This year, I tilled the area in the second section because it was overgrown with weeds and grass.  Its near the water spigot in the yard, so its easy to water the area every day.  I got some new topsoil and mixed it with the existing dirt to cultivate a new area for a vegetable garden.  I planted tomatoes, red bell peppers, jalapenos, carrots, and okra.  The carrots and okra I planted from seeds, so they took a while to come up.  I only got 1 okra plant and 3-4 carrot plants.  I think I made a mistake with spacing on the seeds.  Both of those seeds were tiny, so I planted several of them together and I guess they didn’t grow correctly.  I’ll know better for next time.  Either way, my one okra plant looks awesome.

Pictured to the right is the next section I started today.  I just added another 4′x8′ section onto the long side of the current garden, making the entire area 8′x8′.  I think I will probably add another 8′ section later, maybe this Fall or maybe next Spring, for a total of 16′x8′.  But for now, this is fine.

I dug some shallow trenches for the treated 4x4s I bought at Lowes, and tapped them into the trenches with a sledge.  I’ll put the second row of 4x4s on top of the ones pictures here, to have a 7-8″ high wall around the garden, which will match the existing one.  I also sprayed round-up on the grass today to start killing it off.  Once it starts dying, I’ll till the ground and add some compost to it, and should be ready to plant in a few weeks.

Vegetable Garden is a post from: Liberate Te Ex Inferis

No seriously, I’ve been absent from blogging lately.  I think the last few posts I have made have started with, “I’ve been slacking on posting…” so nothing new here.  But let me fill everyone in on what is going on (all 3 of you readers )

Insanity:
I went through the Insanity workout for the first 4 weeks, and did the rest week on the 5th week.  The 2nd half, weeks 6-9, should have been the Max Interval workout series, but instead I decided to just do the first set of workouts again, basically repeating weeks 1-4.  I saw some fairly good results on weeks 1-4 and I didn’t feel like I had mastered those videos (I couldn’t even finish them most of the time) so I wanted to repeat them.  However, as it turns out, I somewhat slacked-off during these last 4 weeks and didn’t get the videos as effectively completed as what I wanted to.  I’m back to doing P90X for now, along with alot of Abs exercises.  Once I get my abs to where I want, I might redo Insanity.  I’ll decide that later.

WoW / Diablo 3

Most of my online gaming friends have started playing Diablo 3.  Most of these people were also the ones who played Star Wars: The Old Repulic (SWTOR), which is now rumored to be dead.  This is a sad situation because Star Wars has the financial and fan-based backing to make a great game, but apparently, like so many other games, the developers can’t see the forest for the trees and the game is failing.  Of course this is just conjecture on 1 former employee’s part, but time will tell here too.

Diablo 3:  No, I’m not going to play this.  I don’t have anything against it, really.  I just can’t find any interest in starting a new game, which is also why I never bought SWTOR.  With my recent interest in Star Wars Books and my project of reading through the entire universe, I’m disappointed that I haven’t taken more time to try this game.  But, I have some good reasons.

Honestly I would try D3 but, I’m just not interested in taking the time to learn a new game.  I don’t have any desire to play games as much as I once played WoW, and the idea of getting into something new makes me think that I will spend too much time in it and not do other things that I want to be doing instead.  I still play WoW because I can sit down and play for 20-30 minutes, and then stop if I want to.  In fact, I get tired of it after about 30 – 45 minutes nowadays.  Given this fact, I don’t see that I will be trying D3 anytime soon.

Guitar:

One of the reasons I don’t want to spend time in a new game is that I am learning to play the guitar.  This is something that I started a few years ago, then put down for a long time.  But I want to put a serious effort into trying again, so I am taking some lessons from a very good teacher, and spending time practicing at home during the day.  I might post some videos of myself playing soon.  Don’t expect Jimmy Hendrix, though.

More updates later….

Where am I? is a post from: Liberate Te Ex Inferis

Rather than buying something new, which was my first choice, we’ve decided to start saving some money so that I can eventually pay cash for a new truck that I want.  In the meantime, I decided that I wanted to buy a 1977-78 Pontiac Trans Am to replace my Kia and drive daily, while I restore the 1978 Ford.

