Search My Notes

There are many pages of posts on many subjects, and only a few show on this main page. Search for the subjects that you are interested in.

Topics covered in here tend toward Gadgetry, Weapons, Books, Tools, and a lot of other things that have captured my interest.

Please note the "Linked From Here" tab on the results, which lists search results from sites I have linked to in my posts.

Freecycle Flathead


Freecycle Flathead is the place to recycle your unwanted items. Throwing something away? STOP!! If you live in the Kalispell (Flathead Valley) area, please offer your reusable items to other group members. Keep it out of landfill by recycling it.

If you need or want something, ask -- someone on the local Freecycle might have one to give away. There are 1500+ members in the Flathead Freecycle community who are looking for things or offering things for free, and they put up twenty to thirty posts per day.

The only catch is that you must have a Yahoo account and join the group, which is hosted by Yahoo. This is a free service, and if you use Yahoo for email, you already have a Yahoo account and all you have to do is join the Freecycle Flathead group.

There are a few rules and restrictions:
1.KEEP IT FREE, LEGAL & APPROPRIATE FOR ALL AGES. This means, for example,
No Pornography,
No Alcohol,
No Tobacco,
No Drugs (of any kind, including all medicines, vitamins, creams, etc.),
No Copies of copyrighted material only originals (video tapes, cassettes,DVD and CDs)
No Firearms or other weapons.

2.SUBJECT LINE OF YOUR POSTS. Use these phrases to make it easy for others to delete or view.
  • OFFER: Posting an OFFER--When posting an OFFER, three things should be included in the subject line: OFFER, the item, and the location of the item. For example, if I were to offer a table lamp, the subject should read: OFFER table lamp Southside or OFFER table lamp Near Creston. This gives everyone enough information to know how far they must travel BEFORE they request the item. You may provide a brief description of the item in the body of the post. These items should be in your control if you are posting the offer.
  • TAKEN: Posting TAKEN--This post should be made once an item you have offered has been picked up or when you have a long enough list of responses to have plenty of back ups. Do not post an item as being taken with the thought that you will repost if something falls through. This only fills up the board and in boxes. The TAKEN post should not be made by anyone other than the original poster.
  • WANTED: thingamajig, any condition. (Your Location Optional) example, if I were looking for a table lamp, my post would read: WANT, table lamp, Creston. This would be a clear indication that I want a table lamp and live in. Reasons for the want should not be included. Everyone is experiencing their own form of hardship during these trying times. If someone has the item for which you are looking and are willing to part with it, it will not matter that you lost your job, your car, your house, and your dog and that all you want is a light to read the one book you were able to keep.[Please use this post sparingly and don't offer to pay. Also do not ask for a blanket item, like painting supplies, bedroom furniture, kitchen ware. You can ask for a pot or pan, a bed or a dresser, but you may not ask for a group of items. Please limit your post to three different items. This group is not set up as a wish list.
  • RECEIVED--This post should be used to let everyone know that you have received the item you requested through a WANT post. It is NOT to be used to let everyone know that you received an item that was posted as an OFFER.
  • ADMIN: (Used by Owners and Mods)
(Me) (Home)

Contraptor: For Building your Sketchup Designs


Contraptor is another Erector Set, a means of turning your Sketchup plans into reality, a construction set for experimental personal fabrication, desktop manufacturing, prototyping and bootstrapping. Various Cartesian robots can be quickly assembled from Contraptor and used as a platform for projects such as XY plotter, mini CNC machine, 3D printer etc.

Contraptor is an ongoing project under development. One of the original project goals is manufacturability at home with only basic tools, using inexpensive materials and parts readily available in hardware stores and online, with cost in the range of $400 and without the need for a custom-manufactured kit. In addition to DIY plans, we're also working on Shopbot-able kits that can be manufactured in small quantities by anyone willing, from open source drawings.

