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Montana Reflections

This was my second time driving in Montana. The first was a ski trip to Big Sky so I only got as far east as Missoula and everything was covered in snow. This time it was in 90-100 degree heat and I went ~80% of the way across the state. A few thoughts…

  • I was surprised how far the mountains/hills stretched into the state. I thought they stopped around Missoula but there are some decent hills all the way out to Havre and even beyond.
  • The speed limits are really fast: 80 on the interstate and 70 on the two lane roads. If you’re going 5 over you probably need to slow down for some of the corners. Don’t count on a corner sign to tell you to slow down.
  • Passing is pretty easy on the two lane roads if you encounter someone, but watch out because pretty much everything is a passing zone. Just because you have a dotted line doesn’t meant that there isn’t a dip in the road hiding a car or even a corner.
  • Drivers were really courteous. It’s refreshing to get more than a few hundred miles from a coast and see how nice people really can be.
  • It’s beautiful! I was sucked in by views that stretched out for many miles across rolling hills full of wheat.
  • Growing up in northern Indiana, I felt like I lived out in the country. That phrase has a different definition in Montana. Going across highway 2, we passed more than a few towns that were only marked by a small dirt road heading off into the distance and a green sign indicating that there was a town there somewhere.
  • There are a lot of pickups in Montana. I wish I could find a statistic for per capita truck ownership. Montana has to be high up on the list. A lot of those trucks have grille guards on them and it’s not hard to see why with all the dead deer on the sides of roads.

I dream about where I’d live if I had access to plenty of money and didn’t need to make more. Montana is probably in the top 3.

2009 Year In Review

I prepared to write this post by looking back through the photos I’ve taken and reading last year’s Year in Review post. The mere fact that Tyla appears prominently in it should have been a big clue to anyone who has followed my blog that this was something pretty serious. I finished with “What lies ahead? I’ve never been more excited to find out!” Now I know the answer to that, so let’s start from the beginning.

The year started off with a bang as we celebrated the marriage of Tim and Chelsea. The wedding was a blast and the happy couple has just moved into their first house! That wasn’t our only wedding of the year though. In March, Tyla and I took our first big trip together out to beautiful Syracuse, NY for Andy and Lauren’s wedding where I participated in, and won, my first dance off.

Andy, Jay, Mike and I had planned a big ski trip to Big Sky, MT, but that took a very sad turn. I woke up in Spokane on the morning I was supposed to pick everyone up at the airport in Missoula to find out that Mr. A had passed away. It hit everyone hard. Andy and Jay cancelled their plans, but Mike and I went on with the trip. While the trip did not turn out exactly as we hoped Mike and I made the best of it and saw some amazing sights. I hope that the four of us can meet up again soon for another trip.

While I was in Big Sky, I got a tearful call from Tyla letting me know that she had been laid off from her job as a gymnastics teacher. It was a complete shock to her, and given the job market at the time, the future looked rough. It took over a month of hard work and countless emails, phone calls, and interviews to break through the mass of applicants and land a new job. I told her that when it was all done, I knew I would be impressed with the way she handled the situation, and that came true. When unemployment doesn’t even cover your rent, it’s more than a little scary but she showed a ton of determination and got through it.

Early in the year, I bought a new vehicle: a 2009 Kawasaki Concours 14 ABS. After four years of riding, it was time to upgrade to a bigger bike, and what an upgrade this one is! In a normal year, I average 2000 miles of riding. I already have over 5000 miles on this new bike from trips to Bremerton, the Tulip Festival, the Cascade Loop, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Baker, and many others. Tyla was sitting right behind me for many of those miles and it’s a blast being able to share one of my hobbies with her!

Speaking of sharing hobbies, Tyla and I went skiing twice together. She had skied a few times before in Minnesota but still labeled herself as a beginner. I was impressed with her first day on the slopes at Snoqualmie and even more so when we headed up to Crystal. I hope that once we get married we can get her a full set of gear and go even more often.

This was also the year of concerts. We saw the Lion King, Wicked, Little Big Town, Kenny Chesney, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Montgomery Gentry, and Sugarland. I think the Lion King was my favorite of that whole list. If you get a chance to see it, don’t pass it up!

