Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Commentary

Amazon Prime Video Monthly

amazonprimeAmazon has always offered Prime as a one year plan. It’s $99 and you get free two day shipping along with access to a selection of free Kindle books, streaming videos, music, unlimited photo storage and a bunch of other smaller benefits. It’s a fantastic deal and they’ve had me hooked for many years. They will still continue to offer this but they’re adding two new plans:

  1. Amazon Prime Video is now available for $8.99/month. This is obviously in direct competition with Netflix. It’s a good move because it allows them to expand globally even when the rest of the more complicated offerings like 2 day shipping are not available. I don’t think the Amazon Prime catalog is as good as the Netflix one, but since I would pay for Prime just to have the shipping option, the video stuff is just gravy on top and there’s plenty there to keep me occupied.
  2. The full Amazon Prime is available for $10.99/month. If you aren’t sure that the service is right for you or maybe you only want to use it in December for ordering gifts, then you have the option of paying monthly.

If you keep either one for a full year, you’re going to end up paying more than if you had prepaid for a year, but it’s nice that these options exist to expand their customer base.

benmartens April 25, 2016 Commentary

Tesla Model 3

teslamodel3Over 325,000 people lined up to put $1000 down on the new Tesla 3. It’s an incredible accomplishment for Tesla considering that many people lined up without even knowing what the car looked like. Tesla could be the next Apple in terms of producing stuff that people blindly want. They’ve built an incredibly good reputation.

The concern is whether or not Tesla can deliver. It seems like Elon Musk’s plan from the beginning was to learn about electric cars with the early expensive models. Now we’re seeing the full gamble play out. This is make or break time for the company. Tesla can currently make about 50,000 cars per year so at that rate, it will take them six years to fill the orders and they aren’t even going to start shipping them until late 2017. With that many orders lined up, Tesla can go to investors and request a lot of money to build out even more factories so they should be able to ramp up production.

That’s a huge number of electric vehicles. Estimates put the total number of electric cars in the US around 410,000. Tesla sold about 63,000 of those. It’s pretty easy for people to back out of their orders and get their $1000 back, but if even half of the people buy the car, it’s a very sizeable percentage of the total market.

They’ll have to really bring down their production costs too. Car companies generally include research and development costs in the cost of their car. That’s how the companies can stay afloat. Tesla does NOT include R&D in the cost of their cars and even then they aren’t making much money on each one sold. It may be a viable business strategy in the beginning but at some point they have to turn the corner and really be a profitable company.

I hope they succeed and given all of the amazing things Elon Musk has accomplished, it’s hard to bet against them. That being said, this is a huge undertaking. It will be fun to watch!

benmartens April 22, 2016 Commentary

Truck Update

fordfactoryBack in January I ordered an F150. It’s now more than four months later and a common question is “Where’s your truck?” The short answer is that I’m still waiting. I ordered the heavy duty payload option and that requires some special parts that were flagged in the ordering system as “late availability.” I knew this going in and I was prepared to wait, but ugh, it’s hard to wait so long. I’m praying that any day now I’ll hear from the dealer that the build has started. At that point I think it takes about 10 weeks to get the truck.

So I still have a long wait ahead of me. I know that down the road I’ll be happy that I waited for this feature, but right now, I question when it is worth it. One positive is that the longer I wait, the cheaper the truck gets. Incentives from the factory increase as the model year goes on and I get whatever incentives are available when the truck arrives. Also, Tyla and I have been making “truck payments” to ourselves for a while so this wait just means we have a smaller amount left to finance.

I eagerly await the day when I can post a picture of myself standing next to my truck!

benmartens April 20, 2016 Commentary

Instagram

instagramlogoI joined Instagram quite a while ago mainly because it was an easy way to post both to my website and to Facebook, but the more I use it, the more I love it. You can only post pictures and videos so the content is very engaging. And I also find that the userbase is a lot more interactive than on Facebook or Twitter. When I tag posts with various hashtags, it’s very common to get some random person liking the picture or even following me if I post a few in a row that they like. I’ve been on Twitter for years and that almost never happens there. I’ve even started posting some stuff just to Instagram instead of posting to Facebook at the sametime.

