Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Tolt MacDonald Camping

Tyla and I used to go camping once or twice a summer before Elijah came along. Then we got a little gunshy about camping with a munchkin. We have visited Tyla’s family at a campsite multiple times but we’ve never slept at one overnight. It was time to try it out for real.

I picked Tolt MacDonald park as a location that wasn’t too far away but one that still has some interesting stuff for us to explore. It’s the same park where we had our family photos taken. I know there are lots of you who would have been happy to come along, but we wanted to do this first trip by ourselves to make some family memories and then be ready for bigger trips with more people.

We had great weather for the trip and Elijah loved it! We all went to bed together at night around the time the sun set and he was zonked so he fell asleep quickly. We spent Saturday down by the river playing the sand and we also drove over to Snoqualmie Falls. I haven’t been there since they redid the lower viewing area. They have it completely blocked off so that it’s impossible to get down to the rocks below the falls. I’m glad we had opportunities to explore there years ago before access was shut off.

Elijah got to roast his first marshmallows over a real campfire and eat meals outside. He loved it all and didn’t want to go home at the end. The only misstep we had was that he woke up at 6am on the last day and couldn’t get back to sleep. He hasn’t figured out how to keep quiet for very long so we went on a 2 mile hike through the woods to avoid waking up everyone else. All in all, the trip was a success though.

Personally, I was thrilled to go camping with the truck. It was so easy to toss everything in the back. And this was the first time we had fully set up our new tent. That tent is going to last us forever. It’s built really well and worked great. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for my air mattress. I vaguely remember a leak from the last time I used it years ago but for some reason it didn’t get thrown away. So I spent the second half of both nights laying on the ground. I remembered to toss it in the trash this time.

It was a really nice weekend and I’m excited that we can start adding these trips back into our summer schedules again.

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benmartens August 5, 2016 Family, Outdoors

Wheel of Time Recap

wheeloftimeOn August 15, 2014, I started reading the Wheel of Time book series. I had heard that it was good and decided to give the first book a try. After I finished it and was hooked, I realized that there are 14 books in the series and it’s pretty much a single story. The series seem almost arbitrarily divided into individual books. If you include the prequel (which I’m reading now), it’s 11,916 pages long, but it so totally worth the effort and time. The story starts off so simple and small and ends up enormous and complex in a glorious way. If you enjoy fantasy, I recommend that you check it out. It’s a big commitment and the writing isn’t always perfect, but it’s extremely good.

The writing actually gets better towards the end. Robert Jordan created the series and wrote the first 11 books in the series but he died before he could finish it. One of my favorite authors, Brandon Sanderson, was asked to finish it. He picked up Robert Jordan’s notes and did a wonderful job with the end of the story. He kept the style much the same but got rid of a few annoyances I had with Jordan’s writing.

I’m a bit surprised that this hasn’t turned into a Game of Thrones-style TV series. The Wikipedia page for the book series indicates that some TV deals are supposedly in the works but that doesn’t mean much. Hopefully something will eventually come out… and hopefully it does the books justice.

Now it’s time to pick a new book. It has been so long since I’ve read anything other than this series that it’s going to feel really weird to switch gears. Thank you all for the various recommendations that you’ve given me. My general algorithm for picking a new book is to look at my Good Reads “to read” list, sort by average rating, and then find the highest rated one that my library has in ebook format. Looking at that list, I think I might cleanse my pallet with a little non-fiction and check out “How Star Wars Conquered the Universe“.

benmartens August 4, 2016 Books

Facebook Data Retention

Many of us end up dumping a lot of information into Facebook. You might want to download that to have a local copy/backup. It turns out this is pretty easy to do. The Facebook help docs have these instructions:

  1. Click at the top right of any Facebook page and select Settings
  2. Click Download a copy of your Facebook data below your General Account Settings
  3. Click Start My Archive

It takes a while to generate your archive. You’ll receive an email when it’s done. Click the link in the email and save that file to your computer.