In June, Tyla and I flew back to Indiana for a quick three day weekend. In addition to giving her more time to talk to my family, it was great to show her where I grew up. Tyla and David became best friends, Tyla got to play with frogs, we swam in the pool, and we even got out in the canoe on the lake for a while.

My exploration of Washington continued with camping trips to Lake Easton State Park and Moran State Park. I think it will be the last time I visit Lake Easton. While it’s a nice mountain park close to home, it’s also VERY close to the interstate which ruins the feel of camping. But those aren’t the only local trips I took. When Mom and Dad came to visit over Labor Day, Tyla and I took them on a tour of the Olympic Peninsula. We visited Hurricane Ridge, the Hoh Rainforest, and Ocean Shores.

Tyla and I had agreed early on that we wouldn’t even talk about the possibility of marriage until after we had been dating for a year. After that milestone was passed in late July and after I had chatted with both of our parents, I didn’t waste much time getting her into jewelry stores to figure out what she liked. And though she didn’t know it at the time, I kicked off my birthday weekend by purchasing the perfect ring for her. I ended up waiting almost a full month to give it to her. Finally it was time to pop the question, so Tim, Chelsea, Tyla and I headed up to Whistler for a weekend in October. You can reread the proposal story if you want, but the short version is that she made my lifelong dreams come true by saying yes. We quickly switched gears into wedding planning mode. That’s still in progress, but it’s coming along nicely.

If I thought waiting for a month to give her the ring was hard, waiting another 6 months to actually marry her is even harder! I can’t wait to start the rest of my life with her. There is no doubt that God meant for the two of us to be together for the rest of our lives. I’m proud to call her my fiancée, and I know she’ll make a fantastic wife and (God-willing) mother.

As we entered December, cancer’s lightning blow struck closer to me than ever before as Mom was diagnosed with kidney cancer. While the surgery changed our Christmases a bit, so far it appears to have done the trick. She’s on the road to recovery and we’ll find out how successful the surgery was in a few months when they run more tests.

So while there were some bumps along the road, as I look back on the year, I see a long list of memories with Tyla. Last year I finished with “What lies ahead?” When I wrote that, I knew what I hoped would happen and my silent wishes did come true. In just a few more months, there will be another Mrs. Martens in this world.

Previous Year In Review Posts: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008

Picking Stocks

A relative is going through a class in school where they are picking stocks to see who can make the most play money over the course of the class. On the surface, I think it’s a fine idea, but if this is the only exposure that the students have to the stock market, it might do more harm than good. Picking individual stocks is risky at best and pure gambling at worst. It can be a fun hobby but it should almost never be used as a real investment strategy. So what to do? I sent them some thoughts and figured I would post it here as well.

John Bogle, the visionary behind Vanguard, shares his wisdom in the book “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing” which I’ve written about before. It’s concise, backed by research, and a must-read for anyone thinking of investing their money. Bogle’s book dispels common myths about investing. Here’s the bottom line: picking individual stocks or relying on mutual funds managed by others is a losing game over the long haul. Sure, there might be temporary hot streaks, but consistently beating the market over decades is effectively impossible. The market wouldn’t work if it was possible to consistently beat it.

So, what’s the winning strategy? Low-cost, total market index funds.

  • Total Market Index Funds: These funds bundle everything in the stock market. When you invest in them, you’re effectively buying a slice of the entire economy. It’s the ultimate diversification.
  • Low-Cost: The fees associated with these funds are ridiculously low—around 0.03%. Why? Because there’s no human actively managing them. It’s all math, ensuring that the fund mirrors the composition of the entire US market. If a company represents 3% of the total US market, its stock will constitute 3% of the fund.

