Studio711.com – Ben Martens

2015 PNW WELS Softball Tournament

Every year, many of the WELS churches in our area get together for an all-day softball tournament. Our church has participated sporadically but this year we combined with Divine Peace in Renton to scrape together enough people for a team… barely. We had no practices and some of our team members didn’t arrive until we were taking the field for the first game. Nobody know what positions they were going to play and Pastor Herrmann ended up being the pitcher basically because he was the last person on the field, not because he had ever done it before. Amazingly, we played pretty well! We were winning the first game until our opponents had a big rally that we couldn’t stop and they won in the last inning. That team went on to lose in the championship. We won the second game and then lost the third which knocked us out of the tournament.

All in all, I’m surprised at how well we did, especially considering that some of the other bigger churches have teams that play together in regular leagues. And oh yeah, we only had 9 people instead of 10! It was also fun to play against ChrisH who is the principal over in Bremerton now. The last time we played on a field together was high school!

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benmartens September 11, 2015 Sports

Space Heater vs. Furnace

spaceheaterFall is around the corner and with that, the furnaces will be clicking back on. I never wrote about it, but when Elijah was born, we wanted to keep his room warmer than normal. It got a bit cold because of some old windows in his room. I thought it would be more efficient to put a space heater in his room rather than to turn the furnace up and heat the whole house.

WRONG.

That month our electric bill was about $70 more than normal while our gas bill only dropped $20. As soon as I saw that, I boxed the space heater back up and put it in the garage. (And yeah yeah yeah, space heaters in the babies room. I know I know…)

I keep an Excel sheet of all our utility expenses so I’m reminded of my dumb experiment every time I open that up and see the chart.

benmartens September 10, 2015 Commentary

Indiana Vacation

I use that word “vacation” lightly. It’s true that I wasn’t at my normal day job, but I spent the trip doing more physical labor each day than I normally do in a week (or a month!)

Dad and Mom already have a two car garage, but they are adding on to the end of it to have a nice shop work space and another garage bay to hold their tractors. It will be a huge win for them to keep their Allis Chalmers WD45 in the garage instead of under a tarp near the woods. Other than having the foundation poured, Dad is doing almost all of the work by himself. It’s a huge undertaking and this was a fun opportunity to make some memories with him.

Luke, Rachel and David were there for the first couple days. It was fun to see Elijah and David interacting together. They’re the only cousins they have and they rarely get to see each other. David is 7 years older than Elijah so Elijah was pretty excited to hang out with David. The reverse probably wasn’t always true!

Elijah was in tractor heaven. Mom and Dad have three tractors: the big orange Allis Chalmers, a John Deere lawn and garden tractor that they got in 1981 and a newer John Deere mower that they got recently from GrandpaH. On top of that, a neighbor stopped by with his big John Deere 3320 tractor with a bucket on the front. That one came in really handy for getting material up to the roof. Elijah had a ball riding ALL of them multiple times. It was part of his daily routine and now that we’re home, he still talks about it and he uses a blanket to cover his tractors just like my Dad puts a tarp over some of his tractors.

Dad, Luke and I made great progress on the project. When I arrived, there was no roof. When I left, we had started the shingles. Dad and I both thought we’d have been farther along than that, but being novices meant that we did a lot of things twice. We kept joking that when we build the next garage, things will go a lot faster.

It was a great week. The weather mostly cooperated and nobody got hurt. Mom and Dad have continued the shingling work and are probably going to be done by the time you read this. That will be a huge step in the project. Next up will be finishing off the front wall and getting the windows and doors in. If Dad can get the building wrapped and the siding up before winter, that would be a huge win, but he’s just taking it as it comes. There’s a lot to learn along the way!

I set up the GoPro every single day and ran it all day long. I’ll do another post about how to handle these super long timelapses, but for now you can just enjoy the results.

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benmartens September 9, 2015 Family, Timelapse, Travel

Washington Sign

Don took on a big project this summer and replaced his fence. I took some boards that were in reasonably good shape thinking I would make something out them. They sat in the garage for a while before I decided to glue them up into a panel. I trimmed off the rotten ends. Then I put them on my hold down jig and ran them through the table saw to trim off 1/4″ on one side. Once I had that nice straight edge, I could flip them over and run them against the fence to trim off 1/4″ on the other side. With those nice clean edges, I was able to put glue on them and clamp them together.

So then I had a big panel… and I still didn’t know what to do with it. I finally decided to cut out the shape of Washington state. I messed around with blowing up a picture and trying to print it out on a tiled series of paper sheets but gave up and just printed an 8.5×11. Then I drew a grid over the picture, drew a bigger grid in chalk on the panel and I drew the shape by hand.

I was going to use my shiny new bandsaw to cut out the shape, but once I realized how dirty all those boards were, I decided I didn’t really want to dull my brand new blade. So I did it with my little handheld jigsaw instead. I did use the bandsaw to trim a 1×4″ sheet of plywood to put on the back of the panel just to give it some extra strength in case those edge glue ups don’t hold over time.

It was a fun project because I didn’t know what I was going to end up with and I’m going to give it to Don and Nancy as a gift.

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benmartens September 8, 2015 Maker, Woodworking

NFL PreSeason

preseason-football-rabid-fans-nfl-sports-ecards-someecardsYay! The NFL Preseason is over! It frustrates me every year. People get so worked up about the games and who wins and loses. It doesn’t matter. It’s glorified practice and a way to trim down the rosters. I’d love to see the preseason completely removed or at least cut down to a single game. There’s no point in it except for the NFL to make money (which is why it will continue forever or until the players go on strike because of it.)

