Virago 1000

Posted on November 25, 2010 by Brian Gallimore

May 1992:  My first motorcycle (that I really owned) 1984 Yamaha Virago 1000.

Posted in Automotive, Family | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Dinosaur World

Posted on November 21, 2010 by Brian Gallimore

Amber and Bryson went to Dinosaur World this weekend.  I hear they had a good time, and here are some pictures.

img_0838

Image 1 of 10

Posted in Family | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Garden Update: November 19, 2010

Posted on November 19, 2010 by Brian Gallimore

This is the time of the year when the garden would be producing lots and lots of vegetables. If I had stuck with it and planted more stuff a few months ago I would be buried in produce right now. I do have lots of lettuce and kelp. Worms are trying their best to eat all my broccoli. I have lots of volunteer plants, and things that have just stuck around because I’ve neglected to clean up and replant like I should. Lots of fruit is ripe on my fig tree too, I’m wondering what I should do with all of it.

Asparagus Bed
I paid for female plants!
lots of thick stalks on this fern
fig tree
ripe fruit
paw paw tree 1
paw paw tree 2
bed
worms love me
lady bug
no leaf broccoli
native species of flower
don\'t remember 1
don\'t remember 2
flower
edible flower
don\'t remember 3
citronella
bee working on the basil
New Zealand \'spinach\'

[Show slideshow]
1 2 ... 4
Posted in Gardening | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Noisy Pants Bryson

Posted on November 7, 2010 by Brian Gallimore

After Bryson put on his new nylon pants, he started running around the house like a crazy boy just to make lots of noise.

Posted in Family | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Stair Project

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Brian Gallimore

Today, I built a set of stairs for a stage they want to use at Amber’s school.  The stage height is 24″, so I scouted around on the Internet to figure out what the ergonomics behind steps are.  Turns out you want a rise of no more than 7-3/4″ for each step, and something over 5″ is recommended.  I choose a 6″ rise, so it would work out to be 3 evenly spaced steps.  The depth of the steps are called the tread, and you want rise + tread to equal 17 to 18″.  I choose 11″ to make that work out.  I had originally planned the steps like the picture to the left, but after a review by my family expert in the field, I learned that letting the steps overhang is not a good idea.  People with prosthetic legs cant move their legs backward and might get tripped up.  The spaces between the steps is a no-no too.  I changed it up a bit and came up with what is pictured below.  I used up almost a whole sheet of 3/4″ plywood.  All I was left with was a few thin scraps, very little waste!  The school district is gaining this sturdy piece of furniture for the cost of the materials, which was only $35.  I couldn’t help comparing this to the $59,000,000 stadium they are in the process of building, which is a continued sore subject with me!

Posted in Projects | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Bryson is Buzz Lightyear

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Brian Gallimore

Bryson was pretty funny about which houses he would go to for trick-or-treat. He would only choose plain homes with no unusual lights, decorations, sounds, etc. He sure didn’t like the scary stuff, and refused to walk up to those houses. It didn’t take long before he said he had enough candy and wanted to go home. He didn’t get THAT from me!

img_0715

Image 1 of 3

Posted in Family | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Easy Way to Start a Fire

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Brian Gallimore

A few weekends ago I tried multiple different materials to catch a spark and start a fire.  Many of them worked well (steel wool, char cloth) but the one that I thought worked best was cotton balls and petroleum jelly.  The dry grass and shredded cedar bark I gathered didn’t work very well at all.  I thought it would be a good idea to make up some of these cotton balls and keep them near my sparker tool.  It is easy to make fire if you are a little bit prepared.

Posted in Outdoors | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

More Rear-End Fun

Posted on October 23, 2010 by Brian Gallimore

Today was filled with lots of assembly, measurement, disassembly, re-shim, assembly, measure, repeat. I think I have everything within spec now, and my mesh pattern looks good (to me at least). Tomorrow, I’m going to add an extra 5 thousandths shim to each side of the carrier, and press the real bearings on, then install the real pinion bearings. If all goes well, the new bearings will be close to my setup bearings and I’ll be done with the carrier setup. Picture is of the grade 9 bolts used to hold the ring gear to the pinion. You have to be impressed with grade 9 bolts!

I made this ‘special tool’ today. 3/16″ thick angle. Using it plus the 3-foot cheater bar let me get the required 255 ft-lbs of torque on the pinion nut.

Posted in Automotive | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

What We Believe – Bill Whittle

Posted on October 21, 2010 by Brian Gallimore

I went over to PJTV to watch a new Bill Whittle video today, and he isn’t there anymore!  He is most of the reason I subscribe to that site, and now he is gone.  He does have a youtube channel, with these three videos that explain what he believes, and his values pretty much nail what the tea party core values are and explain it clearly and eloquently, which is typical of his work.  I’m not sure what is next for Bill, but I’ll be following him!

Posted in Politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Blog, Tumblr, Facebook Integration

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Brian Gallimore

A friend asked that I describe how my blog and tumblr and facebook are all tied together.  This diagram shows what is going on.

Some smart and generous people have already developed plugins that take care of the details for you.  I like having everything show up on facebook because that seems to be the best (largest) network of friends.  I use tumblr.com to share interesting websites, small text updates, quotes, words of wisdom, single pictures, videos, etc.  It is simple to use and flexible.  Tumblr allows you to ‘queue up’ posts and will publish them periodically throughout the day, so that your audience is not overloaded with lots of activity all at the same time.  The twitter connection is just for the few friends I have that only use twitter.

Another tool that I use is friendfeed.com.  It consolidates all my ‘online activity’ into a single feed.  In the past, I used this feed to post to facebook, but it seemed to frequently not work, so that lead me to change things up a bit and settled on how I’m using it now.

So this is my attempt to bring all my activity together and do my best to stay in touch with my friends.  Online social networking is still in its infancy, but it has changed my lifestyle, and I think it has the power to change (hopefully improve) how we humans interact, govern, trade, etc.

PSA:  If there is anyone who is still not using RSS feeds, please take a little time to inform yourself about what they are and how they are used.  They allow you to consolidate information from lots of different sources into a single place.  I use RSS feeds to monitor my friend’s blog websites, picture websites, news sites, and craigslist searches too.  Some of my previous posts about this are here and here.

Posted in Technology | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment