Studio711.com – Ben Martens

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?

This post will probably embarrass Tyla, but I need to share the incredible project that she recently completed. When I met her in 2008, she had a LOT of stuff. She wasn’t ready for hoarders, but let’s just say a box of random rocks had been transported more miles than anyone cares to count.

I think a lot of people reach a point where they realize that mental, physical, and monetary burden of having too much stuff is worse than the emotional burden of tossing/selling it. For me, it was some point when I was moving back and forth between Jersey and Minneapolis. Cleaning house was difficult, but it feels incredible to not have tons of junk following me around waiting to be organized. Tyla got to that point around the time I met her. If you ask her, she’ll attribute much of that decision to a book called Clutter’s Last Stand.

So for the last four years, Tyla has been spending random weekends and evenings going through her boxes. She gave some of it to me to scan and photo before throwing away, some of it got donated, some of it got thrown straight into the trash can, and some was important enough to keep. We both wish that we had some way to count the numbers of carloads that I took to Goodwill or the trash cans that got filled up. It would be an astounding visual. In the end, this is what’s left:

I’m so proud of her for finishing this seemingly insurmountable project one box at a time!

I’ve made beer twice in my life so I’m an expert and would like to share my learnings with you. It turns out there is a lot more to beer bottle preparation than I knew. When the guys told me to start saving beer bottles, I did what I think most people would do. I kept the old box, rinsed out the bottles when I was done with them and dropped the bottles in right side up. Well what do you think happens when you put a slightly wet bottle in a dark place and leave it for a while? MOLD. It was pretty gross, but luckily they were salvagable. Here’s the process for reusing a beer bottle.

1. Drink the beer.
2. Rinse out the bottle.
3. Let the bottle drain out by storing it upside down in such a way that air can get into the bottle. A dish rack works well for this.
4. Once dry, store the bottle top down back in the box.
5. Fill a tub or bin with water and add a scoop or two of OxyClean.
6. Dump the bottles in. You can do a bunch at a time. Just make sure they are all submerged.
7. Leave that to sit for 24 hours.
8. Many of the labels should be floating now and if they aren’t they should almost fall off the bottles.
9. Run the bottles under hot water and scrub off any remaining glue. Also rinse out the inside thoroughly.
10. Dry the bottles again. I like to empty the dishwasher and stack all the bottles in there and let them dry overnight.
11. Store the bottles upside down in the boxes again.

We brew our beer at Gallagher’s, and one of the many pieces of equipment they provide is a bottle sanitizer. In about 10 minutes, it will sanitize a hundred or so bottles. Note that this is sanitization only, not cleaning. You can’t put any moldy bottles or bottles with labels in the machine.

The best part about all this is that it’s relatively inexpensive. If you buy clean/empty bottles at Gallagher’s they charge you $1. That’s about what I pay for the bottle AND the beer at the store so by recycling the bottle, I’m basically getting free beer!

The Seattle area has been under incredibly dense fog for the last 4-5 days and it’s not going to end for a couple more days. The fog is caused by a temperature inversion. As you gain elevation, the temperature INCREASES. The temperature is right around freezing near the ground but if you go up 2500 feet, you’ll be at a balmy 60 degrees.

Inversions happen in the winter when we have a very stabile atmosphere. As cold air sinks and stays near the ground, a high pressure system can roll in on top of it and trap it. The hills and mountains provide the edges of a giant imaginary bowl. The higher pressure air up top is warmer because if you pressurize air it warms up. That warmer air sits like a cap on top of the cold air. If you head up about 1000 feet, you’re above that transition point and the skies are brilliantly clear, but down near sea level it’s thick pea soup. The air quality is incredibly poor because we aren’t getting any circulation. It’s also causing a lot of accidents as the thick fog freezes on the roadways overnight. Cliff Mass’s last few posts have been about this inversion if you want to read more.

Thankfully this should all blow out of the area on Wednesday the next system comes through.

Tyla had her big 20-week ultrasound yesterday and from the very first image that showed up on the screen, it was clear that we’re having a boy! I guess I didn’t know what to expect going in, but I was surprised that the doc spent 20-25 minutes checking out the baby. She measured various parts of his body, checked every vertabrae, examined his heart, and much more. He was wiggling all over the place which made it difficult at times. I had no idea they could roll over inside the womb. He even got the hiccups! Everything checked out normal and he is right on track. I would have been happy with either a boy or a girl, but I’m thrilled and thankful that so far he appears very healthy.

After getting a wisdom tooth ripped out and my sinuses fixed last year, I had hoped that I was done with doctor’s offices for a while. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like that’s going to be the case. Around the end of last year, I saw a dermatologist for a routine skin check. I have lots of moles which puts me in a higher risk category for skin cancer. Without going into unnecessary details, the lab results showed one area that was “severely abnormal.” Yikes. I never thought at the age of 32, I’d be on the phone saying, “Wait… so… do I have cancer?” Thankfully that answer was no, but it was still something that needed immediate action. This is basically the last thing they see before they see skin cancer so they need to cut out a bunch more skin around that area. That’s happening today. I’ll end up with stitches and have to take it easy for a couple weeks. I shouldn’t need to miss any work but it will keep me off the ski slopes for a week or two.

I was hesitant to share this info, but it’s worth it if even one of you gets your skin checked. The facts about skin cancer are staggering. One in five Americans will develop some form of skin cancer. Over the past 30 years, more people have had skin cancer than all other cancers combined. Get checked or at least ask your doctor about it on your next visit. Maybe you’ll find out that you’re in a very low risk category. Or maybe, like me, you’ll find out that you got checked just in time.

It’s rare that I write a post praising a business, much less a car mechanic, but if you have a Subaru, you should consider taking it to All Wheel Drive Auto in Kirkland. Tim first pointed me to them and I’ve been very impressed in my interactions with them. They’re honest about what’s wrong and how much it will cost. I’ve never felt them try to sell me something I didn’t need, and if I need a loaner, it’s easy to get one. At the Subaru dealer, I have to schedule a month in advance to have a hope of getting a loaner.

I was in there recently having them diagnose a small oil leak. There was another lady in the shop who was making the five hour drive from Salem, OR to Seattle. She only had about an hour before she had to be at her destination. It turned out that she had a leaky head gasket. They did a full writeup of all the steps they would take and how much everything would cost. In amazement, the lady said, “You did all this work for an estimate on my car even though you know I won’t be getting it fixed here?” “Well of course. I want you to understand everything that needs to be done to fix this problem so that you’re educated when you do get this fixed.” They explained everything to her in detail and showed her what she needed to do to drive the car to her destination and then back home. When she said that maybe she’d delay her service until she was in town next month so she could have it fixed at their shop, they then started talking to her about whether it was worth fixing or not since she already had 220K on the vehicle.

This mechanic is one of the reasons that I’m hesitant to buy anything other than a Subaru next. I don’t want to have to go through the hassle of finding another great shop!

My room during my senior year at Purdue overlooked the rec fields. After a snowstorm I looked outside at the huge field of white and had the idea to go write a message. A quick AIM chat (hey, it was 2002) with my friends didn’t reveal any great ideas for what to write. The best we could come up with was SPACE FOR RENT. We of course came up with a lot of great ideas the next day. It went over pretty well. I heard a number of positive conversations about it on campus.

There’s an artist named Simon Beck who really takes trampled snow to the extreme. He creates works of art on a huge scale in the snow. Check out this post for photos of his work.