I wouldn't describe myself as a "gym rat", but I do go to the gym fairly frequently, and my routine doesn't vary much. Gym clothes on, sneakers tied, iPod Touch charged so I can continue listening to whatever audio book I'm in the middle of -- the current one is the Steve Jobs biography -- and my rather scroungy over-ear headphones so I can keep listening even as I move around and get into "the zone".

Keeping track of my time and performance on the various machines, monitoring my heart rate, and - hopefully! - seeing progress isn't something I've paid much attention to, so when the team at iHome offered to send me a pair of their new Fitness Evolved headphones (developed in cooperation with New Balance), I was intrigued. It'd track my performance and I'd even be able to graph things on my computer. Cool.

Last week marked the fifteenth time I've attended the always-amazing Consumer Electronics Show. With 158,000 attendees and 3,100 vendors exhibiting, it's a trade show like no other I've ever seen, and "massive" doesn't begin to describe it. In fact, this year I had a pedometer in my pocket and on the day I walked the most, I took 17,000+ steps, around nine miles. One day. Walking.

There are lots and lots of companies showing their wares in reasonably modest booths, 15x15 feet, 20x20 feet, and then there are the real consumer electronics powerhouses, companies like Samsung, Sony, Intel and Sharp, they have spaces that are larger than your local store. The Sony booth itself was 30,000 square feet and took a year to design and create.

So what was worth seeing?

My family is really into Thanksgiving, which I've always liked as a holiday. Turkey, desserts, football, family, what's not to like? This year, however, my kid sister was complaining that we should skip eating turkey because it has an abnormally high amount of "triptofan" [ed: it's actually spelled tryptophan]. What is tryptophan and why should we avoid it?

It's World Aids Day, which begs the question: Is AIDS (more properly HIV) really still a problem, or has it faded out of the public eye precisely because there are less cases and both treatment and cures are available or shortly will be on the market?

The answer: a resounding yes, it's still a major health problem, but it seems to have peaked...

Having just eaten a huge turkey dinner for Thanksgiving, I'm sitting lazily by my computer and wondering why turkey always makes me sleepy. I've heard that there's something called triptofan (tryptofan? tryptophan?) in turkey that does this, but I'm skeptical. What's the scoop, Dave?