The only thing left at that point is to figure out which actual funds to buy. This is where strategies can vary a bit, but they’re generaly fairly similar. Here are two popular strategies:

  1. VTSAX and chill. This is the simplest version of investing. VTSAX is as low cost fund that covers the entire US economy. Buy this one fund, don’t touch it, and reap the benefits when you need the money.
  2. Split between US, international, and bonds. You can vary the percentages based on your stage in life, but here’s a good starting point:
    1. 70% VTI – Low cost, total US market index ETF.
    2. 10% VXUS – Low cost, total international market index ETF
    3. 20% BND – Low cost, total bond market index ETF

Of course it’s important to remeember that all of this investing has a bigger tax burden than tax-advantaged accounts like a 401k or IRA. Investing directly in the market is generally only something to consider after you’ve maxed out your better options. Financial health can feel overwhelming but as I’ve written about before, this flow chart does a great job of breaking it down. Or if that’s too much, start with Dave Ramsey’s 7 Steps.

I’m no expert and you shouldn’t blindly follow anything I’ve written here, but you should have your own opinions about this. If you’re going to rely on individual stocks, you should read Bogle’s book and be able to explain why you think he’s wrong. It’s so easy to get sucked into thinking this has to be complicated, but the complicated route will almost always lose you huge amounts of money down the road.

One Week in Moab

This year, we decided to visit some of the national parks in southern Utah for our family vacation. It started as an idea to hit all five, but we scaled back to spending a week in Moab, Utah for easy access to two of the parks. In the end, we were glad we simplified our plan because there was a lot to keep us busy and it was more relaxing than trying to cram in a bunch of different stops.

Moab is about 1100 miles from our house, and I’ll write a detailed post about our road trip, but in short, we took two days to drive down there and two days back. So after two long days in the car, we rolled into Moab late on Sunday afternoon.

I’m happy to promote the Airbnb that we rented. It was a duplex so we had our own garage (with a charger for our electric car) along with way more beds than we needed. It also had a private hot tub along with a full washer and dryer. There was a community pool a short walk away too. It was a great home base for our adventures.

I had tried to pre-plan as much of the trip as possible so that I wouldn’t have to be doing logistics and figuring things out while I was on vacation. Plus, Moab is an incredibly busy place and many of the things we wanted to do required reservations months in advance. Moab is a town of about 5000 people with around 2 million people who visit every year! The economy is defined by tourism which is good for business but it’s also wreaking havoc on the people who live there. They simultaneously can’t make a living without the tourists and they often can’t afford basic necessities like housing because of the tourists.

Monday

For our first full day in Moab, we started with Arches National Park which is just on the north end of town. It was about a 15 minute drive from our house. Arches is using timed entry reservations. Months in advance, I registered for entry into the park between 7am and 8am on the day we were planning to go in. We arrived right at 7am in hopes of beating the crowds a bit and also beating the heat. Our plan each day was to be mostly done with planned activities by noon to avoid the hottest part of the day and leave ~half the day open for random activities. This meant getting up early each morning on vacation, but I think we’d do it the same way if we went back.

I have seen plenty of pictures of some of the arches in the park, but I was surprised how different it felt to be there in person. A picture can’t communicate the enormity of the scenery. It feels like the opposite of a green, cool place like Seattle!

We came prepared with an itinerary for our park days thanks to dirtinmyshoes.com. For a few bucks, I purchased her guide to Arches and we followed her two day itinerary. I won’t repeat the details here since I don’t want to give a free summary of her great content, but we were very happy with the info she provided! Despite the extreme visitor load, we never found a trailhead that was full, we ate lunch in a completely empty picnic area each day, and we even had some of the arch views to ourselves!

The highlight of our first day in the park was the Devil’s Garden area. Landscape Arch is enormous and the hike from there to the Double O arch was one of our favorite hikes of the trip. It required climbing up and walking along big rock fins.

Tuesday

Tuesday was our first of two paid adventures: off roading! Moab is a world-renowned mecca for offroad fun and we didn’t want to miss the opportunity. We chose a 2.5 hour with the cleverly named “Moab Tourism Center” tour company. I drove the UTV/side-by-side for our family and there were a total of 5 vehicles in our group including our guide.

It’s hard to put into words what this trip was like! The vehicles were extremely capable and the terrain was incredible. We drove up steep narrow fins, down steep inclines, and over all sorts of terrain that I would never have imagined was possible.