You can create things with Contraptor without having the actual set. 3D models of Contraptor components are hosted on Google 3D warehouse and can be downloaded directly into Sketchup - a free 3D modeler that is gaining popularity because it is very intuitive and easy to use. If you prefer other 3D apps, DXF exports of "official" components are hosted on Thingiverse, a cool new site for sharing hardware designs.

Contraptor is mechanically compatible with 1" T-slot (such as 80/20 Fractional 10 profiles), pegboard, 1" grid beam (such as commercially available perforated steel tube), and likely other things with dimensions standartized in 1" grid.

(Me) (Home)

Sketchup: EZ 3D Drawing

Sketchup is the opposite of CAD--- Computer Aided Design--- which is detail-driven. SketchUp gives you total flexibility messing with the FINAL look of something. You work directly with the vision you have, learn what's wrong or right with it, and keep trying variations or starting down new tracks.

Google SketchUp is software that you can use to create 3D models of anythinsg you like. Most people get rolling with SketchUp in just a few minutes. Dozens of video tutorials, an extensive Help Center and a worldwide user community mean that anyone who wants to make 3D models with SketchUp, can. Redecorate your living room. Design a new piece of furniture. Model your city for Google Earth. Create a skatepark for your hometown, then export an animation and share it onThere's no limit to what you can create with SketchUp. You can build models from scratch, or you can download what you need. People all over the world share what they've made on the Google 3D Warehouse. It's a huge, searchable repository of models, and it's free.

(Me) (Home)

Ruger Forum: Everything Ruger


This is a Ruger Firearms enthusiast's forum, but it is in no way affiliated with, nor does it represent Sturm Ruger & Company Inc. of Southport, CT.

It is quite active (around a thousand visitors a day) and seems to be the place to go to discuss anything Ruger. The site also has a classified section for buying, selling and trading firearms and accessories
, and forums on handloading, concealed carry, and politics. With an average attendance of close to a thousand visitors a day, there are a lot of posts.

(Me) (Home)

HeadWaters


Headwaters News is the one source that covers the top important news for the Rockies. It is a project of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West at The University of Montana.

  • We provide a daily snapshot of news and opinion in the Rocky Mountain region of North America, giving the changing mountain West a tool to understand itself and a platform for the exchange of ideas. We welcome your comments.
(Me) (Home)

Clicker: Internet TV Guide

Clicker is the complete guide to Internet Television. Our mission is to make it simple for you to find the right show, right now. As massive amounts of programming move online, consumers are entering a world of infinite choices, all on-demand. Great! Finding the show you want to watch? Painful. Thousands of episodes from thousands of shows are housed on thousands of different sites, mixed among billions of random clips and videos.

What's nice about Clicker is that it only offers full episodes of content, so you won't get dozens of hits that lead to 15 second clips. Clicker catalogs content from both free and paid sources, such as Netflix Instant Streaming and Amazon Video-on-Demand, but it marks paid content clearly so you can skip over it if you wish. You can set up Playlists, and Clicker also offers some social features, such as Trends and connecting your Clicker account to your Facebook account.

Clicker catalogs all broadcast programming online, along with TV-quality Web originals, from these silos and delivers them in one seamless, organized experience so you can easily discover what's available to watch (and what isn't) online, where to watch it, and what's worth watching.

  • Action & Adventure

  • Animation

  • Arts

  • Business & Finance

  • Comedy

  • Documentary

  • Drama

  • Education

  • Events & Specials

  • Food & Cooking

  • Health & Lifestyle

  • How To

  • Kids

  • Live Programming

  • Mystery & Suspense

  • News & Information

  • Reality & Game Shows

  • Science & Environment

  • Sci-Fi & Fantasy

  • Sports

  • Talk & Interview

  • Technology & Gaming

  • Travel

  • (Me) (Home)

    Protecting our Heritage


    If you like to hunt and fish or just be in the outdoors, you owe a lot to the Montana Wildlife Federation.

    It is an organization of conservation minded people who work to protect and enhance Montana's public wildlife, lands and land access, waters, and fair chase hunting and fishing heritage. It has been active for over seventy years.

