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My electric razor is currently in the Berkeley Police property room awaiting me (long story). After 2 days without a razor, my face felt like a porcupine autofelating itself: not good. I’ll get my electric back soon but I had to pick up some interim Bic razors at Walgreens.

After lathering up my face, I touched the razor to my upper lip, gave it a tuGGHHHHAAARRRRRGwhatthefaaaahk?! Ouch!

What the hell are people thinking, using a razor instead of an electric is masochistic! I’ve used a rotary electric razor since 1990 and never looked back. And today I was reminded as to why!

Screw bladed razors, get a Norelco rotary electric razor! They rock!

Both the Clic Eraser refill from Pentel and the SumoGrip refill from Sakura are acceptable eraser refills for my Logo II pencil. I have to add Scotch tape to make them fit perfectly, just like my original fix for the Logo II.

I like the SumoGrip refills a little better because the eraser material is a little more firm, and it’s cut to length, though the length problem took 2 seconds to fix with scissors.

Last summer I gushed about my favorite mechanical pencil, the PaperMate Logo II here. I’ve now bought 3 cases of them, 12 0.7mm pencils and 24 0.5mm pencils. I use them constantly and love them (read my post for a vital fix to the eraser!).

Here’s the review I’m posting on the Virgin Mobile site…

Total:  3 of 5 stars
Features 4/5
Performance 4/5
Ease of Use 3/5
Battery Life 1/5

I live in San Francisco. 4G sucks the battery fast (3 hours will kill the battery dead) but it’s fast when available. It’s definitely not available everywhere. Powering up the 4G takes like 2 minutes. :-(

Virgin 3G data is definitely universally slower than AT&T. The browser will hang for 20 seconds at a time. But browser pages usually eventually load.

Chrome has problems, an update is supposed to be forthcoming. I installed Opera browser which is working well.

I bought a $75 Seidio 4,000 mah battery so the phone will last all day with 3G turned on. Without it, the phone is DEAD at 7pm. With the new giant backpack battery, the phone is usually at 50% at midnight :-) …. but one day I had a runaway process or something so that the battery died at 8pm. :-(

But hey, $35/month for 3G and 2.5Gig/month! Begrudgingly happy.

And the 3D camera is a really neat Gee-Wiz toy.

Pros: (blank)
Cons: slow 3g, data sucks battery, spotty 4g service

As I posted on REI.com (and next to all the other poor reviews):

It was the only bike stand at REI, San Francisco and there weren’t any set up which made me suspicious but I bought it anyway.

Why the hell is it on wheels? That makes it slip around!

When used “correctly”, it holds my full size men’s hybrid bike by pushing on the spokes. I’m sure something will happen and it’ll put my wheel out of true! I don’t like it and I don’t trust it.

The plastic parts have that noxious cheap Chinese plastic smell.

I’m returning it right away.

A couple of friends have asked about health insurance they might get. Here is my current solution. Feel free to write me if you have a better solution!

I have ClearProtection Plus 5000 from Anthem Blue Cross http://anthem.com/ca
$190/month for “very good insurance after a $5k deductable” for this 42 year old man living in California.

ehealthinsurance.com is a good site to price out plans. It gets confusing and frustrating quickly thought because well, insurance is confusing and frustrating. It’s likely that my plan will come out the least expensive of the plans that actually cover anything. Cheaper plans are available but I noticed that they always only cover something like 50% after the deductible. So your $100k heart attack might cost you $50k :-(

LifeHacker continues to be one of my favorite geek sites. Here are two great articles that taught me, the  consummate  geek, something recently

Top 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Slow Technology

 Protect Your Stuff From Loss and Theft This Weekend

Some tidbits I learned today from Lifehacker today

Did you lose your Android phone? Install Plan B from the Google Store and your phone will email its location to you! It worked on my phone perfectly. I also have Prey on all my devices

SSD hard drives are cheap enough to start buying ($100 for 100 gig) especially since new (as of Nov 2011) Intel motherboards have built in support to use them as a cache (called    Smart Response Technology)

I just “upgraded” my laptop’s Synaptic trackpad with the latest drivers so I can do 2-finger scrolling like on a Mac. It sucks. It doesn’t react properly.

