Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Microsoft Store

Tyla’s laptop died. It was some kind of hardware failure that we worked around for a while but eventually consumed the device, and I couldn’t resurrect it. It was time to shop for a new laptop.

We get employee deals with most of the major manufacturers through work, but I also included the Microsoft Store in our search. We don’t get any special discount there, but I’ve heard good things about them. Indeed the prices were excellent, they offered free shipping, and if we had picked a model that was in stock, we could have picked it up immediately. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case, but our new HP Pavilion TouchSmart arrived in just three days via UPS for $499. I was amazed that we could get a touch screen laptop for $500. I think the only change we might make to this in the future is swapping out the 5400rpm 750GB drive for either a hybrid drive or a straight SSD.

When the Microsoft Store sells a device, they put their extra special touch on it. When it boots for the first time, you aren’t flooded with a bunch of adware for AOL or McAfee. It’s a very clean machine with up to date drivers. I always format new machines when I get them, but I didn’t see any need* on this one.

If you’re looking for a new laptop, I recommend including the Microsoft Store in your search. You can’t customize the devices like you can buying direct, but you also get a machine that is very clean and ready to go straight out of the box.

* In the end I actually did have to reformat the laptop. The drive was partitioned with GPT instead of the older MBR scheme and my backup solution (Windows Home Server 2011) only supports MBR. There’s no way that I know of to revert from GPT to MBR without killing all the partitions and starting over.

benmartens July 16, 2013 Gadgets

Reality

I was told many times, “You can’t prepare for fatherhood” and my joking reply would be, “Great, then I’m not even going to try.” That was sort of true, but even though I don’t think we went nuts planning for parenthood, I did have some expectations. And they were wrong.

The biggest one is probably how often a baby eats. I had heard that 2-3 hours between feedings was normal. Ehh that’s not so bad, right? Well, what I didn’t know was that the clock starts as soon as they start eating. So out of that 2-3 hours, take out 20-30 minutes for the actual feeding, some more time for changing a diaper, and then more time for trying to get him to fall asleep again.

Lots of people told us to “sleep when he sleeps.” Sure, that’s a good idea, but the flip side is that we’re awake when he’s awake, even if it’s 2am. And we’re so used to sleeping once per day for 7-8 hours that sleeping in 1-2 hour segments for weeks on end is really draining! Thankfully Tyla has usually been able to take an afternoon nap with Elijah and I’ve been known to stumble down to my car for a quick 15-20 minute nap in the parking garage at work. I’ve resisted adding up how much sleep I’m getting each night because I think that would make me even more tired.

There have been many times since Elijah’s birth that I’ve thought about the Mark Lowry comedy skit “it came to pass.” He says his favorite Bible passage is “And it came to pass…” When Elijah is screaming in the middle of the night for an hour straight and we can’t figure out what’s wrong, I remember that it’s going to pass. When we’re trying to drive him somewhere and he’s so unhappy in the backseat, I know it will pass. And when he’s snuggled up to me sleeping peacefully, I enjoy it because it’s going to pass!

Today is Elijah’s one month birthday which means that Tyla and I have successfully kept another human alive for one month. (That reminds me of another great comedy skit, this time from Kermit Apio.) The last month has had it’s hard times, but overall I feel like we’ve had it pretty good. Elijah is generally well-tempered and we can usually figure out why he’s crying to get him happy quickly. He’s eating well and gaining weight at a great pace. Every time I look at him, I’m filled with immense pride and excitement for the adventures we’ll have together in the years to come. I love you little man!

benmartens July 15, 2013 Family

We Shipped!

I’ve been at Microsoft for over seven years working on various iterations of a common idea. Over the years, our product direction has been tweaked and adjusted quite a few times in big and small ways. I don’t think anybody could have seen this result back then. But that’s part of what makes this milestone so great!

So what did we end up shipping? It’s officially called Microsoft Power Query for Excel and we’re part of the Power BI for Office 365 package. You can find our team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dataexplorer/. There’s plenty of news coverage too.

This product is an add in for Excel, and in a nutshell we make it super easy to connect to data whether it’s data you already know about or data that you need to search for. You can pull data from SQL, Azure, DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Terradata, Oracle, Sharepoint, Hadoop, Active Directory, websites, Facebook and many more. Don’t know where to find your data? Open up the search pane and find it! Once you’ve identified your data source, you can easily transform it, clean it up, and/or merge it with other data even if the data sources are huge. You’re working with a preview of the data and building up a script in the background as you make changes. Once you’re done, you can hit Refresh and we go back out to each of those sources, run the transformations again, and give you the final result with fresh data!

