Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Living Wills

Earlier this year I was asked by a medical office if I had a living will. I knew my answer was yes, but it got me thinking more about it. I remember talking to our lawyer and just using the default form that he usually used. As a Christian I never felt great about it, but I hoped that Tyla and our Pastor would base their decisions on the Bible.

Fast forward a few months and I heard about free living wills from Christian Life Resources. They’re actually Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care documents (more comprehensive than living wills), but they explain the difference and why you would prefer one over the other. They have unique versions of the documents for each state along with a guide that explains what every choice means and how we view it in light of the Bible. It made it super easy for us to get some documents in place that more accurately reflected our wishes.

To get them officially signed, there are a few options in our state, but we chose to get them notarized. Our bank does that for free, so before too long, we were done!

We put the papers in with our will and then emailed them to our parents so that others have them readily accessible.

This is one of those things that’s easy to put off, but Christian Life Resources made it so easy to get it done. If you’re interested, you can get all the information for free at directives https://christianliferesources.com/resources/christian-medical-directives.

benmartens September 2, 2022 Commentary

I Lost It

[UPDATE] I have created a new woodworking Instagram account @martenswoodworks.

The other day my Pixel 4a got into a boot loop, and I couldn’t figure out any way to fix it. It would restart, show a few things on the screen for a couple seconds and then restart again. I found my way into the root menu but none of the easier choices did anything, so I was left with a factory reset. I knew it would be annoying, but it shouldn’t be that big of a deal because everything is backed up to the cloud.

Everything was NOT backed up to the cloud.

There were a few things that I lost forever:

  • Photos I had taken while we were away from the house (and Wi-Fi) weren’t backed up but that wasn’t a huge deal.
  • We use the ScorePal app to record every board game we play. I thought that was all backed up to the cloud, but the last backup I had was from August 2020. Oh well.
  • When I started up my Microsoft Authenticator app, it either hadn’t backed up or I went through the wrong flow and erased the backup. Either way, I was left with no way to do two factor authentication for many of my most critical accounts.

Uh oh.

Thankfully, most of them had ways that I could reset my two factor auth either through backup codes, email verification, or text message verification. But there was one that I couldn’t get back: my @martenswoodshop Instagram account. When you set up two factor auth, they give you backup codes and I’m always good about saving them, but I can’t find the codes for that account anywhere. Instagram has an automated flow which has you take a video of your face with the app and then it looks through your account photos to see if it recognizes you. But guess who didn’t post any pictures of his own face on his woodworking account. Oops.
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I’ve tried every way I can think of but it’s just gone. The account will sit there forever, but it’s dead in the water. I’m frustrated but it is what it is. And I think it’s worth mentioning that I don’t blame Instagram for any of this. I set up my account to include a super-secret, no-exceptions password and I lost the key to it. Meta has 3.6 billion users and my valid attempt to reclaim my account is drown out in a sea of millions of attempts to hack other accounts. They use the same protocols as everyone else but I made a mistake with how I configured my account by not having a secondary auth two factor auth mechanism and by not saving the recovery codes.

So please consider this yet another reminder to think about what you would do if your laptop or phone were suddenly wiped. Would you be able to recover everything? I thought I was ready, and I mostly passed the test, but I clearly had some holes. I’ll learn from these lessons and hopefully have a better experience next time. Never let a crisis go to waste. (And in the big scheme of things, losing an Instagram account is hardly a “crisis.”)

As for the woodworking content, I’m going to focus more on posting pictures of my projects here and not worry about posting woodworking stuff to Instagram. There’s a lot to be said for putting my content into a system that I control, and I could do with a little less time staring at Instagram.

benmartens August 29, 2022 Gadgets

San Juan Campground

Last year Elijah said he wanted to go camping without anyone else around. We didn’t get to it last year, but this year we set out to make it happen! Tim knew just the place: San Juan Campground. It’s out the boonies north of Skykomish, and because of a washout on one end of the road, it involves about fifteen miles of dirt roads that are rough in some spots. While you don’t need a truck and four wheel drive, both did come in handy.

There are no reservations at the campground so we arrived around lunchtime on Friday and had our pick of the nine spots. We snagged sites 2 and 3 which had their own driveway and one of the pit toilets. By Thursday evening, all the sites were full. I suppose we didn’t meet Elijah’s wish because we could see some other campers through the woods, especially at night with the fires, but he didn’t call us out on the technicality.

The days were spent playing cornhole, eating food, having good conversations, and enjoying the river which was right next to the campsites. We built dams, threw rocks, and enjoyed the beauty. It was a fantastic spot! We had to pack in all our own water, but we were able to use the river water for our dishes.

On the way out of the campsites, we checked out a nice swimming spot on the river but we didn’t venture in. Then we did a quick hike around Troublesome Creek. It was such a short/easy hike at the end of a very long drive that we would never have done it on its own, so I wanted to get it done and cross it off the list. It was short but beautiful.

