Review: Maxforce Fleet Ant Bait Gel

 We had an ant problem and none of the cheap ant bait traps on Amazon worked. Xiaoqin did some research and found recommendations for Maxforce Fleet Ant Bait Gel. At $40/pop this stuff isn't cheap but neither is pest control so we ordered it and tried it.

The dispenser is a syringe. We would apply it to a post it note and then plant the post-it note along the ant paths. We did this in several places in the house, using 2 out of 4 syringes in the box over 5 days.

Within a week the ants were gone. Just like that! It's so nice when your problem can be solved by buying things. Recommended.

Review: Brasscraft BC260

One penalty of living in an old house like mine is that the kitchen sink clogs up about twice a year. I got fed up of paying the plumber to come out and unclog it every time, so I tried various solutions. The hand powered augers were too painful to use, and the drill auger I rented once turned out to be difficult as well. Finally, I asked the plumbers to give me a recommendation. They were reluctant but eventually pointed me at the BrassCraft machine.

The BrassCraft auger sits on the ground, which is perfect, because then you're not holding the power drill. It comes with a foot switch so you can activate it while feeding the cable into the clean-out. I've used it in anger twice since I bought it earlier this year, and it works, though the set up is laborious. Because the power cable is too short, I have to first run an extension cord out to it. Then, I have to thread the proper cleaning tool onto the front, and then screw it on.

After plugging everything in, you then put on gardening gloves, and then pull out the cable and feed it into the cleanout, stepping on the foot switch to help everything grind along. Note that even though there's a "reverse gear" on the drill, the manual says not to use it! Fortunately, if you've actually cleared the obstacle in the pipe, you can generally pull the cable out by hand.

To my surprise, you can actually over-drive the cable machine: the cable itself is not anchored in anyway to the drum, so if you get over-enthusiastic and drive out all 50', you can end up pulling the cable out of the machine entirely. This sucks, because you'll spend at least 15 minutes working the cable back in.

Nevertheless, the machine will pay for itself if you use it just 3 times over it's lifetime, and it looks like it'll survive quite a bit longer than that. It also saves quite a bit of time since the penalty with calling the plumber isn't just that you have to pay him, but also wait for him to come around to where you are.

Recommended.

First Impressions: Sensi UP500W WiFi Programmable Thermostat

I had a Hunter 44860 Thermostat that had been going strong for ages. While my wife repeatedly complained about the programming UI, the cheap skate solution was to just disable the programming and have my wife set the thermostat manually to a temperature that was acceptable to her. It didn't particularly waste much power, and I had to change the battery every year or so, but it was trouble-free.

Then I found a deal for the Sensi WiFi Thermostat on Amazon. While my ultra-geek friends went for the Nest, if you're even a little bit skeptical, you'll find on-line horror stories about the Nest failing in all sorts of potentially dangerous ways. In particular, the requirement for a C wire is such that if you live in an older house or have a system that doesn't provide the C wire, you could potentially burn down your house, because the system then draws power from the HVAC control wire. Yes, one of my geek friends rents, so he doesn't care if the house burns down, but at least another few do own their homes. Assuming you survive such an event, of course, Google (which now owns Nest) has such deep pockets that you could probably recover the cost of replacing the house, plus make a tidy profit.

Why does Nest do this? Rather than require the owner/user to occasionally replace AA batteries in the thermostat, Nest includes a rechargeable battery in the device. That device, however, charges itself by drawing upon a C wire (or in the absence of such, the HVAC control wires). You would think that the product managers would specify, for instance, that the device in such a case should shut down rather than potentially burn down a house, but remember, this is the same company that decided that it would rather prevent you from being able to receive e-mail than to separate your photo quota from your e-mail storage quota.

Anyway, after determining that the Sensi wouldn't potentially burn down my house (it includes AA batteries, and you do have to replace those batteries occasionally), I embarked on the installation project. To do this, you download the Sensi app from the app store, which then walks you through the procedure: remove the old face plate, label the wires, unscrew the old wires, uninstall the old backplates, install new backplates, wire the labelled wires into the appropriate screw slots, install the new face plate, and then visit the WiFi settings on your phone. All through the procedure, the app holds your hands, even offering you videos if you should be unsure. This is more reassuring than most manuals.

The device then sets up a WiFi network which you connect to from your cell phone. Once that happens, your smartphone app then programs the device's WiFi settings, gives your device a name, and then pairs your device so you can now can control the thermostat remotely. I checked the heating and the cooling, and then proceeded to list my Hunter for sale on Amazon. (If you live locally and want my old thermostat, just drop me a note) I could install the same app on multiple devices, and any one of them could control the thermostat.

The device isn't fancy. It has no proximity sensor and doesn't learn when you're in the house or your habits. But as my wife points out, the reason for the thermostat isn't to replace human control, but to let us turn off the device while we're away and forgot to do so. That, and not burn down the house without our help or the help of our 2 sons.

All in all, I'm pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to install, and that it was possible for a complete newb like me to do so. Even if you bought this at the regular Amazon price instead of the deal I got, it's still half the price of the Nest. It's not fancy, but that means that those AA batteries will last a good long time. And if those AAs run down when you're on vacation, rather than running up the power, the device will just shut down WiFi and run on your existing schedule, which is what you want.

Recommended.

Review: NXR-RH3001 Professional 30" Under Cabinet Range Hood

After our recent remodeling I now have a deathly fear of home improvement projects. Unfortunately, our microwave range hood's microwave function went dead recently, and our remodeling also left us with some ridiculously sensitive smoke detectors, so I went crazy and bought the most powerful range hood Costco has: the $500 800 cfm "Professional" model.

