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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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Can You Come Home from Work, Now!?

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Brian Gallimore

Amber called me and asked if it would be possible to come home a little early.  She went on to explain this detailed account of haircut for Bryson, going to do a little shopping over here, getting the stroller out, slamming her head with the liftgate, gushing blood, feeling dizzy, not sure she can drive, etc.  She just wanted me to come home and look at it to see how bad it was.  I could see the cut was deep enough that it wasn’t going to heal on its own,  so I said, lets go get you some stitches.  I can’t help comparing this incident to something that would frequently happen to Amber’s dad!

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Posted in Family | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Bryson Pictures

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Brian Gallimore

Amber, Nana, and Bryson had lots of social events planned this weekend.  Here are some of the pictures I found on the camara!

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Pictures from the Texas State Fair

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Brian Gallimore

We ate our way through the state fair again this year.  I think we all had a good time!

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Hoodlums Texas Fall Gathering

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Brian Gallimore

Here are a few pictures from my trip this weekend.  Most are from the fire starting class.  I learned lots of good information from some very experienced folks.

Tool for making a Net

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