Chest & Triceps

Dumbbell Bench Press
Dumbbell Lying Triceps Extension
Smith Machine Incline Bench Press
Smith Machine Close Grip Bench Press
Cable Cross Over
Cable Standing Triceps Extension

Back & Biceps

Close-Grip Front Lat Pulldown or Underhand Pull down
Overhead Cable Curl
One-Arm Dumbell Row
Standing One-Arm Dumbbell Curl Over Incline Bench
Pullups or Wide-Grip Lat Pulldown
Hammer Curls
Dumbbell Bicep Curl, if feeling ambitious

Shoulders

Smith Machine Overhead Shoulder Press
Front Incline Dumbbell Raise or Dumbbell Front Raise
One Arm Incline Lateral Raise or One Arm Side Lateral
Cable Rope Rear Delt Row
Cable Up Right Row

Legs

Smith Machine Squat
Smith Machine Hack Squat
Seated Leg Curl
Leg Extensions
Seated Calf Raise

Abs

Ab Crunch Machine
Torso Rotation

A few notes about the routine… There are a few exercises where there’s one or the other. For the back and biceps, I thought that on some days the pullups were a little too intense, so I substituted different pull-down exercises instead. In the shoulder workout, I figured out that the incline exercises were causing me some shoulder and neck pain after a few weeks, so I discontinued those exercises and I’ll consider bringing them back at a later date.

My goal has been 3 sets of 8 reps for each exercise. Once I do three sets of the same weight, I increase the weight on the last set. After I can successfully do 8 reps in the last set, I increase the middle set as well, and the same for the first set. Once I get to the same weight on all three, I start the process over. This has resulted in noticeable gains, specifically in my chest and arms.

Now that I have some development, I’m going to shift my focus in my next iteration of my workout to endurance and cardio. I’d like to trim a few percent off of my body fat so that things look a little more proportional. I’ll be making a new workout program with basic exercises, that I’ll do 2-3 sets of 12-15 reps at 70-80% of the weight that I’ve been doing. This should get my metabolism in gear for a while. I will likely only keep that up for a month or two because I really enjoy the heavy weights. Of course, I’ll try to keep you posted of my progress.

It could have been much worse — I’d been trying to lift heavy in March and April before my “moving hiatus”. This was my second week back and I was working my way back up to (and on some exercises exceeding) my previous weights. My workout partner is having a rough time in his personal life and was off his game. I’d just noticed during the previous rep that he wasn’t spotting me, but I thought I was fine. As I was pushing for my last rep of my last set of incline dumbbell bench presses with a 50 lb weight in each hand, I lost control of the dumbbell and it started to fall toward my face. Now, keep in mind that my muscles hadn’t failed — I’d just lost focus and lost control, so I focused my strength to getting the dumbbell to not fall on my face. Instead, the dumbbell came to rest with some force against my clavicle on my left side.

Of course, it hurt. How couldn’t it? But it didn’t hurt as bad as I’d expected it should. I didn’t see the need to get checked out — I think I’m just bruised, but there’s no visible bruising. The area is a little tender to the touch and only hurts when I poke it or extend my arms really far in a manner that stretches my chest muscles.

In summary, I’m definitely fine, but it just makes me realize the importance of a spotter and keeping focused. I’ve always lifted light enough to get away without a spotter, but I’m crossing over into a new realm so to speak!

bash: ./script.pl: /usr/bin/perl^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

Seeing the ^M was a dead giveaway to me that my Windows carriage returns were still in the file and being interpreted by bash. I needed an easy way to remove them and stumbled upon this:

perl -pi -e 'tr[\r][]d' script.pl

This takes out the carriage returns in-place and makes your Windows script Unix-friendly. (Of course, I had to put in my blog here so that I can find it more easily in the future!)

perl -pi -e 'tr[\r][]d'

Anyone who knows me well enough to visit my house over the past 4 years knows that Mark does nearly all of the cooking. Occasionally, I’ll prove that I can find my way around the kitchen, but for the most part, it’s Mark’s domain. With this in mind, yes, I do feel the need to preface this recipe with the fact that it is my own variation, but it is largely stolen from glutenfreeliving.co.nz. I’ll be playing around with it more over time, and I might turn it over to Mark for further enhancement since he understands baking more than I do.

Chocolate Mug Cake
2 tablespoons rice flour
2 tablespoons tapioca starch
1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons dark chocolate cocoa
1/2 of a beaten egg (about 2 tablespoons)
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
a splash of vanilla
a handful of chocolate chips

Mix the dry ingredients in a large coffee mug. Add the wet and mix as thoroughly as possible. Add the chocolate chips and mix lightly so that they don’t sink all the way to the bottom. Cook in the microwave for 2-3 minutes. Allow to cool for about 5 minutes… or dig in immediately knowing that you will probably burn your mouth on it since it’ll be hot!

I tried to make a small batch of a simple frosting, but it came out like a glaze instead. I’ll work on that. The original recipe called for a full egg and guar gum (indicating that the guar was optional), but that made it too heavy. I’m not sure if reducing the egg or adding xanthan gum (Mark says they’re interchangeable for the most part) was what made this better. It’s still not “perfect” — in my opinion it still tastes like a cheap cake mix or mass-produced brownie, but sometimes that’s enough to curb the sweet tooth craving. Also, this could/should probably be two servings, but so far, I’ve made it when I’ve been home alone!

It turns out that there is a really easy way to accomplish this: FIELD()

The query that I use here employs a series of SUM() functions to give me totals for each type of data.

SELECT status,
SUM(IF(datum_type = 'order', 1, 0)) AS 'order',
SUM(IF(datum_type = 'patient', 1, 0)) AS 'patient',
SUM(IF(datum_type = 'supply', 1, 0)) AS 'supply',
COUNT(*) AS 'total'
FROM data
GROUP BY status
ORDER BY FIELD(status, 'unreviewed', 'queued', 'processed', 'confirmed', 'rejected');

Now, my records magically sort in the order I want. That was easy.

