The Newsroom

When we last left our heroes , they were firmly in the NHL basement. Now, as the accompanying screen cap shows, they've scratched and clawed their way into a tie for 28th place. Pity the New York Islanders. Of course, there's a line of thinking that suggests the Oilers may actually be worse than last year's team, which finished dead last overall. So don't go planning the Stanley Cup parade route yet.

We have family over, so we're not doing a big recap tonight. Nick and Vicki basically gave up and took a six hour penalty rather than finish their last task. But was another non-elimination leg, so they're still in it - albeit way behind and with a speed bump to boot. Most undeserving team ever. Next week: North Korea

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As noted last week, I had a social function last night so I couldn't recap the show. And as it turned out, it was a "special episode" dealing with the final 9 (read: It's Thanksgiving in the US and no one is watching anything other than football.) So, I skipped this one entirely. Be back next week with a real show.

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It's Double U-Turn night on TAR, a twist in the game that will no doubt have the Internet fan boys up in arms. The teams made their way to Bangladesh. Jill and Thomas got there approximately 2 weeks ahead of the other teams. Jill and Thomas used the U-Turn on Brook and Claire. Nick and Vickie were second to the U-Turn but declined to use it. Nat and Kat U-Turned Chad and Stephanie. Chad and Stephanie finished last and were eliminated. We wish them well in their future endeavors. Next week: Grey Cup in Edmonton! And race drama!

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There's a UFC PPV this weekend, and despite what the poster says, the real main event is going to be Hughes-Penn 3, and I hope that Matt wins handily. Here's the link on where to find a bar to watch it .

It's the much-anticipated "Day From Hell" episode of Survivor: Nicaragua. The TV guide preview helpfully tells us that the camp burns down due to an unattended fire. Apparently, no one thought it was a bad idea to leave the fire unattended surrounded by wooden chests to keep it protected from the rain. Although, frankly, the entire scene played out on less time than it took you to read this and was never mentioned again. The show-long storyline was folks plotting to get Brenda out. But Chase kinda blew the plan a bit by telling Brenda. Meanwhile, Jane won immunity. At Tribal, Sash declined to use his hidden immunity idol to save Brenda and the cute but evil queen was was voted out. Now there's no reason to watch this show. And Naonka is still in this. Blergh. Next week: I'm out at a social function and won't be recapping the show until Thursday at the earliest. Oh, and surprise! Naonka is still crazy.

I'm really tired tonight and absolutely do not want to be doing a long recap of this show. Although if I had to predict an elimination, I'd say Chad and Stephanie because both the onscreen TV guide and the actual CBS preview of the show notes Chad proposes to Stephanie. Err, nope. Fake out. Chad and Stephanie finished first, although only because Jill and Thomas incurred a time penalty for paying a cab to lead them somewhere. Gary and Mallory came in last and were eliminated. Next week: Double U-Turn!

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I really don't feel like taking lots of notes tonight. So let's cut to the chase: Brenda won immunity. Marty hatched a plan to tell folks to vote for Naonka to flush out her hidden immunity idol and then blindside Jane. Naonka set a record at tribal council for the number of F-bombs. SHE'S A TEACHER! Naonka ended up not playing her idol, but it didn't matter, as Marty's plan utterly failed and he got voted out. Next week: The day from hell. (I have no idea.)

OK, 2008 is an approximate date. When did built-in iPod/iPhone car stereo adapters become standard equipment on vehicles? Ah, it doesn't matter. The important thing is that I have a spanking new iPhone adaptor in my factory-installed car stereo and can now control my phone through the stereo controls. It sounds great! Bye-bye FM transmitter. You've served me well.

I happen to really like the iPhone in Canada blog, so when they say that there's a "must-have" app, I'll take that recommendation seriously and check it out. Monday morning, they highly recommended the AccuRadio app, noting: "This gem is free, requires no sign up, has tonnes of genres, and offer unlimited skips, plays in background on iOS 4, and can be streamed to your car via Bluetooth. Win." I can't vouch for the Bluetooth, but the rest of it is entirely accurate based on my testing of it. I installed it, quickly found the Christian music genre, and set it into motion. (There's about a gazillion genres on here, everything from Beatles to something called "Sir Telty's Tunes" and a genre known as "Vintage Violence".) As advertised, it plays in the background, it runs over the Telus network, so you can stream without wireless, which is a plus, provided you have a big data plan. You can skip over the current song to t...

Sorry for the late post on this. I watch an American time-shift feed that often gets pre-empted by football. So TAR started over an hour late tonight. Sigh. The teams are in Russia. They were off to the circus. Task No. 1 was a choice between plate spinning and accordion playing. Jill and Thomas managed to not accomplish neither task several times. Meanwhile, a bunch of teams, including Michael and Kevin both misread clues and took taxis instead of walking. Only Brook and Claire figured it out and retreated to do right. Hey, why didn't Nick and Vicki have a speed bump after being spared in the non-elimination leg last week? Nat and Kat finished first after acing the Russian bowling task. The end was a race between Chad and Stephanie, who showed up at the mat without their bags and were sent back to pay their cab, and Michael and Kevin who ended up with an hour-long penalty, versus C&S's 30 minute penalty. So Kevin and Michael were eliminated. Team YouTube has been l...

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...because I'm not the only person who has this problem: My issue, in a nutshell, was that one of my Firefox extensions wouldn't uninstall properly. I think it was the Prism , but I'm not 100% sure. Let's just say this was the one that wouldn't uninstall that I noticed first, and it all spiralled out of control from there. I'd try to uninstall it and it would tell me to restart Firefox to complete the uninstall. I'd do that and it would still tell me to restart Firefox to complete the uninstall. This turned into a cascading effect that was preventing any of my other add-ons from being properly updated or uninstalled. So my add-ons slowly devolved over the last few weeks into this tangled mess of half-installed, half-uninstalled semi-working programlettes that were causing me increasing frustration. The final straw came last night when AdBlock Plus needed to be updated and the process of updating it actually ended up killing AdBlock Plus on my browser ...

It's tribal merge day on Survivor, which means the teams will be told to drop their buffs, enjoy a merge feast, the enjoyment of which will actually last about 20 TV seconds, and then they'll be scrambling to build new alliances and start throwing people under the bus again, while clambering to win individual immunity. There. I just recapped the first 45 minutes of the show without even watching it. So, now that the show is actually on... The merged tribe is called Libertad. Naonka made tortillas with the bag of flour they got, and after getting the last tortilla, she decided to show her maturity by stealing food and a frying pan. I ask again: SHE'S A TEACHER? The tribe, of course, blamed Naonka on the entirely reasonable grounds she's utterly insane. Naonka reacted by screaming and storming off. Later, Naonka copped to it and threw Alina under the bus, too. You stay classy, Naonka. The immunity challenge had 2 necklaces up for grabs, one for the guys, one for...

The sky over Edmonton was streaked with purple this morning. It was absolutely beautiful. YouTube Video