A huge portion of Utah is “BLM land” (Bureau of Land Management) and you can do pretty much anything you want there. Our tour took us through the “Hell’s Revenge” area which had a additional rules because of the high traffic. If you’ve watched any rock crawling videos on the internet, you’ve probably seen some of the main features in this area. We stopped at “Hell’s Gate” and watched four vehicles try to climb it. Three made it up fine but the fourth flipped up and over! Everyone was fine, but it was quite a sight. All of this is just a short drive out of town so part of our tour involved a ~10 minute UTV drive on the roads to and from the business where we started. UTVs can be road legal in Moab and you see lots of them!

If I could go back for one day, I’d do another UTV trip!

Wednesday

We got up early again to get into Arches right at 7am since it had been working so well for us the previous two days. This day involved more highly trafficked parts of the park, but our early start gave us easy parking and ok-ish crowds. Highlights were Delicate Arch, both of The Windows, and the Double Arch. When I had been researching this trip, I saw Double Arch and immediately recognized it as from the opening scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. While the arch was covered in people, it was still neat to see the area in person. We again ate lunch at a completely empty picnic area with a great view of Balanced Rock.

Thursday

Our second scheduled excursion was a half day rafting trip from Adrift Adventures. Their web presence and signup process was less polished than our other excursion, but everything went smoothly. There were three small groups like ours that got put together in one boat and then there was an enormous group of dads and sons that filled up about four or five other boats. They were pretty wild so our guides did a good job of keeping us separated from them on the river so we could have our own fun.

The trip mostly hits “bumpy water” Class 1 and 2 rapids but there was one short Class 3 section too. This felt just about right for our family. There were a couple areas where Tyla and I both jumped out of the boat to swim, and Elijah even got to row the boat for a while.

The river had about 2.5 times as much water flowing through it as it did last year so everything was moving faster than normal. We got to do the whole 12-mile stretch that they normally divide up into two different 6-mile tours.

Friday

For our last day in the parks, we drove about 50 minutes to Canyonlands National Park. This park is divided into three distinct areas and the entrances are hours apart. We chose the Island in the Sky district. The name comes from the fact that this part of the park is mostly on top of a large mesa.

The site we used for he Arches Itinerary had some guidance for Canyonlands but not a full itinerary, but our early arrival paid off again and we were able to see everything without overwhelming crowds. Our first stop was Mesa Arch and it might have been our favorite one of the trip! It’s quite a trippy experience walking up to the arch because it’s right on the edge of the mesa so there’s an enormous drop off beyond the arch. We also had the whole thing to ourselves for quite a while so we got some good pictures and enjoyed the view.

We did one longer hike out to Murphy Point and thoroughly enjoyed the view there. Again, we had the whole viewpoint to ourselves for almost the whole time!

The remaining stops were a couple that we could drive to which mean that they were much busier, and while the views were awesome, our first two private stops were much more enjoyable due to lesser crowds. We found another private picnic spot with shade and a great view for lunch.

Miscellaneous

Our plan to finish each day around 12 or 1 worked out well. We got to beat the heat and crowds, and we also had the afternoon free for relaxing and spending time in the community pool.

We saved a lot of time and money by eating breakfast and lunch at the house every day (or packing a picnic lunch.) We did go out to dinner each night and our favorite spots were the Moab Brewery, El Tapatio, Moab Food Truck Park, and Spitfire Smokehouse. Utah has some confusing liquor laws which means that good draft beer is hard to find, but I did sample quite a few new ones.

We played the license plate game on our drive and made it amazingly close to collecting them all! We ended without seeing Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Delaware, but we did get a few Canadian provinces, D.C., and two Mexican states (Chihuahua and Nuevo Leon.)

Summary

This is long post already, but we have so many memories that I haven’t touched on here like lizards, base jumpers, frisbee plates, the Tree Penguins, the filming location for Horizon, meeting people from Woodinville on our first day in Moab, Lops ice cream, and a lot more. What an amazing trip!

I did a lot of research and planning ahead of time, fully expecting to only use it as a rough guide, but almost the entire trip went flawlessly according to plan. The return trip had some hiccups mostly due to extra traffic on the weekend before the Fourth of July, but it wasn’t a big deal. I’m so thankful for the smooth adventure and the fun family memories. When’s our next road trip?! Let’s do it again!

