Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Miss Kay’s Banana Pudding

If you watch Duck Dynasty, you know that Miss Kay is a great cook. We tried her banana pudding recipe a while back and it has become a staple for special family occasions. Here’s the recipe. I changed it to skip the double boiler and it works fine, but if you really want the original you can find it here.

Ingredients

  • 2 sticks of butter
  • 2 cups of sugar
  • 1 teaspoon of salt
  • ¾ cup of all-purpose flour
  • 1 12 oz. can of evaporated milk
  • ¾ cup of milk
  • 6 egg yolks
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 bag vanilla wafers and crumbled
  • 3-4 bananas, sliced

Directions

  1. Slowly melt the butter and then add the sugar, salt, flour, evaporated milk and regular milk. Stir with a whisk.
  2. Temper egg yolks (add some mixture to the eggs to avoid them scrambling.) Add the egg yolks to the mixture, constantly stirring until thick. Add the vanilla extract.
  3. Place the crumbled vanilla wafers and bananas into a 9" x 13" Pyrex dish. Then pour in mixture.
  4. Chill before serving.

Warning, it’s super sweet and it kind of sneaks up on you so don’t eat too much in one sitting or you’ll regret it!

DIY Irrigation Winterization

Now that we have an irrigation system, I have one more chore on the fall list: winterization. All the water needs to be blown out of the lines because I sure don’t want to dig them up again! You can pay a company $50-70 to come with a huge generator and blow out all your lines in a matter of minutes. Or you can be a cheapskate like me and do it yourself. I’ll caveat this by saying there a lot of different ways to accomplish this. What you see below is how I chose to do it.

The first piece of the puzzle is an air compressor. The bigger the tank, the better you’ll be. I have an 8 gallon one which is pretty small but worked ok for my yard.

The next challenge was hooking the air compressor up to the irrigation system. When we put it in, Tim installed a quick coupler valve. I went to McClendon’s and built the contraption in the photo below. It’s the quick coupler connector, a ball valve, a reducer and then the quick connect for the air compressor. Shove that into the valve, hook up the air compressor and you’re ready to go.

I used a combination of manually opening the valves and using the control clock. The clock kept me drier but the valve box let me be closer to the action to see when I was done. The basic idea is that you pump air into the lines, open up one zone, and let it blow until all the water is gone. The ball valve on the coupler keeps you from getting water pushed back into the air compressor after the first few blows.

Some zones only took a tank or two while others took three or four. This is a two beer job so get comfortable. You don’t want to rush it and leave water in the lines.

Free Money At Safeway

Around this time of year, it literally pays to watch the gift card section of Safeway. They regularly have deals for 2-3x gas reward points when you buy gift cards. That’s a reasonably good deal, but until 12/9 they have an even better one: $10 off your next visit when you buy $100 in gift cards.

Amazon is included in the list and since we normally spend a lot of money there anyway, I threw a $100 Amazon gift card into my cart. Including the extra gas rewards, that means I just got ~$12 in free money. Sure it’s not a lot, but for almost zero effort, it’s worth it. All I had to do was come home and type the code into my Amazon account. Easy!

I didn’t see any limit to the number of times you can do this.

DIY Dent Removal

We were carrying a box through the garage and accidentally dropped one on the Subaru. Bummer! It’s not a huge deal on an 8 year old car with lots of other dents and scratches, but since I’m hoping to trade it in some day, I thought it would be nice to try and fix it, but I wasn’t willing to pay a shop to do it.

Some quick searching around online revealed that most of the “as seen on TV” dent remover kits are really just hot glue and some pressure. So I headed to the garage, chopped a spare 3/4” dowel rod into a few short pieces, and ran a screw through them to give me something to grip.

I started with an old dent on the passenger side door made someone’s by an errant golf shot. I cleaned the area, hot glued the dowel to the car and then waited about 5 minutes. When I pulled on it, it came off very quickly leaving most of the glue on the car. So I heated up the glue on the car with a heat gun and added a little fresh hot glue too. I waited five more minutes and this second attempt stuck MUCH better. The dowel eventually popped off under my pulling but not before removing most of the dent. It was enough success to try it on the front fender.

