Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Fantasy Football – Week 1

Welcome to another season of fantasy football! We have the same group of guys as last year. The season got off to a rocky start with difficulty scheduling the live draft. In the end only Andy, Logan and I live drafted, but it’s doubtful that makes any difference. Next year I’ll have everyone who wants to participate help pick the date and time of the draft.

Week 1 was a dramatic start to the season. Peyton Manning tied the NFL record for 7 TDs, Danny Trevathan dropped the ball before getting to the goal line, and Chip Kelly brought a little duck to the life of the Eagles. Despite my failed ability to schedule a DVR and watch the Seahawks game, they did pull out a victory. This could be a great year for them…

Now on to the weekly awards:

  • Highest Team Score: Luke had 151.22
  • Lowest Team Score:  Dad had 87.89
  • Biggest Blowout:  Ben beat Dad by 62.37. This blew away last year’s record too. Sorry Dad!… sort of.
  • Closest Win: Logan beat Tim by 0.89
  • Highest Scoring Player: Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy. This is higher than last year’s record.
  • Deadbeat:  None!

Stats mostly via TMQ:

  • Since Jan. 2012 in the playoffs, Green Bay is 0-5 versus the Giants and Forty Niners, 12-3 versus all other teams.
  • Terrelle Pyror had 329 of the Raiders’ 372 offensive yards.
  • The Browns (2.0) are 1-14 in openers.
  • At 1:59 p.m. Eastern on Sept. 8, 2013, the Oakland Raiders scored their first rushing touchdown since October 2012.
  • Green Bay has gone 44 regular season games without a 100-yard rusher.
  • Andrew Luck has appeared in 18 NFL games, and has already led seven fourth-quarter comeback victories.
benmartens September 11, 2013 Fantasy Sports

British Accents

If you watch a movie set in England before the mid-1700s and the actors are speaking with a British accent, feel free to annoy your fellow movie watchers and point out that the accents are not historically accurate. What we think of today as a British accent didn’t exist back then. They spoke pretty much like we do in America now. The British accent was created by rich people in England who wanted to distinguish themselves from commoners. And since Boston and New York City in America had similar deposits of rich people with connections to England, they picked up some of the accent too (dropping the R’s.) I’m not sure who sits around at a party and decides to stop saying a letter to sound more cool, but hey, stranger things have happened!

Thanks to KenC for posting the article in Live Science about this.

benmartens September 10, 2013 Links

Paternity Leave – Week 1

My first week of paternity leave was put to good use. Tyla got a bunch of her task list crossed off and I got a good start on the cabinet project in the man cave.

The best part of the week was being able to take a nap with Elijah every day. It’s really neat seeing him throughout an entire day. When I’m working I get a little time with him in the morning and then an hour of cranky time before bed. Now I see him in a lot more of his happier/calm moods and I feel like I actually get to know my own son a little better.

benmartens September 9, 2013 Commentary

Picking Ikea Cabinets

I don’t know when Ikea started selling cabinets, but I’ve been hearing a lot about them lately. Sure they sell very cheap melamine cabinets, but they also sell cabinets that look very high-end. We have a homeowners mailing list at work which is usually full of high end remodels, but even people there have been buying the cabinets and having their contractors assemble and install them.

I recently purchased seven cabinets for the project in the man cave and it’s worth sharing a few tips I picked up for getting the cabinets from Ikea. Like all the furniture in that store, it comes unassembled in a about 4-6 boxes per cabinet. You can pay $40 to have an employee pick all the pieces for you off the shelves, but it’s not too hard to do it yourself if you have the right preparation.

Let’s say you want to buy Akurum wall cabinets. First, go to the website and choose the exact size and color options that you want. That will give you a specific “Article Number” located under the price. Write that down. Near the bottom of the page, there’s a section that says it comes in 4 packages and has a link to view the sizes of each package. In the popup window, each package is listed twice (once in imperial and once in metric.) Write down the article numbers here and note how many of each one you need. The text of the website will also suggest if you should get other things with the cabinets like legs for the base cabinets and suspension rails for the wall cabinets. Finally, create extra blank columns for aisle and bin numbers. Now you have a table that looks like this:

Print this off and take it with you to Ikea. Take a look at the map when you walk in and skip straight to the warehouse. Head for a computer and type in the main article #. That will pop up a screen showing each of those pieces that you listed and the aisle and bin where you can find them. Fill those numbers in on your sheet.

From here on out, it’s just manual labor. Visit each of the aisle/bin locations and grab as many of the items as you need. At the end, add up how many pieces you expect to have and then count the items in your cart. Keep this sheet around because when you’re back home, it will help you remember which boxes go with which cabinet style.

The $40 service from Ikea is expected to take 30-40 minutes. I did this in just under and hour, and that includes wasting about 15 minutes miscounting the items in my carts and trying to figure out why it wasn’t what I expected.

My father-in-law kindly loaned me his truck for this, but it turns out I could have fit everything in the Escape. But given how far Ikea is from us, I didn’t want to drive all the way down there and then not be able to get it home.

