Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Fantasy Football – Week 4

The Seahawks were on a bye this week. Now they have 13 straight weeks to make their run at back to back Super Bowls. I actually didn’t get to watch any games this weekend, but I did peek in at our league a couple times. The big story in our league is Tim’s continued undefeated domination. Dad is having a pretty strong season and gets the next crack at Tim in Week 5.

I wrote a new app for our league. If it works, it will monitor the league and send emails to people who have players that are Out, Questionable, or on a bye week. (It does not notify for Probable players.) If someone on your team gets flagged by the tool, you’ll get an email on Thursday morning and/or Saturday evening. Don’t rely on this tool! This is the first week and I’m sure there are some bugs that I haven’t found. If you have comments about the tool, please share them. For example, I wasn’t sure if it should email for Questionable players. Also, if you want to opt out of the emails, let me know.

Now on to the weekly awards.

  • Highest Team Score
    • This Week:  Dad had 154.98.
    • Season: The previous record was in Week 1, Ben had 137.85
    • All-Time: In 2013, Tim had 195.50
  • Lowest Team Score
    • This Week: Logan had 69.53.
    • Season: In Week 3, Luke had 55.04
    • All-Time: In 2011, Luke had 47.01
  • Biggest Blowout
    • This Week:  Tim beat Austin by 37.95.
    • Season: In Week 3, Tim beat Luke by 64.34
    • All-Time: In 2010, Luke beat Andy by 113.02
  • Closest Win
    • This Week: Dad beat Luke by 17.53.
    • 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:  Eli Manning had 40.10 for Andy.
    • Season: In Week 3, Andrew Luck had 40.30 for Ben
    • All-Time: In 2013, Peyton Manning scored 60.28 for Andy
  • Longest Winning Streaks:
    • Active: Tim has a 4 game winning streak
    • Season: Tim has a 4 game winning streak
    • All-Time: In 2011, Micah had an 8 game winning streak
  • Longest Losing Streaks:
    • Active: Luke and Austin have a 2 game losing streak
    • Season: Dad, Logan, Luke, Austin and Andy had 2 game losing streaks
    • All-Time: In 2011, Kyle had a 14 game losing streak

Lopez Island

While Dad and Mom were visiting, we spent a couple nights in a rental house out on Lopez Island. It was the first time any of us had been there and I really enjoyed it. It’s one of the smaller islands, and while none of the islands are “busy”, this one was very quiet/local. Highlights included some nice, quiet beaches and a short hike out to a rocky bluff where we could watch a LOT of seals. Our best meal was at Southend General Store and Restaurant. It’s not a place you would drive by and expect to have good food, but I think we would all be happy to eat there again.

I took a bunch of Photosynths. There’s the view from the deck, the park with the seals, and one showing the inside of the house.

Thanks to Dad and Mom for renting the house and letting us crash the party!

NASCAR On YouTube

For quite a few years, NASCAR has had internet subscription models for watching and listening to the races. But now, for the first time, NASCAR surprised me by offering all of the remaining races this season for free on YouTube (after the race is over.) That’s an especially cool deal for me since some of these races are on ESPN which I don’t pay for anymore. You can check out the New Hampshire race from last week. It’s exciting to see more and more sports embracing the Internet.

I-405 Project

We live off of I-405 so we have been watching the huge construction project for the last couple years. The project page has all the details, but basically they are adding an HOT lane (carpoolers use it for free, single occupancy cars can pay to use it) and fixing the interchange where we live. Cars going from 405 to 522 had a hard time merging with cars going from 160th to 405.

I had thought that after the change, we wouldn’t be able to get onto 522 from 160th St anymore but it looks like they have accounted for that in the design. That’s great for us because it means we’ll be able to head out that way without driving through the traffic mess in Woodinville.

The people who bought those townhomes right along the new braided exit ramps are going to be treated to an enormous sound blocking wall right outside their balconies. They’re going from having a view that had about 3 or 4 rows of trees between them and 405 to seeing a concrete wall 10-20 feet away. Ouch. At least the real estate market is starting to recover around here so some of the decrease will be masked.

And since I mentioned real estate, here’s a semi-related factoid: the guy who bought our condo from us sold it a few months ago. He sold it for about 20% more than he bought it so he made a little money after all the fees and taxes. Our house has gone up about 3-4 times as much as that condo did though so I still think it was a good financial move. (And it was a great move for many other reasons.)

Ride Along

I’m continually amazed by people merging in front of big trucks and semis, especially as traffic is coming to a stop. I see it every day. Why do you think the truck is leaving that space? It’s so they don’t kill the people in front of them. I wonder if it would help to add a “big rig ride along” day as part of driver’s ed. Students would go ride with a professional driver for an hour or so. Drivers would learn a lot about how long it takes to stop a truck and what cars do that is dangerous around trucks. There are likely a lot of legal and liability issues with that idea, but if implemented correctly, it might improve our overall safety.