2022 Year In Review

After two years that were defined by COVID and its aftermath, it was nice to have a year where we could setting into a more sustainable routine. Don’t get me wrong, COVID still played a major part of 2022. It’s one of the top five killers, but we’re learning how to fine tune our behaviors so we can live life while protecting it at the same time.

The first part of the year started off with a bang as we un-paused our Hawaii trip which had been planned for the week everything shut down in March 2020. We thoroughly enjoyed our time in the warm sunshine by playing on the beach, hiking Diamondhead Crater, visiting the zoo, and sampling lots of delicious food. It did feel a little odd to take our big family vacation so early in the year, but the rest of the year didn’t disappoint.

We kept up our monthly family adventures with day trips like the ferry to Kingston, Deception Pass State Park, Leavenworth with Luke and David, hiking to old train tunnels, Birch Bay State Park, Tiny Hearts Homestead, Barclay Lake (with Dad and Mom before the forest fire!), Dege Peak at Mt. Rainier, and Kayak Point.

We had two nice camping trips. One was to Seaquest State Park near Mt. St. Helens with Tyla’s family. It’s interesting to go back there every few years and see how much has changed at the eruption site. The second trip was to San Juan Campground. These were first come-first served rustic camp sites right on the North Fork of the Skykomish River with the Scherschels and Neumanns. Elijah has always asked to go camping where we can’t see anyone else, and this came pretty close to meeting that criterion.

Even though we went to Hawaii, if you ask us about our favorite trip this year, we’d probably all say it was our visit to Leaping Lamb Farm. This was a bonus trip that Tyla picked for Tyla’s 40th birthday celebration. Farm managers Denny and Kate were magnificently friendly, and it was a fulfilling to see Elijah helping with the farm chores and roaming the farm on his own.

This was also the year our family got into disc golf. I’ve always been curious about the sport, but I’ve also been too intimidated to try it out myself. Tyla and Elijah gave me a starter set of discs for Father’s Day and that eventually encouraged me to do some YouTube learning and get out to a course. I was hooked! I love that it’s friendly, approachable, free, and something the whole family can enjoy together outside. According to my UDisc app, I played 428 holes the majority of those were with Elijah. Part of the fun of learning new things is experiencing the rapid improvement as you progress from total newbie to bumbling beginner. By the end of summer, I had even played in my first tournament!

Work continues to go well. The vast majority of my organization still works from home and while there are people who go in for a few days a week, only a small percentage of employees show up every day. I pretty much only go in when there is free food for a social gathering. Otherwise, I very much prefer working from home. While it’s relatively unimportant compared to other work I do, the highlight of my work year was probably the US Government officially awarding me a patent. It’s fun to know that, at least according to the patent office, I’ve invented something brand new and it will be recorded forever.

It’s beyond cliche, but I’m really noticing how quickly life goes by. A week at work seems like nothing when I look back on it, and even the months fly by if I have something fun to look forward to next month. I suppose it’s a good way to breeze through the mundane parts of life, but it’s also an encouragement to live in the moment. If I don’t appreciate each day, the fast forwarding can keep accelerating until all I’m doing is looking forward to huge life events. (Queue the reference to Adam Sandler in the movie “Click.”)

Along with the increased pace of live comes more thoughts about how quickly my life will be over. Maybe this is also cliche for someone in their early 40s. I’ve always thought that eventually we’d move out into the country for a place with more land, but if we wait until Elijah is done with high school so we don’t have to care as much about school districts, then how long will we live in that house before we need to move back closer to town/doctors/help/etc? Regardless of all these earthly decisions, whenever the end of this life comes, I have heaven waiting for me through faith in Jesus’s saving death and resurrection. I think Paul’s words to the Philippians sum this all up nicely:

12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:12-14

Previous Year In Review Posts: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021

COVID-19: Part 8

We made it through day 50 of the lockdown! Most places in the US seem to have seen their peak hospital utilization. Daily infection rates have flattened out so at least things aren’t getting exponentially worse. Our efforts are working. However, our fight is far from cheap. The economy is struggling to deal with this, unemployment is skyrocketing, and people are antsy to gather in groups again.

