Bit Defender Free Edition (version 2009) review

I downloaded this product Nov 2011, but apparently the latest version of the scanner was released in 2009. The virus signatures, however, are up to date. I wanted it as an on-demand anti-virus scanner, rather than a all-the-time background resource eating scanner. It advertises right-click to scan, which is exactly what I want, but at least out of the box it's not quite as resource friendly as I hoped, as it installs 2 services and one background process, which together consume about 60MB of RAM.

Then when I tried to run a 'deep scan' it crashes midway through. So I reboot and try to uninstall it, and it fails massivly: registry keys left all over the place, and none of it's files deleted. What a piece of junk.

AVOID!

home loans:USE Credit union review

I got my home loan from USE Credit Union, in San Diego (the UCSD branch). I never plan to use them for anything else, as they did a horrible job of it. It left a sour taste in my mouth that I doubt will ever go away. The world needs a web 2.0 loan company with less of the 'human' touch, because I can tell you right now the "human" touch here means "how many mistakes can we make" + "how rude can we be".

Half of my problems were due to USE contracting out most of the loan processing to PHH Mortgage in NJ, who are also a bunch of bumbling idiots. I will leave out the problems I had with them, however, and focus on USE, though keep in mind that you will be forced to deal with PHH if you get your loan from PHH.

First, USE (Kathleen) told me that a 30 day close would be no problem. Then, pretty much stating the day after I signed the contract with them, they backed up on that statement and starting saying that it would be difficult to meet that deadline - bait and switch! The documents gave to USE had to be sent to PHH since they do all the loan processing, and several documents were 'lost' in that process because Kathleen didn't mark them properly. Then she lied and said my documents were sent to underwriting for review, when PHH was still waiting for the lost documents. We lost 5 days out of our 30 day close just because of this one mistake. But there are so many more. Kathleen claimed to know the inside scoop on how UCSD does employment verification, and that she would handle it personally to make sure it went smoothly. Well, she didn't handle it personally, they didn't do it the way she said they needed to, and it didn't go smoothly. BUT the reason was USE put down the wrong UPS billing number, and had nothing to do with Kathleen's claims about special procedures needed. Worse, when I called Kathleen to find out about the status of the request, she claimed that she had called UCSD earlier that day, and would call again. Well, I eventually called UCSD myself, and they had never been contacted about my employment file. Lesson: never trust anything that USE people say. I could go on and on about the stupid mistakes they kept on making the whole way though, but it's just to painful to relive the process. In the end the only really important metric of success was achieved,more or less: we were able to close in 31 days. That was only true because I ended up spending an hour every day calling all of the involved parties to make sure that each had gotten what they were supposed do, and where doing what was needed with it. Many of these people were folks dealing with the mortgage company/USE, so I really shouldn't have been responsible for that.

One final lie: I asked Kathleen if they were going to sell my loan to somebody else after closing? She said that loans were their bread and butter, and it was very, very unlikely. Well, just 12 days after closing they did just that, and sold the loan. It doesn't really affect me, but it's a great example of how USE (or at leas Kathleen) tells you what you want to hear, independent of the truth.

A word of advice, more generally. When you are shopping for a home loan, ask who does their processing for them. If it's PHH Mortgage, you don't want that loan!

Pure vanity "research" journals

Add another one to the list: Journal of Optometry. At a glance, they seem reasonable, given that it is now associated with Elsevier. But be warned: any claims they make should be taken with extreme skepticism. For instance, they inflate the number of "readers" by sending out spam to pretty much anybody on the internet at an EDU address. I must say, Elsevier's imprint has really lost it's value.

Hacking your shower head: 2.5gpm a minute and flow rate limiters

Federal laws put strict limits on the maximum flow rate for shower heads, of 2.5 gallons per minute. Many shower heads do not even reach that for fear of exceeding the limit and the strong sanctions the company's would face for selling such a shower head. If you pay for your water, the amount you use to shower should be up to you. Some shower heads offer a convenient law work-around: a plastic washer or screen is used to set the rate limit, and can be removed. It's not something they can advertise online, however, so it can be hard to find one. Here's a list of what I've tried, and what level of success I've had.