I thought a lot about this last weekend while driving around a 5300lb truck pulling 10,000 pounds of trailer and dirt. It’s the truck driver’s responsibility to be safe, but just in the short time I was driving that rig, there were at least a couple people who were saved from a messy death only because I guessed ahead of time that they were going to do something stupid.

Fantasy Football – Week 3

The rematch of last year’s Super Bowl proved to be quite a bit more exciting and suspenseful than the Super Bowl itself. Peyton Manning drove the Broncos down the field for a touch down and two point conversion to tie up the game with seconds remaining, but then Russell Wilson matched him and led the Seahawks to a game winning OT TD. Oh and by the way, Peyton Manning is making more than 22 times as much money as Russell Wilson this year.

In our league, all of the games except one ended on Sunday without needing Monday Night Football to finish them off. Logan and Andy broke their losing streaks, and Tim defeated Luke to be the only remaining undefeated team.

Bye weeks start this week! Combined with all the injuries to big names in the league this week, please pay close attention to your roster to avoid 0’s.

Now on to the weekly awards.

  • Highest Team Score
    • This Week:   Ben had 129.50
    • Season: In Week 1, Ben had 137.85
    • All-Time: In 2013, Tim had 195.50
  • Lowest Team Score
    • This Week:   Luke had 55.04
    • Season: The previous record was in Week 1, Jim had 82.00
    • All-Time: In 2011, Luke had 47.01
  • Biggest Blowout
    • This Week:  Tim beat Luke by 64.34
    • Season: The previous record was in Week 2, Jim beat Dad by 49.04
    • All-Time: In 2010, Luke beat Andy by 113.02
  • Closest Win
    • This Week:  Andy beat Dad by 7.82.
    • 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:  Andrew Luck had 40.30 for Ben
    • Season: The previous record was in Week 1, Matt Ryan scored 37.42 for Dad
    • All-Time: In 2013, Peyton Manning scored 60.28 for Andy
  • Longest Winning Streaks:
    • Active: Tim has a 3 game winning streak
    • Season: Tim has a 3 game winning streak
    • All-Time: In 2011, Micah had an 8 game winning streak
  • Longest Losing Streaks:
    • Active: Dad has  2 game losing streak
    • Season: Dad, Logan and Andy had 2 game losing streaks
    • All-Time: In 2011, Kyle had a 14 game losing streak

While Peyton played a pretty good game, he did give us some good “Manning Faces” to choose from. This one was near the end of the game after Kam Chancellor intercepted him and ran it back 52 yards to the Denver 35.

Evergreen Speedway

For Father’s Day of 2013, Tyla and I got Don a night at the track up in Monroe. We’ve all talked about seeing a race there so it seemed like a good gift idea. It was, but it took us over a year to actually get up there! It was a fun night though. We saw a bunch of smaller races and then the late model cars took to the bigger outside oval for their 100 lap race. I could definitely see going back and it will be fun to take Elijah there once he’s a little older. Tickets were under $20 so it’s a pretty good deal.

Outlets

You can never have too many outlets in your shop. I finally got fed up with running extension cords all over the place so while Dad was visiting, we got our electrician on. Three new outlets were added inside: one near the bottom of my shelves to power the air compressor and the battery tender for the motorcycle, one by the irrigation clock, one up in the rafters by the IR light and the security camera. We also added two more outside that are on the same timer circuit as my outdoor lights: one is near the ground and one is up under the eaves. Why do that? For Christmas lights of course! I’ll have easy places to plug them in and then I’ll be able to control them with our fancy timer switch from inside the house. Thanks for the help Dad!

Birthday Food Extravaganza

When Tyla asked what I wanted to eat for my birthday dinner, I said “BACON LOG!” It’s been a long time since we’ve made one and sitting outside in the sunshine by a smoker for a few hours seemed like a good way to spend the day. Don got in on the action too and decided to smoke a brisket. He really went all out marinating it for two days and then starting the smoker at midnight. He got up every couple hours to check on it. He also chopped up two grill baskets full of veggies. Thanks Don! While we had all that going, we also cooked up a new batch of hot sauce. This time we did it with all mango instead of including some papaya. Logan dubbed this one “Yellow Fever.” It came out delicious though Logan claims the Agent Orange recipe is better.

There was so much delicious food that day. Thank you to everyone for helping to put it together and for letting me fulfill my dream of making another bacon long!

Bixler 2

After about a year of flying cheapo RC planes made out of foam board from the dollar store, I feel like I’m ready to attempt my first “real” RC plane. A huge thanks goes to Tyla for buying me the Bixler 2 that I’ve had my eye on. It’s still a beginner plane, but it’s much more capable than what I’ve been flying. Plus, there is a big community built up around this plane of people who make modifications for flying FPV (First Person View) and other things like that. I’m looking forward to putting it together and tossing it in the air. Any bets about how long it will fly before it’s first crash?