I feel like I'm drowning in the opiate of the Olympics.

I know that it's possible to keep up-to-the-minute track of how events are going, either by mobile phone (if your wireless carrier is AT&T), or online through the official site or host network NBC (long as you have a Windows XP or later operating system for the network's clips; stuck with Windows 2000 at work -- I know! Shut up! -- I can't even watch NBC's online highlights here at Times Central). But that doesn't matter to me.

Because I'm using my digital video recorder to turn the olympics into a time-shifted, family-friendly event.

Basically, my TiVo-like DVR has been commanded to record the Today show and NBC's prime time Olympics coverage. Not to quibble with this olympics/DVR dissertation by my St. Petersburg neighbor and media guru Frank Maggio, but I find with my two-tuner DVR, I can make dinner or watch some other programming until about 9 p.m., click onto NBC's ongoing coverage and watch only the coolest events.

The Today show has proven a great place to catch up on results that may not have been shown in prime time or that went late (I missed the USA men's gymnastics results fro a few days ago, for example, but caught them on Today the next morning). Waking at 8 a.m., I can similarly breeze through parts of the morning show I can't stand and focus on the stuff that matters to me.

Since I'm not a sports fan, this works well; the kids, my wife and I can check out gymnastics and swimming and breeze past the beach volleyball (maybe I'll watch that later alone :) ).

And while I'm still a little snarked by NBC's light touch on the negatives -- and mystified that the network hired maniacal Romanian ex-coach Bela Karolyi as an analyst when you can only understand every other word coming out his mouth -- I find this approach works very well for me.

What about you, blog buddies? How are you keeping up with the 3,600 hours of coverage NBC is offering this time around?