Studio711.com – Ben Martens

BOB Stroller Review

After months of research, Tyla settled on the BOB stroller for jogging. I wasn’t thrilled with the price (we traded in Tyla’s first car for less than the cost of the stroller!) but after checking it out, I was impressed with the build quality. Even the 20% off coupon at Babies R Us wasn’t enough to match the screaming deal on Amazon. We ended up with the slightly more expensive Stroller Strides version because it comes with a free week of Stroller Strides classes which she is already planning to do anyway.

Unboxing was very simple. I just had to pump up the tires and attach them to the stroller. One tricky bit was that we have a Graco Click Connect 35 car seat. BOB isn’t making a car seat adapter for these new Graco seats but they say the Chicco adapter will work. I picked up a used adapter from a friend at work and it works great. While Elijah isn’t quite old enough to go jogging with Tyla yet, the car seat adapter will be handy to use for more casual walks.

We’ve heard lots of people who love these strollers and keep them for a long time so hopefully we get our money’s worth! I’m already thinking about how I can modify it a bit to add some LED lights for visibility while she’s jogging.

Birth Costs

How much does it cost to have a child at the hospital? We had some wild guesses going into this, but I think we’ve finally received all of the bills related to the birth. Now remember that Elijah’s birth was probably one of the more expensive ways possible, but still, this will at least give you a ballpark idea. All of the doctors and companies involved billed our insurance for $36,224.50. Our insurance said “Ehhh…. no… how about your charge us 52% of that and we’ll call it good?” And then, obviously we didn’t have to pay 19k since our insurance picked up a good chunk of the tab.

How much would you pay to have a healthy wife and child? It was definitely money well spent! We’re very thankful to have such incredible medical care available within walking distance of our home.

Scorecasting Review

If you enjoy sports and statistics, there’s a book you need to read and it’s called Scorecasting. The tagline for the book is “The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won” and that’s a pretty good description. I tell people it’s like Mythbusters for sports colloquialisms. Does defense really win championships? Does home field advantage exist and if so, what causes it? Are the Cubs really cursed? When should you punt? They go into very rigorous detail to answer each question. That rigor can create for a bit of slow reading in a couple spots, but overall, it’s a winner!

Golden Steer Recommendations

A friend and I were recently talking to a third guy about the Golden Steer butcher in Bellevue. I’ve tried a lot of things from them and they are all delicious, but if you’re going there and feel overwhelmed, here are my favorite purchases in no particular order:

  • Bacon hamburgers
  • Bacon sausage
  • Pepperoni stick
  • Beef kabobs
  • Boneless rib eyes
  • Beef hot dogs
  • Any of their brats and sausages

I’m getting hungry just thinking about this. Luckily we have a rib eye marinating in the fridge right now!

Painting Timelapse

Last weekend, we put a coat of white, reflective paint on the flat roofs on the church property. I set up a GoPro in the corner of the roof on a tripod because I can’t even do manual labor without geeking it up.

By the way, if you want to see more stuff like this and photos from the work days that I organize at church, you can friend the church on Facebook. In addition to doing the property maintenance, I’m also the self-appointed social networking guy so I’d love to see our numbers go up!

Ikea Cabinet

Have you ever used Ikea cabinets? I’ve heard really good things about them and I’m thinking about using their cheapest version for a project in the man cave. We’re going to make an entire wall into a bunch of storage and a long desk. Playing around with Sketchup and a premade library of Ikea cabinets gave me this rough idea:

This is probably going to be one of my big projects for the month of September when I’m home on paternity leave. Next steps are to finalize the design and pick up the cabinets. I’ll get those installed and then figure out how to make a desk top and the shelves. If you’ve done anything similar and have advice for me, I’d love to hear it.

Xbox 360 Infrared Receiver

While I love the design and quietness of the newer slim version of the Xbox360, the infrared receiver on it isn’t very good. You have to be pointing your remote control directly at the box to get it to register. Since we use the 360s around the house as our Media Center Extenders to watch TV, we spend a lot of time accessing them via remotes. We were having particular trouble in the living room so it was time for a little change.

