Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Pacific Northwest Rally

A recent episode of the American version of Top Gear featured multiple locations in Washington State. (You can watch the whole episode at history.com) It started at DirtFish rally school which is down the road in Fall City. Tanner Foust had a segment driving his car along some of the roads in the area and I recognized a lot of them from my motorcycle rides. Later on, they headed out to the south east corner of the state for some driving along the Snake River Canyon.

During the show, I learned that there’s a new rally race in the area called the Nameless Rally. It happened on June 21-23 so I’m way too late this year, but if they run it next year I’d love to go out and watch it.

That Dirt Fish school isn’t cheap, but I’d love to take a class there some day. Maybe if I combine birthday and Christmas presents for a few years it would add up.

benmartens September 26, 2013 Links

Fantasy Football – Week 3

How’s this for league parity? We’re going into week 4 and everyone is either tied for first or only one game out of first. Both undefeated teams lost to the teams with no wins in spectacular fashion. Austin beat Logan by 50.02 points and Dad beat Andy by 63.83. At one point Dad was up on Andy by 100 points! Here’s how Yahoo summed up that game: “EndOverEnd registered the highest point total this season to put a drubbing on RAAAWWWRRRRR!!! 173.00 – 109.17. This was a legendary beating, with the 63.83-point margin of victory being the highest recorded in the league this season.” Sorry Andy, I guess Dad didn’t get you a wedding present! If you guys aren’t reading the Yahoo league recaps, they can be interesting. Here’s the one for week 3. They point out that only 65 points separate first and last place.

Now on to the weekly awards:

  • Highest Team Score: Dad had 173.00 (Previous record, Week 2: Tim had 154.46)
  • Lowest Team Score:  Tim had 85.40 (Previous record, Week 2: I had 87.42)
  • Biggest Blowout:  Dad beat Andy by 63.83 (Previous record, Week 1: Ben beat Dad by 62.37)
  • Closest Win: Jim beat me by 6.42 (Record, Week 1: Logan beat Tim by 0.89)
  • Highest Scoring Player: Drew Brees had 37.78 for me. (Record, Week1: Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy.)

Stats mostly via TMQ:

  • DeMarco Murray has rushed for 428 yards in his last two games against the Rams.
  • The Washington defense is on a pace to allow 7,808 yards; the NFL’s all-time season worst is 7,042 yards.
  • In the first half at Carolina, the Giants had 1 net yard passing.
  • The Patriots and Bengals are a combined 28-4 when BenJarvus Green-Ellis scores a touchdown.
  • Alex Smith is on a streak of 26 touchdown passes versus five interceptions.
benmartens September 25, 2013 Fantasy Sports

Woodinville History

Earlier this summer, I was surprised to see a “20th anniversary” parade for the city of Woodinville. After some research (translation: reading Wikipedia), I learned that the city was incorporated in 1993 after Bothell started discussions of annexing the area. Take that Bothell!

The area was settled in 1871 by a logger/farmer named Ira Woodin. The cabin he built ended up serving as the first school and the post office. 93% of the buildings built since then have been wineries.*

The city held 10,938 people in the 2010 census which is a 19% increase from the 2000 census. Every one of those people apparently drives through downtown Woodinville at rush hour. There are some old train tracks that run through the middle of the city and make for awkward intersections under the bridge. At some point I think all 11K residents are going to be willing to pay a bit extra in our taxes to rip that thing out. Luckily my route to work avoids that whole mess.

Tyla and I continue to be thrilled with the location of our home and I’m happy to call Woodinville home. It’s nice being part of a smallish community inside the huge 3.5 million population of greater Seattle.