The same process repeated itself with the first attempt pulling off too easily. The second attempt stuck so well that I decided I’d gotten it as good as I could get it and the dowel never popped off. I was concerned about pulling any harder on the sheet metal because it was starting to pull up from the headlight area and I didn’t want to break anything. After using the heat gun to melt the glue and get the dowel off, I used the heat gun and Goo Gone to remove the rest of the hot glue.

The pictures might not show it perfectly, but it greatly reduced the size of the dent. It’s FAR from perfect. There’s still a dent though it’s probably 70-80% smaller and there are still scratches in the paint, but it’s good enough now that I’m going to leave it alone.

If I had a nicer vehicle, I wouldn’t try this, but for an older beater, why not?

Fantasy Football – Week 13

Seahawks! Two excellent defensive games in a row with enough offense to win. I’ll take it. The road doesn’t get any easier but these last two wins were critical and they now control their own destiny. This weekend they will be on the road in Philly. I’ve been making big points off the Philly defense this season so we’ll see how the “meh” Seahawks offense stacks up.

In our league, we had another very high-scoring week. Tim has locked in a playoff spot, but everything else is up for grabs. You couldn’t script this final week much better. There are four teams who basically can win and make it into the playoffs but are in jeopardy if they lose and none of them play against each other. Every game in our league is critical for determining the playoffs! Austin, Jim, Logan and I all still have a pretty equal chance to grab the final three spots. Since none of us play each other, there are a lot of possibilities. Here’s how it works out:

  • Ben – Win and I’m in. Lose and I need one of the other guys to lose OR I need to have more total points than one of them (unlikely but possible)
  • Austin, Jim and Logan – If only two of these guys win, those two will make it. If all three win, one of them needs me to lose so they all make it if they have more points than me. Everyone except Logan is pretty much a lock for winning the total points tiebreaker.

Austin and Jim look pretty good because of their high point totals. The last playoff spot is definitely up for grabs between Logan and me, and I have a slight edge since I don’t need the tiebreaker if I win this week. But then again, I have a much tougher game ahead of me than Logan does. It’s too close to call… just the way I like it!

The power rankings keep Austin on top while Jim and I swapped places between second and fifth. This aligns with what I’ve been saying for weeks: watch out for Austin. He started slow but since week 5 he has been averaging more than 10 points more than anyone else in the league! This week he could have had over 180 points if he started his optimal roster.

  1. Austin (–)
  2. Ben ( 3)
  3. Logan  (–)
  4. Tim (–)

Now on to the weekly awards.

  • Highest Team Score
    • This Week: I had 149.41
    • Season: In week 10, Tim had 184.06
    • All-Time: In 2013, Tim had 195.50
  • Lowest Team Score
    • This Week: Jim had 95.37
    • Season: In Week 3, Luke had 55.04
    • All-Time: In 2011, Luke had 47.01
  • Biggest Blowout
    • This Week: I beat Dad by 39.57 on his birthday. How’s that for a present?
    • Season: In week 8, Austin beat Dad by 103.48
    • All-Time: In 2010, Luke beat Andy by 113.02
  • Closest Win
    • This Week: Austin beat Andy by 19.12
    • Season: In Week 2, Austin beat Ben by 1.7
    • All-Time: In 2012, Jim beat Ben by 0.12
  • Highest Scoring Player
    • This Week:  Ryan Fitzpatrick had 51.32 as a free agent! He’s only owned in 8% of Yahoo fantasy leagues.
    • Season: In Week 8, Ben Roethlisberger had 56.78 for Dad
    • All-Time: In 2013, Peyton Manning scored 60.28 for Andy
  • Longest Winning Streaks:
    • Active: Ben has a 5 game winning streak.
    • Season: Jim, Tim and Ben had a 5 game winning streak
    • All-Time: In 2011, Micah had an 8 game winning streak
  • Longest Losing Streaks:
    • Active: Andy has a 3 game losing streaks
    • Season: Dad, Andy and Luke had 4 game losing streaks
    • All-Time: In 2011, Kyle had a 14 game losing streak

