For several months now I have been working on my porch at home. I am not the handiest man in the world, but I try to do as much as I can so that I can save a few dollars. This is the biggest project that I have ever taken on and soon to be the most rewarding as I am almost finished.

A little background into the porch last summer my fiance and I decided it was time to update our porch because it had become a little outdated. By outdated I mean it was a simple concrete floor and 1970’s era wood paneling. Unfortunately I made the mistake of not taking and before pictures and we didn’t have any to start. We decided that we wanted to run lights to each side of the porch, insulate and drywall the porch, and put in some carpet & tile to make the room more comfortable.

I never really expected to document my progress so the pictures aren’t great but here is what it looks like after we stripped the drop ceiling and the wood paneling off the walls.

You may have noticed to our surprise the porch was already insulated, well the walls were. and that made life much easier. After I stripped the walls and ceiling of the ugliness that was on them I ran electric to each side of the porch so that when finished we could easily install new lighting. A key item in any room. I also installed a can light in the middle of the room between the doors. Now I can see my keyhole at night.

So then it was time for drywall. I don’t know if you have ever done drywall before, but mudding and taping around 14 windows is the worst thing that has ever happened. But it was starting to look good.

Finishing the drywall was something of a relief. I could now move on to a new part of the project. I have been drywalling for weeks and was ready to be done. With the drywall hung and mudded last weekend we were able to get the first coat of white primer on the walls and the room looks great.

One more coat of primer, a couple of coats of good paint, carpet, tile, and trim are what we have left to do. Keep in touch and watch the progress as the porch gets closer to finished.

For the last few days I have been writing about the correct ways to eat, and how by simply changing your diet your body will become a fat burning machine, but it is now time to focus on what you are drinking. What you put in your body in the form of a liquid is just as important as what you put in your body as a solid.

Water - Drink lots of water. Everybody knows how much water you are supposed to take in on a daily basis and yet almost nobody actually does it. This is one of the hardest parts because unless you are really hot or really thirsty water just doesn’t taste all that good. It has no taste so why would it. But your body needs water so drink as much as you can.

Tea - Green tea is one of the healthiest drinks on the planet if you can get your hands on some put it in your stomach.

Coffee - Let’s not be crazy you can’t cut out the morning cup of Joe and guess what you don’t have to. Coffee isn’t “good” for you but it isn’t bad either. With no calories in it being basically water you can still enjoy that cup of coffee just leave the sugar at home.

Alcohol - This guy here is the toughest. I generally drank 1 to 2 drinks a day and I have not had one in 6 days. Alcohol contains antioxidants and some other beneficial substances that your body could use, but it is not the best way to get them. Eat right and limit the drinking. If you truly want to get in shape you can make this commitment. Don’t stop drinking forever just realize that intoxication is not a good reason to be fat. Limit yourself to 3 drinks a week.

Soda - If you have to drink it limit yourself to 1 or 2 Diet Cokes a week. I said Diet Coke specifically because it is the only soda that still has some flavor and isn’t terrible for you.

Milk - Drink low fat 1% or skim milk. You need the calcium but not the fat.

Smoothies - Drink smoothies as snacks. They are delicious and you can add fresh fruits, yogurt, milk, whey protein, and juices until you find the one you like best and the whole time you will be getting healthier and thinner.

Day 4 June 12th, 2008

Age: 25

Height: 6′11″

Weight: 218lbs

Body Fat: 24%

You will notice that my weight and body fat counts will not change during the week. I will weigh in on Mondays and you will see the updates on Tuesday.

Breakfast:

Sandwich - 1 Egg, Egg White, 1 Low Fat Cheese, 2 Slices Canadian Bacon, 1 Whole Wheat Roll

Cup Coffee Black

Snack 1

1 Cup Kashi Go Lean Crunch

1 Cup Milk

Lunch

Sandwich - 4 Slices Turkey, 1 Slice Low Fat Cheese, Spinach Leaves, Mustard, Whole Wheat Bread

1 Apple

Snack 2

1 Cup Raisins

Dinner

1 ?oz. Grilled Chicken Breast Mccormick’s Grill Mates Seasoning

Salad - Romaine Lettuce, Cucumber, Shredded Parmesian, Balsamic Vinegrette

Grapes

Snack 3

3 Slices of Turkey
Excercise Routine

15 Pushups

20 Squats

My plan is to keep going with my daily log and to provide weekly weigh ins, and progress picks. So if you want the quickest updates be sure to subscribe to the blog. You can subscribe via an rss reader or by subscribe by email. Oh and don’t forget to post your log and tell me if you are working out as well.