* Not true, but probably not far off.

benmartens September 24, 2013 Commentary

Stephen Bautista Visits

We had a visit from musician Stephen Bautista in church last Sunday. He travels around the country with his 7 kids and wife in a van and camping trailer playing music for churches in our synod. Various traveling musicians have come through before, but Stephen was in a class of his own. I heard lots of people commenting on how good he was. He’s still playing at other churches in the area so consider stopping in to hear him play. Everything is posted on his website at http://www.stephenbautista.com

Stephen played a bunch of songs during the service and then gave a mini-concert during the time slot normally occupied by Bible class and Sunday School. I recorded that concert and posted it on YouTube. The audio isn’t great, but if you like it, he has two albums you can buy and is working on a third. Both albums are on Xbox Music and Spotify so I’m guessing they’re available on iTunes, etc too. And of course you can buy music and get more info on his website.

benmartens September 20, 2013 Music

Tracing Waterways

On a hike through the mountains in the Pacific Northwest, you’ll often cross some streams flowing down the mountain. Where do they start? How do they make their way to the ocean? There’s a tool from nationalatlas.gov that can answer these questions. You click on any point in a river and trace it upstream and downstream. It’s neat to see how differently a raindrop could flow if it lands just a couple hundred yards east or west. One is a quick trip to the Puget sound while another might be a more roundabout trip into the Columbia River and then out into the Pacific on the border between Washington and Oregon.

benmartens September 19, 2013 Links

Fantasy Football – Week 2

Naturally 50% of the teams won in the first week and this week, 50% of those teams won again leaving us with two undefeated teams: Andy and Logan. Both of those undefeated teams play the two teams that haven’t won a game yet (Dad and Austin) so we’ll see if they can keep their streak going or succumb to an upset.

Now on to the weekly awards:

  • Highest Team Score: Tim had 154.46 (Previous record, Week 1: Luke had 151.22)
  • Lowest Team Score:  I had 87.42 (Previous record, Week 1: Dad had 87.89)
  • Biggest Blowout:  Andy beat me by 56.55. (Record, Week 1: Ben beat Dad by 62.37)
  • Closest Win: Logan beat Luke by 7.1. (Record, Week 1: Logan beat Tim by 0.89)
  • Highest Scoring Player: Aaron Rodgers had 42.90 for Tim. (Record, Week1: Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy.)

Stats mostly via TMQ:

  • Tim owns the two top scoring players this week: Aaron Rodgers and Michael Vick.
  • Baltimore has won 11 straight versus Cleveland.
  • Peyton Manning is 3-0 versus Eli Manning.
  • At 7:08 Eastern on Sept. 15, the Jacksonville Jaguars became the final NFL team to score a touchdown in the new season.
  • San Diego, which won at Philadelphia, is now the favorite to win the Super Bowl. The Eagles’ four most recent home-opener opponents, the Saints, Packers, Giants and Ravens, all won the Super Bowl that season.
  • At New England, Geno Smith’s passer rating was 27.6, below the 39.6 an NFL quarterback receives if every pass is incomplete.
  • The Giants, who committed 21 turnovers in 16 games in 2012, have committed 9 in two games in 2013.
  • Detroit, which just lost at Arizona, has not won a game in that state since 1993. Sunday the Lions travel to Washington, D.C., where they have never won — 21 consecutive road losses versus the Washington team.
benmartens September 18, 2013 Fantasy Sports

SiriusXM Review

When we bought our Ford Escape six months ago, it came with a free trial of SiriusXM radio. We loved not having commercials, but overall we didn’t feel like the service was worth it. I was disappointed in the sound quality and it cut out a LOT around our home in Seattle. Maybe we’re on the edge of the satellite coverage? I understand it losing a signal under a bridge sometimes, but it would lose it in the trees along 522 up to Monroe and with nothing overhead at the same spot on 405 at 124th St every single time. But even with all that, the ability to listen to music without commercials and without connecting another device was really nice. Plus it also feeds traffic data into our navigation system which is handy.

When the free trial was up, they called to try to get us to continue. They walked through a number of deals culminating in $0.99 for one month and I said no. We kind of wished that we had said yes to that last deal so clearly it did still hold some value for us.