Supporting The Site

This is a personal blog and it’s almost entirely a hobby so it makes sense that I never ask for donations or show banner ads. That being said, it’s not free. I added an Amazon.com link to the right hand side of the page. If you are planning to buy something at Amazon, consider clicking that link to start your browsing session. I’ll get a small portion of the sale for referring you. Thanks!

Bad Motherboard

I wrote previously about my two failed hard drives. The story, unfortunately, didn’t end there. A few days later, I started getting some goofy boot up behaviors that pointed to a bad BIOS. It would get stuck at “Loading operating system.” This was a transient thing that I had seen before but now it was consistent. I tried to update the BIOS and that said it succeeded but after that it never got past the logo screen for the motherboard. Oops. I tried pulling the CMOS battery to reset the BIOS but nothing I tried got me past that logo. I decided it was time to replace the motherboard even though it was only four years old.

The CPU was an LGA1156 socket and unfortunately they don’t make motherboards for that anymore. I had to buy a new CPU too. I really didn’t need any additional power in that server box, but I did upgrade a little. Here’s what I got:

  • MSI Z87-G41 PC Mate LGA1150 Motherboard $90 after rebate
  • Intel Core i5-4590 $179

The swap went pretty quickly and easily with no problems. It booted right up and I didn’t have to reinstall Windows or anything. I did have to reactivate it but a quick phone to a robot call took care of that.

I kind of suspect that the second hard drive failure was more of a motherboard failure than a drive failure. I’ll run some thorough SpinRite tests on it before putting it to use again.

P.S. Happy Birthday Dad!

Windows Phone 8.1

Verizon still hasn’t released an update for the HTC 8x to push it to Windows Phone 8.1 that came out earlier this summer. The latest promise was October but that obviously still hasn’t happened. The Microsoft Band only works with 8.1 and above (and Android and iOS too) so I decided to take the plunge and manually update my phone. It’s not supported, voids your warranty, etc so do this at your own risk. I chose to update my phone but didn’t touch Tyla’s. Thankfully it has worked ok. This was my first real experience with with 8.1 so here are my thoughts after a couple weeks:

  • Cortana is great! You can ask her anything and she’ll either search for the results or perform the action. One of my favorite capabilities is saying something like “Next time I’m at Safeway, remind me to buy bread.” It sets a reminder coupled with my GPS location. Super helpful!
  • There’s now a notification center similar to what Android and iOS have. This feels like a “me too” feature that isn’t needed. The brilliance of Windows Phone is that you have live tiles giving you all the information you need at a glance. Now I have that but I also have this notification center giving me the same information in a less convenient fashion. It probably feels more comfortable for people switching to the platform, but I wish I could just turn it off. I should probably look into that more.
  • In addition to the normal keyboard, you can also now use the “Word Flow” keyboard. This is like Swift Key for Android. You just drag your finger across the keyboard and it figures out what you’re trying to type. Pretty cool and really useful when your hands are busy or you aren’t looking at your screen the whole time.
  • One big downgrade in my book is the loss of the “hubs.” They are technically still there but all the awesomeness about them is gone. For instance, I used to click on the “Me” tile and be able to make an update that went out to both Twitter and Facebook. Now I need an app for that. I used to be able to click on a tile for another contact and see their Facebook and Twitter updates without opening anything else. Now I need apps for that. Boo. This was one of the things that made Windows Phone more awesome than Android and iOS. Now we’ve lost that differentiator.

There are lots of other tweaks and changes and overall I’d call it a big win. It feels a tad sluggish on my phone but my hardware is over two years old now so that’s not terrible. We should be up for some new phones soon. More on that later but I’m thinking I might drop Verizon after being a customer for 14 years and switch to AT&T who appears to have much more love for the Windows Phone platform. Plus, AT&T doesn’t track you anymore.