How easy are they to install? That will have to wait for another blog post. I’m still figuring that out.

benmartens September 6, 2013 Home Improvement

Facebook Ads

Did you know that Facebook might be using your name ads to your friends? If you say you like a company, your friends might end up with an ad that implies that you’re endorsing the company. Fair enough I guess since you are, sort of, endorsing the company by liking them. And remember, you’re not paying for Facebook so they’re going to make money off you somehow. That being said, you can disable this along with possible future expansions of the ad feature.

  1. Log in to Facebook
  2. Click the gear icon in the top right
  3. Click “Ads” in the menu on the left side
  4. Edit both options and choose “No one”
benmartens September 5, 2013 Commentary

Skin Cancer

I wrote about having a chunk of skin removed back in January, but I feel the need to send out another warning message. Since that time I’ve had 6 more areas sent in for testing and one of them was bad enough that I had to get it cut out. That means I’ve now got two big ugly scars. You can laugh at me when I stop to put on my sunscreen before stepping outside, but I’m officially done with the sun. I guess Seattle is a good place for this type of behavior in the winter but in the summer, it’s one of the driest and sunniest places in the country. And don’t think that you’re safe just because it’s cloudy. Clouds still let UV through and unless they are super thick, you still need protection.

Please also consider a trip to the dermatologist to get checked. Best case is that he says you have no concerning areas and you walk out the door 15 minutes later with all worry removed. Worst case is that you have to get some treatment, but isn’t it better to catch it as early as possible? If you have a problem, it’s not going to disappear if you ignore it.

If you’re anything like me, none of this will actually convince you to go. I’ve had many friends tell me the exact same thing I wrote above and the only thing that got me to make an appointment was Tyla basically making it happen. I’m glad she did! Now I’m on a regular checkup schedule.

benmartens September 4, 2013 Commentary

Group Texting On Windows Phone

In Windows Phone 7.5, there was an option to receive group text messages and see all the other recipients. In Windows Phone 8, that was removed and it was incredibly confusing to receive a group text message. After getting the [collapse]original message you start receiving replies from people you’ve maybe never even talked to before.

That was all fixed in the latest update which I received on my HTC 8x last week. Go into Settings > Applications > Messaging and then enable Group Text all the way at the bottom. It seems crazy that it took so long for this feature to return, but I’m glad it’s back. The update also enabled the FM radio that has been lying dormant in the phone.

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benmartens September 3, 2013 Gadgets

Sleeping

I’ve hesitated to write this post because I know it will change, but for the past ~2 weeks, Elijah has been going to sleep amazingly easy. Or maybe we’re just getting better at learning his queues. When 7 or 7:30 rolls around, we go through a ~20 minute routine and the last step is actually putting him to bed. Lately that has only taken 2-3 minutes. We can lay him down even if he’s awake and just walk away. He falls asleep on his own!

There are so many opinions and books out there about how to teach your child to fall asleep on his own and go back to sleep when he wakes up at night. I picked one and read through it to make sure we weren’t starting with any bad habits. The book implied that up until 4 months old, it’s a crapshoot. At that point they start to have the biological capability to make it through a night without feeding but their circadian rhythm doesn’t develop until somewhere between 7 and 10 months. If that’s all true then I’m taking this as a complete bonus and expecting to return to the tough bedtimes and difficult returns to sleep after night feedings. But for now, it’s awesome!

On a typical night he goes to bed at 7:15 and then wakes up around 1 and 4 for feedings. We haven’t slept through a night since June 15, but we’re thankful for how much easier it has gotten in that time frame. Now we’re looking forward to his little tummy getting big enough to hold enough food to get him through the night. We probably have a ways to go yet.

benmartens September 2, 2013 Family

Paternity Leave

My employer has good benefits for women taking maternity leave which isn’t too surprising, but they also have benefits for guys. New dad’s can take up to 12 weeks off within the first 12 months from the birth or adoption! The first four weeks are paid and the rest of the weeks would be unpaid. I’m taking the four weeks off and today is my last day of work. I won’t have to go into work for the entire month of September! It’s a huge blessing and we’re looking forward to taking advantage of it. There are no major plans but we’ll be catching up on projects around the house, having a visit from my parents, and enjoying some small day trips. I’m sure that October 1 will come all too quickly.

benmartens August 30, 2013 Commentary

Save the River

On my latest drive through Stevens Pass, I saw a few signs for savetheriver.org. After checking it out, I learned that the Snohomish Public Utility District is attempting to put a dam in the Skykomish River. The dam will supply 30 megawatts (power for roughly 10,000 homes.) The dam itself seems like a neat idea. it can be inflated and deflated as desired to let debris, salmon and water flow past the dam. The dam would only be inflated in the winter when the flow is the highest.

Of course environmental protection groups do not like the idea of adding a dam to the river and they have a pretty good argument. The river is part of the state’s Scenic River System and much of the PUD’s power already comes from hydro dams.

That being said, this design seems like a pretty good compromise design. It provides power and helps decrease the use of fossil fuels for power without having a huge impact on the land. If this isn’t good enough, I wonder how the environmental groups propose that the PUD should move to more renewable energy sources? The comments I read were all just renewable energy in someone ELSE’S back yard.

benmartens August 29, 2013 Commentary