Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Remote Control Christmas Lights

Every Christmas, we set up a tree and the Christmas village. Turning these on and off as we enter and leave the house can get a bit tedious, so this year I introduced a little technology to the picture. Enter the Belkin remote controlled power strip! Our tree and village are plugged into this power strip and then the remote is left near the door. The ease of use means that we turn it on more and get more enjoyment out of the decorations. I picked this up at Home Depot but it’s also available at Amazon via the link above.

benmartens December 5, 2013 Commentary

Fantasy Football – Week 13

I’m sure there were some other good games this week, but I thoroughly enjoyed the Seahawks game on Monday night. They made a big statement about their chances of making it to the big game this year. There’s a lot of work to do, but it would feel great to have home field advantage. The 12th Man regained their title as the loudest NFL crowd. Kansas City briefly took that title from them earlier this season. They can keep yelling a bit longer since the Saints plane broke down last night forcing them to spend an extra night in Seattle.

I had my own personal dilemma as I decided to bench Drew Brees and start Cam Newton instead. That ended up being a good move but I felt like I was turning my back on my Purdue roots and embracing Seattle instead. Maybe I have, at least when they’re facing each other.

What’s your prediction for the Super Bowl? Seahawks vs Broncos?

Our league remained relatively similar as far as the playoff picture goes. Andy is still on top with Dad and I chasing him. Logan dropped a game but remains in fourth place. With only one game remaining until our playoffs start, Andy, Dad and I have clinched playoff spots. The fourth spot is almost certain to go to Logan. Even if he loses and Luke or Tim win, he’ll still have enough points to win a tiebreaker. So this last week will be about setting the playoff seeding. My money would be on Andy to win it this year. He cranks out a lot of points. We’ll need to watch out for Dad though. Josh Gordon has been on FIRE lately, scoring over 100 points in the last three weeks.

Now on to the weekly awards:

  • Highest Team Score: Andy had 156.03 (Record, Week 4: Tim had 195.50)
  • Lowest Team Score: Jim had 83.11 (Record, Week 6: Jim had had 72.17)
  • Biggest Blowout: Tim beat Jim by 42.24 (Record, Week 3: Dad beat Andy by 63.83)
  • Closest Win: Andy beat Logan by 24.4 (Record, Week 1: Logan beat Tim by 0.89)
  • Highest Scoring Player: Eric Decker had 45.40 for Andy. (Record, Week1: Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy.)
  • Mr. Consistency:  Luke is on a 4 game winning streak and Jim has lost 4 in a row.
  • Crystal Ball: Dad started a perfect roster.

Stats mostly via TMQ:

  • Andy has the best record in the league and has only made 4 roster moves, the fewest in the league.
  • Jim has made the 6 roster moves, the second fewest in the league, and he’s in last place.
  • With their win on Monday night, Seattle is the first team in the NFL to clinch a playoff spot.
  • Every team in the NFC West has a positive points differential against opponents.
  • The Saints and Drew Brees ended their NFL record streak of 43 consecutive games with at least 200 passing yards.
  • The Giants and Jets, the New Jersey teams, are first and second for giveaways, combining to turn the ball over 58 times.
  • Nick Foles has 19 touchdown passes and no interceptions.
  • Kansas City became the first NFL team ever to open 9-0 then go 0-3.
  • In opening 9-0, Kansas City’s defense allowed 11 touchdowns while scoring six. In going 0-3, the Chiefs’ defense allowed 13 touchdowns while not scoring.
  • Outgaining the Packers by 435 yards, the Lions won at home on Thanksgiving for the first time in a decade.
  • Carolina, which has allowed just two touchdowns in the first half, is on a 13-3 run.
  • The Seahawks are 14-0 at home when Russell Wilson starts.

A correction to last week’s stats: Logan had the high score with 151.53. I’ve updated that post.

benmartens December 4, 2013 Fantasy Sports

DBAN

So you’re getting rid of some old hard drives, but you’re nervous about just throwing them in the trash. If the idea of creating a USB boot key doesn’t frighten you, then you should know about Darik’s Boot and Nuke. Simply deleting files or formatting the drive doesn’t actually erase the files on the drive. You need to overwrite every sector on the drive multiple times to really be sure.

