Studio711.com – Ben Martens

The building across the street has been taken over by WSDOT for the east side light rail extension project. It got me curious about exactly where this line will run.

In addition to the stop across the street from my building, it runs a little farther up to the Overlake Transit Center. I suspect this line will be popular with Microsoft employees since it runs right to campus.

I have mixed feelings about the project. It’s a HUGE expense (~$50 billion for the full plan) and most of that is coming out of property taxes. The proposed lines are mostly in Seattle but us east side residents will bear the brunt of the costs. The cost per rider is going to be huge compared to installations in other cities.

On the flip side, I really don’t like going into Seattle because it’s so annoying to drive and park. Buses are available but generally it takes twice as long to get where I’m going. I expect that the train will be a faster option and since the western end of this line is right by the stadiums, that could be pretty convenient.

And anyone who drives in this area knows that traffic is pretty rotten. The lake and the mountains don’t leave much room for people to travel so everyone ends up using the same roads as everyone else. With the area rapidly growing, changes need to keep coming.

Is it worth a couple hundred dollars per year in extra property taxes (and even more in other kinds of taxes)? Many of the people footing the tax bill for this will be retired or moved away from the area long before this plan is ever completed. How do you do transit planning when you can’t build fast enough to keep up with demand, costs are enormously high because of the terrain, and oh yeah, there’s not really any ROOM to put in a rail line? Sounds like a tough job. I wonder how far we could get with $50 billion if we were investigating teleportation?

We haven’t had a lot of lowland snow around here in the past few years, but when it does happen, it’s a mess. When I moved out here, I thought people were blowing it way out of proportion, but after my first few Seattle storms, I got it. The roads are usually wet prior to the freezing event and we get a layer of ice underneath whatever snow comes down. Add into that tons of hills, drivers that may have never even seen snow before and very few snow removal vehicles and the city basically shuts down. If you want a quick overview of what it looks like when you combine ice, snow and Seattle, check out this YouTube link. Chains are very helpful for navigating the hills when the roads get like this.

On top of that, if you’re going to travel in the mountains in the winter, it’s a good idea to carry chains. There are times when the roads get bad and chains are required on most vehicles. There are even situations where the roads are really bad (but still open) and chains are required on ALL vehicles, including 4WD and AWD. The WSDOT has a good page about this. If you get caught without chains when you should have had them on, expect a very big fine ($500+).

So blah blah blah, I buy chains for all my vehicles. I used them a few times on the Subaru and they were incredibly helpful. The manual for our Escape specifically says not to install chains. I’m guessing it messes with the AWD system. (The Subaru AWD could handle it for short distances.) For the Escape, we got AutoSocks which are approved by the WSDOT. They aren’t as good or durable as chains, but they are effective.

The truck manual actually says that only certain tire sizes should use chains and my tires weren’t listed. Too bad, I’m buying chains for it anyway. On the rare instances where I need them, I’m not using an AutoSock for a big truck. I bought both the Subaru and the truck chains from tirechain.com. The specific ones I’ve purchased are “Class S ONORM Diamond Chains”. The chains come quickly, are priced competitively, and they’re easy to install once you get the hang of it. They slide around the back of the tire and then once you attach them to the tire, you drive forward a few feet and retighten them. I highly recommend that you practice a couple times in your driveway because the first attempt might take you 15-30 minutes. After you understand it, you can put them on in 5 minutes.

The chains come with a nice carrying/storage bag, but I like to put one of the chains inside a ziplock bag so that they don’t get tangled up. I also put a ziplock back in there with a set of dispoable heavy latex gloves and the instructions.You’re probably going to be putting these on in messy road conditions.

The first five years that I spent out here were a lot snowier than the last five years, but who knows what’s going to come. I want to be prepared for a mess on the commute home and I also want to take my truck into the mountains in a safe manner. If the price is prohibitive for you, it’s possible to buy cable chains at a local Les Schwab and then return them at the end of the year if you didn’t use them.

I’m the resident Audio Visual nerd at church. Over the years, I’ve slowly been cleaning up and improving the system, but the biggest problem was still the amplifier and speakers. The amp came out of my living room and could barely produce enough power to make the system audible on a busy Sunday. The speakers were tiny and some of them were blown out. (You can see an example of the old speaker on the left side of the photo.) Everything was cranked up as loud as I could get it without feedback or distortion and it was barely enough.

Finally, it was time to upgrade. The only catch was that I had no idea how big of a system we really needed. I didn’t even know how to find speakers that would work with an amplifier. I spent some time learning about resistance, RMS, amplifier wattage, and how to pair an amp with speakers and made a wild guess.

We ended up with a QSC GX3 300 watt amplifier and two Mackie C200 speakers. The speakers are rated for 200 watts RMS and the amp can drive 300 with one of these speakers on each channel. The speakers are mounted to the wall with some simple, custom speaker boxes that I made with plywood, pocket hole screws and black paint.

Our church is roughly 75 feet long, 40 feet wide and 30 feet high at the peak. My hope was to get a system that would be at about 30% total power to get the right volume under normal conditions. I failed that, but the system is still a success. This setup is loud. When the church was empty, I got it turned up about 1/3 of the way and it felt like a rock concert. I seriously wonder if more power could blow out some windows.

So yeah, overkill. But you know what? It feels AWESOME to have a system that really works and isn’t straining to sort of meet our needs. We have had a lot of births in the last five years so church is a lot noisier than it used to be and it’s nice to have the ability to drown out the kiddie buzz if we need to.

The Lutheran church has a strong German heritage. So when October rolls around, it’s time for Oktoberfest! Our church puts on a pretty good party with everyone bringing homemade German dishes to share. We also had a pie baking contest, a beer judging event and hammerschalgen. Any day when I get to eat a bunch of sausage and taste 11 different beers is a good one in my book.