That is a saying outlined in the Abs Diet by Dave Zinczenko. His theory is that if you eat the right food at the right time you will simply turn on the fat burning machine that your body is. Your body wasn’t meant to be fat, it was meant to take good food and turn it into muscle. However after years of stuffing Twinkies and hot wings down your throat and going on low intake diets your body has seen times of famine and stores fat for when it needs it. The Abs Diet says forget reducing calories or dropping certain food groups from your life. What you need is to find the foods that are good for you, the foods that reduce health risks, the foods that will help you burn fat and create muscle and eat them in combination with an easy full body workout.

This is the 3rd day of my diet and the second time I am reading the abs diet book. After just three days I already feel better. I wake up not feeling as groggy, I am hydrated and don’t always have cotton mouth, and I am willing to bet that I have already lost weight. Although I won’t weigh in until Monday.

In the logs from my first 2 days you will notice that I am eating 6 times a day. Seems like a lot huh? This is only going to be further proof that more food = more muscle = less fat when my next weigh in does come. Dave states in the book that just by adding 1lb of muscle you will burn an extra 50 calories a day to maintain that muscle. Talk about a diet, if just by eating right I can help turn fat into muscle my body is working off more calories than it was before. And all I did was eat more than normal.

Oh and the food is good by the way how can you argue with salmon, chicken, turkey, smoothies,  fresh veggies & fruits?

Day 3 June 11th, 2008

Age: 25

Height: 6′11″

Weight: 218lbs

Body Fat: 24%

You will notice that my weight and body fat counts will not change during the week. I will weigh in on Mondays and you will see the updates on Tuesday.

Breakfast

1 Cup Kashi Flakes Cereal with Blue Berries

1 Cup Skim Milk

1 Banana

1 Cup Coffee Black

Snack 1

2 Tablespoons All Natural Peanut Butter

Baby Carrots (AYCE)

Lunch

6 0z. Crab Meat (Artificial)

Salad - Spinach Leaves, Green Pepper, Red Pepper, Cucumber, Low Fat Italian Dressing

Snack 2

1 Cup Blueberries (Frozen)
Dinner

Tacos - 94% Lean Ground Beef, Salsa, Shredded Lettuce, Low Fat Cheese, Onion & Unfortunately Flour Tortillas (which aren’t really on the diet, I just didn’t have and Whole Wheat ones readily available)

Snack 3

Smoothie - Vanilla Yogurt, Skim Milk, Peanut Butter, Banana, Raspberries, Ice

Excercise Routine

15 Pushups

20 Squats

30 Minutes of Brisk Walking

My plan is to keep going with my daily log and to provide weekly weigh ins, and progress picks. So if you want the quickest updates be sure to subscribe to the blog. You can subscribe via an rss reader or by subscribe by email. Oh and don’t forget to post your log and tell me if you are working out as well.

This post is a day late and a dollar short being that the internet spreads gossip faster than a fat lady with a cell phone, but I thought it was a good topic of discussion anyway.  If you haven’t gotten it you can find it here.  The download became available yesterday and I have been tooling around in it for the last couple of hours. 

It seems pretty nice with a couple of new added features.  However it hates my site which means more work for me.  Creadiv.com crashes it consistently so if you have installed it make sure you are using the emulate IE7 to view creadiv. 

The coolest new feature that I have found is called Activities.  Microsoft has inserted a cool new tool the gives you a bevy of activities that you can perform by simply highlighting text on a page.  For example if you wanted to translate this entire post into German simply highlight it and select the translate with windows live activity and there you go.  A completely translated copy of my text.

But it doesn’t quite deliver on its promise of being standards compliant.  The acid2 test is a standards test that will display a smiley face correctly if your browser is 100% standards compliant, and it doesn’t quite work.  There is a definite improvement from IE7 which is Microsoft’s best and most standards compliant browser to date, so that is something.

If you have downloaded the beta and have had the opportunity to use it, let me know what you think.  I am looking too hear what people have to say about it.  I am a IE guy which is probably a saying that makes many of your buttholes pucker do to the new immense popularity of firefox and the intense hatrid of IE that has been forming.  So give it to me. I look forward to seeing what you can tell me about it.