Peerless massage shower head, "4-spray SH-chrome", model 76456. No obvious rate limiter to remove, and out of the box it's like showering in a light drizzle. ~$13 at Walmart.

Waterpik power spray 4 setting (model sm-423cg). The back of the box advertises a removable flow limiter. The included diagram shows a water filter and a separate rate limiter, but in my shower head I could only find the filter. Removing the filer did improve pressure, to a level much better than the Peerless above, but still weaker than I'd like. Maybe I didn't find the rate limiter, or maybe it was missing, but in the end this shower head was only satisfactory, not awesome. ~$15 at target.

Review of Nikolai Pavlov, Dentist of La Jolla

Nikolai Pavlov (Nick) is located in a low rent part of La Jolla, near the border with PB. I took this as a good sign: he could pass the savings on to me. Wrong! Instead I got one heck of an up sell.

The good: the office was clean, if tacky, and I didn't have to wait long before the dentist was ready to see me. First they wanted Xrays, which I was expecting, but I don't like having more than once every couple years, so I declined. Unexpectedly, I was able to get Nick to agree to this, though he wasn't happy to do it.

The bad: next he looked in my mouth for all of 20 seconds, checked the depth of the pockets in my gums in about 3 places, and then announced I needed a special treatment that would cost 80 extra dollars, even after insurance. My previous dentist checks the gum pockets for each tooth, and had never thought such treatment was necessary.

While the snap judgment was troubling, worse was that Nick refused to respect my wishes and provide a regular cleaning. I'm no pushover on these kinds of things and I spent a good ten minutes politely trying to convince him to just give me the regular cleaning. No dice.

Either I pay the $80 extra, or I go home, having already wasted my morning.  I resolved never to come back, but since my time is worth something I went ahead with the more expensive cleaning.

The actual service seemed OK - I had to wait a while, but all the arguing with the dentist was probably the main factor behind that.  I couldn't see any evidence that the actual cleaning was subpar.  They never did a full check of my gums though, which was disappointing.

So I paid more, and got less. There is nothing to recommend Nikolai Pavlov as a dentist.

Resolution comparison of Nintendo sprite-based gaming systems

nes 256 x 224
gba 240 × 160
nds 256 x 192

The SNES has a bunch of resolution modes, but it sounds like the most common one matches the NES.

One upshot of this is that no hand-held unit can perfectly simulate the old (S)NES games - some of the pixels must be cropped or scaled. But the NDS isn't far off. The PSP is  480 x 272, so a non-Nintendo portable gaming system would actually be the best for emulating classic Nintendo games (slightly ironic, eh?)
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Krups 10-Cup Thermal Coffee Maker FMF5 review - avoid!

We bought this because of the thermal carafe. That part worked great - the coffee stays hot for 3-4 hours with no loss of taste, unlike a regular coffee maker which starts to burn the coffee within 15 minutes of brewing.

Nothing else about this coffee maker is very good, however.

It is very hard to pour from the carafe without spilling.

The machine has some kind of fancy logic that is supposed to determine if the coffee maker has been turned on with no water in it, and will shut off immediately. Nice idea, but whatever method they use also responds if you make coffee, and then refill the reservoir right away to make another batch.

And the real kicker: it failed on us after 1.5 years of service (it only has a 1 year warranty). Not a little failure, either: the heating element cracked in two! I called Krups and they refused to even estimate a repair cost - I had to send it back in at my cost and then they would tell me how much more I would have to pay if I wanted it actually fixed.

And a final minor annoyance - in order to discover what was wrong with the unit, I had to take it apart - which required not only a TORX screwdriver set, but a fancy, TORX security set that is hollowed out in the middle so that it can fit into the screw-head. I own it, I should be able to take it apart without having buy a new screwdriver!