Now that you’ve got it all backed up, are you sure you want to leave it sitting on the Facebook site? I don’t. Deleting your data from Facebook is a lot harder than backing it up. They don’t provide an easy way to selectively delete data. Thankfully there are some tools to help you out. I like the Facebook Post Manager extension for Chrome. It’s not super fancy or easy to use, but it did the job for me. I wiped out most of my posts, shares and some of the photos from before 2016.

It takes a little while, but I think it’s worthwhile to not have that all sitting around. I’ve been doing the same thing with my email with MailStore for the past couple years. Did you know that until some time in the last year or so, no warrant was needed to read email that you left on the email server for more than six months?

In the big scheme of things, this probably makes no difference. There’s so much data about us out there already, that deleting my old Facebook posts doesn’t matter, but oh well, it makes me feel a little better. Facebook probably still keeps them around on their server but now random internet people can’t view them all.

benmartens August 3, 2016 Geek

Comcast Deals

comcast-hold-timeIt has been a year since I got my last Comcast deal. That deal only lasted for 12 months. I noticed my bill went up again so it was time to call back. I spent 35 minutes on hold and had to hang up for a meeting. I called back again and spent another 30 minutes on hold. I started thinking that nobody was ever going to answer. That call was happening on my desk phone at work so I called in parallel on my cell phone but this time I chose a different path through the phone menu. I also made a change by choosing not to receive the survey. I got an instant human answer. Coincidence? Dunno.

After some questions and some typing, I got my $90 bill lowered to $59. Previously it was $55 so $59 is pretty good. The deal lasts for 12 months. It’s their Internet Plus plan with 75Mbps down. We do lose some cable channels but we watch so little TV I don’t care. We basically just get the local channels now and somehow that package also includes HBO which I’ve never had in my life. It’s good enough for a couple sitcoms and football. I think we could save $10/month if we dropped TV completely, but for now, that’s a reasonable deal. If I could find a way to reliably watch football games for a similar price, I’d probably drop the TV part of our package.

The last two times I’ve called Comcast like this, I’ve basically gotten the “new subscriber” price with no contract. It will be helpful to know this going in so I can figure out what package/price I want to end up with.

benmartens August 2, 2016 Commentary

Allie The Alligator

Growing up, Allie the Alligator was one of our favorite pool toys. It was a giant blow up alligator. It was a treat to get it out since it was so hard to blow up. I pulled it out on this latest trip so Elijah and cousin David could see it. It’s a lot easier to blow up now that Dad has an air compressor! Here’s a shot of the boys on it and another one of me, ChrisH, Rachel and AngieH on it in 1988.

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benmartens August 1, 2016 Commentary

Tractors Galore

Elijah is a farm boy born in a subdivision. He LOVES tractors. He’s in heaven when we go back to Indiana because Dad and Mom have three tractors at their house. They have two John Deere lawn mowers and one Alis Chalmers WD 45 which Elijah has named Otis.

Elijah was already enjoying riding those around the property and even driving one of the John Deere tractors by himself. Then we met up with my high school buddy Scott. When I was in high school, his family owned a Deere dealership. Since then they sold it but they still own/manage the dealership and they have a bigger/newer shop. They sell everything from lawnmowers and blowers to top of the line combines, tractors, seeders and sprayers. Scott is the resident expert on their GPS equipment which is fun because that’s what I did in my internship at John Deere. It has changed a LOT since then.

We chatted with Scott and his dad for a while and then headed outside. Scott tossed me the key and told me to take Elijah for a drive in anything he wanted! Our first pick was a fairly new 8245R. Back in high school I used to help Scott’s family on the farm a little bit but it has been a very long time since I’ve driven anything like that. Thankfully he gave me a quick tutorial on all the buttons and switches and we were off on a quick tour of the parking lot. After that we climbed around in a combine (complete with refrigerator) and then took a 5000 series tractor with a bucket out for a longer drive. Elijah loves the smaller tractors with a bucket and no cab. Scott asked if there was anything else we wanted to drive and for some reason, Elijah wasn’t interested in any of the other huge equipment they had (bummer!) but he loves Gators. Scott found one of their brand new, high end models and let me take Elijah and Tyla for a ride. Those things FLY! He said a guy in their shop had it up over 50 but I kept it under 40 with a three year old sitting on my lap.

