Studio711.com – Ben Martens

It has been six years since the last time I grew a mustache for Movember. Tyla just loved it so much that I feel bad that I haven’t done it again for her to enjoy. (I’m not sure the full weight of that sarcasm can be communicated in plain text.) Plus, I think Elijah would find it amusing to see me with more than a little bit of stubble when I don’t shave for a while. So I’m putting the call out now: who’s with me for another Movember? Remember that the overall point of this is to raise awareness and money for men’s health so it’s for a good cause. In addition to growing that mo’, why not throw a donate a couple bucks too?

Here’s what I propose:

• Leave a comment and let everyone know you’re joining in.
• You’re welcome to get a running start on your mustache. Feel free to grow a full beard and start whenever you want.
• Shave off that beard and let that mustache shine in all it’s glory during Thanksgiving week. I’ll probably go to work with it at least one day.
• Send me a photo of your beautiful mustache and I’ll include it in a post here on my site.

Go forth and grow that mo!

It’s fun (and frustrating) to slowly see media companies making their way to the online space. This year, Twitter bought the rights to stream ten Thursday Night Football games. It might seem like an odd purchase, but Twitter thrives on live “chat” so getting a bunch of people together to watch a live event makes sense. You can watch free for yourself on tnf.twitter.com. It looks like they only have the games that are also on CBS or NBC, but it’s still nice to have when you’re out and about.

Or at least I assume it’s nice… I can’t watch it on my Windows Phone. In a few months I’ll have an Android device and then I’ll be good to go.

When we booked the stay in the caboose, I looked at a map, noticed it was on water in the south end of Puget Sound and I assumed it was on Hood Canal. Wrong. It turns out that the sound is divided up into a bunch of different “basins” and Hood Canal is just one of them. We were actually staying on the “South Basin”. The Wikipedia article about Puget Sound has a very nice map showing the different basins and I’ve included that map below.

It felt like the difference between high tide and low tide was huge while we were down there in the South Basin, but surely the tide is the same everywhere, right? Nope. Here’s a quote from Wikipedia: “The difference in height between the Higher High Water and the Lower Low Water averages about 8.3 feet (2.5 m) at Port Townsend on Admiralty Inlet, but increases to about 14.4 feet (4.4 m) at Olympia, the southern end of Puget Sound.” It has something to do with all the interconnections and interplay between the basins, but I couldn’t find any good info explaining the physics of it.

The shoreline is over 1300 miles long! That’s roughly the driving distance from New York City to Miami. We’ve explored only a tiny portion of it, but there are lots of great spots for further investigation in the future.

The caboose that we stayed in was once part of the Great Northern Railway. I had never hear about it before but I learned some interesting stuff while I was there:

1. The railway line stretch from the St. Paul to Seattle.
2. It’s the only transcontinental railroad that was privately funded. It was built out in sections so that each part became profitable before expanding.
3. The Stevens Pass tunnel was constructed as part of the creation of this railroad.
4. The book The White Cascade tells the story of a Great Northern Railway train caught in a major avalanche. It’s a great book if you’re interested in history.
5. It started in the late 1800s and ran through 1970 before being merged into the Burlington Northern railroad.

If you want to read more info, the Great Northern Railroad Historical Society has a pretty deep website.

It 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.

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.