Your reading assignment for today is an excellent post by Bill Gates. He has devoted his life to global health issues so it’s extremely interesting to get his take on the situation. If you only have time to read one post, read his!

For my own feeble analysis, let’s start by looking at the IHME models. As we move into the long recovery period, I find this to be a great source of information. They do a good job of showing how the current load relates to the total availability of hospital resources, how the speed of recovery is uncertain and at one point we might get to a day when nobody dies from the virus in the state. I took their data normalized it by state population and then calculated the predicted total deaths per 100,000 people based on the average output of the IHME models. I think this helps to show how various states reacted to the virus and how well their efforts to slow the virus are working. I picked the top 10 states along with a few others where some of you live.

LocationMean Deaths Per 100,000
New York119.4
Connecticut84.3
New Jersey79.5
Massachusetts61
Rhode Island57.7
North Dakota46.7
Louisiana38.3
Michigan33.8
District of Columbia32.4
Wyoming27.8
Illinois16.9
Indiana14.4
Washington10.7
Vermont7.3
Ohio6.9
Minnesota6.4
Wisconsin6.1
Montana1.7

Some states have a harder time containing this than others. Most people are spread out in Montana so a lockdown probably doesn’t need to be very severe. New York City is much denser so they need an extreme lockdown to contain the spread. And then there’s the question of how many deaths the lockdown itself causes. What’s the right balance point? I think all we know for sure right now is that “it depends”. With this heavy social and political push to end the lockdown, it feels pretty inevitable that we’re going to start growing exponentially again. Very little has changed since the first growth period. Social distancing is the only tool we have to fight this. There’s no vaccine or treatment, and now the WHO is evening questioning whether it’s possible to build up an immunity. I do think we’re going to oscillate back and forth a bit until we find the least amount of lockdown that keeps us at some sustainable balance of infections and economic pain. I don’t think anybody has the answers about what that balance point is yet so we’ll have to fail a few times as we get it figured out.

The only way this works is if everyone participates in following the guidance provided by your local government. Doing otherwise is selfish. Stay home. Stay healthy. We can do this if we do it together.

If your government says it’s ok to start easing up on the lockdown, then use your best judgement. I know it’s going to be a long time before the three of us feel comfortable in a crowd again. I’m starting to have dreams at night where the basic premise is that I realize I’m in a crowd and regardless of how I got there, I don’t know how to extricate myself. I’m guessing I’m not alone in those kind of thoughts. Thankfully our management has already said that we will not be among the first to return to the office, and even when it is an option, we’ll all be able to keep working from home as long as we want to. I don’t expect a mad rush to fill up the office spaces again.

It has been an interesting time to be a husband and a parent too. Other than getting food, we have had almost zero contact with anyone outside our house and that’s our continued plan until the lockdown restrictions are eased. While being home together is a chance for us to bond and grow stronger as a unit, we’re very eager to have parks and hiking trails open again so we can get out a bit more. More and more trails will be snow-free as the year warms up so that will spread out the hikers and I’m confident I can find trails with low crowds on them.

Little League thinks they’re going to resume practices on May 11 and June 1. I find it highly unlikely that they’ll be allowed to operate on that schedule. On the surface that feels like a great activity since it’s outside and fairly spread out, but if you’ve ever walked through the fields on a Saturday, you know it’s a huge event. Six fields with ~12 kids each plus coaches, families, umpires, and concession booth workers add up to a big crowd in a tiny space. We opted to skip this year and use our money as a credit toward next year. I also expect a fair amount of other families will be opting out so it will be interesting to see hear if they have to combine teams or anything like that.

In the face of uncertainty, we press on knowing that God has this under control and even though we are being tested, we won’t be pushed beyond what we can bear.

James 1:2-4 2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Davinci Resolve

One of the big reasons I built a new PC recently was to make it easier to edit 4k video footage as more and more of my devices are able to record it. I’ve been using various versions of Adobe Premiere Elements for 10 years, but I’m starting to feel like I’ve outgrown it. The problem is that the next level of video editors is the same stuff the pros use which means it’s complicated and expensive. The main contenders are Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro from Apple. Thankfully there’s a third option: Davinci Resolve.