The drive home took an exceptionally long time due to the ever-present backup into Sultan. It was effectively about a 7 mile stop and go backup from the Sultan stoplight. That’s a hard way to finish the weekend, but the camping was so fun that there wasn’t much complaining.

It will be different next year since they are planning to reopen the washed-out portion of the road. That will make the campground much easier to access and it won’t require any dirt roads. It might be harder to find a site so I’m glad we got this trip in!

I posted a photo sphere to Google Maps and some additional photos are included below.

The water in this photo is 8-10 feet deep, but it’s so clear that it’s hard to tell.
benmartens August 17, 2022 Family, Outdoors

Savings and Debt

I think about retirement more than is normal for someone of my age, but saving for retirement is a long-term game. My basic plan has been to save some money, pay off debt, and then save more money. We’ll see how well that works out for me, but it aligns well with Dave Ramsey’s “7 Baby Steps“.

Those basic guidelines are great, but there are so many small choices along the way. What’s a good order to do them in? Then I found a flow chart on reddit and I was in awe! I’m sure there are people with different opinions, but if I have a tough time believing that anyone would go too far off course if they followed this verbatim. You should be able to click into it to see all the details, but if not, check out the linked post above for the original content.

benmartens August 12, 2022 Uncategorized

Rimetrix Laminar Black Wheels

Welcome to another Tesla Tuesday!

When we were originally pricing out our car, we had planned to go for the upgraded 20″ black wheels because we liked the way they looked better. But when the price increased right before we ordered, we backed off that and went for the default 19″ regular wheels. In the end, I’m glad we did that because those 20″ wheels reduce the total vehicle range and give a slightly rougher ride, but that wasn’t the end of the story.

The Model Y 19″ wheels have a cover that snaps onto the actual rims and that cover improves range by about 7%, but since they are a cover, they’re replaceable. Rimetrix makes some aftermarket wheel covers for the Model Y (and the Model 3). They give the same aerodynamic performance and aesthetically pleasing black look while being significantly cheaper than the 20″ black rims.

The actual installation itself was very quick and I’m super happy with how it came out. Along the way, I also removed the two chrome Tesla badges and replaced the “dual motor” badge on the back with a blacked out version. There’s no chrome left on the car and now we have a car that is slightly different than the ocean of other Model Y’s driving around our area.

benmartens August 9, 2022 Electric Vehicles

Energy Sources

When power plants churn out electricity, it gets integrated by a “balancing authority”. There are a few dozen groups that handle this in the west.

I recently found a site that shows live stats from the Bonneville Power Authority Balancing Authority. On the map, this is represented by the medium blue that covers much of Washington, Oregon, northern Idaho, and western Montana. Every five minutes, the site is updated to show where the power came from those previous five minutes along with the demand level. (Note that VER stands for Variable Energy Resource which means wind, solar, etc. In this case it’s mostly wind.)

https://transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx

So the last five minutes of power were 75% hydro, 9% fossil fuel, 9% nuclear and 6% wind, but for the last couple days, wind was actually producing more of the power than nuclear.

The power at my house comes through PSE so this isn’t exactly applicable to me, but I still find this fascinating. If anyone knows how to find similar data for PSE I’d love to see it! Thanks to Cliff Mass’s excellent weather blog for setting me off on this side track with his post about why energy production declines during heat waves.

benmartens August 5, 2022 Electric Vehicles, Geek

End of an Era

I started the Studio711 fantasy football league back in 2007, but I’m closing the league. We won’t be playing this year. It sucks up a lot of my time to write these posts, make sure the league and rosters are full, handle my own team, etc, and while I could probably get by with less effort, I don’t want to do it halfway. It has been a lot of fun over the years, but lately it has felt like more of a drag, and honestly, I didn’t even watch every Seahawks game last year, much less keep up with all the NFL news.

Here’s one last post full of stats summarizing the years from 2007-2021 (minus 2020 when we took a COVID break.)

  • A total of 15 different people participated in the league over the 14 years of the league. Luke, Tim and I were the only people to play in it for all of those years, but Andy and Dad were in 13 of them.
  • I had the most playoff appearances (12 time, 85% of the seasons) but Tyler had a 100% appearance rate over his three seasons.
  • Micah dominated our league for one year with an 85% win percentage but he ended up losing the championship. Of teams that played at least 3 seasons, the top three win percentages are Tyler (62.8%), Logan (62.6%), and me (59.7%.)
  • Logan made the most moves per season (32.5) and Chelsea made the least (6).
  • Logan averaged the most points per season (1745 over 11 seasons) and Ed averaged the least (1436 over 3 seasons).

Thank you to everyone who participated over the years!

benmartens July 18, 2022 Fantasy Sports

Seaquest State Park Camping

In the summer of 2020, we had planned to camp with Tyla’s family at Seaquest State Park. Don had gotten stuck out of state during COVID and was still quarantining, but we did make the trip with Logan and Megan. This year we decided to try again and thankfully we were all able to make it.

