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OK, that's better. Slightly over 170 lbs. I think getting to 165 lbs. could be tougher than I thought, as my weight is wanting to hold in the 170-172 lbs, range. Hopefully I can start biking to work in a few weeks, and we'll see what happens then.

I'm not going to do a detailed recap because, let's face it, the show was last night and no one cares anymore. So... Julie lost the 3-way duel on Redemption Island and is gone. Matt lives to fight another day. Again. Ralph was voted out at Tribal Council. In a twist, they did another immediate immunity challenge, and it ended up with Steve getting voted out. So we're now down to 6 people, all Rob's minions, and four people on Redemption Island who could upset the apple cart at any time. Next week: Rob's alliance of 6 turns on itself.

After some delays , the new TweetDeck for iPhone app (known as iOSDeck) arrived in the App Store this morning. And not a moment too soon, as the old app was badly broken and TweetDeck effectively abandoned it months ago in favor of rebuilding it from the ground up. I've had some time to play with it today and here are my impressions: The Good: Combined columns: This is the greatest new thing ever in Twitter apps. While this was a feature already included in the Chrome version of TweetDeck (known as ChromeDeck ), its making its first appearance here in the iPhone app. Basically, instead of having a Twitter feed, a Facebook feed, a DM feed, etc., you can merge columns, so you can put your FB and Twitter feed into the same column; all your replies, Facebook mentions, etc., go into another column, and so on. You can combine multiple searches into one column. The flexibility to create your own columns substantially cuts down on the number of columns I have running. A gigantic thum...

UFC 129 is this weekend, and it's easily my most-anticipated PPV card in a long, long time. Here's the link to find a bar to watch it in Edmonton, Calgary, or elsewhere in Alberta . Of course, my local bar is advertising this as UFC 130, but given the number of cards UFC runs, that's almost understandable. Reminder that the PPV starts an hour earlier from now on, so get there early!

The teams headed to Liechtenstein with the warning of a Double U-Turn this leg. The road block was biking the entire length of Liechtenstein and giving the correct distance of 22 km. It was harder than it looked as several teams couldn't read their maps. Zev and Justin started telling other teams the correct answer so they'd all build up a lead on the Cowboys. The teams then headed to Switzerland, where they either had to deliver luggage or eat a lot of cheese fondue. Zev and Justin, fresh off their food disaster last time, decided to redeem themselves by eating fondue. They struggled and one of them vomited. It took them nearly an hour but they finished. Zev and Justin finished first again. Jet and Cord were the only U-Turned team. They finished last and were eliminated. And my favorite team is gone. Next week: Mountain climbing.

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Hmm... Not really happy about this, but considering it's the heaviest I've been all week, maybe it's a glitch in the Matrix. Or gravity went up overnight or something. Just gotta work harder this week.

I came in a little late and saw Matt deciding that maybe he didn't want to be in Survivor after all, when suddenly he gets another room mate when David showed up. The 3-way duel between Matt, Mike and David was a house of cards competition. Mike stayed alive by finishing first. Matt stayed in the game finishing second. David is gone, and is the first member of the jury. Steve and Phillip got into it over some bad rice, and Phillip played the race card over being called crazy, basically equating it to the N-word. Rob won immunity, guaranteeing he'll be running the game for at least another week. Julie stole Philip's shorts, forcing him to walk around in that really hideous pair of underwear. At Tribal, Phillip accused Steve of stealing his shorts. And even Jeff thought it was unfair to equate "crazy" with the N-word, although he did do a great job of mediating the dispute. And Julie did cop to stealing the shorts. And Julie paid for it by being voted o...

The teams left India for Austria. The Cowboys were the only team - again - not to be on the same flight as everyone else. The teams got their first clue via video message in their Product Placement Vehicle. And we saw it over and over with each team. Except for Gary and Mallory, who couldn't activate their message. In Vienna, teams had to either deliver a couch or eat a big meal on a Ferris wheel (in a timed rotation.) Kisha and Jen failed at eating the food. So did Zev and Justin. Gary and Mallory also failed. Mallory dutifully offered to throw up and try again. Really. (Her dad said no.) The number of teams who had to do both parts of the detour let the Cowboys catch up. I've also determined that Kent and Vyxsin have a very dysfunctional relationship. The teams then headed to Salzburg where they had to chimney sweep. It didn't seem particularly difficult or challenging. Zev and Justin finished the leg first, and they each won the Product Placement Vehicle. Ga...

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YES!

