Even if you don’t care about hockey, punch up NBC. USA ties Canada with seconds to go, and it’s 2-2 going into OT.  Update: Take off, eh? Canada bags the gold 3-2.  

Great clip here on the evolution of Olympic pictograms, c/o the New York Times.

Pin trading is a huge deal at each Olympics. The Apple Store at Pacific Centre in Vancouver was giving these away as a bonus, and the Apple Store at Oakridge Centre had a special Nano pin.  Didn’t make it to the Games? Oh, there’s a lot of ‘em here.

Windows XP.  True. There are over 6,000 PCs and laptops running the Vancouver Olympics.  And they’re running on Windows XP.  Windows 7 is too new, OK.  Vista is…Vista, as Ina Fried points out. So XP it was. 

Take a walk through a bunch of computers and folks wearing Olympic fleece.

The Olympics start Friday, but you can give your computer an Olympic theme right here, lots of designs in multiple sizes.

So to speak. The Olympics kick off Friday, and CNET has a great article here on just what kinda hardware is running the show. Numbers that will make a geek swoon include:

More than 5,000 kilometers of cable…More than 7,000 cell phones…More than 40,000 Ethernet ports…and more than 6,000 PC’s. Mac count: unknown.

Huge events mean spikes in searches for that event, and you can bet the search guys will be handling a lot of queries. Bing is going to make out like a bandit with this one, as they are the search engine on NBC’s Olympic website. Google’s got a nice clean (imagine that) Olympic reference site here, and Yahoo’s site is supposed to launch Wednesday.  Cuttin’ it close, Carol.

You don’t know his name, unless you’re a relative.  Even then, Magnus Alvarsson presents a rather low-profile image.  Magnus is one cool customer.  He has to be.  He happens to be in charge of all the computers, phones, and tech stuff at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, which I hear start this Friday. How many servers, you ask? Try 800.  How many computers? How’s 6,000 sound? CNET’s Ina Fried has more.