Home (warranty) Deconstruction
Buying a home is stressful and I admit it feels good to know it is under warranty.  Maybe that's why where I live it seems like the home warranty is standard in every real estate offer.  It depends on what you buy but it never covers everything in your home.  It is a very specific contract with limited coverage of some of the appliances and systems in my home.
● "[Home warranty company] agrees to repair or replace systems and appliances mentioned as covered... "
A few weeks after moving in I found a leaky gasket under the dishwasher.  We called the home warranty company and after a $60 copay it was fixed.  The repair technician was good but focused on the appliance repair.  He was not there to find other issues.  After the call I poked my head in under the cabinets in the kitchen much more deeply than I had before.  I found another, much bigger, problem that was contributing to the moisture under the sink.  The "clean-out" plug attached to the sink drain was over tightened and broke the ABS pipe.  It was leaking every time we used the sink and dishwasher and probably for several months before we moved in.  For another 60 dollars the plumber removed the broken pieces of pipe and plugged it with a 5 dollar rubber bung.
You may be wondering what happened to all that water.  I go downstairs and find I can easily stick a pencil through the drywall at the base of the floor!  The water had been leaking for some time and saturated the drywall.
The damage caused by the leak was not covered...
● "[Home warranty company] is not responsible for Consequential or Secondary Damage (including Consequential Damages due to a Service Contractor's conventional repair efforts of the primary item)..."
I ended up pulling out a section of drywall, killing any mold, and patching the hole myself.
Three months later I notice paint starting to bubble next to the shower stall in a completely different part of the house.   We called, they send out a plumber, he looks behind the faucet and finds no leak.  We pay him sixty dollars and he says, "Not a plumbing problem, go buy some caulk and goop it on the seams of the shower.  I don't have any with me..."
At this point I make a mistake.  Instead of calling the warranty company to send out a better plumber I pull out the cover of the drain and find a squashed gasket.  To me this is a sign of a plumbing problem.  Covered, right?  Nope.  If there was any chance of having this repaired under the contract I lost it when I decided to pull out the entire shower.
As we would find out over the next several weeks the shower was improperly installed, here is the language in the contract that cost me 1000 dollars...
● "THIS CONTRACT DOES NOT COVER:  Repairs or replacement required as a result of ... Improper Installation, [among other things] "
Had I paid 100 dollars more for the upgraded coverage improper installation would have been covered.
I'm not saying I couldn't have tried harder to negotiate a repair.  Had I made a case and the warranty company agreed to have it fixed.  How would it be fixed?...not well enough for my tastes.  By this stage I had lost confidence in the workmanship of the home and felt I needed to dig more deeply that a superficial repair.  I don't want the same low quality parts patched together to make a system that I don't trust work.
● "We reserve the right to repair and/or replace systems and appliances with non-original manufacturer's parts, including rebuilt or refurbished parts... We will not upgrade any covered item. "
I decided to start from scratch.  As we pulled everything out we found that the shower was not on a solid foundation and the drain pipe was not welded with ABS cement.  Essentially, it was sitting on top of a drain stub.  Even if I had found nothing the idea of water seeping slowly into the walls and mold growing would prey on me.
As of the date of this article I'm still working on the new shower.  I'm about 500 dollars into it and doing all the work myself.  I don't recommending pulling out the entire shower stall to see what's really going on.  Consider doing a little extra reading before it comes to that.  If you are considering a warranty get a clear picture of the coverage, increase it to a level that you are comfortable with (or do away with it altogether).  By the time I pulled out the contract and read through it, it was too late to do anything but tell you about it.

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Runner's Diet

Not getting injured is more important than any other aspect of running. You must be able to run.  Run slowly, run short distances, run often,  and eat whatever you want.  
 
Measuring distance and time are necessary but the other side of the coin is to ask yourself, "how am I feeling at this point in the run?  How does that compare to last month?  How much of that turkey roll did I run off?"


The goal for most runners and the focus of the industry is on competition.  I believe measuring how you do against others comes later...and only if you choose so to do.  So start by measuring the time you spend running and make it at least 15 minutes (not counting the warm-up and shower).  

Everybody can do this.  If you find yourself fading, slow down!  Spend more time running and less time eating.

Baby Food Diet

Sitting down and cracking a few jars of baby food for lunch with the gang has a lot of good shock value and will produce some laughs the first day or two.  But I would make sure you work in a place with no cruel people or that you are the boss before you try this at work.  I suppose you could transfer the baby food to another container before taking to work but then you lose the convenience that comes with this program.


You eat baby food for breakfast and lunch.  Drink a fiber supplement once or twice a day.  Then you eat whatever you want for dinner. Cool, huh?


There's a lot of variety in baby food now-a-days.  And you can even go organic or vegetarian if you wanted!  

Bolus Diet

This diet idea really would appeal to the technically minded person.

Phase I You don't change your eating habits. You take notes on how many swallows of food and non-water drink you take each day. You also note the bite size.

Phase II You take what you learned and simply reduce the number of swallows of food you take each day while maintaining the average bite size you measured before. So say you normally swallow 50 bolus' of food a day.

Try reducing that to 40 for six weeks and see what happens. Say you swallow 40 sips of cola each day. Reduce that to 30.

You don't have to change what you eat. Just how much. You focus on chewing your food better, increasing water intake while minimizing sugary drink intake.