So I'm back. It turns out, my passenger side cable was shot. Don't know if there's much you can do preventatively, I guess if you experience any hood "issues", I wouldn't hesitate to change the cable. My cable was very stiff and not moving well at all, compared to the new one.

Couple followup details, the latch comes out on the passenger side fairly easily. There's an electrical connection on the passenger side, you need to disconnect it too, the new latch comes with the entire electrical cable assembly attached. See the picture:





Once the latch is out, you twist the cable attachment to unlock it (took me a minute to figure that out), and then twist lock the new one on:





Getting the drivers side out is much harder, there is a similar opening, but it's blocked by a body flange. Doable, but more of a pain:



I'm still looking for a safely design on the release. It's tough because you need to push the latch back toward the rear of the car, so any cable you could attach and pull forward isn't going to release it unless you wrap it around something and get it to pull back. It think it's possible, because there are 2 little holes behind each bracket, but it's not as simple as I wanted.