall – more blogs, it also means that the perceived value vs. effort has not increased, even as the blogosphere has expanded.

Interesting.

Had Thai food (takeout) tonight; I just love curry.

And for some reason, I like green curry better than the others (red, yellow, brown…). Why?

No clue. I think the difference between the curries is the blend of spices that make up the curry (curry is not a spice; it’s a blend of spices – much like “pasta” doesn’t mean much specific). But I could be totally wrong. Whatever.

The weird part – to me – is that curry is a kind of weird food for an American. Fairly common today, more so because more Indians and others from curry-friendly nations have come here as part of the dot.com boom/bust/Web 2.0, but not your traditional American steak and potatoes. Over a decade ago, it’d have been tough to find a restaurant serving curry in most towns in the US. Or – I’d guess.

And I was a picky eater as a kid.

How the hell did I develop a taste for curry?

I – oddly – am very adventurous with food. I’ll try most anything, and like a lot of the weird (ostrich, alligator, buffalo, jack fruit and so on).

And I have leftovers for breakfast. Excellent!

First trip on the company plane today, and – I’ve got to say – this is the way to go.

Get to the airport two hours before departure and all that? Take your shoes off and all that?

Here, drive up to the “terminal” (a building); park 10 spaces away from the terminal, walk in, walk out to plane and … that’s it. Two hours later you’re at the two-hour flight destination, not just getting ready for boarding.

Veddy nice.

WATCHING:
Million-Dollar Baby
Clint Eastwood, director

I seem drawn to the not feel-good movies. This, the tale of a white-trash woman who dreams of becoming a title-holding boxer, starts depressing and goes downhill from there.

It’s an interesting movie – I especially like the way everything was not all wrapped up neatly at the end – but not as good as I expected. Three stars maybe – but maybe that’s because I’m not a fan of boxing. Solid performances all around, especially by Hillary Swank, but not a movie I’ll return to any time soon.

All movies

Well, this has been the mildest winter in Chicago since they first began keeping records a century or so ago (but there’s nothing to the global warming nonsense), yet I’ve still got – in early February – Spring Fever.

Wanna get out of the house and cut the lawn or something.

We’ve had very little snow this year, which my back appreciates, but it’s going to be bad for the plants this summer – need some groundwater. We had the same problem last year, which was almost drought-like (again, here’s nothing to the global warming nonsense). It has rained a bit (we’ve had more thunderstorms than snow storms thus far this winter, which is just freaky), which helps, but the snow pack also helps insulate the ground and protect plants’ roots, so that’s not happening.

Today is the 250th anniversary of the composer known as Mozart.

I love classical music; of the classical composers, Wolfie was always my favorite.

Thanks for Symphony No. 38 [Prague] (my favorite)

Thanks for Symphony No. 41 [Jupiter] (last symphony; perhaps the best).

And countless other pieces.

I’ve always been a big fan of Norton/Symantec products (especially Antivirus), but – over the last year or so – resubscribing to its products (via Net), has been, at best, shitty.

I’ve NEVER had a good experience (over the last year or so).

This is something Norton/Symantec used to do well; I think the whole DRM thing has made stuff messy.

Too bad. I know the products; I like the products; I want to give the company money…but it makes it difficult to do so.

That’s not a good thing. For me or Norton/Symantec.

My recent 2006 prognostications post had a bullet point for privacy – I expected privacy to erode.

Long story short, the Feds (Bush administration) have asked Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL for search information to help its case to protect minors from porn.

Google has resisted; here are some thoughts this whole situation has engendered in me:

• If the actual intent of this effort is to protect kids from porn, well, the very fact that the government is getting involved here dooms said process. See the CAN-SPAN act. And the Supreme Court cannot even define “obscene” beyond “I know it when I see it.” So exactly what are we attempting to defend our children against? This is a serious question.
• While most of the request from the government seems benign, the “random X web sites you have indexed” does seem to trample on trade secrets and so on. So – for this reason alone – Google has (to me) a good push-back point (from a PR standpoint; I don’t know the law).
• OK, the judicial branch can issue subpoenas – agreed. Can they subpoena search engines for this? Where is the “probable cause”? Search engines don’t seem tied to COPA, but….
• Google resisted; others didn’t. If Google had not pushed back, we’d not be discussing same. What other “requests” etc HAVE happened and we don’t know about because there was no push back?
• Google is pushing back, I think, on this request so there is not a precedent. Today, search terms. Tomorrow, who searched [x]??
• WHY did other engines just fork over the info? Jeremy Zawodny – a Yahoo! employee (and mySql god) has finally written about his company’s complicity with all this. He politely spanks his company, while giving (quietly) Google kudos. That sorta sums up all of this (to me). Read whateveryawant into that.

Again, welcome back George Orwell…

OK, a blog meme this year seems to be posting where you’ve been last year. A little ostentatious, in many cases (Megnut and Jason Kottke, who have both traveled a bunch this year [together, for the most part]), but an exercise worth doing.

So – beyond my suburban travels – here is where I was this year:

• Chicago, IL (downtown)
• Springfield, IL
• Santa Fe, NM
• Albuquerque, NM
• Albiquiu, NM

Yes, I’m somewhat of a loser…