Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Note: I realize that some of you are anti-vaccine. This post is being written because I find it amazing that we can have an epidemic like this, not necessarily to try to change your mind about vaccines.

Visits to the OBGYN are usually full of facts about things that have never crossed my mind before. On one of our first trips, we were asked if we had been vaccinated recently for whooping cough. I’d never even heard of it. Maybe I’m the only one, but I’ll explain a bit anyway.

The scientific name for whooping cough is pertussis. It’s a bacterial disease that causes severe coughing fits. In serious cases, it can result in death. A research paper from 2012 says that it affects 48.5 million people and kills 295,000 every year. It spreads through droplets produced while coughing, talking and sneezing. Young children are most susceptible to the disease and run the greatest risk of death if contracted.

It turns out that I had received a whooping cough vaccine at a few points in my life, though not recently. It’s commonly distributed as part of your tetnus shot, or TDaP which stands for Tetnus, Diphtheria and Pertussis. That’s usually given every 10 years but the pertussis vaccine is only good for three years.

Little did I know that I’ve been walking through a whooping cough war zone for the past year. The Department of Health for Washington has a good website with lots of information about the outbreak. This report shows that last year the levels were 15 times greater than the baseline and eight times greater than what they would call an epidemic! Thankfully the numbers are starting to decline through education and vaccination.

The docs recommend that we get the vaccine ourselves and also ask anyone who is planning to have close contact with our child to do the same. I got mine done last week (insurance covered the cost) and Tyla will get it at a specific upcoming point in her pregnancy. Even if you’re not around babies a lot, it’s worth considering getting vaccinated to help control the spread of this disease.

It looks like the Post Office is going to cut Saturday delivery to save money. It’s a novel idea: cut costs to balance your budget. No wonder it’s causing so much confusion in D.C. But regardless of the politics or whether it’s even legal for them to do this, I think the Post Office is missing some big opportunities.

What is the biggest asset of the USPS? They employ a workforce that touches almost every household in the country 6 out of every 7 days. How many dotcoms have we watched fail because their service couldn’t handle the costs of a workforce like that? Maybe they really have to cut Saturday delivery to save money, but what else could they be doing to make more money instead of just delivering mail?

Imagine if you could pay a USPS worker to knock on the door of your elderly relative every day and report back to you if nobody answers the door. Or what if you could pay a USPS worker to clean any packages or fliers off your doorstep when you’re on vacation?

It seems that the volume of mail is going to keep declining. Are they just going to keep cutting days of service? Or will they make use of their army of employees to broaden their horizons and change their business model?

In the post about my beard, I mentioned that part of the reason for doing this was that when I was a kid, I saw some pictures of Dad with a beard and thought it was hilarious. It seemed like a fun thing to do for my son too. Mom has embarked on a project to scan in thousands of slide photos and she stumbled across the photos of Dad’s beard. I think it looks pretty good! The shirt in the second photo maybe not so much.

Tyla commented that Mom looks about as thrilled with Dad’s beard as Tyla is with mine. I had to explain that for as long as I can remember (and apparently longer), Mom’s eyes are magically closed in almost every picture! There may be some supernatural forces at work.

But seriously, thanks to Mom for digging up these photos and for spending countless hours in front of the scanner salvaging these slides. It will be an amazing historical record of our family for decades to come.

A couple weeks ago, Don, Logan and I made two full batches of beer at Gallagher’s. Last weekend it was done and ready to bottle. Each batch makes about 140 12oz bottles so we had a lot of work ahead of us. Thankfully Ken and Tim showed up to help.

We had been saving enough bottles so we didn’t need to buy any at the brewery. We did, however, have to sanitize them before starting. Note that this is sanitization, not cleaning the bottles. Don took charge of running that machine and keeping us stocked with bottles. Logan and I took turns filling the bottles while Tim and Ken took turns capping the bottles and putting them in the boxes. We all shared the responsibility of drinking some of the beer. We ended up with about 11 cases of beer and we bottled it all in under two hours. Half of it is like Redhook ESB and the other half is a hefeweizen. I’m not a huge fan of the hefeweizen but it’s good and I love the ESB.

Once ski season is done I’d love to get in a more regular habit of making beer there. The final cost for our beer was about $1.15/bottle which isn’t bad at all. That’s about what I pay at the grocery store. So far we’ve made three of their 50 or so recipes. I want to come up with my own concoction, but I don’t know enough about how the flavors work together. I guess I need more practice!

Happy Valentine’s Day to the love of my life and the mother of our unborn son!

Late one night a few years ago, I discovered a Martens Brewery in Belgium. For a 255 year old brewery, they have an embarrassingly bad website that stymied my attempts to learn more about them. Here’s what I do know. The brewery is in Bocholt Belgium and it was founded in 1758. Their signature beer is the Martens Pilsner, and like me, it’s tall. It’s sold in 16.9 oz cans. I don’t know how big they are, but they do seem to be distributed around the world since I found a Taiwanese commercial for Martens beer. But that’s about where my research ended. I couldn’t figure out how to buy any.

