Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Motorcycle

A Few of My Favorite Things

Xbox, Microsoft, and motorcycles. Oh my! Looks like the good people of the Xbox team are doing a motorcycle ride for charity. I wonder how long it would take me to ride to Redmond to join up with them. I was thinking we should start up something like this at Lockheed. I know a lot of people ride, and I bet we could get a fairly good sized group together.

Speaking of motorcycles, I had the first warm ride of the spring yesterday and I'm looking forward to a lot more of it today and tomorrow. I own an extra helmet now so if any of you lovely ladies would like a ride, just let me know.

benmartens March 10, 2006 Links, Motorcycle

I’ve Got a Fever

It's funny how some of my strongest memories are stupid things I've said and done. For example, I remember riding in the car with Mrs. Hintz around this time when I was probably 11 or 12. We were sitting at the intersection of Hickory and Cleveland in their old brown minivan. “So Ben, do you have spring fever?” … “Nope, I feel fine. I know a lot of people are getting sick though.” At least we were the only two people in the car for that one. It wasn't nearly as embarrassing as my answer to Mrs. A's “So Ben, have you ever had a yard sale?“ question on the trip from Boston to Harrison in a car full of people I didn't know very well yet. I think the recurring theme here is that I'm a moron.

Anyway, back to my point, I do in fact have spring fever. Our ever-reliable weathermen are predicting 68 degree weather by this weekend. (But then again these are the same weathermen who had live “Winter Storm Coverage” last Friday simply because it was raining all day.) This weekend was still chilly in the 40s but it was sunny. I got my car washed and my motorcycle cleaned and oiled up. It's time for spring. Ski season, such as it was, is winding to a close around here. Until I move west, March means grass showing through the snow.

Every season has it's charm, but the freshness, warmth and vibrant colors of spring make it my favorite. Bring on the warm weather, the sunshine, barbeque's on the deck with friends, and long Saturday rides on the motorcycle. Bring on rollberblading along Kelly Drive, tailgating at Phillies games, and the endless debate over whether or not someone will punch Hibbs at the next softball game.

I'm declaring an end to winter in Philly. It's spring. I'm ready.

PS. If you don't understand the image I chose for this post, watch this SNL clip.
benmartens March 6, 2006 Commentary, Motorcycle

TGIF

It's Friday. The engineers have shunned their tan khakis in favor of jeans that are a little too tight and ditched the brown shoes for the velcro sneaks. It's like a fashion runway at a bingo tournament.

I must say that even though it's rainy and cool outside, I'm in a pretty good mood today. It has been a great week. I've been out of my house the past three evenings and that's always a good thing (except my Xbox is feeling neglected.) Tuesday night was Valentine's Day, Wednesday was our ski trip escape, and last night was a melding of representatives from three different groups of friends at PJ's. (Cue the clip from George on Seinfeld: My worlds are colliding!) My only regret is not getting out on the motorcycle during the warm days we had, but there will be more days time for that in the coming months.

I have no big plans this weekend, but catching up on sleep is high on my list. Sunday afternoon will be filled with HD NASCAR. The rest of the time will be periods of Xbox360, chewing, and sleep (did you know you technically cannot catch up on sleep?) Sounds like a good time to me. Three meetings and 6.5 hours of work stand between me and freedom.
benmartens February 17, 2006 Commentary, Motorcycle

OnDemand

I was flipping through the OnDemand section of our digital cable subscription and was surprised at some of the content they have on there. You can get a lot of the new movies that are out on DVD as well as some of the more popular TV shows, but of course you have to pay for all that. The free selections aren't too bad. For example, what happens when the karaoke bar changes their karaoke night? Just head on home and flip on the cable box. There are karaoke songs out there! And what happens when you get tired of hearing your friends belt out barely recognizable tunes and you want some authentic NJ lovin'? Flip on over to the section full of Bon Jovi music videos! They have music lessons for guitar and piano as well as a couple movies that I've actually heard of (including Warren Miller and Monty Python.) Comcast has a website that lets you search through all the content which is a lot easier than using the on screen guide. There's a lot of junk out there but there are a few gems worth finding. Now if only I could get OnDemand HD content.

benmartens January 17, 2006 Geek, Motorcycle

Back to Work

All in all I have to say it was a pretty good three day weekend. I actually stretched it into a three and a half day weekend by leaving at noon on Friday. I'm still happy about pulling out a win in that poker tourney on Saturday night. Hopefully they'll invite me back for another one. My lack of projects from a couple weeks ago has completely gone away. I now have plenty of stuff to keep me busy and good ideas for future projects. Right now I'm mainly focused on getting my site completely operational on GoDaddy and getting Jay moved over as well. That's getting pretty close to completion. I'm also reading again. This weekend I made it about 70% of the way through the second Harry Potter book. We had such perfect weather this weekend that I spent some time reading outside on the back deck and put about 250 miles on my motorcycle. It's good to be busy with fun stuff again.