If you are awesome subscribe to my rss feed.  If you like emails subscribe via email.  Remember only you can prevent forest fires help me acheive my goal of 100 subscribers by June.

My state’s presidential primary was held yesterday, and the experience of casting a ballot (or mine, at least) was a lesson in the dangers of not having enough faith in one’s audience.

Now, it should be said that the process as a whole was pleasant and efficient in all other respects–even though I had to go through the “extra” registration process (I’d moved since the last election). Very helpful, smiling people at every turn. Great job!

But when I was got to my booth and opened my ballot, it was obviously the product of a bureaucratic design process. The actual “fill in the space next to the candidate of your choice” concept was familiar, well laid out and free of ambiguity (no chads to be left dangling here). Anyone, and I mean ANYONE would instantly recognize what was expected of them within a second of looking at this.

That is, unless it was accompanied by paragraphs full of explanatory small print. Certainly, some of it could’ve been useful to a new voter (i.e. “Do not mark next to more than one name . . . ballots with multiple marks will be disregarded.”), but the rest of it only made me more uncertain that I was doing this correctly. In the end, I’m sure I did it right (phew!), but what should’ve taken 15 seconds ended up taking about a minute. Still time well spent, unless one considers what an extra 45 seconds per voter adds up to over a 13-hour polling period. Lines? You betcha.

So when designing a process, I urge you: Have faith in your users! When you’ve managed to make your design intuitive to the end-user (be it ballot, website, hardware or software), STOP! Once the message has been communicated clearly, have the presence of mind to realize it, or risk re-cluttering.

Like every good blogger I make lists.  Lists of tools, lists of sites, list of lists and so on and so on.  But this time I don’t have to create the list because there is no need to reinvent the wheel.  When it comes to web design and development there are experts everywhere, and  they have some really good information to share with you, but you can’t always find what you are looking for.  Well instead of coming up with 10 different lists of tools I will offer you the greatest list ever.

Today I give you the web developer’s handbook. 

 The web developlers handbook is a collection of the best tools, practices, tutorials, sites, and anything else you can imagine to help you create a website.  You will be able to spend hours sifting through well formatted and highly informative lists and I can gaurantee you that you will find exactly what you are looking for.  Enjoy this reference, it has helped me alot and I hope it will help you to.

 If you like this post then please consider subscribing to my RSS Feed.  If you think others will like this post as well please feel free to add it to a social bookmarking site.  I would also appreciate if you would visit my sponsors to help me keep this site going.

 The world has move on from the classic form of communication and
everday blogs and web magazines become the more present and popular
form of getting news for a large group of people.

This new media is extremely popular because it gives people an opportunity
to get information now and do so in a way that is easy and fun. 

But this doesn’t mean that everything is changing.

The newest trend in blogging is straying from the “latest post / sidebar”
layout that millions of web users have gotten used to and is heading toward
a more familiar feel. The news or magazine layout. 

So how will this effect you as a blog reader? What are your Benefits?

3 reasons the news/magazine style will benefit you a reader.

1.  Most importantly you get more information.  This style allows you to see the new posts, the headlines, the pictures, and  the old posts easily.  With this format the writer has the ability to show you more than ever before.

2.  You get more writers.  The magazine and news layout allows the author of the site to easily have more writers than just him/herself.  You can then be exposed to various opinions and topics on the same site.

3.  Navigation is simple you can find anything and everything you are looking for with links to related posts, images pointing to what you are looking for, tabbed menus that drive you toward extra content and all of this is built in to a layout that you have seen for years in magazines and newspapers.

The blogosphere is always evovling, and in ways it brings us back to the traditional forms of media, which is not something you would have expected but it definitely has it’s benefits to you and me.

 This article was inspired by a competition from ianfernando.com  he is having a contest in which he is giving away 3 premium news/magazine blog themes.  Please check it out and maybe I can win myself one, you never know I might even give it away to you my reader.

I don’t know if there is anyone out there who was reading my blog before. But I haven’t done anything to it in a long time.  I started off gung ho and then fizzled into a state of laziness that has left you update less for quite some time.  I promise that I will be back and writing soon.  I just need to get through the holiday season and let things settle back into their normal places. 

Hopefully writing something worth while soon.