When Andy and Stephanie showed up to watch the Super Bowl, he had a four pack of Martens Pilsner! Apparently they sell it at a local Whole Foods, and after checking the Total Wine website, I think they might have it too. I was so excited to finally get to try it! At the risk of offending my namesake brewery, the beer isn’t anything to special and is reminiscent of a Coors Light. Then again, I’d say that about a lot of pilsners. Yes I realize they’re different types of beer, but they’re so different from my normal beer that they kind of blend together in my memory.

So now I have a source for Martens beer. My quest continues to find t-shirts, hats, neon signs, pint glasses, or anything else from the brewery. This might require a trip to Belgium.

I’ve gotten used to having my hair cut pretty low. I like being able to cut it by myself for free whenever I feel like it, and I like being able to wear a hat or helmet without getting hat hair. This winter I’ve been supplementing the short hair with a beard.

It started around mid-November when I had my sinus surgery. It hurt to shave so I let the beard go for a couple weeks. That’s also about the same time I got hooked on Duck Dynasty and those guys have some great beards. That was also about the time that the ski season started and a beard works really well to keep your face warm when you’re skiing.

When I was growing up, I remember seeing a photo of Dad with a beard and I just thought it was so hilarious that my clean shaven Dad once had a beard. I don’t have a copy of it anymore and I don’t even know if I remember it correctly, but I remember it being a fun moment in my childhood. Part of me wants to keep the wild beard going and photo bomb my child in the hospital. “Daddy? Who is this homeless guy holding me in the hospital?” I’m not sure I’ll take it that far though. While I love not shaving, I think I might break out the razor once the ski season ends.

And no, the color on that photo isn’t wrong. My beard is red and my hair is blonde/brown. I don’t know how that works.

Last year I bought my first shotgun, and even though I’d been around shotguns my whole life, I didn’t really know where to start. There are many people who know way more about guns than me. If you have detailed questions, go ask someone like KenC or LoganB. But if you’re just looking for the super basics, maybe something in this post will help you. I know it was a daunting task for me. As I looked around online I found forum and after forum of people arguing tiny little details about very specific gun parts instead of giving me the overall guidance I was looking for. So in this post, I’ll describe what I was looking for, some features I looked at along the way, and what I ended up with.

First off, I’m not really interested in hunting. I have nothing against it and could see picking it up in the future, but this gun purchase was 100% for shooting trap. If you’re going to be hunting, then you might want to research what characteristics work well for the animal you’re hunting.

There are lots of shotgun sizes. You could get (in order of smallest to largest) a .410, 20 gauge, 16 gauge, 12 gauge, 10 gauge or even an 8 gauge. Those numbers refer to the diameter of the barrel. The 12 gauge is the most popular and is pretty much the only thing you’ll see at the trap range unless a junior is there with a 20 gauge.

Once you decide on the size of the gun, you need to figure out how the gun will cycle through multiple shots.

• A single shot gun means that you put one shell in at a time. Every time you fire you break the barrel open, eject the old shell and put the next one in.
• Pump shotguns will hold about five shells. After you shoot, you pull the forestack back and push it forward again to eject the old shell and insert the new shell. This is a very common entry level gun.
• A semi-automatic shotgun looks roughly like a pump shotgun except that every time you shoot, the shell is automatically ejected and the next one is chambered. You can immediately pull the trigger again to fire the next round.
• An over-under shotgun has two barrels with one on top of the other. You break the barrel open to manually insert a shell in each barrel, but then you can rapidly shoot two shells in succession.
• A side-by-side is similar to an over-under except the barrels are laid out horizontally instead of vertically. These aren’t too common anymore.

A semi-automatic or over-under is what you’ll see more advanced trap shooters using because the more complicated versions of the game require multiple shots. You can’t really use a pump shotgun fast enough to get off two shots in trap. Those types of guns are also significantly more expensive. This was going to be my first gun. I didn’t know how long I’d stick with the sport so I didn’t want to spend a ton. That meant I was getting a pump.

At this point I knew I was getting a 12 gauge pump and I just had to pick out the specific model. Two of the most common entry level guns in this category are the Mossberg 500 and the Remington 870. Both have been produced for the last 40-50 years. That means they’ve worked out all the bugs and there is a huge after market parts selection if you want to customize your gun. Plan on spending about $400-500 for the gun, a cleaning kit and a case. I chose the Remington 870 but they’re both good American-made guns. The other things you’ll need right off the bat are some kind of ear protection (foam ear plugs work fine) and safety glasses.