I know Instagram is a very popular service, but if you haven’t signed up, give it a shot. You can see the full list of people I’m following, but to wrap this up, I’ll share a couple of my favorites:

  • spacex
  • calvarylutheranwa
  • cascadeloop
  • northwesthiker
  • mattcremona
  • smartereveryday
  • steveinmarin
  • iliketomakestuff
  • jaybates86
  • crystalmountain
benmartens March 30, 2016 Commentary

Toll-Free Times On 405

opentoallhotlanesLast week, WSDOT changed the tolling procedure on 405. The HOT lanes are now open to everyone between 7pm and 5am and on weekends. You don’t need a pass, you don’t need multiple passengers, and you don’t have to pay money. I love this change, but I’m surprised they did it.

If you read the notes from the meeting where they decided this, it’s clear that they have a lot of data available. Some of those charts are incredibly interesting. If you’re a data nerd who travels 405, you’ll love it. But the main problem I have, as I’ve stated before, is that they aren’t optimizing just for maximum throughput on the road. You can see it in their notes. They always talk about how much money each of the options will cost them in lost revenue. The system is in place to generate money and give rich people a fast lane. I’m fundamentally opposed to that. The highway is a shared resource. Let’s maximize throughput. End of story.

So why am I surprised that they created a toll-free time? Because people are going to start realizing that the toll isn’t the part of the system that is important. The important part is having separate lanes with limited entry and exit points, just like a standard express lane setup. There are already calls for WSDOT to experiment with no-toll times during the day instead of just at night, but I can’t imagine them doing that. They’d be giving up a lot of money and that’s a higher priority for them than just improving throughput. Making it free at night and on weekends costs them 3% of their total revenue and removes traffic jams that the HOT system added on the weekends so it’s a nice PR win and actually does improve traffic. Changing the daytime rates would be a much bigger hit to their bottom line.

benmartens March 28, 2016 Commentary

Movies At Home

seanparkerOnline streaming has gotten a lot better and movies are available in just a few months after they are released in theaters. But wouldn’t it be cool to watch movies at home as soon as they show up in the theater? There have been some VERY expensive devices (tens of thousands of dollars) that allow rich people to do this, but Sean Parker (of Napster fame) is trying to change that.

He has a new product and service called “Screening Room.” You pay $150 for a set top device and then you can watch movies for $50 each. Sure, it’s a lot more expensive than waiting until it’s available for rental later (or even later when it’s on Netflix and Amazon), but if you want to watch a current movie, you’re easily going to spend $50 at the theater with two or three people.

This could easily be a cost savings if you see a lot of movies with your friends or family. While I’m interested in that part, I love the idea that I can finally watch current movies without the hassle of trying to find time to go see it with a toddler in the mix.

It seems too good to be true which means that it probably won’t ever happen. I don’t love going to theaters so if this actually happens, it could be something that I would pick up.

benmartens March 25, 2016 Commentary

Holy Week

holy-weekContinuing in the “What do all those church holidays mean?” series, we’re now in Holy Week. It’s a big week for Christians. It started last Sunday with Palm Sunday. This is the day when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and was greeted by lots of people waving palm branches to celebrate his arrival. He knew full well what was going to happen to him later in the week, but he came anyway. The people were celebrating him as their king and Jesus cried because they still didn’t get it. He wasn’t their eathly king. He was there to save them from their sins for eternity! Some of those same people would be in the crowd later in the week shouting for him to be crucified.

Four days later, we celebrate Maundy Thursday. On this day, Jesus ate the “Last Supper” with his disciples. You’ve probably seen the famous painting depicting this scene. At this meal, Jesus gave us the sacrament of communion. We still partake in communion regularly throughout the church year. We receive his body and blood along with the bread and the wine to give us forgiveness and strengthen our faith.

The next day is Good Friday. This church service is usually very somber. This is the day we remember Jesus’s death on the cross. He was abandoned by his disciples and the crowds that he had preached to were now shouting “Crucify him!” He was executed in one of the most gruesome manners that humankind has ever developed, and it all happened because you and I sinned. The Bible says that the wages of sin is death, so God sent his only Son to die in our place to pay for our sins.

Thankfully, that’s not the end of the story. On Easter Sunday, various people went to the tomb and found that he was not there. He had risen! His death marks his victory over death and the devil. Because He died and rose again, we can live with Him forever in heaven.