Reboot the computer with either a CD or USB key inserted and you’ll boot into DBAN. From there you can choose a number of options for wiping the drive that range from writing 0’s one time across the whole drive to doing much deeper scrubs with multiple passes. I generally default to “DoD Short Wipe” which does three passes. That could take you a day or two with today’s larger drives, but it’s nice to know that nobody is going to find my old hard drive and pick any data off it.

I’ve also been known to physically take drives apart and smash the platters with a hammer (wear safety glasses!) That’s messy and technically it’s still possible to read data if the pieces are big enough, but it’s good enough if I’m in a hurry.

P.S. If you find yourself doing stuff like this often, consider picking up a hard drive dock. It’s a lot easier to swap drives in a dock then to physically open your computer. This is the one I’ve had for a while, but you might want to consider a USB3.0 model too.

benmartens December 3, 2013 Geek

Extended Warranties

There are a couple stores around here that push their extended warranties ridiculously hard. Sports Authority is probably one of the worst. No matter how I say “No”, I continue to get the guilt trip throughout the entire transaction. It almost makes me want to explain why I never buy it, but I question whether they’d understand the math. Here’s how it works out:

The break even price of a warranty is equal to the cost of replacing the item times the percentage chance that you’ll need to replace the item. So if the product costs $100 and there’s a 20% chance that it will break, then you should buy the warranty if it’s less than $20. The trick is that it’s usually impossible to define the odds that you’ll need a warranty. There’s still a way to prove that it’s a bad deal though.

Think about the company offering the warranty to you. If they charge everyone less than that breakeven point, they’re going to go out of business. They need to make a profit so the warranty is almost ALWAYS going to cost more than that breakeven point. Therefore it’s a bad financial deal for you to buy it.

There are, however, some cases where warranties and insurance are a good thing. Those cases are generally when you do not have enough financial reserve to cover the replacement cost if the item is destroyed. Think about your house or your car. If you have $30K lying around to buy a new car, then you could technically get buy without insurance (though they’ve made insurance a legal requirement since almost no one has this kind of reserve available.)

So when you’re standing at the register and they offer you the extended warranty, know that it’s a bad deal and if you can envision paying that much money again to replace the product, do not buy the warranty. You’ll come out ahead in the long run even if you do have to pay full replacementreplacmenet value every once in a while.

benmartens December 2, 2013 Commentary

Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History

A few weeks back, KenC mentioned Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast and I listened to one (three hour) episode. It’s incredible! He takes a small slice of history and dives really deeply into it. The story he weaves is deep and really helps you understand all of the complicated forces that combined to shape the event.

He only cranks out a handful of episodes a year and I imagine that’s because each one requires so much time and effort. There are 50 total episodes and starting with show 34, they’re available for free on his website.

If you enjoy history, I recommend that you give one episode a shot. That’s all it took to get me hooked.

benmartens November 29, 2013 Commentary

Elijah At Five Months

Elijah, you’re almost five and a half months old now! On the one hand, it seems like you just came into our lives, but on the other hand, I’m amazed at how much you’ve grown up and changed since we brought you home from the hospital.

Every week you’re picking up new tricks and skills. These days you always want to be sitting up and you smile all the time. When you’re really happy you give big open-mouth smiles and you’ll stick out your tongue and chew on it. If you get near anything, your right hand shoots out and you start scratching it and feeling it’s texture. If it’s mobile, it quickly finds it’s way to your mouth so you can chew on it.

You’re coming off the tail end of being pretty sick for about three weeks and that wasn’t fun for any of us, but it’s so nice to have our happy little boy back again. You’re so good-natured that it’s hard to ever get frustrated for too long, but if you slept a bit better at night, Mom and I wouldn’t complain. We haven’t slept three hours in a row for a month. But it’s ok. I’ll do whatever it takes to help you grow up happy and healthy.

Mom has been busy taking you to lots of activities like a parent/baby group, a mother/child workout program, and Little Gym. The other day Mom said you hung from a bar all by yourself! You’ve mastered rolling over from your back to your stomach and I’m just waiting for you to figure out crawling. I bet it’s not too much longer!