And finally I'll leave you with my thought of the day: "Mondays aren't so bad when they're Tuesdays."

benmartens September 6, 2005 Commentary, Motorcycle, Site News

Saturday Morning

Whatever happened to the days when I didn't wake up until 1 or 2pm on Saturday? It's 8am and I'm wide awake. On the positive side, it really is nice to get up early on the weekend because it makes your weekend feel so much longer.

Today I'm heading out on another ride with the Lockheed motorcycle gang. We're a fearsome bunch. I'm not sure where we're going but it will be somewhere up towards New Hope and the Delaware water gap. For anyone who has a motorcycle and is looking for a good place to ride, I stumbled across this site last week: http://www.motorcycleroads.us/

Hope you all enjoy your Labor Day Weekend!

benmartens September 3, 2005 Commentary, Motorcycle

Rainy Day

It's a pretty gloomy day here in Jersey, but that's ok since I haven't had much time to look out the window. I've been too busy answering my phone and email. Apparently there was a patch applied to a bunch of servers and it simultaneously destroyed every one of the applications I support. Yada yada yada…

But on to more serious issues. I find myself bored at home. This is the first time in quite a while that I haven't had a project. Going back to the spring of 2004, here are the projects I can work on (the big ones that I remember anyway): the arcade machine, moving to the new house, the home theater, [break for a couple months for skiing], car iPod setup, motorcycle license, and the Ticawa shirts. I've been thinking for the past couple weeks and I just can't come up with a new project that really grabs me. I have a couple programming ideas but nothing that has really grabbed my attention yet. Poker has been a good diversion but I only play that for an hour or so every night. (I started with $50 and I have about $62. Not bad.) What I really want is some snow. I want to ski! Last year the first day we skied was December 18. Assuming a similar start date that means I have 4 months to wait.

Anyone have an idea for me?

benmartens August 16, 2005 Commentary, Motorcycle, Projects

Sauron’s Helmet

Yesterday, Aubry, his friend and I rode up to New Hope. It was a nice little ride to the motorcycle mecca. We stopped for lunch and some Rita's and walked in a few shops up there. One of the shops we stopped in was a medieval shop with armor and clothing from that time period. They had a case full of Lord of the Rings props. One that caught my eye was Sauron's helmet. Can you imagine buying this thing and wearing it down the road as your motorcycle helmet? It's probably not a good way to pick up women, but I don't think anyone would try to headbutt you.

http://www.hotmovieprops.com/product_info.php?cPath=2_84_163&products_id=556
benmartens August 7, 2005 Commentary, Motorcycle

A Glimpse Behind The Curtain

Some people are impressed when I tell them I work for Lockheed Martin. I have a security clearance and write code that protects the country and brings peace to the world (by bombing the snot out of the bad guys.) I'm like a geeky James Bond. Maybe. I thought I'd give you a little glimpse into what happens behind the scenes in this high intensity work environment. The scene takes place five minutes ago in my cubicle.

I said, “I wonder what people would do if I started wearing my motorcycle helmet around the office.” I put on my helmet and went back to work. Pretty soon Rick had stolen the baseball that I keep on my desk and was throwing it at my head to see how well my helmet worked. So there we were… I'm wearing a helmet and typing at my computer while my cubemate is throwing baseballs at my head.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to saving the world.

benmartens July 12, 2005 Commentary, Motorcycle

Random Thoughts

This morning I went out for a long ride on my motorcycle. Aside from the usual thoughts of “Does that car see me?”,  “What if a duck waddles out in front of me?”, and  “Do I look like a dweeb on this thing?”, I was pondering something else. They say that there is one guy for every girl and vice versa. That's always bugged me. First of all, there are 6 billion people in the world. If there's only one girl out there for me then we're talking about a search of needle-in-the-haystack proportions. Even if I know 10,000 people, I've only met 0.00014% of the 6,000,000,000 on this planet. Of course only approximately half are women so that gets me up to 0.00028%. But let's forget about that part because obviously it's not quite that bad. Look at all the married people. If those odds were really correct, then this planet is on an incredibly lucky streak. Ok, so “the one” is out there. What if I had been born five miles away from where I was born? What if I had been born 3 years later than I was? Would “the one” still be the “the one” or would there be a different “the one?”

I guess you probably think I'm stressed out about this, but I'm not. I'm enjoying life and looking forward to whatever is coming down the road. That whole saying is just an odd phrase when you really start to think about it. And when I am left to think alone, I think about odd things. I'd probably scare/bore you if I blogged all my random thought topics. There's one good example of this. I was driving along on a cross-country trip with my girlfriend. We'd been talking for hours and ran out of things to talk about for a while so we were enjoying a nice period of silence. After about half an hour she utters those words that every guy hates, “Penny for your thoughts.” I was scrambling for something deep to say because my current train of thoughts was not worth sharing. “Ummm…..” “Just tell me what you were thinking right when I said that.” “Ok, well… if you're taking care of your car and you have the money you'll buy the expensive gas. The rest of us buy the cheap stuff. Why do they make mid grade gas and who buys it?”

benmartens July 9, 2005 Commentary, Motorcycle