It’s an incredible roller coaster of emotions for the Christian, but it’s a fantastic annual reminder about how seriously God takes sin. God demands perfection and even one single sin is enough to send someone to hell for eternity. We’re all hopeless, but Jesus took our place, bore the weight of the entire world’s sin and died for us. But because he was not only true God but also true man, he had the power to rise from the dead. God demands perfection but he also showed us mercy by sending Jesus to pay for our sins. Nothing we can do can ever pay that price, but if we believe that Jesus died for us, we will spend eternity with Him in heaven.

benmartens March 24, 2016 Commentary

Justified Theme

justified-artwork-timothy-olyphant-dvdbash-03I finished all six seasons of the Justified TV show.The whole series (except for parts of season 4) are excellent, but wow, the ending is a doozy.

The show is set in Harlan, Kentucky. It’s a little blip on Highway 421 which, coincidentally, is the same highway I used up in Indiana to get between college and home. They play a lot of the song “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive”. It got me to wondering if the song written for the show or if the song came first.

It turns out the song was released in 2001 by Darrell Scott. The show, which came in 2010, featured three covers of the song from Brad Paisley, Dave Alvin, and Ruby Friedman.

Harlan shows up in a few other songs from big name singers including the Steve Earle song “Harlan Man” and the Anna McGarrigle song “Goin’ Back to Harlan” (covered by Emmylou Harris).

I’ve never been to Harlan (you can tell because I’m not there now and I’m still alive), but I don’t think it looks much like the scenery in the TV show. That bugged me. The show is filmed in California and it’s pretty obvious from the terrain and the foliage.

But aside from that minor stumble, this is still a great show. Thank you to Ken and Logan for reocmmending it to me over and over until I finally watched it. All six seasons are free on Amazon Prime so it’s easy/free to get into it.

benmartens March 23, 2016 Commentary

Seattle’s Big Dig

sr99viaductprojectSeattle is in the middle of an enormous construction project. I haven’t kept up with the details, but my general impression was that it was a financial disaster. I spent a little time doing some research into the current state of the project and how far it has come:

  • The double decker highway, SR 99, going right along the waterfront is in severe need of replacement. The 2001 earthquake damaged it and it is a disaster waiting to happen. It’s also a terrible spot for an elevated highway. It runs like a big scar right along the beautiful waterfront creating a dark, gloomy, wet area that you have to walk through to get to the waterfront. The plan was to bore underneath it. You know, right next to the ocean. What could go wrong?
  • It is the widest bored tunnel ever attempted.
  • The initial budet was $3.1 billion and started in 2011. It was scheduled to be done in 2015. The tunnel boring part was expected to take 14 months.
  • At the point when the tunnel was 10% complete, the state had spent 70% of it’s money.
  • The drilling machine, Big Bertha, has moved 1437 feet. That’s about 15% of the total distance.
  • Problems so far have included the machine getting stuck, the machine breaking and needing major repairs, and the ground caving in.
  • When the machine broke, it was down for two years. There’s no way to back it out so they had to dig a huge hole to get down and repair it in place.
  • Even parts of the project that don’t involve tunneling are over-budget. Replacing the seawall along Alaskan Way was a $331 million dollar project which is already about $100 million over budget.
  • The most recent estimate I could find for completion was March 2018. Complete rebuilding of the waterfront will stretch into 2019.
  • I couldn’t find anything that gives a recent estimate of the actual cost of the project. It seems like most people just shrug, laugh and cry.

I get why people thought this was a good idea. It would be beautiful to hide all that traffic and really beautify the area, but the discussions now are not around what would be beautiful, but rather, when should they cut bait and run. And of course, if they do decide to stop, they still have the original problem of the decrepit double decker SR 99 to deal with. It’s anybody’s guess how (and when) this one will turn out.

benmartens March 18, 2016 Commentary

Five Whys

whyWhen we’re trying to get to the root of a problem at work, we like to employ the “Five Whys“. Somebody just keeps asking why about five times and it’s amazing what you can discover. You get past the obvious problem and blow through the excuse to find something that might actually be addressable to prevent it in the future.

If you have a two year old, you probably wish it stopped at five. Elijah is a master of the five (or 500) whys. I know I did the same thing when I was young and I try really hard to answer him legitimately. I want to cultivate his curious mind, but wow, it can be a trying ordeal to hear why over and over and over again. On the flip side, it leads to some intersting, albeit one-sided, discussions.

benmartens March 15, 2016 Commentary