    With more than 7,000 members and 22 affiliate clubs, Montana Wildlife Federation monitors governmental, commercial, industrial and private activities that affect our natural resources, hunting, and fishing. As the leading Montana advocacy organization for sportsmen and sportswomen, it conducts conservation, wildlife, and public resources education programs and symposiums, and engage with state agencies and the Montana legislature. The membership is dedicated to strong conservation principles and conservation policies that perpetuate wildlife, and develop lasting environmental safeguards for wildlife habitat.

    It is worth joining.

    (Me) (Home)

    State of Montana Online Services

    Just in case you didn't know about some of the services your dollars pay for!

    Family, Health and Safety

      Labor and Employment

    • File an Unemployment Claim

      This service allows you to file your unemployment insurance claim, reactivate your claim, file your biweekly request for payment, request direct deposit of your unemployment benefits, review information about your claim, or view and print your 1099-G.

      Driver and Vehicle Services

    • Search for Traffic Incidents

      Search for information about traffic incidents that occurred within the past 10 days and were reported by the Montana Highway Patrol.

    • Renew your Vehicle Registration (License Plate Tags) Service

      Renew the registration for any type of vehicle, provided the vehicle is eligible for renewal and the transaction doesn't require any additional paperwork.

    • Find your Driving Record

      If you have a current Montana driver license, you may search for your driving record.

    • Find a Vehicle Record

      Search for information about vehicles registered in Montana or perform a vehicle title and registration search.

    • Make a Driver Licensing Appointment

      Schedule an appointment for most driver licensing services at the following exam stations: Billings, Bozeman, Columbus, Hardin, Helena, Red Lodge and Townsend.



    (Me) (Home)

    Free Classics

    Planet Ebook has over sixty free classic books in PDF format and its sister site, Planet PDF, lists dozens more. If you want to reread some of the stuff you stumbled through in school or want to widen your reading interests, these ebooks are a good way to go.

    (Me) (Home)

    Project Valour-IT: Go there. Donate. Now!


    Project Valour-IT

    In memory of SFC William V. Ziegenfuss

    It was the first time I felt whole since I’d woken up wounded in Landstuhl.
    –Major Charles "Chuck" Ziegenfuss, on using a voice-controlled laptop

    Every cent raised for Project Valour-IT goes directly to the purchase and shipment of laptops and other technology for severely wounded service members. As of October 2009, Valour-IT has distributed over 4100 laptops to severely wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines across the country, and is now expanding its mission to include other technology that supports physical and psychological recovery.

    Valour-IT accepts donations in any amount to support our mission, but also offers a sponsorship option for laptops. An individual or organization may sponsor a wounded soldier by completely funding the cost of a laptop and continuing to provide that soldier with personal support and encouragement throughout recovery. This has proved to be an excellent project for churches, groups of coworkers or friends, and members of community organizations such Boy Scouts.

    Originally Valour-IT provided the voice-controlled software that accompanies the laptops, but now works closely with the Department of Defense Computer/electronic Accommodations Program (CAP): CAP supplies the adaptive software and Valour-IT provides the laptop. In addition, DoD caseworkers serve as Valour-IT’s “eyes and ears” at several medical centers, identifying patients in need of laptops and other technological support for their recovery. Wounded military personnel can also directly request a laptop through the sign-up form or through the Valour-IT/Soldiers' Angels representatives at the following medical centers, and other veterans health care facilities across the country.
    ---------------

    Soldiers' Angels is a volunteer-led 501(c)(3) non-profit organization providing aid and comfort to the men and women of the United States Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and their families. Founded by the mother of two American soldiers, we are an international, volunteer-led organization supporting America's men and women in uniform. With over 30 different teams and projects, our nearly 200,000 volunteers assist veterans, wounded and deployed personnel and their families in a variety of unique and effective ways.

    Board of Trustees

    (Me) (Home)