We could not have asked for better weather! It was in the mid 70s during the day and mid 50s at night. There were scattered clouds both days, and on the first day, there were just enough clouds obscuring the mountain that we didn’t make the drive up to the visitor center. (We were watching the webcam.) Instead, we went to Harry Gardner Park and sat along the river for a while. I took my drone and managed to photo some kind of big hawk in flight! (It’s on the left side if the river in the center of the photo.) At the time I thought it was a bald eagle but the tail isn’t white so I guess it was something else.

On Saturday, the web cam looked great when we woke up so we ate breakfast and made the 1 hour drive up to the observatory. Getting there early was really nice as we didn’t follow a line of campers up the mountain. There were more clouds by then but we still had a great view. I’ve been there twice in 2007 and once each in 2011, 2012 (when we climbed it!), and 2020. It’s fun to see how much it has changed over the years. The dome was rebuilding for a while and the area around the mountain is slowly coming back to life. Check out these pictures comparing my view from 2007 with the view from 2022. There’s a lot more green and the dome inside the crater has grown.

Mt. St. Helens 2007
Mt. St. Helens 2022

All in all, it was a fun trip. I pitched in a couple meals but thanks to Don for taking the bulk of the work! It also makes tent camping a lot easier when your camping buddies have a camper!

benmartens July 15, 2022 Family, Outdoors, Travel

Identifying Tesla Models

Welcome to another Tesla Tuesday!

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the current prices for the various models, but how do you tell them apart when you see one in the wild? It takes a little practice, but here are some identifying characteristics:

Tesla Model 3

If you don’t know, guess Model 3. Today, this is the most common Tesla on the road (but going forward the Y is expected to overtake it.) The 3 is the smallest of the four models. It’s a four door sedan and, like the Y, it has no main grill openings on the front aside from the opening on the very bottom of the bumper.

Tesla Model Y

The looks like a bigger version of the 3. In fact, they share ~70% of their parts. The Y doesn’t have any grill openings either. The Y is a bit taller (~7 inches) and is a “crossover” style. It has a full liftgate instead of a trunk. It’s easy to get these confused with the Model 3.

Tesla Model S

Like the 3, the S is a sedan, but this one looks a lot fancier. You can differentiate the S and X from the 3 and Y by the grill “opening” with the Tesla logo. The rear end of the newer S and the X models also have a chrome accent that runs between both tail lights. These models usually have an emblem in the lower left of the rear that says “Model S”.

Tesla Model X

The X is BIG. It’s a full size SUV, but like the S, it has a grill “opening” and the chrome accent between the tail lights. If you see it in a parking lot, you’ll notice the gull wing doors. The door handles for the front and rear doors are also centered along the line between the doors.

benmartens July 12, 2022 Electric Vehicles

Charging Costs vs Gas Prices

Welcome to another Tesla Tuesday!

Before we did the car, I did a lot of research and math to compare a Model Y’s long term cost of ownership to the Ford Escape that we likely would have purchased instead. As part of that, I estimated that gas was going to average $3.50/gallon over the life of the car. That was about the average around us when I was doing the research and while I knew prices would go up a bit, I wanted to be very conservative (favoring the Escape over the Model Y.) Obviously the world has changed a lot since then and gas costs an average of $5.44 around us. How does that affect my calculations?

First let’s talk about how I’m collecting data. Finding “average gas prices” is a bit tricky. Most sites that you’ll find show averages for the state by month. That’s better than nothing, but our area is typically more expensive than other parts of the state, and we should be able to do better than monthly data. The GasBuddy website has daily updates on gas prices at a lot of gas stations. I wrote an app that checks the price for regular gas at the 6 closest gas stations to our house. I log that data to a database every day.

The next piece of the puzzle is figuring out how much gas I would have been buying at those processes. Obviously that’s a little tricky to get exactly right, but I’ve estimated it by looking at the total miles driven per day in our new car and assuming that I would just pay for that much gas each day. I get the daily mileage from the Tesla APIs and log that to the database as well. I’m left with a query that shows X miles driven for a given day when the gas price was $Y. I use the average MPG from our last Escape and do the math to estimate how much we would have paid for gas that day.

The Tesla API also gives me a record of every time I’ve charged the car. It tells me not just how much energy was added to the battery, but how much energy I pulled from the wall to account for a small amount of loss in the charging process. We have a tiered electricity cost based on total usage for the month so I assume that all the charging costs are in the highest tier.

When I was working out the math to see if an electric car would be cheaper, I had planned on saving $12.72 on gas per 100 miles. But that as planning at $3.50/gallon, so what does all the data show? After putting 2100 miles on the new car, I’m happy to report that we are saving $18.68 per 100 miles!

benmartens July 5, 2022 Electric Vehicles