Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Great Northern Model Train Review

My parents have an O-gauge model train running around their tree. It’s a relatively new purchase, but it was there when we were home with Elijah and he LOVED it. Tyla and I have always thought about getting one for our tree so we decided to pull the trigger this year.

I was visiting Eastside Trains with Elijah a few weekends ago to kill some time and I saw the Great Northern Mountain Mover set. Great Northern is the railroad that ran the caboose that we stayed in earlier this year. I liked that it was related to a family vacation… and I also liked that it was deeply discounted. Tyla and I often do a family Christmas present instead of giving each other gifts so we decided to make this the family gift.

As we expected, Elijah LOVES it. It came with just enough track to get around the tree but that’s plenty to keep him entertained. The box says for ages 14 and up, but he has been good enough with it that we have let him play with it unsupervised a little bit. It takes a lot of coaching but he’s a pretty responsible little kid.

Once he’s old enough that we trust him to not destroy Tyla’s big Christmas village, we’ll set that up with the train. The train should be the right scale to match the village and we’ll have a nice little Christmas display every year.

christmastrain

benmartens December 2, 2016 Gadgets

KitchenAid KOCE500ESS Review

Our house was built in 1990, and when we bought it, it still had the original combination microwave/oven unit. They worked fairly well so we just left them alone and marveled at how nice it will be some day to have cool new features like a spinning tray inside the microwave.

The unit slowly degraded over time and the biggest annoyance was that sometimes the microwave would look like it was running, but when you took your food out after 2 or 3 minutes, you found out that it hadn’t actually been heating. It seemed like a problem with the door sensor so we each had our own routines of how to close the door to avoid that problem.

We decided it was finally time to upgrade. Unfortunately there aren’t a ton of options for these combination units. I looked into buying two separate units and trying to work it into the existing cabinet space but I gave up on that* and handed over the credit card to buy a KitchenAid KOCE500ESS. Kudos to the Rick at Judd and Black for another great purchasing experience and what seemed like a fair deal to me.

The new unit was a few inches shorter than the old one. That extra space generally is less noticeable at the bottom of the unit than at the top, but that means building a little shelf inside the cabinet space. Since the unit is hardwired into the 220v circuit, Judd and Black have to hire that out to a contractor. Couple that with the shelf building and the install fee was going to be around $250. For that price, I was willing to try it myself and I’m glad I did. And when I say “myself”, I mean with help of some cheap labor from Logan.

Logan and I wrestled the old unit out of the cabinet and tossed it in the truck. Judd and Black took that one back at no cost and we picked up the new unit. It took us about 2 hours to install it, but that was largely due to my mistakes building the little shelf. It’s an extremely simple build with the tools I had in the garage, but there isn’t a lot of room for error between having a gap above the top of the unit and making the hole too short so that you can’t slide it in.

The actual appliance is really nice. It has three racks in the lower oven, one of which extends fully out for easy access. The top oven is some goofy combination of a microwave, convection over and broiling unit. I don’t understand how it works, but in addition to using it like a regular microwave, you can do some combinations like using the microwave in conjunction with the broiling element to make crispy hot sandwiches or french fries. You can even put most metals in there. It works out pretty well and really speeds things up. For example, if you want to make a frozen pizza, you can bake one perfectly from start to finish in about 8 minutes. Compare that to the 10 minutes of pre-heat time and 10 minutes of cook time with a standard oven.

But in general, it’s just nice to have a microwave that heats every time and an oven that heats evenly even with multiple racks full. Hopefully this unit provides us with a lot of delicious food for many years to come!

oldoven
lickingwires newovenin
* After we removed the old unit, I discovered that there was an extra 110 line coming into that cabinet. One of my hangups with doing separate units was that I’d have to run another line over there to power the microwave. Looks like the home builders already thought of that. If this new unit ever dies, I’ll probably give more thought to buying two separate units because it’s so much cheaper.

benmartens December 1, 2016 Home Improvement

Fantasy Football – Week 12

2016_week12_breesSo the Seahawks place very well and defeat the Eagles and Patriots but then get manhandled by the Buccaneers?! Hey John Schneider, can we please have an offensive line? What a mess that game was. The defense was really missing Earl Thomas but held Tampa Bay scoreless in the next three quarters. The offense was a mess though and only managed 3 points the entire game. That loss also broke a pretty major streak: “Seattle’s streak is over. At no point during the fourth quarter today were they within one score of tying the game. This is what blowing out Seattle looks like.” [source] That incredible 98 game streak that was ended by the Buccaneers who are now over 0.500 for the first time since 2012.

Our league standings are officially constipated. Andy is still comfortably out front but there is a 4 way tie for 2nd place. Total season points are the tie breaker. As the monday night game ended, I was on ahead of Logan in the total season points by 0.01. Then Rodgers took a knee twice and Yahoo apparently counts that against the QB rushing yards so that dropped me to 0.19 behind Logan. Austin is close behind us in fourth and Tim is 220 points behind in fifth. He’s going to need to get into the playoffs with his record because I don’t think he can make up that point deficit with only 2 games remaining until the playoffs start.