A few days later, we got an offer in the mail for $30 for 6 months. It’s normally $15/month so that’s a pretty great deal. We decided to go for it with the intention of cancelling again unless we can get a similar good deal. $15/month seems a bit crazy considering I pay $10/month for access to Netflix streaming and $10/month for access to millions of songs on Xbox Music.

benmartens September 17, 2013 Gadgets

Reading Your Email

PRISM is still a hot topic in the news as more and more information leaks out. I happily stay far away from politics, especially on this site, but when there are people spreading incorrect tech facts out there, I feel compelled to speak up.

I believe there are definitely some reasons to be disturbed by this news and to call my representatives to make my feelings known. However, as with most popular news stories, there are people arguing the same side as me but who I completely disagree with. Those people say they are appalled that someone was reading their email or their web traffic. Their email is private! Umm… what? Even if the NSA wasn’t reading your email, you know who can read it? Your email provider, your ISP and countless other people along the route. Not only CAN they read it, but they DO. How else can Gmail serve up those contextual ads based on words that are in your email? How else can they filter out spam? How else can they sell information they glean about you to advertisers and other businesses? And even if THEY aren’t reading your email for some reason, I assure you that China, Russia and other countries are. There’s nothing difficult or illegal about the technology since it’s all sent across the Internet unencrypted. It’s trivial to read it.

Now if you want to call for changes in the scope of the NSA’s powers, create better oversight and transparency, or stop the government from using their web snooping to profile citizens, then that’s fine. But please don’t muddy the waters by being surprised that someone is reading your email.

On a related note, there’s an excellent open letter from a guy named Ben Adida to President Obama which makes some fantastic points about this whole debacle. He does a wonderful job of communicating his point logically without letting emotion ruin the argument. Here’s my favorite quote from the letter, but please go read the whole thing:

What would have become of the civil rights movement if all of its initial transgressions had been perfectly detected and punished? What about gay rights? Women’s rights? Is there even room for civil disobedience?

Though we want our laws to reflect morality, they are, at best, a very rough and sometimes completely broken approximation of morality. Our ability as citizens to occasionally transgress the law is the force that brings our society’s laws closer to our moral ideals. We should reject mass surveillance, even the theoretically perfect kind, with all the strength and fury of a people striving to form a more perfect union.

benmartens September 16, 2013 Commentary

Wild Ride

After the first 26 races in the NASCAR season, 12 drivers are chosen to compete in the “Chase” which basically is NASCAR’s 10 race version of playoffs. The specifics of how those drivers are chosen are a bit tricky but basically it’s the top 10 drivers in points and then two wild cards. My favorite driver, Ryan Newman, was right on the bubble for the last wild card position. Lap by lap the standings would change and he’d move in and out of the chase. With the race winding down, Newman was driving his heart out and had pulled into the lead. A victory would have guaranteed that he beat out Martin Truex, Jr for a spot in the chase. With just a few laps remaining, Truex’s teammate Clint Bowyer was told over the radio that Newman was going to win the race. Then they asked Bowyer, who had poison oak on his hand, how his hand was feeling. “Is your arm starting to hurt? I bet it’s hot in there. Itch it.” At that point, Bowyer spun bringing out a caution. After the pit stops, Newman was no longer in the lead, didn’t win, and Truex got into the Chase on a tie-breaker with Newman.

NASCAR cracked down incredibly hard on Michael Waltrip racing which owns both the Bowyer and Truex cards. Investigations revealed they had also played games to help Joey Logano in his points standings. Truex was kicked out of the chase and Newman was put in.

Getting into the chase based on a penalty isn’t the super strong year fans want for Newman, but it’s great to see justice done and fun to see him in the Chase. This is his last year with Steward Haas racing before he moves to the vacant Jeff Burton ride with Richard Childress in the 2014 season. (I lost a lot of respect for Tony Stewart when he fired Newman to hire hot-headed, whiny Kurt Busch but that’s a topic for another blog post.)

benmartens September 13, 2013 Sports