First, we need to reparition and format the flash drive. Windows won’t let you do this from the GUI, so from a command prompt run as administrator, run “diskpart“, which is a command-line disk partitioning and formatting utility. I’m not sure if this is included with Windows XP, but Vista and 7 should both have it.

First, you’ll want to “list disk” to see which disk is your flash drive and then “select disk n“, where n is the drive number of our drive.

Next, run the following commands to clear the partition table, create a new partition, format it, and set it bootable:

clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32 quick
assign
exit

Now that we have a bootable drive, we need to install a bootsector from it. If you’re putting a Windows Vista or Windows 7 installer on it, you can to that at a command prompt run as administrator. From the \boot directory of your source disk:

bootsect.exe /nt60 n:

… where n: is your flash drive’s drive letter.

Finally, to copy the actual disk files to the flash drive:

robocopy.exe s:\ n:\ /MIR

… where s: is your source disk’s drive letter and n: is your flash drive’s drive letter.

After doing all of that, though, I got an error saying that Windows could not start. The error was File: \Boot\BCD Status: 0xc00000e Info: “An error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data.” After some searching, apparently the way that some BIOSes enumerate the USB drive prevents Windows from properly seeing it.

My next attempt was to use UNetbootin, Universal Netboot Installer, but it had the same results.  I’m going to keep working on this and see if I come across anything useful. It could be that my hardware is too old to boot to USB using these methods.

EDIT: I figured out the issue.  All I needed to do was change the filesystem to fat32 (changed above) and it worked. Yay! Now I can easily make bootable USB drives.

I’m going to have to try that technique myself.

I believe I have finally, today, finished my holiday shopping for 2010.  However, I haven’t purchased gifts for friends. I’m not sure if we’re doing that this year, and I honestly hope we’re not. I usually enjoy gift giving, but this year, it’s been so much of  a stresser than before. I’ve almost achieved my mission of paying off my consumer debt, and being that I’m so close, I don’t want to blow a lot of cash on gifts, except for my family, and my niece and nephew to whom I’m obligated to spoil.

Speaking of, I just want to say that even though my brother and I have been civil if not downright very nice to each other over the past 5 or so years, now that he has children, over the next few years, I plan to get my revenge for all of our sibling rivalry by buying his kids the most annoying toys possible!! Muahahaha!

For a few weeks after my quest for cardiovascular improvement, I was diligent about working out for 45 minutes a day for at least 5 days a week. Since, then, I’ve had a few back-to-back excuses, the most recent of which involved tooth pain resulting in a root canal. Now, my excuse is the side effects from the antibiotic my dentist gave me to clear up the infection in my tooth.

Coming up, we have the holidays, which pose a challenge to many people in keeping workout regimes. I’m definitely not going to want to work out until after Black Friday at this point, but hopefully I can knuckle down between then and Christmas. I’d like to pick up weight training again in the meantime, too. If not, there’s always the new year.

First, my blood pressure was high at my doctor’s office. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but I’m going to guess that it was around 140/85. Optimally, it should be below 120/80. My numbers were on the lower threshold of hypertension. However, I’d had it taken that morning by a nurse and it was 117/78. Well, just for the sake of proving that I’m not crazy, I bought a blood pressure monitor, and since then, my average reading has been 113/76, which isn’t bad at all! I’m still going to keep an eye on it, though. I want to be able to tell my doctor (and present proof!) that my blood pressure is fine if this happens again next year.

The second big risk factor, and this one is more legitimate, is the results from my lipid panel. I’ve had issues with triglycerides in the past. Years ago, they were over 540, but in more recent years, they’ve been lower. They’re even lower still, but they’re still high, and on top of that, my LDL cholesterol is just over the threshold for “high” and my HDL cholesterol is under the threshold where it should be. Personally, I’d rather not go on medication to correct this, but if I have to, I will. However, I’m only going to do this after I’ve tried more “natural” methods of getting my numbers in order.

My goal,  now that I have a good reason for it, is to focus on doing 30 minutes of cardio at least 5 times per week. I’m sure that this will help with my weights anyway when I get back to them. I read in Muscle & Fitness that one should keep cardio sessions within 30 minutes per session (“Burn Fat/Save Muscle”. Muscle & Fitness Jun 2010: 182-190.) to avoid breaking down muscle instead of fat and glucose. I’ve also read that it’s best to do cardio between 5 pm and 7 pm (“The Best of the Best”. Muscle & Fitness Oct 2010: 134-142), so I think eventually I’ll want to do my weights in the morning and cardio in the evening.

Now, before you ask, my diet is fine. I could do a little better at lunch time, everything else I eat is reasonable. Oh, I could also start drinking red wine. I’ve read that it can raise good cholesterol, which is believed to help flush out the bad cholesterol. Excuse me while I find the corkscrew.

su
mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
cd /system/app
mv EmailGoogle.apk EmailGoogle.bak
mv VVMStub.apk VVMStub.bak
mv CorpCal.apk CorpCal.bak
mount -o ro,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
sync
reboot

Basically what we’ve done here is remount the app directory as read/write so that we can actually make changes. Then we rename the email, visual voicemail, and corporate calendar apps (in that order) to have a .bak extension in case we want to reverse this change later. If you want to make this permanent, you can delete the .apk files and the corresponding .odex files, but personally, I’d rather preserve them in case I need them someday.

If you can follow this but you don’t feel like typing, you can achieve pretty much the same thing with Root Explorer. I’ll leave it to you to do it, though. Honestly, if you can’t follow the shell commands, you probably shouldn’t have a rooted phone.