I picked up an infrared extender for $17 on Amazon. It’s a very simple IR repeater. You plug the transmitter onto the receiver of the 360 and then put the new receiver somewhere that’s more visible. We stuck it onto the bottom corner of our TV. The whole thing is powered via USB which would be super convenient if our TV had USB power (it doesn’t.) The new extender works much better and it’s very rare to have trouble registering a command from the remote.

Two Months

Happy two month birthday, Elijah! It’s hard for me to leave the house each morning* and know that I won’t see you again until the evening. In these past few weeks you’ve started to smile a lot and you’re beginning to have some control over your crazy arms that swing everywhere. It’s exciting to watch you discover your world! I look at you and think how tiny you are, but then when I look back at your first photos, I’m reminded how much you’ve grown. There are already big stacks of clothes that are too small for you.

Your mom and I haven’t slept through an entire night since June 14. I think we’re starting to adjust to the lack of sleep, or at least we are smarter about going to bed early with you to piece together enough sleep to get through the next day. For now you’re sleeping in a rocking bassinet in our bedroom so we have easy access to feed you as soon as you start waking up. On a good night you’ll go 3 hours between the start of each feeding session and then you fall back to sleep pretty easily. Other nights you need to eat a lot more and/or you have a hard time going back to sleep.

Tyla and I are both looking forward to the month of September when I will be on paternity leave and won’t have to work for the entire month. We’ve started giving you bottles every once in a while which let’s Tyla get out of the house for a bit. We’re so thankful that you are completely content taking room temperature milk from a bottle. I’m guessing that Tyla has a lot of ideas for things she wants to do in September while I’m at home and feeding you with a bottle!

We don’t have much personal experience to compare to, but I think you’re a pretty good baby… for now!

*Ok, that’s not completely true. On those days when you have a huge diaper blowout, I don’t mind missing the cleanup. I think you poop above your weight class.

Treehouse Masters

Tyla and I enjoyed watching the entire season of Treehouse Masters on Animal Planet. The shows all followed a strict formula but it was still fun to see what they came up with for each treehouse. Sidenote: it’s amazing how rude and ill-mannered rich people who want to buy treehouses can be (ie. the wife in the “Backyard Bungalow” episode.)

If you only watch one episode, check out the finale called “Love is in the Air.” Pete builds a treehouse on their own property so he gets to do exactly what he wants and wow, it’s a whopper of a treehouse! What’s even cooler for us is that we saw them building this while we were there. The film crew wasn’t there that day, but they had gotten the metal bridge supports in and were working on the main treehouse building. Pretty cool!

I’m so thankful that we stayed there last summer before this TV show hit. Even then it was nearly impossible to find an opening 6-8 months into the future and now they don’t even offer online booking or prices. You have to email them. I imagine they are flooded with requests!

Electric Cars

My Subaru is nearing 100K. Hopefully I’ll get another few cheap years out of it, but then I’ll have a decision to make. I’m really interested in the possibility of getting an all-electric car. My commute is ~12 miles each way which seems easy for almost all the electric cars out there today. There are lots of free charging stations around the area and there are so many Teslas and Nissan Leaf’s around here that you hardly even notice them anymore.

The costs are really coming down and you can make a fairly convincing argument that you’ll finally break even on the cost after the life of the car (though people on either side of the argument will still say that’s either too conservative or too unrealistic.)

There seem to be two design ideas on the market:

  1. Most companies spend a lot of money on the battery packs and provide something that will survive many charge/discharge cycles over many years. There are charging stations at many parks and businesses.
  2. Tesla is building their own “super charging” stations which give you a half charge in only 20 minutes or you can do a complete automated (ROBOTS!) swap of the battery pack in 90 seconds. Charging is free. Battery packs cost about the same amount as a tank of gas.

Tesla is making cars people really want to drive with good recharging capabilities and everyone else is following an agreed-upon standard. Who’s right?