The hot new iPhone app on the Interwebs these days is Tweetbot , which is billed as "A Twitter client with personality". Basically, it's a Twitter app. That's underselling it, because it's a very good Twitter app, but it's still fundamentally another way to access Twitter on your iPhone or iPod Touch. And heaven knows that the world has been lacking in Twitter apps, eh? The good: It's got a very slick interface with features that, quite frankly, I'd love to see stolen by other Twitter apps that I prefer to use , particularly the little "drawer" of commands that opens up underneath a tweet when you tap on it (see image) to reply, retweet, or bring up other options. It's one of those small things that as soon as you see it, you wonder why no one else has ever thought of it before. The swipe-left/swipe-right features on tweets to bring up conversations and related tweets is also quite nice. The usability of Tweetbot is its big adva...

Sorry, but it's been a long day and I'm beat, so a highly abbreviated recap tonight. There were 2 tribal councils. Grant won the first immunity. Mike was voted out to Redemption Island. They went right to the next immunity challenge without doing a duel. Huh. Andrea won the second immunity challenge. Oh ... the person voted out next joins Matt and Mike at Redemption Island. I see. David was voted out to Redemption Island. Rob is in full control of this game. It's quite amazing to watch. Next week: Phillip ... yeah. Crazy.

After a week off, our intrepid teams return for another week of racing. In an amazing way. Hey, it's not Wipeout, but it's still fun. The Cowboys were the only team not to get on the 10:45 flight in India, putting them an hour behind all the other teams. The roadblock involved finding holy men on an extremely crowded street. Jet and Cord arrived well back, as would be expected, but they still finished before Ron and Christina, as Ron may still be wandering the streets of India narrating his adventure to himself. One of the detours involved cow poop. Much retching ensued. The Globetrotters came in first place. Kent and Vyxxyyynnn had a water taxi mishap that resulted in V ditching her taxi by jumping in the water. I could have sworn at one point, Kent called Vyxxyyynnn "sis" which ... uhhh ... Let's just move on, shall we? (Or maybe it was "Vix.") The Cowboys moved up to 5 after being behind much of the leg. Good for them. Ron and Christina ...

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I'm down 0.4 lbs. from last week, which I'll take considering the week consisted of Girl Guide Cookies and sampling the approximately 100 lbs. of chocolate my older daughter brought back from Europe. Still working on that 170 lbs. number. So Georges St. Pierre's welterweight title is safe for another week.

It's merge day on Survivor, and the winner of the duel gets to go back into the game. Matt went into the duel with a cut on the bottom of his foot that he wondered would hinder him. And, of course, the duel task was to stand on narrow footholds. So Matt was at a disadvantage. Jeff asked Phillip a question during the challenge and he spoke for about 4 days. Amazingly, Matt won again and he's back in the game. The dude is unreal. Curiously, the Redemption Island concept continues with the merged tribe. Which means Matt could be right back there. Wacky. Matt and his cute chick Andrea, plotted to overthrow their tribe and get rid of Rob. The individual immunity challenge involved balancing balls on a disc while balancing on a log. Natalie (who may be making her first appearance in these recaps) won the first individual immunity. After the challenge, Matt changed his mind about flipping and decided to stay with his original tribe. And then he told Rob what he and Andrea we...

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I saw this on the Internet a while back and got a family member in the States to send us some. I cannot personally vouch for the Key Lime Pie flavor, but my wife and daughter say it's really good. I'm currently chewing on the Mint Chocolate Chip gum, and I gotta say, they nailed the flavor really well. It's like chewing an After Eight mint, or that familiar chocolate mint ice cream flavor. Really nice. EDIT: The Lime gum was a bit disappointing to me. The flavor fades really quickly, and the gum becomes very rubbery in texture - like chewing a balloon. The Mint Chocolate Chip gum, on the other hand, kept its flavor for almost an hour. My only complaint? WHY IS THIS NOT AVAILABLE IN CANADA!? Hey, Wrigley! We want this, too!

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Last night's concert:

Whooo! I'm now down 10 lbs in 69 days, and I'm at my lowest weight since a decade ago when I hit 172 lbs. and then my work situation changed, I stopped exercising and basicallly spent 10 years struggling between 177 lbs and 183 lbs. I still have 1.4 lbs to go before I can fight Georges St. Pierre for his welterweight title, though. My goal was to get to 170 lbs., but once I'm there, why not 165?

Another current favorite song.

One of my current favorite songs. Like if Chicago was a worship band.