I could go on and on, but the reason I started writing is that I want you to know that on this Thanksgiving Day, I want you to know that I’m thankful for you and our wonderful little family!

benmartens November 28, 2013 Family

Fantasy Football – Week 12

For a while I thought that all three #1 teams were going to lose but Andy ended up winning pretty easily. He now stands along on top of the leaderboard and there are three people tied for second. Andy has 100 points more than his nearest competitor so I feel like he has a pretty good chance at making the playoffs. As for the rest of us, well it’s anybody’s guess.

Now on to the weekly awards:

  • Highest Team Score: Logan had 151.53 (Record, Week 4: Tim had 195.50)
  • Lowest Team Score: Jim had 77.85 (Record, Week 6: Jim had had 72.17)
  • Biggest Blowout: Andy beat Jim by 44.04 (Record, Week 3: Dad beat Andy by 63.83)
  • Closest Win: Tim beat Austin by 4.41 (Record, Week 1: Logan beat Tim by 0.89)
  • Highest Scoring Player: Josh Gordon had 36.70 for Dad (Record, Week1: Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy.)
  • Mr. Consistency:  Luke is on a 4 game winning streak and Jim has lost 4 in a row.

Stats mostly via TMQ:

  • Ryan Tannehill has been sacked 44 times.
  • Ohio native Ben Roethlisberger is 16-1 versus the Cleveland Browns.
  • The Houston Texans have followed a 13-4 streak with a 2-10 streak.
  • The Kansas City Chiefs, who a month ago led the league in sacks by/against ratio, are on a minus-12 streak for sacks by/against.
  • Tom Brady is 24-5 when the kickoff temperature is freezing or below; Peyton Manning is 2-6 in those conditions.
benmartens November 27, 2013 Fantasy Sports

Workshop Additions

I recently purchased (used) a few tools which will greatly expand what I can do in my workshop.

I’ve always felt a bit stuck without a tablesaw. Whenever I needed one, I had to drive up to Monroe and bug Tim. That also meant making very sure that I had all my measurements ready ahead of time. The alternative was trying to use my circular saw to make the cuts myself. All that is behind me now!
I never knew I needed a biscuit joiner until I had access to one. This makes it so easy to join pieces of wood together. I used it heavily when I was building my desk and again when I was building the church sign.
When Tim offered to sell me his jointer, I said, “What’s that?” After a quick YouTube search, I wrote him back and said I’d take it. This helps you make two sides of your board perfectly flat and at a perfect 90 degree angle. This will come in very handy when I finally getting around to building some nicer furniture.
benmartens November 26, 2013 Home Improvement, Woodworking

Real Estate Disaster Averted

When I moved here in 2006, I looked at a bunch of condos and townhomes. One that I really liked is right down the street from where our house is right now. It was tall and skinny with three floors, very similar to the townhouse where I lived in Jersey. Since buying this new house, I’ve wondered if we would have moved after getting married if I had bought that townhouse because it’s in the right location and it had three bedrooms. But now I’m extremely thankful that I didn’t buy that townhouse.

In June of 2006, I would have paid about $310K for a unit along the backside of the complex. Today that same condo is worth about $204K. But that’s not the worst of it. The buffer of trees that were behind the complex have been completely removed for the I-405 project. The new ramp from 405N to 522E is going to end up almost directly off the back porch of those townhouses! You can see some of the piers for the ramp in this picture.

I owe my realtor a lot for suggesting that I might not want to buy this townhouse. Even with the trees the road noise was loud, and we weren’t even there during rush hour.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the property values as this project continues.

benmartens November 25, 2013 Commentary

Church Sign

Many moons ago we embarked on building a new sign at church. The masonry and the main sign were installed earlier this year along with all the landscaping and irrigation. The final step was to build a reader board below the sign to hold acrylic letters. Tim and I met up a few weekends back to get the sign built and it didn’t take too long. We used some cedar and got it all put together. Then I spent about a week putting coats of primer, paint and clear coat. Hopefully it’s fairly waterproof at this point but only time will tell. Logan met me at church to help get the sign mounted. It looks pretty good! I wish we could have matched the colors of the sign, but the sign company just mixed paint to get the colors and couldn’t give us any paint codes. Getting an exact match from a photo or something like that seemed like an impossible task. Black and white should work fine. The only thing we might have to still do is add a piece of plastic over the sign with a lock to keep people from messing with the letters.

benmartens November 22, 2013 Projects