There’s no rest for our team though. Stay tuned for more exciting things! (Assuming you find data exciting… and who doesn’t?!)

benmartens July 12, 2013 Geek

Treehouse Masters

Last summer, Tyla and I spent the night in an amazing treehouse. While we were there, one of the owners told us that Animal Planet was filming a new reality show based on their treehouses. We never saw the show appear on TV so we figured it had been cancelled, but it’s on now! The show is called Treehouse Masters and new episodes are Friday nights. Full episodes are available online or on their mobile app.

We’ve only watched a couple episodes, but it seems like the show follows the genius behind the treehouses, Pete Nelson, as he builds treehouses for various families. The show feels like lots of other home improvement type shows, except instead of fluffy pillows and crazy paint jobs, the end result of this show is an incredible treehouse.

If you live in the area and like the show, consider spending a night in one of his creations at Treehouse Point in Fall City. It was pretty hard to book a room last summer so I imagine now it’s quite a bit harder with the show being on TV. Make sure you book well in advance!

benmartens July 11, 2013 Commentary

In Defense Of Hospital Births

Every situation is different. Keep that in mind as you read this entire post. I’m not trying to convince you that our way was right, but I do want to share our experience.

Tyla and I took a lot of classes leading up to Elijah’s birth. We had about 30 hours of a natural birth class that were separate from the hospital, and we also attended 4 or 5 shorter classes from the hospital. Before taking any of the classes we had decided to have our son at the hospital, but Tyla still wanted to go as natural as possible. In talking with various people inside and outside of the natural birth classes, we heard over and over again how much we’d have to fight to keep the hospital staff from intervening unnecessarily. We walked into that hospital ready to fight… but the fights never came. The methods suggested by the hospital aligned very closely with what the natural birth people said we’d have to argue for. The staff were fully on board with almost every single one of the things proposed in our class and would have done them even if we hadn’t asked.

It seems to me this area of science is going through lots of change. Imagine life before the mid-1900s: the only choice was a fully natural, unmedicated birth. Death rates for mom and baby were very high. As medical science took off in the mid-1900s, researchers were flooded with new data and technology for intervening in the birth process. The rate of intervention sky rocketed but it dramatically improved the success rates for mom and baby. Now it seems that the medical profession is starting to realize that by intervening less and in only the more critical cases, they can improve success rates even more. National C-section rates have stopped rising and are holding steady at around 1/3rd of births. In many hospitals (including Evergreen), there is a huge push to drive the rates down. I heard one unsubstantiated estimate that said a healthy C-section rate is somewhere between 10-15% which aligns with my intuition about how many times births went bad back in the old days.

As we went through the pregnancy, we sometimes wondered if we had made the right choice by going to the hospital. But I think if we had more frank discussions with our OB about how she practices medicine, I think we could have dismissed some of the antagonism coming from the natural birth people who were apparently basing their opinions on what hospitals used to be like 10-20 years ago. Who knows if we’ll have another child or what we’ll decide at that point, but right now I’d be shocked if we ended up anywhere other than Evergreen Hospital.

I wrote a post earlier explaining why a C-section was the only path toward a healthy mom and baby in our case, so I’m extremely thankful that the staff recognizes those key points where they need to intervene. But I also like the idea of letting nature run it’s course when possible and trusting the birth process to work in most cases. I’m sure by the time Elijah’s generation grows up and has children, everything will be changing again, but as long as the rates of healthy mom’s and babies declines and the rates of medical interventions decline, then I think it’s a win for everyone.

benmartens July 10, 2013 Commentary

Google Reader Replacement

RSS feeds have been a great way for me to keep up with a long list of websites in a very efficient manner. Google Reader was the app of choice for me, but unfortunately it closed it’s doors on July 1. The search was on for a replacement.

After trying out a variety of sites designed to fill the void, I settled on one called theoldreader.com. As the name implies, it’s pretty much a clone of the old Google Reader. It might be boring, but since the Google app was all I needed in the first place, I wasn’t keen on learning something completely new.

