My favorite event: Karma

I'm just glad this happened to Vancouver and not us - Sam and Randy haven't yet figured out how to hit the big leagues to chase an Olympiad sponsorship. The $6B Vancouver will end up floating debt on would just about double your debt-o-meter.

A number of years ago, some slightly heeled - as opposed to well heeled - folks generated a Committee to get Oregon to make a bid on the Winter Siiness.

Events were to be held in venues ranging from Mt. Bachelor and Bend to Timberline, Meadows and Portland.

Fortunately, it failed.

Many moons ago, I worked in the Package Engineering Department at 3M. I worked for what was then the Magnetic Media Division (diskettes, video tapes, cassettes) and they sponsored the Olympics. The packaging for every single iteration (and there were so blessed many!) of each product had to have the artwork changed to add (and then remove) the Olympic logo according to their very exact time schedule in order to be in compliance with their trade or copyright rules.

This was before everything was computerized and each iteration of each package had it's own (multi-page) specification and accompanying standard. We're talking about one billion reams of paper, countless tons of "old" packaging scrapped, and untold man hours of make-work all because of those stupid rings!

It was: S**t! The Olympics are coming up. Revise 500 specs, make new boxes, get the old ones out. Then 6 months later: S**t! The Olympics are over. Get those rings off. Revise the same 500 specs, make new boxes, scrap the old ones. What a pain. What a waste.

Who knew the Olympic sponsorship thing sold diskettes? I assume it must have, or else why go to all the bother and expense? Then again, 3M was run like a large government bureaucracy, with lots of those young creative types in the marketing department, so who knows?