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Window Sill Seedling Garden

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I've always loved gardening, but living in Minneapolis presents some challenges. Most notably, our short growing season means that starting plants like tomatoes and peppers (some of our favorites) inside is a must. I tried all kinds of ways to successfully start seedlings inside, but every one seemed to have a fatal flaw. Covering the kitchen counters with little plants for several weeks every spring got old fast. Setting up a whole growing table with lights took lots of room in our small house, and was ugly besides. We moved it to the basement laundry room, but it was too cold and there was no natural light. Besides, we kept forgetting to water them down there. Precariously stacking little cups of dirt on a south windowsill meant the toddlers and dog knocked them all over. Besides, even a south window doesn't give enough light to grow healthy seedlings. Finally we settled on these narrow shelves hung across a south window with some fluorescent lights above. This set u
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Leaning Ladder Dumbbell Rack

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This is a leaning ladder style dumbbell rack I recently made. Built mainly from 2x4's, its cheaper and better looking than the steel ones commercially available. The plans below use a slightly different shelf design than I used, to better support weights of different sizes.
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Xfinity: Playing Now In the Theater of God

Yesterday, courtesy of World Magazine , I received in my inbox a chapter from the book With Calvin in the Theater of God , edited by John Piper. I was impressed by what I read, and since our local library didn't carry the title, I ordered a used paperback copy from eBay for $4.29 + tax. That done, I continued down through my inbox to see I had gotten a coupon code from my local cable company. "Thank you for being such a great customer," it read. "Enter this code for $5 off your next bill." Keeping in mind that I once cancelled my (basic internet) cable for year in the process of price negotiating (after they again raised my rates for no reason), I can't help but feel my life a part of the theater of God.
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Disc Brake Maintenance

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Redoing your brakes is one on the simpler auto maintenance tasks, especially if your car has disc brakes all the way around. That being said, keeping your brakes working is pretty important, so it's well worth the extra time spent to do the job right, rather than stopping at simply throwing new pads on and calling it a day. I've probably redone the brakes on 4 or 5 vehicles at this point, and I've learned something new each time. 1. Brake Pads. This is the most basic step of brake maintenance. Brake pads are usually equipped with a metal clip the creates a high pitched sound when the pads are worn too thin. This signals that they should be replaced before they damage the rotors, or even the calipers. I inspect my break pads twice a year when I swap summer and winter tires, so I usually replace them before they get that worn. When installing new brake pads, make sure they slide freely in the caliper bracket. The new pads should come with new metal shims and packets o
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The Once and Future Vegans

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Photo courtesy of our garden last summer While browsing the news during my lunch break last week, I read an interesting story published by the BBC about the limitations of a vegan diet. As the popularity of such diets has increased, nutritional scientists have found several vitamins and fats that are both essential to brain development and can only be found in animal products such as meat, milk, or eggs. In fact, a vegan diet is not recommend for young children and nursing mothers, and even other adults can be left deficient in essential nutrients. When sharing what I'd read with my wife later that day, she pointed out that this is yet another result of the Fall (of man in Genesis 3). Under God's original plan, without death, all creatures must have subsisted entirely on a plant-based diet. Yet now, in our fallen world, God has made us genetically dependent on a type of animal sacrifice. We are unable to return to the utopia for which we were created. Unable, at least, unt
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Ford Focus Roof Rack

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I needed a roof rack for the 2013 Ford Focus Hatchback that I recently bought. I don't like the clamp-on racks; they always look like an afterthought, and there's also the risk of damaged paint. I wanted the rack to be bolt-on, yet fully and easily removeable. This was my solution. Pictured are Yakima "Jetstream" bars with Landing Pad 11. This should work with any type of Focus, Focus ST, or Focus RS since they all have the same body, probably other cars, too, if they have the same style rain gutter. Although it took more time than I thought, I'm really happy with the result. Overall I probably spent 16hrs, spread over a week's time, mostly because I had never done it before and was being extremely cautious so as not to damage my car.  I checked with a local rack installer before I started, but their solution was to permanently mount the landing pads, which I was not thrilled about. Instead, I opted to install threaded "T-nut" mounts
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The Gospel

Gospel: literally, "Good News." That humans are incapable of living good and perfect lives, as would be required to meet God's Just and Holy standards; but that Christ Jesus came to take the punishment we deserve, meaning that by accepting that gift, we all can spend eternity with God. Although I was taught the Gospel at a very young age, it wasn't until recently that I realized how central it is to all beliefs and decisions in life. Last summer, while visiting with a friend, he mentioned that while searching for a church after moving to the Indianapolis area, they had found many that were Bible centered, but not Gospel centered. I did not really understand what he meant until I read Tim Keller's article "The Centrality of the Gospel." In it, he makes the case that the Gospel should be central to every area of life by building on a concept first put forth by Tertullian. From Keller's article: "Tertullian, a Christian writer in the se
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