However, every time I get frustrated about the preseason, I remember that one time when Dad took me to see a preseason NBA game between the Bulls and the Supersonics. They were playing in town at Notre Dame and I actually got to see Michael Jordan and Shawn Kemp playing each other on the same court. It was a highlight of my childhood.

So in that sense, I guess the preseason is good. Ticket prices are a little lower (though they’re still $75/game for the cheap Seahawks tickets) and maybe it gives a different set of fans the opportunity to see some of their heroes play, if only for a few minutes of the game.

benmartens September 7, 2015 Sports

Giving Feedback To Microsoft

sendfeedbackWe all find things that we like or dislike (usually the latter) when we’re using applications or websites. The good news, is that more and more apps (especially from Microsoft) are coming with easy ways to give feedback. It’s generally in the upper right hand corner and it often looks like a Smiley Face. You might also find a button or a menu option called something like “Give Feedback”. Wherever you find it, I encourage you to use it. As an employee on a team that makes a product with easy user feedback options, I can tell you that one report from a user carries a LOT more weight than me giving feedback to my own team. We love to hear from you and it’s one of the most important signals we have for improving our products. (And if you throw in a positive note every once in a while, that’s appreciated too!)

benmartens September 4, 2015 Commentary

Microphone Light

arduinomiclightA few months ago, I bought new wireless microphones for church. They’re simple but they work well. The old ones were dying so it’s nice to have some that work well. The only downside is that the old ones had a nice flip switch on the top so you could tell by feeling the box whether the mic was on or off. These new mics have a button that you press once to turn on and another to turn off. Pastor turns his mic on and off throughout the service and it’s really easy to get mixed around with the on/off state.

After thinking about this for quite a while, I decided I could turn this into a project. There is a light on the mic receiver up in the balcony that goes on when his mic is on. I taped a light sensor on top of that and ran that to one of the analog input pins on an Arduino. If the light is off (meaning his mic is off), the Arduino sends a signal to a relay to let power flow to a light bulb. The bulb is red so if Pastor sees a red light, he knows his mic is off. I’ve only been testing it for a couple Sundays but so far, it works great!

This was the first time that I’ve ordered from AdaFruit.com but I was really impressed. Each product page has lots of examples and documentation to get you going. I also really liked their “Power Tail 2” product. It has all the relay stuff built into a short extension cord so you can skip all of those pieces. It’s way more expensive than doing it yourself, but “it just works.” And obviously I didn’t need an Arduino to do this simple logic, but again, it was easier.

This was a fun project to research and build. I love these Arduino projects, but I don’t have a lot projects on my list that require one.

benmartens September 3, 2015 Projects

Giving Your Best

quality-timeWe have a lot of interactions during the day whether it’s with family, coworkers, cashiers, online people, etc. They all demand some level of civility and good behavior. But over the course of a week, who gets the best you have to offer? I wish I could remember where I first heard this, but whoever said it, it stuck in my mind. Their point was that instead of letting go and giving our spouse (or family, etc) the rest of whatever we have to give that day, we should be giving them our best. We might rationalize it by saying, “My spouse knows me better than anyone else so he/she knows I don’t really mean it when I let me bad mood run wild.” But flip that over… if you have a limited amount of good behavior to dish out, shouldn’t you give it to the people you love the most? Save your best for your spouse.

Of course that’s easier said than done. We usually see our spouse at the end of the day when we’re really tired and fed up with all the other interactions we had during the day. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not a great idea.

I suppose ideally we’d have infinite good behavior to dish out to everyone we see, but even if you are nice to everyone, you can’t reasonably go the extra mile for everyone. Save that extra effort for the ones you love the most! Don’t use that close relationship to dump them with the leftovers of your day.

UPDATE: I wrote this before hearing Pastor’s sermon last Sunday, but it fit this post very well. One key tagline from his sermon was “You’d die for your spouse, but do you live for them?”

benmartens September 2, 2015 Family

Edmonds Marina Beach Park

Tyla and Elijah found Edmonds Marina Beach Park and they were both very excited about it. Elijah particularly loved it because the park features:

  1. Train tracks that run by the park
  2. A nice playground
  3. A beach
  4. Ferries
  5. Fork lifts moving boats around

The fork lifts probably trumped all the rest. They store quite a few boats on racks on land and then forklifts put them in the water. It’s quite a process and Elijah can watch them for a long time without getting bored.

One Saturday a few weeks ago, I went along with them to check out the park. I think it’s going to be a regular spot for us. The park really is beautiful and there are a lot of things for Elijah to enjoy.

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benmartens September 1, 2015 Family, Travel

Comcast Bill

comcasticI’ve been a Comcast customer for the last 13 years, and honestly I complain, but for the past few years, the internet and TV connections have been almost rock solid. That’s good. The price increases on the other hand, are not.

In December of 2013, we dropped to a lower TV package and we saved $40/month with no contract*. In the 20 months since then, our price went up 15% for exactly the same service. Give me a break.

I complained about it on Twitter and got a reply from the @ComcastCares service account. I’ve talked to them before without much luck, but this time it was great. They dropped our bill to ~$55/month without changing our service or requiring a contract. That’s awesome! I hate that their business model requires good customers to whine to get lower prices, but whatever.

* Why is no contract important to me? I feel like we’re at the tail end of having any TV package at all. We only record about a dozen series per year and they’re all available online either for free or for purchase. If I didn’t host football parties here, I think I would have already dropped cable TV. But when we have all those people over to watch a game, Comcast is still the most reliable way for me to display it. We can’t get over the air because of all the hills/trees, and the online streaming options aren’t stable enough yet.

benmartens August 31, 2015 Commentary