The problem with this idea is that all the money I spend on a Trans Am could instead be used for bodywork and new parts for the 1978 Ford.  Of course that would mean keeping the Kia for a bit longer, maybe another year, and putting my current money into the truck.  But I think this would be the more responsible way of doing things.  I haven’t decided 100% yet which decision to make, but at this moment I am leaning this way.

Doing some research for these older cars has got me to thinking again that I would like to restore old cars as a hobby/money making project.  Some of these late 70s Trans Ams that I’ve been finding are going for $30,000-$50,000.  Of course these cars are quite nice and are either original or have been custom restored.  I might not get as much money for a non-numbers matching car, but if I purchased a well-used model for around $5000, then sunk $10,000-$15,000 into it with parts, and doing most of the work myself, I’m thinking I could sell it for around $30-$35,000.  Of course this is all dependent on features of the car.  More research is warranted here.

So for now, at least for this moment before I go home after work, go to sleep, then wake up and change my mind again, here is the plan;

1. Drive the Kia for another year and restore my 1978 Ford F150.  All resto steps, including pictures and videos will be documented on this blog (along with any future projects I might do)
2. Once the Ford is done, sell this Kia piece of crap, and plan to drive the truck for a while.  This will free up my garage and allow me to purchase another car, park it in the garage, take it all apart and start the whole resto process again.

I’ll probably keep the first car I build, then buy another for the purpose of flipping.  It will depend on what I can find at the time for a good price.

Here is a list of cars that I would like to build and actually keep, although parking and garage space may start to become a factor:

• 1977-78 Pontiac Trans Am
• 1965-68 Mustang
• 1968 Dodge Charger (this is my dream car.  WHEN I find one of these cars again, I will be restoring it for the purpose of keeping it.   I plan to do this one from the ground up, taking everything off the unibody (frame) painting it on all sides, and then replacing parts 1 by 1 with new pieces.)
• 1962-64 Ford Fairlane – My desire here was to build one of these cars, and customize it to modern standards.  I’d like to drop a 5.0 or 5.7L engine in it with a fuel injection system, auto- transmission, a/c, bluetooth stereo, etc.  This will be a daily driver, that looks like a 40-yr old car, but has all the amenities of a new car.

Good luck to me.  We’ll see what the future brings.

Ford Truck Restoration is a post from: Liberate Te Ex Inferis

The Twitter-hype was not wrong.  This is perhaps the greatest superhero/comic book movie to date.  The story picks up all of the heroes right where we left them in their previous movies, and it ties them all together for an epic story.  I really enjoy continuity and I hate when movies or books change plot lines to suit some other details they want to add to the story, which wasn’t part of the original.  The Avengers movie doesn’t do that at all.  Other than Mark Ruffalo playing the Hulk instead of Ed Norton, I saw no deviation from the previous movies.

And let me say, those of you who know me know that I am a huge Hulk fan;  I was not looking foward to Mark Ruffalo playing the role of Bruce Banner.  Not that I don’t think he is a fine actor, just because I wanted Ed Norton to continue his role from the previous movie.  Ed Norton played a great Bruce Banner.  However, I think Mark Ruffalo filled the shoes quite well.  I will be looking forward to a “Hulk 2″ movie that stars Mr. Rufallo.

I’ll be going to see this movie again, for sure.  Here are some tips:

1. Go to the bathroom before the show, and if you can, don’t buy a drink.  I should have followed my own advice on this one.  The movie is over 2 hours long and doesn’t slow down at very many places.  I had to pee twice during the show, so I missed a couple of the slower scenes.  But that gives me more reason to see it again.
2. Stay until the end of the credits, like normal for these Marvel movies.

I can’t picture who the villain was that was shown at the opening of the credits, can someone tell me who that was supposed to be?

Conclusion:  The Avengers is going to be the biggest blockbuster of 2012.  It won’t win “picture of the year” but few blockbusters ever do.  However, I bet it will be on the top of the list for money-making films of 2012.