Resolve initially started as a color correction tool but evolved to include a full editor and special effects tool. The best part is that it is FREE. That’s right. Free! Or at least it’s free until you start editing the next Marvel movie and then you’ll want to shell out a few hundred bucks for the Studio version of Resolve. But there’s no way a mere mortal at home is ever going to get that far.

One downside to Resolve is that it has a very steep learning curve. Thankfully I’m not totally new to editing and our library also includes a free subscription to Lynda.com. I took a ~5 hour course, learned the basics, and then plunged into my first video: a full church service.

Because we’re staying home, we decided to publish as much of a normal church service online as we could. Pastor spent many hours at church recording the various segments and DaveK recorded some organ pieces from home. I was able to get it all pieced together and posted. You can find it on our Facebook page and our YouTube channel.

Other than having to do some searches to find a few very basic things, the experience was good and it didn’t add a huge amount of time to the way I did things before. As I get better I’m confident that I’ll be able to make them look even nicer and do it faster than before. Specific things I’m already enjoying:

  • It has a feature that syncs separate audio and video tracks with a single click! This was a constant source of pain for me before because even if I got them synced up, at some point they might start to drift by a couple frames.
  • The titles are done through their full-blown effects system so the sky is the limit. I stuck with the built-in titles for this first video but I thought even those looked very nice.
  • Rendering is FAST. This software uses both my CPU and video card to get the rendering done as quickly as possible.

The three of us put in a huge amount of time getting this one service done, but it looks like we’ll have a lot more chances to optimize our workflow. The biggest hiccup was transfering ~12GB of files around but it turns out that just dumping them on the PC at church and letting Backblaze put back them up was the easiest and most reliable solution. The upload speed there is very slow (2Mbps) but reliability proved more helpful than raw speed.

It was also really tempting to try to use the special effects to light the candles, but I resisted. We’ll get those lit in real life and made some other small tweaks for next time, but if you’re using these videos and there’s anything we can do to improve your experience, please share them with us!

Fantasy Football 2019 – Week 8

The Seahawks logged another win to move to 6-2, but those pesky 49ers are still undefeated. Football Outsiders says that the 49ers have an 86% chance of winning the division and the Seahawks have a 43% chance of winning the wild card. (Minnesota and Phildelphia have similar wild card chances.) As for the Super Bowl, the best odds are that it will be New England vs the 49ers or the Saints. Don’t worry, they say there’s only a 4% chance that the 49ers will go undefeated…

Our league rebounded from our lowest scoring week of the season to the highest scoring week of the season. Our low score this week would have easily beaten everyone (except Tyler) last week. Logan is getting hot as we move through the middle of the season. His 4 game win streak has him in a tie for first. Luke and Tim still have huge point totals but they’re a game behind in 3rd. After next week we’ll have someone in sole possession of first place because Logan and Tyler are facing off. Only 6 weeks left until the playoffs!

Tim might be hanging out down in 4th place in the standings but the power rankings say he’s the toughest opponent right now.

1. Tim (Beer-me) +1
2. Luke (Helmetheads) -1
3. Tyler (Krazy Kanuck)
4. Logan (Goat Roapers) -1

On to the weekly awards… but wait… there are two new awards this time! I went back through all the data since 2007 and dug up the “Lowest winning score” and “Highest losing score”. Interestingly Tim holds the all time records for both ends of that stat.