It was a fantastic outing. At the end of the day I asked Elijah for his favorite part of the day. He said, “Mr. Scott is so nice! He let us drive TRACTORS!” Thanks Scott and Ken! We loved it!

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benmartens July 29, 2016 Family, Travel

Warren Dunes

Indiana has better beaches than Washington crazy. Sound crazy? You’ve never seen Warren Dunes! The Lake Michigan shoreline is gorgeous. It has huge sandy beaches and the lake is so big it looks a lot like the ocean (minus the salty water, huge waves and sharks.) You can only see the other side if it’s a VERY clear day and then you can only see the tops of the highest buildings.

One of our favorite shoreline spots is Warren Dunes State Park. The beach is beautiful and there are pretty big dunes that you can climb. The tallest one is 240 feet. Climbing up it in the hot sun on slippery sand is quite a chore, but the view from the top is worth it. As kids we would run as fast as we could down the hill. As gravity pulled you faster and faster, your strides would get enormous until you inevitably started tumbling head over heels. I climbed the big dune with Tyla and Luke but our descent was a little more controlled than it was in my youth.

Elijah and David had fun playing in the sand on the beach and even though it was a very hot day, we got there early enough that we could enjoy ourselves before it got too hot and we left.

We finished up the trip with a stop at Oinks in New Buffalo for some delicious ice cream. Yum!

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[UPDATE] Thanks to Ken for pointing out that Warren Dunes is in Michigan, not Indiana. But my statement still holds true. Indiana has some nice beaches/dunes too! Michigan’s coast line definitely wins though. It’s huge!

benmartens July 28, 2016 Family, Travel

Hesston Steam Museum

Tyla, Elkijah and I spent a week in Indiana with my family. We had a fantastic time! The weather was great and, unlike our Christmas trip, Elijah was healthy. We crammed in a ton of activities and spent most afternoons in the pool since it was quite hot. Posts over the next few days will highlight some of our activities.

One of our first stops on the trip was at the Hesston Steam Museum. We bounced along back country roads for about half an hour until all of a sudden we ended up at a field with a bunch of steam trains and equipment. It has been operating for over 60 years. It started with a couple guys who liked steam equipment and has grown like that ever since. The facility is mostly operated by volunteers.

We focused our attention on three of the trains they have in operation. There’s a full size narrow gauge train, a smaller train which was just big enough for us to squeeze into the caboose and a tiny train where you ride on top of the cars. That tiny train was all of our favorites and we rode that one twice.

It’s a pretty impressive place in a pretty unlikely spot, but if you’re ever in the area, it’s worth a visit.

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benmartens July 27, 2016 Family, Travel

Spinning

We had a family company picnic at a local park. Elijah had a blast and loved the merry go round on the playground. When he sat in the middle and spun, it reminded me of one of those “choose your character” screens from a video game so I made it into an animated gif and chuckled:

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benmartens July 26, 2016 Family

Garage Sign

My parents have been building a fantastic new garage at their house. I thought it would look good with a new sign in it. I found some inspiration online, drew it in Inkscape and then took it to the laser cutter at work. The sign is made out of two sheets of 1/4″ MDF. The bottom is just a circle and the top has all the shapes cut out of it. I also cut the white portions out of 1/8″ plywood and put that under each of the white pieces. That gave it a raised look which I really like. After I got it all done, I realized I probably should have put “Martens Garage” instead of just my Dad’s name because Mom uses it for her project too but, oh well. Maybe I’ll have to come up with something else that has Mom’s name on it.

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benmartens July 25, 2016 Maker, Woodworking