My Review of The Avengers is a post from: Liberate Te Ex Inferis

I’ve been slacking off on posting in this blog again.  I’ll try to step up the frequency on that too.

Guitar is a post from: Liberate Te Ex Inferis

I admit that the main point of the JVC KD-X50BT that caught my eye was the fact that it said “For Blackberry with Bluetooth SPP Connection”  Of course it also listed that it was compatible with the iPhone and the Android phone too, but most devices these days don’t take the time to list BlackBerry.  This impressed me so I did some research on the unit and decided to give it a try.

Installation was fairly easy and straight forward.  After fitting it into the dash of my car, and modifying the dash just a bit (no cutting) it looks aesthetically appealing and compliments the rest of the interior of the car.

I immediately tested the front Aux Jack and the Front USB connections, and both worked perfectly.  My last car stereo had a front Aux Jack that I never could get to work, either with my phone, tablet or iPod.  The JVC works beautifully with all 3.  The JVC also comes with a 2nd USB port on the back of the unit, and a USB extension cable that attaches to it, which you can run up to the console of the car or anywhere convenient.  There is a bluetooth dongle in the end of this USB extension cable, which allows bluetooth devices to connect to your car stereo.  The bluetooth connection allows 2 phones, plus a 3rd audio device to be connected all at the same time, and will remember pairing for up to 5 devices.

Connecting my BlackBerry Smartphone and my BlackBerry Playbook was simple.  The stereo connected to each one without issue, and played Pandora from the phone with no problem.  I didn’t try Pandora from the Playbook, but I played some songs I had stored locally on the device, and those played perfectly too.

The stereo also comes with a microphone that attaches to the back of the unit and has a long cable and a sticky pad for mounting.  This along with the bluetooth controls in the menus turns your stereo into a hands-free unit for your cell phone.  I placed a test call after setting all this up, and it works great.

For less than $100, I am VERY impressed with this unit.  The only thing I can really complain about is that the digital readout on the screen looks somewhat archaic, like a digital alarm clock from 1990.  I wish the font was smaller and more modern looking.  The complete name of a song usually doesn’t fit on the screen of the unit while you are playing through bluetooth, simply because there isn’t enough room with the font size. But this is a minor drawback.  The functionality of the unit is better than I hoped for, and I plan to enjoy using every feature on it.

JVC KD-X50BT In-Dash Car Stereo is a post from: Liberate Te Ex Inferis

This CD is a bit on DH’s lighter side, but I don’t mean that in a bad way.  If you like Heart String Come Undone or Driving Nails, then you should really enjoy this CD.  There are a few tracks on the harder side, with their traditional screamo also, which I really live for   But I am really enjoying the entire CD also.

Whether or not you are into Christian Music, you should give this CD look.  It is a great sound from a great band, and I think you will enjoy if it you enjoy this genre of music.

Demon Hunter: True Defiance is a post from: Liberate Te Ex Inferis

I don’t think this behavior was typical for the Pub, I think we basically overran them.  They simply weren’t prepared to handle the number of customers we brought them.  I didn’t want to complain, that wouldn’t have been a good representation of why we were there.  So I left a tip of the normal amount I would have on a good outing.  The good news is that O’shea’s wants us back, probably on a monthly basis, so they should be prepared to serve us better next time.  Heck, I can’t blame them, since we brought them so much business.

And yes, I drank 2 beers that night.  A couple of my church friends did too.  It was a fun, relaxing time, having just a couple of beers and singing worship music to the rockin’ church band on stage.

I didn’t take any photos of this event, this time.  But when we go back, I’ll be sure and capture some on that trip.

Easter at the Pub, part 2 is a post from: Liberate Te Ex Inferis

Video for Easter at the Pub from FOTP.

Easter at the Pub Video is a post from: Liberate Te Ex Inferis

I watch the RSS feeds and traffic that come to this blog, and while I don’t get much interaction in the comments section, I do see when people some and read my posts.  If you are reading this and want to join us tonight, I’d love to see you there and talk to you.

7pm tonight at O’sheas Pub and Grill.  I plan to take some photos and of course post some of them here tomorrow.

Easter at the Pub is a post from: Liberate Te Ex Inferis