Is there a way to turn off Auto Update?

I love Sikuli. However, I am using it over a very slow Internet connection. To top that off, it has to go through a proxy server that most of the time do not work as expected. These combination causes Sikuli to lag significantly when it tries to check for an update after launch. I tried to disable it through the preference window, but to no avail.

Please let me know is there a way to turn it off so it will not check for updates? I tried compiling by commenting the "checkUpdate()" line. Somehow that affects it in a way. I am not sure whether is my system or is it I have "hacked" it wrongly. After the compile, I ran my scripts on Fedora Core. Each time it reaches either "sleep()" or "wait()", it will just stop there and will not proceed.