You can think of the calories inside your body as a bank account. You want to spend more money from your account then you put into it. The goal is always have a negative bank balance(which is not hard to do). As long as your negative each week then you WILL lose weight(assuming you do not have any medical condition that keeps this from happening).

There’s lots of talk about what foods to eat. As I stated before a calorie is a unit of measurement. Therefore 150 calories in a piece of boneless skinless chicken breast is the same as 150 calories of a doughnut. You will still have to burn the 150 calories to lose weight.  So whether you burn more calories then you eat while eating pure doughnuts or chicken it does not matter(remember I am talking about strictly weight loss and not healthy eating).

One of the problems is eating 2000 calories of doughnuts in a day instead of more healthy foods is you will still be hungry after you have ate the 2000 calories. Since doughnuts and types of food like that are calorie dense they are not filling.

Burning more calories then you eat is the ONLY way to lose weight. Remember that.

In Janurary I started back with heavy weights at the gym. The routine I decided to start with is the Rippetoe Starting Strength rountine. Which looks like this

Workout A

• Barbell Squat 3X5
• Overhead Press 3X5
• Deadlift 1X5

Workout B

• Squat 3X5
• Bench Press 3X5
• Deadlift 1X5 — Replaced later with Power Cleans 5X3

You can find the book by doing a quick search for “Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe”. Part of the program is to try and lift heavier weight each time week.  I have not been able to add weight on every exercise every week but I have gained strength.  Here is a list of the exercises with my beginning weight, then my current weight lifted

• Squat—185lbs–>225lbs
• Bench Press—185lbs–>210lbs
• Deadlift—225lbs–>275lbs
• Press—95lbs–>120lbs

Again these are results from just one month of lifting. In high school I mainly did bench press so I am unsure what my other numbers would have been back then but I know that I lifted 225lbs 5 times on Bench Press and Maxed out around 260lbs. So I am shooting for those numbers again for my birthday in March.

How does this help me lose weight? Well first these are compound exercise that work many many muscles at one time. Take the squat for example. It works your quads, hamstrings, back and stomach muscles, so basically your legs and core.  Imagine putting 225lbs on your back, your core has to be strong to hold your upright, and your legs have to strong to be able to squat down and stand back up. Using the most muscles really burns the calories as opposed to isolation exercises. Also another benefit is the added muscle you get from this workout. The more muscle you have the more calories you burn at rest. So sitting here typing this I am burning more calories then I would have a month ago.

The faucet in our bathtub has been dripping water, and the problem has gotten to the point where it’s almost a steady stream. I decided to take it apart in hopes I could stop the leak. I had to run to the hardware store once I had it taken apart, as my wife doesn’t know the difference between an ip 119 and any other small part sold for repair.

In the end, the man at the store gave me the wrong size of the part I needed…so the drip is still present. Hopefully I can make it back to the store this week so that the leak can be fixed.

I heard about www.expertsatellite.com from a colleague of mine and she was right – I was really missing out. I think she got tired of trying to tell me about the Real Housewives and me having no idea what she was talking about but at the end of the day I really like all the shows I get on BRAVO. I used to think cable was a waste of money but TV has sure come a long way since back then. There’s something to be said for not having to watch the nightly news or Jeopardy – as it turns out my taste is totally trashy reality stuff! I love being able to get home at night from my stressful job and just take a load off…there’s something to be said for not having to worry about whether or not I’m going out or going to a bar – getting a dog changed all that. Now all I have to say is “oh, I have to go home and let the dog out!” and people listen!

So to replace the hood release I first popped the hood. To do this I had to use pliers and pull what was left of the hood realease inside the car. Once that was open I noted the path the cable traveled from the front of the car back as far I could see.  I took 4 push bolts out from around the hood latch assembly which attaches to the front grill. There are 3 bolts to get the assembly out, I then was able to get the end of the cable out of the assembly. There are also 2 clips you will have to take out along the path of the cable. I used needle nose pliers to pinch them and push them through the body to release them. Next I went inside the car, took the interoir piece off that covers the hood release. Then unbolted the hood release from the car. I then used wire cutters to cut the old hood realease cable.

I took the new boot/seal off the new cable and taped the new cable to old one so I can pull it through. This is a good trick to do that will save some time but this time it did not work. It became hung up on the old seal/boot that goes into the firewall and the tape broke. Leaving me with the old cable on the garage floor and the new cable still in the floorboard of the car.

I quickly ran inside and looked up how to replace the cable. I did not find any videos(found some on how to open the hood from the outside). And read some posts on Honda Civic forums about doing it. Most of them said to remove the fender to route the cable correctly. While others said to relocate the cable altogether for so it would be harder to theives to pop the hood.   At this point I was dreading having to take the fender off and was looking for any other way around it.

I shoved the new cable(once I got the tape off) through the firewall and heard it hittitng inside the fender. I then proceeded to push it on through hoping it would find it’s way. No Luck. I then had an idea. I jacked up the driver side front of the car, took off the front wheel and took the screws/push bolts out of the back part of the fender well near the door. I then could reach in and grab the cable and feed it through the correct hole. Routed it back around to front of the car put the clips back in and hooked the end of the cable into the hood release assmebly. After bolting everything back together we tested it and it worked. It only took 2 hours, but if I had not tried the tape trick then I would of been finished in a hour.

I wrote this post because I don’t want anyone else thinking they have to remove fenders to replace the hood release.

This still left me skeptical. The Wii worked except that it could not read the disc. We could play our downloaded games just fine. So I could see the disc drive being replaced but all the other stuff?

I see this as instead of Nintendo owning up to the fact that old Wiis have trouble playing newer dual later discs, they are just telling people that they can repair them, then send us a new one. This has also happened to a few more people pretty much in the same way(send it in for repair, then they get a new one). While I am not complaning about getting a new Nintendo Wii for $64 but I still would like for Nintendo to own up to what they’ve done and not do this under the covers.

As you probably could guess when we unboxed our new Wii we played Just Dance 3 and Rock Band 3 most of the night, trying to break the system. So far it’s still working. A few more times of playinhg JD3 will let us know if it will continue to work or not.

I called Nintendo support and talked to someone about this. They would not own up to the fact that these discs are tearing up the Wiis. They keep saying that games cannot tear up the console. They did offer a discount to me but I wanted it fixed for free since I did nothing to tear it up. My wife called back tonight with the serial number and the best they could do was $60 plus tax(included shipping). She asked if that was ok and I thought about it. If we did not have these expensive Rock Band 3 Professional Drums for the Wii I think I would have just sold the Wii games and Wii online and began buying more games for the PS3.

Let me explain how I think a game can tear up a Wii. DVDs have a thickness tolerance when they are made. Too thin and the Player cannot pull it into the console and could possible break while spinning at high rpms, too thick and it could rub the lens. The other idea is that these DVDs are not totally smooth and have bumps on them or some other imperfection. Now I will say that Activision makes the Black Ops game, Ubisoft makes the JD3 and Nintendo makes the Super Smash Bros, but I wonder if they had bought the blank DVDs from the same company. Or maybe on the older Wiis the lens was not set far enough away from the the DVD and when the thickness gets close or exceeds the tolerance it scrubs. Either way explains why some Wiis can play these games fine and others do not.

Either way no one will own up to the errors and Nintendo is making $85 a pop to repair them(unless you haggle with them in which you pay $60). I am not happy with paying to get it fixed, but I want it working.