Both of these guns come in multiple barrel lengths. Most trap shooters will use a barrel between 28 and 32”. The longest Remington 870 gun I could find came with a 28” barrel, but as I mentioned before, you can buy other barrels for it down the road. I haven’t done that yet and don’t plan to. My first purchase will probably be a longer stock because that part is a bit to short for me. This is also useful if you’re looking for a home defense shotgun. You could buy one of these guns and then buy a second, shorter barrel.

So how do you buy a gun? That varies widely by state and what type of gun you’re buying. In Washington, you just walk into a store, fill out some paperwork, wait a few minutes for them to do a quick background check by phone and then you’re walking out with a shotgun. Shop around because prices do vary. While Sports Authority isn’t the first place I’d think to buy a gun, they had the best deal so that’s where I bought it. There are used markets for shotguns, but be careful to check the laws about transferring ownership and make sure you know the quality of what you’re buying. If you really want to go used, you might want to start with an actual gun dealer for your first purchase.

Once you have the gun, check out wheretoshoot.org to find a range near you. If you live around me, check out the Kenmore Shooting Range. They have archery, rifle, pistol, and shotgun facilities available. Their website is about 10 years old, but the facility and the people that run it are great. I’d be more than happy to go with you and show you around.

Credit cards are getting stolen a lot these days, but the credit card companies are getting really good at detecting this. The last time it happened, I received a call after only one fake charge had been made and I hadn’t even noticed it! The replaced my card and the whole situation barely made me miss a step.

The flip side of this is since it’s becoming more common, it’s a good place for scammers to hop in and confuse us. I just received a call saying my card had been compromised so it was now locked and I needed to input some information into the phone system. My suspicions were already high because the call was from 000-000-0000 and it referenced a card from a company that I didn’t think I did business with.

The bottom line is that you should assume ALL calls pertaining to anything like your credit card, bank information, retirement accounts, etc are fake. When I get a call like this that I think might be legit, I ask for the caller’s name and extension and tell them I’ll call them back. I then go look up a number that I trust from their main website or from the back of the card and try to get back to that extension. I did that last time my card was stolen and the guy said, “Wow, that was smart. I’ve never had anybody do that before.” It should be very common!

You’re not required to give out your information to anyone. Think about how you can verify the person you’re talking to. Social engineering scams like this are increasingly popular and you need to always have your guard up. If you’re interested in the topic and/or want to learn more ways to protect yourself, check out Kevin Mitnick’s book called The Art of Deception.

Humans are terrible at evaluating risk. Did you know that you’re seven times more likely to date a super model than to die in a plane crash? Or did you know that 115 people die every day in car accidents which means you have a 0.015% chance of dying each year in a car accident? The odds of simply being in a car accident in a year are 2.2%! Or did you know that on average, you have a 0.84% chance of dying each year? Yet how many people are afraid of their cars or heart disease and how many people are afraid of planes or some random health story they read on the internet? We get distracted by the grandiose stories of dramatic events and focus on those relatively minor possibilities.

As prospective parents, our first few visits to the doctor were a barrage of testing options. There were a seemingly endless number of diseases and defects that we could test for, but most of the tests couldn’t produce a guaranteed conclusive result. So if the odds of defect A are 1 in 4000, then even if you get a negative test, you haven’t ruled it out. You’ve just decreased the odds to something like 1 in 20,000. I never thought I’d be using my math degree in a place like that.

But it doesn’t stop there. The doctor presented us with a few things Tyla could do to reduce the odds of defects like avoiding alcohol and smoking. Those seem like no-brainers, but the list could potentially go on and on depending on whom you believe. Some have medical statistics to back them up and some are old-wives tales. Good luck telling them apart with a lot of effort.

But it doesn’t stop there. As we read through baby books about the various purchases we need to make, there are many statistics that state things like 7 children died last year due to faulty X. Most of the odds are incredibly low, but it’s still a possibility and it makes you think.

It’s so easy to get wrapped up in these wild odds. If 1 in 4000 babies has defect A, then 3999 in 4000 don’t. If I told you there was a 99.975% chance it will be sunny, would you pack an umbrella? Tyla and I will take a lot of precautions like avoiding specific food and drink, getting recommended vaccines, and skipping our couple’s chainsaw juggling class, but we’re not going to let these random possibilities rule our lives. Given the odds, the most dangerous thing we’re doing to our baby is letting Tyla get into a car.

There’s a great song from Caedmon’s Call in the late 90s’s called Table For Two. The lyrics contain the phrase: “Given a chance and a rock see which one breaks a window, And see which one keeps me up all night and into the day.” It’s all in God’s hands so what will we gain by stressing out about it?

Also remember that statistics can say anything and you need to stop and think whenever you read one. For example, did you know that only 93% of all humans in history have died? Does that mean you have a 7% chance of not dying?