Next week we have some big matchups that will help shape our playoff picture. Andy gets his chance to beat up on me, but then Tim and Luke play each other, possibly battling for that fourth playoff spot, and Austin and Logan play each other battling to break out of the four way tie. Dad and Jim make up the fourth game and one of them will get to put another notch in their win column.

1. Ben
2. Logan (+1)
3. Austin (-1)
4. Andy

  This Week Season All-Time
Highest Team Score Ben had 143.98 Logan had 170.69 (Week 5) Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score Jim had 92.69 Tim had 67.79 (Week 8) Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout Andy beat Jim by 40.19 Logan beat Tim by 79.46 (Week 5) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Logan beat Tim by 7.76 Luke beat Logan by 0.11 (Week 9) Luke beat Logan by 0.11 (2016)
Highest Scoring Player Drew Brees had 40.50 for Austin Ben Roethlisberger had 43.90 for Andy (Week 4) Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak Andy has a 5 game winning streak Was Andy, Ben, Logan and Tim and had 4 game winning streaks Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had an 8 game winning streak
Longest Active Losing Streak Dad has a 5 game losing streak Was Dad, Logan and Jim had 4 game losing streaks Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
benmartens November 30, 2016 Fantasy Sports

Stuff You Should Know Archives

StuffYouShouldKnowI’ve written about the Stuff You Should Know podcast before. It’s my top recommendation when people ask me for a podcast that they should listen to. It’s generally approachable by everyone compared to the tech and woodworking ones I also listen to.

If you get hooked, watch out. They have 905 episodes for you to catch up on! I caught that bug and ended up listening to all of them. It’s a lot of content and I know I only retained a fraction of it, but it’s really good entertainment.

I’m happy I did it, but I’m also happy that I’ve caught up. At some point it did kind of become a slog, but that was so close to the end that I just powered through.

benmartens November 29, 2016 Commentary

Best Of YouTube

The coolest uncle in the world is back with an incredible project: a giant glow wall. I want to do this! This would make for an epic show-and-tell day at Elijah’s school or a great way for the neighborhood kids to kill a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Bacon. Cupcakes. I’m sold.

And third on the list is not actually a video and it’s not even on YouTube because I’m crazy like that. Go listen to the fish fraud episode of Stuff You Should Know. Did you know that if you’ve ordered fish in a restaurant, there’s a VERY good chance that you were served something other than what you ordered? I’ve listened to hundreds of those episodes and usually I have at least a small idea of what they’re going to say, but in this case, I didn’t even know fish fraud existed. Super interesting!

benmartens November 28, 2016 Links

Android App List

androidapplistI’ve written plenty about the pros and cons of Android vs Windows Phone, but one undeniable pro is that there are a lot more app choices available on Android. (I guess it can also be a con because there are a thousand apps to do every task, but at least I have a choice.) Logan just picked up a Galaxy S7 too and was asking what apps I liked. I figured it would make a good post. Obviously this won’t be a full list of every app on my phone, but it’s some of the ones I think are a little bit interesting or the ones for which there are many available options. If you think you have a better app for a category, I’d love to hear about it.

That’s probably a good list of the apps that had lots of choices. And then of course I have various TV channel apps, smart home apps, game apps, app-kabobs, app creole, app gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple app, lemon app, coconut app, pepper app, app soup, app stew, app salad, app and potatoes, app burger, app sandwich. That- that’s about it.

benmartens November 25, 2016 Gadgets

Average Lifespan

happyoldpersonI wanted to do a post about how rapidly the average lifespan is increasing but it turns out it’s really difficult to find datasets that agree. There are also a lot of complexities around measuring this. Are you measuring life expectancy at birth or only after people reach 21? Do you live in a developing country? How wealthy is your family? Over time there have been different factors that increased or decreased death rates in different age groups so you probably really want to trend the probabilities of death by age X over time.

I’m too lazy (and probably unqualified) to do a bunch of research into all these studies to combined their findings, but here are some hand-wavy data points:

  • If you were born in 1900, you were probably going to die before you reached 50. Kids born today will exceed 80 years old on average. That’s a 30 year increase in average life expectancy in just one century. Compare that to the incredibly slow increase in the previous millennia.
  • For the first time in history, there are as many 65+ year olds alive as there are kids under 5.
  • 25-30% of people over 85 have dementia.
  • Average life expectacny is currently increasing by about 6 weeks per year. My son was born when I was 33 so that means his life expectancy his roughly 4 years longer than mine.
  • Average life expectancy is growing exponentially. Not only are babies expected to live longer with every year that passes, that rate of change is increasing.
  • More than 15% of the people alive today are expected to live past 100.
  • The number of people over 100 years old is expected to increase tenfold between 2010 and 2050.

There are even some really wild predictions out there saying things like the first person to live to 200 is already alive today, but I’ll avoid those for now.