Thankful

Thanksgiving seems like a good time to give an update on our Little Man who isn’t so little anymore. Elijah is now 17 months old. When he’s awake, he’s jabbering almost non-stop. We can’t understand 99% of what he’s saying but that doesn’t deter him. We can pick out a few words like woof, car, quack, daddy, etc. His best one is probably “thank you.” He’s really gotten the hang of this and even says it at the appropriate times. For example, if you take him to the grocery store, he says thank you every time the bagger puts a bag in our cart.

He walks quite fast now and can almost keep up a normal/slow adult pace for brief periods. He stops not because he gets tired, but because there are so many interesting things to see. Every plane that crossed the sky requires him to stop and point. We live in the normal landing pattern for SeaTac so this happens every few minutes.

He still hasn’t slept through the night and only has slept for more than 4 hours straight a couple times in his life. We go through periods where he wakes up between 5 and 5:30. Nighttime has probably been the toughest part of being a parent for me. I’m awesome at sleeping so I don’t know who he inherited this from.

Coming home is a treat for me as Elijah now recognizes the sound of the garage door and usually comes  running to the door to great me with a big smile! I love you, Little Man! And I love you too, Tyla. We’re raising an awesome kid!

Fantasy Football – Week 12

The Seahawks defense finally looked good for a solid 60 minutes. And look what happened… a victory against a tough opponent! The secondary is back and healthy and it’s a good start to a grueling end to their season. Just making the playoffs is going to take some luck so let’s start with that goal and see where they go.

We had another high scoring week in our league (third highest of the season). Tim lost again but remains on top which speaks to his big league. You’ll see that he takes a big hit in the power rankings though. Only two weeks left to settle the playoff spots and nobody has clinched one yet. I’d say that Tim and Jim are looking pretty solid in their chances for a playoff spot though. I think Andy and Dad (and maybe Luke) are pretty much eliminated, but the rest of us will have to duke it out for the final two spots. If I had to bet money, I’d take these four guys that are in the Week 12 Power Rankings:

  1. Austin ( 4)
  2. Jim (–)
  3. Logan  (–)
  4. Tim ( 3)

Now on to the weekly awards.

  • Highest Team Score
    • This Week: Austin had 162.93
    • Season: In week 10, Tim had 184.06
    • All-Time: In 2013, Tim had 195.50
  • Lowest Team Score
    • This Week: Tim had 95.42
    • Season: In Week 3, Luke had 55.04
    • All-Time: In 2011, Luke had 47.01
  • Biggest Blowout
    • This Week: Austin beat Jim by 39.94
    • Season: In week 8, Austin beat Dad by 103.48
    • All-Time: In 2010, Luke beat Andy by 113.02
  • Closest Win
    • This Week: Ben beat Luke by 12.59
    • Season: In Week 2, Austin beat Ben by 1.7
    • All-Time: In 2012, Jim beat Ben by 0.12
  • Highest Scoring Player
    • This Week:  Peyton Manning had 36.08 for Luke
    • Season: In Week 8, Ben Roethlisberger had 56.78 for Dad
    • All-Time: In 2013, Peyton Manning scored 60.28 for Andy
  • Longest Winning Streaks:
    • Active: Ben has a 4 game winning streak.
    • Season: Jim and Tim had a 5 game winning streak
    • All-Time: In 2011, Micah had an 8 game winning streak
  • Longest Losing Streaks:
    • Active: Andy and Tim have 2 game losing streaks
    • Season: Dad, Andy and Luke had 4 game losing streaks
    • All-Time: In 2011, Kyle had a 14 game losing streak

And finally, as we near the playoffs, let’s look back at the previous list of winners:

2007: Jim
2008: Ben
2009: Luke
2010: Luke
2011: Andy
2012: Ben
2013: Logan