But I found a donation-ware program called two-finger-scroll that does the job nicely. I disabled the 2-finger scrolling in the factory drivers and installed this and I’m good to go. Hurray!

I’m thinking of switching from my AT&T cell phone plan with an Android phone (Samsung Captivate, AKA SGH-I897, AKA Galaxy S) to Virgin Mobile.

What is your experience?

It looks like the difference is:

AT&T (monthly)
$75
200 MB data
1000 texts
450 Rollover minutes
Unlimited talking with other AT&T cell phones

Virgin Mobile
$45 ($30 less!)
unlimited MB data (I dunno if I could use more than 500 MB/month)
unlimited texts (I sometimes use 500 texts/month)
1200 minutes (plenty)

It looks like I can sell my phone on eBay for $100, buy an LG Optimus Elite for $150, and start saving $30/month.

Why shouldn’t I do this? Leave a comment.

I have been wanting this email feature for oh my god, like 20 years. Thank you internets!

Boomerang for Gmail is awesome! (that is a referral link, if you use it, we both get some free prizes like these.

Here’s a video showing Boomerang in action

You know when you send an important email and a timely response is important but you aren’t sure the person is going to respond quickly? How do you keep track of this important tidbit? What I used to do was copy-and-paste the email into a Calendar item… which is cumbersome and a PITA to do on a regular basis!

From their website:

Boomerang allows you to schedule messages to be sent or returned at a later date. Write a message now, send it whenever, even if you’re not online. Track messages to make sure you hear back, and schedule reminders right inside Gmail

I’ve been using it for a week and it works as advertised! I’m in!

There is Boomerang for Gmail on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari (Hahah, no Internet Explorer!), and Outlook too.

These are all Android apps I heartily use and recommend for my AT&T Galaxy S phone.
Find all these apps on Google Play for your Android phone.

RealCalc Scientific Calculator – a great calculator. The stock calculator suuuuucks but RealCalc is great (and costs like a buck or something!)

NoLED – It turns on the screen and tells you when you’ve missed a call or text. Essential (I can’t believe Samsung forgot this functionality!)

Google Goggles – great for scanning QR codes (those fancy new computer bar codes). It holds promise for doing a lot more, but not much more yet.

Fish Bowl – photo gallery

Clock – The built in Clock app with the wake-me-ever-so-gently “Smart Alarm” is my daily alarm clock and I love it.

Lord Of Magic – fun shoot’em up

Gmail – of course
Google Maps – of course

Silent Time – Works great to keep my phone quiet for my weekly appointments.

SwiFTP FTP Server – I use this and an FTP client on my home computer to move files from my computer to my phone

Hi-Q MP3 Recorder – Rock solid
I use this every day to record lectures and people giving me information. It is indispensable.

Chase Mobile – it’s pretty convenient depositing checks remotely!

Google Voice – works great. Once every couple months it doesn’t let me listen to voicemails but generally works great.

Andmade Share – makes sending  attachments  and such way easier

Astro Player – Music playback. Love it for the equalizer and playback speed adjuster. I record lectures in school. I use the equalizer to make the recordings listenable and I use the playback speed changer to scroll through the lectures quickly. Win!

BART Usher – It’s my go-to schedule travelling through BART

Data Traffic Monitor– Helped me diagnose a bandwidth hog program

Screen Filter – Indispensable brightness control for my AT&T Galaxy S phone.

Tasker – It is supposed to be super-duper powerful but the best use I found was that I created 6 (pretty useful) buttons with it that have obvious purposes: Sound On/Off, Wifi On/Off, 3G On/Off.

Wifi Manager – Lets me see the wifi networks around me at a glance. Nice.

Google Authenticator – If you use Gmail, you should use 2-Step Verification to protect your account! How to enable it. And a friendly video that walks you through it.

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Here are the maybe/maybe-nots

Groupme – I WANT to love it but 2 of my friends don’t receive the messages reliably :-(

SomaFM Radio Player – I WANT to love it but It uses a bit (30kb/min… 43 megabytes/day) of bandwidth and a lot of battery even when paused. I don’t have unlimited monthly 3G bandwidth so I’m wary to use the app.

Prey – It is supposed to track my phone in case I lose it. So far I haven’t gotten it to work right. But I’m on it.