It’s free so definitely give it a shot if you haven’t found anything that you like yet.

benmartens July 9, 2013 Links

Infant Passports

We’re hoping to head up to Vancouver, BC in a couple months and it dawned on me that we have to get Elijah across the border too!

I started doing the math about how long it would take to get a copy of his birth certificate and then get a passport. It’s going to be close. Thankfully since we are driving into Canada, it looks like we can just use his birth certificate. US Customs and Border Patrol has a very helpful website located at http://www.getyouhome.gov. Here’s the relevant info for traveling with a child:

Beginning June 1, 2009, U.S. and Canadian citizen children under age 16 arriving by land or sea from contiguous territory may also present an original or copy of his or her birth certificate, a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, a Naturalization Certificate, or a Canadian Citizenship Card.

I’ve seen other sites (though not as official) indicate that if both parents are not present, they must include a letter giving permission for the child to cross the border. Since Tyla and I will both be in the car it shouldn’t be a problem.

We’ll probably still go ahead with the passport, but it’s nice to know that we don’t have to worry about it not arriving before we head to Canada.

benmartens July 5, 2013 Commentary

Road Trips From Seattle

We’re starting to get some beautiful summer weekends so I thought I would like out a few of my favorite day or weekend trips.

  1. Artists Point on Mt. Baker – Check WSDOT to see when it opens. It will probably be a few more weeks yet, but the road is fun to drive and it’s awesome to see how much snow is still up there in the middle of the summer. Do this on a sunny day though so you get a good view.
  2. Dry Falls – We did this as a day ride, but you could combine it with something else (like #3). The stretch along Highway 2 going east from 97 away from Wenatchee is AWESOME as you wind through a canyon on very curvy roads.
  3. Grand Coulee Dam – This is a long drive so maybe you want to spend a night, but you could do it in a day I guess too. Just make sure you give yourself some time to take the tour. It’s worth it and shows you stuff you’d never get to see on your own. They have a laser light show on the dam at night which is interesting for the first few minutes but didn’t hold my attention. If you’re staying overnight then it’s worth seeing.
  4. Hwy 20 is the northernmost pass through the Cascades and it’s my favorite. You’ll go through Winthrop on the way back which has a fun old west look to it. I did this as a long day ride on my bike. You’ll go past Lake Chelan which is huge and beautiful but also very packed.
  5. Canyon Road between Ellensburg and Yakima is another great curvy road with fun scenery. You can combine this with a drive across US 12 and a stop at Rimrock Lake.
  6. Mt Rainier – Duh. Sunrise on the east and Paradise on the south are the main stopping points, but if you’re up for some off-roading, you can also check out Mowich Lake.
  7. Crystal Mountain – It’s my favorite winter spot but it’s also great in the summer. They offer horseback rides or you can take the gondola up to the top and hike down.

This is by no means a complete list, but maybe there are a few on here that you haven’t tried yet. Whatever you decide, get outside and enjoy the incredible Pacific Northwest!

benmartens July 4, 2013 Outdoors

New Printer

Last week our printer, a Canon MX700 all-in-one,  stopped printing black ink. It was 7 years old and my attempts to revive it were unsuccessful. Printers are super cheap (they make their money on ink) so the cost of switching to a new printer is really just the cost of whatever ink you have laying around. There wasn’t much left in the printer and I didn’t have any spares to worry about so we ordered a new printer.

We stayed in the Canon family and got a Canon MX922. It provides similar scan, fax, copy, print functionality but it adds duplex printing and wifi networking. The wifi bit is really nice because it means the printer can be located anywhere in the house and can print regardless of whether or not a computer is also turned on. It has a bunch of interesting networking features built in like the ability to scan to an email attachment, print from an email sent to the printer (for easy printing from phones), and printing from popular online photo websites.

While we generally print photos down the street at the drug store, the printer does a remarkable job printing photos. It comes with some 4×6 photo paper and the results from the printer were tough to distinguish from the drug store prints. Consumer Reports says it costs $0.50 to print a 4×6 through the printer and our drug store only charges $0.29. But it’s still a nice feature to have available.

The only knock I have on it so far is that envelope printing is tedious. The 700 had a separate feed tray for envelopes. With the new 922, I have to remove all the paper, put in an envelope, and then switch back to the paper again. That’s not a huge deal for us though. If this printer lasts another seven years like the last one did then I’ll be happy!

benmartens July 3, 2013 Gadgets