This Week This Season All Time
Highest Team Score Tim had 171.35 Luke had 202.63 (Week 5) Luke had 202.63 (2019)
Lowest Team Score Dad had 115.77 Andy had 79.13 (Week 6) Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout Tim beat Ben by 35.95 Logan beat Andy by 66 (Week 6) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Tyler beat Dad by 0.42 Andy beat Tyler by 0.56 (Week 5) Tyler beat Nick by 0.01 (2018)
Longest Active Winning Streak Logan has a 4 game winning streak. Luke has a 5 game winning streak (Week 5) Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had 8 game winning streaks
Longest Active Losing Streak Luke has a 3 game losing streak. Nick has a 6 game losing streak (Week 6) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
Highest Scoring Player Aaron Jones had 38.10 for Andy Aaron Rodgers had 53.76 on Ben’s bench (Week 7) Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Lowest winning score Tyler beat Dad with 116.19 Tyler beat Nick with 92.63 (Week 4) Tim beat Jim with 79.34 (2015)
Highest losing score Dad lost to Tyler with 115.77 Tim lost to Luke with 169.11 (Week 5) Tim lost to Luke with 169.11 (2019)

Fantasy Football 2019 – Week 1

Need a reminder for how last year finished up? Andy defeated rookie (only in this league) Tyler to win the championship. This year? Yikes. Not a great start for the defending champion. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Tim finished last year with the lowest score for the entire league for the season but he dominated with 150 points this week. It should be an interesting year! By the way, Logan had 3 roster moves before getting to week 1… what’s he up to?!

The Seahawks were 9 point favorites but only one by 1. It was nice to see them come back to win it in the 4th quarter, but hopefully they look a little smoother as the season progresses like not letting Wilson take 4 sacks every game. A win is a win though!

I’ll start off the weekly awards by keeping the records from last season around.

This Week Last Season All Time
Highest Team Score Tim had 150.29 (Week 1) Tyler had 191.89 (Week 8) Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score Andy had 81.19 (Week 1) Was: Tim had 71.25 (Week 16) Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout Luke beat Andy by 61.07 (Week 1) Tyler beat Dad by 90.22 (Week 8) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Logan beat Nick by 10.13 (Week 1) Tyler beat Nick by 0.01 (Week 12) Tyler beat Nick by 0.01 (2018)
Longest Active Winning Streak Tim, Luke, Tyler and Logan have 1 game winning streak (Week 1) Andy, Logan and Tyler had 5 game winning streaks. Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had 8 game winning streaks
Longest Active Losing Streak Ben, Nick, Dad and Andy have a 4 game losing streak (Week 1) Tim has a 6 game losing streak (Week 13) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
Highest Scoring Player Lamar Jackson had 43.56 for Tim (Week 1) Mitchell Trubisky had 55.46 as a free agent (Week 4) Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)

Fantasy Football – Week 16

If you told me two weeks ago that the Seahawks would lose to the 49ers and beat the Chiefs, I would have thought you were crazy, but boy did the Seahawks look good against the Chiefs! All pieces of the game seemed to come together. A consistently good running game coupled with crazy good catches from Lockett and Baldwin propelled them to an exciting victory. That makes them a lock for the wildcard spot and the chance to rest some players in Week 17. Say it with me: “No injuries!”

Week 16 brings our season to a close with coming out on top. Andy saved his biggest game of the season for the championship and dropped the mic with a score of 173.04 to take first place. Congrats! Here are the final standings:

  1. Andy
  2. Tyler
  3. Logan
  4. Ben
  5. Nick
  6. Luke
  7. Dad
  8. Tim

Thanks to everyone for a great season! Tyler and Nick, you were great additions to the league. I really appreciate everyone starting a full roster each week. That makes such a big difference in our small league. I hope you’ll all be back next year!

On to the weekly records for the last time:

This Week This Season All Time
Highest Team Score Andy had 173.04 Tyler had 191.89 (Week 8) Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score Tim had 71.25 Was: Tim had 72.47 (Week 10) Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout Andy Beat Tyler by 54.54 Tyler beat Dad by 90.22 (Week 8) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Logan beat Ben by 3.87 Tyler beat Nick by 0.01 (Week 12) Tyler beat Nick by 0.01 (2018)
Highest Scoring Player Aaron Rodgers had 46.88 for Andy. Mitchell Trubisky had 55.46 as a free agent (Week 4) Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak Nick and Andy have 2 game winning streaks Andy, Logan and Tyler had 5 game winning streaks. Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had 8 game winning streaks
Longest Active Losing Streak Ben and Tim have 2 game losing streaks Tim has a 6 game losing streak (Week 13) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)