It’s really interesting to think about how this dramatic increase is affecting many social norms and programs. For example, the average retirement age is going to have to increase and how will social security and medicare ever keep up with that many elderly people? What will the world be like when the average life expectancy is 100? We aren’t very far away from that…

If you want to pick one single resource to peruse, the best one that I found is from the US Department of Health and Human Services: https://www.nia.nih.gov/sites/default/files/global_health_and_aging.pdf

benmartens November 24, 2016 Commentary

Fantasy Football – Week 11

2016_week11_tombradyIt seems like there have been a lot of very tense Seahawk games this year, but this one was more of a comfortable win. They played pretty well and chugged along to get the win. There are some concerning injuries coming out of the game though. Procise is probably out for the season and Pope is going to miss a game or two. Thankfully Rawls is back but he got banged up in the game too. Thomas and Sead have hamstring strains at might miss a week. One bright spot is that Bennett is probably going to suit up for the next game after missing the last 4. The Seahawks have survived some pretty major injuries so far this season. We’ll see if they can continue that. They will definitely be a favorite over the Buccaneers but these injuries will add to the drama.

In our league, Andy’s #1 team scored the second lowest points but was playing against the lowest score in the league so he keeps his streak alive. (Andy’s total was hurt with the major injury to A.J. Green.) Logan ended his 4 game skid by stopping my 4 game winning streak. We haven’t had a winning or losing streak more than 4 games long this year.

Nobody has clinched a playoff spot yet and the league is still really tight. It’s going to be a stretch for Dad and Jim to make it, but everyone else has an excellent chance to make it in. Currently, the third through fifth teams all have the same record and the most points in the league, but they are separated by only 24 points. Thank you to everyone for continuing to start full rosters even as some people drop out of the playoff picture!

There’s no change in the power rankings this week. They still differ wildly from the actual standings so we’ll see how that shakes out.

1. Ben
2. Austin
3. Logan
4. Andy

  This Week Season All-Time
Highest Team Score Logan had 127.17 Logan had 170.69 (Week 5) Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score Luke had 83.60 Tim had 67.79 (Week 8) Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout Tim beat Dad by 26.88 Logan beat Tim by 79.46 (Week 5) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Andy beat Luke by 4.24 Luke beat Logan by 0.11 (Week 9) Luke beat Logan by 0.11 (2016)
Highest Scoring Player Tom Brady had 36.40 for Logan Ben Roethlisberger had 43.90 for Andy (Week 4) Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak Andy has a 4 game winning streak Andy, Ben, Logan and Tim and had 4 game winning streaks Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had an 8 game winning streak
Longest Active Losing Streak Dad has a 4 game losing streak. Dad, Logan and Jim had 4 game losing streaks Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
benmartens November 23, 2016 Fantasy Sports

Android Pay

androidpayOur new Galaxy S7 phones support Android Pay. It’s one of a few competing standards out there, but thankfully it’s one of the big ones so it’s supported at a lot of stores. The concept is simple: you add your credit card info into the app and when you approach the credit card machine, you just tap your phone on it. Your phone will then ask you to authenticate the purchase and in our case, that’s just a thumbprint verification. It’s very convenient. The app can also be used to keep store loyalty cards. To use those, you just display the barcode in the app and have the cashier scan it.

Usually added convenience includes added risk, but in this case, it’s safer. The store gets a one time code that is linked to your account so if the store gets hacked, the number that the hackers get is useless.

It is true that your number is now in your phone but to use it, the hackers would have to figure out how to spoof your disk encryption and/or your thumbprint. And they’d have to do all that before you realized your phone was gone and wiped it remotely. I put that risk about equal or less than me losing my wallet and someone else finding my credit cards so I’m not too worried about it.

benmartens November 22, 2016 Gadgets

Chicken Pot Pie Stew

chickenpotpiestewChicken pot chicken pot chicken pot pie!

Last week I made an effort to cook only recipes that I’ve never cooked before. Sunday was crock pot day and I somewhat randomly picked this recipe. It ended up being delicious! Our crock pot finished it perfectly right at the 5 hour mark. It’s important to keep your chicken and potato pieces big so that they don’t melt away.

Ingredients
• 2 large skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, cut into cubes
• 5 medium red potatoes, quartered
• 1/2 (8 ounce) package baby carrots
• 1/2 cup chopped celery
• 1 (26 ounce) can condensed cream of chicken soup
• 3 cubes chicken bouillon
• 1 teaspoon garlic salt
• 1/2 teaspoon celery salt
• 1-1/2 teaspoons ground black pepper
• 1/2 (16 ounce) bag frozen mixed vegetables
• 1 roll of buttermilk biscuits

Directions
1. Combine the chicken, potatoes, carrots, celery, chicken soup, chicken bouillon, garlic salt, celery salt, and black pepper in a slow cooker; cook on High for 5 hours.
2. Stir the frozen mixed vegetables into the slow cooker, and cook 1 hour more.
3, Make biscuits!

benmartens November 21, 2016 Food