Being tired of remodeling, we paid someone to do the install. He had to make a couple of trips to Home Depot since the hood didn't come with all the parts, but we kept going instead of returning it because he said he had experience with the unit and thought it was an excellent choice.

The hood extends down quite a bit more than the microwave did, but that's not a bad thing: it just means that the hood is closer to the cooking pots and what not. The lights also work better since they're closer to the stove.

At full 800CFM, the thing isn't excessively loud, and was indeed the same noise level or less than the microwave hood it replaced. What's most important, however, is now when I get out the blow-torch to sear steaks, the house's smoke detectors don't go off, and you can visibly see the hood sucking up all the smoke and grease.

At lower levels (the hood has 4 different motor speeds), you can barely hear the device.

Recommended. Should have done the upgrade ages ago.

Review: OXO Tot Tub Drain Stopper

My old tub drain stopper started leaking, so I went to look for a replacement. The OXO one came highly recommended on Amazon, and I ordered one despite my skepticism. It's over-sized, and drops into the tub cover with no problems. It didn't look like it would work, but once water gets into the tub over it, even a bit of water seals the stopper and holds it tight. Much simpler than my previous mechanical spring-loaded stopper which had to be taken apart and fixed once by me before failing completely.

Recommended.

Review: Vivere Double Hammock with Steel Stand

I've long enjoyed the idea of having a hammock around in the home, but never had any place around to hang it, either in the form of trees, columns. And I'm too lazy (or chicken) to drill holes in the walls or support beams.

When Amazon had a sale on the Vivere Hammock with Stand, I jumped on it. I figured worse comes to worse, I'd return it.

Unpacked, the hammock came with a carrying case, 5 pieces of metal, and a hammock with metal reinforcements on the eyelets. The stand was fairly easy to assemble, and tool-free. Once the hammock was set up, there was no question of returning it, as Bowen immediately decided that it was his! He fell off the hammock a couple of times despite us teaching him how to get in and out of it properly, but after that had no problems whatsoever.

It's unusual nowadays for a toy to hold Bowen's attention for more than a few days, but it's been a couple of weeks and he still guards it jealously, though he occasionally will share it with friends. It's been a great buy and I have no regrets.

Recommended!

Power Tools for Home Use

Once you become a home owner, you end up with lots of little jobs that you have to work on that are too small to call a handyman for, and too big for a manual screw driver. This is especially the case if you have a rental property, since some renters will call you for literally anything from flipping a breaker switch to lubricating a vent with WD-40.

I ended up with 2 fairly decent pieces of kit for work around the house. The first is the Denali 3.6V Cordless Screwdriver kit. It's a fairly small and handy set, and comes with drill bits as well as screw driver bits. It doesn't have a lot of power, but it's also fairly safe to use. It's not meant to drive screws into studs, but it's perfect for say, screwing in a long screw onto an existing pre-drilled slot, installing keypad locks, and other such small jobs. The low power is actually useful for delicate jobs, as you won't risk driving screws that are canted or hammering in things that shouldn't be hammered.

For jobs that require more power, I ended up with the Makita 10.8V Impact Driver and Drill. The set is now obsolete, and has been replaced by the 12V combo. They are quite a bit more powerful, capable of driving screws and drilling holes into studs. The battery life is incredible, and the charging time ridiculously fast, though my usual complaints about people who design chargers that go from red to green to indicate charge status apply.

What's nice is that the set is fairly light, which translate to less fatigue. You might not think this a big deal, but when you're squatted down and bent over trying to get a screw hammered in at a corner this becomes huge. The biggest issue is that there was a lot of confusion for me as to what drill bits/screw-driver heads were compatible with this. The poor reviews on the Markita branded bit set scared me from buying them, but after collecting a few sets that were incompatible from the local hardware store I realized that I should have ignored those lousy reviews and just bought them. For a typical home user, these sets are essentially consumables and you should plan on replacing them every few years anyway, so why sweat the crappy reviews?

In any case, in terms of the number of handyman calls I've avoided as a result of owning this set of tools, I've more than made back triple the cost of the tools, so these come recommended.

The Siren Song of Real Estate

I'm constantly astounded by how frequently people tout real estate as a great investment. Take a look at this example from Quora, for instance:

Buy a single-family, 3 bedroom rental for $180,000. Rent = $1,200/month. That's about 7% rate of return on your investment. Here's the good news: after depreciation, you net income is practically zero (on paper).

Where do I begin? First of all, don't forget maintenance, insurance, and taxes on the home!  If there's a HOA, add that monthly fee in there as well. On average maintenance costs about 1% a year, and property taxes eat another 1%. Add to that insurance, which is another 2.5%. Now that's $4,500 / year.

There's also costs of acquiring a renter, as well as the possibility of not being able to rent out a house for a while. (If your 3 bedroom house rents for $1200/month, it's not in a strong market like the Bay Area) John T Reed uses a 95% vacancy rate as standard, which means that you lose about 2 weeks of rental income a year due to moving people in and out.

So now your numbers look like this: $13,846 in revenue, $4500 in costs, which is $9346, or a 5% return, give or take a bit. But you also paid a real estate agent about $5400 to buy the home, and you'd have to pay the same to sell it, assuming no appreciation. (Typically real estate appreciates 0.4% a year after inflation, and if you're getting a house for $180,000, it's not in a high growth area like the San Francisco Area)

Note that the above numbers from Quora are doctor'd! In other words, good luck buying a house for $180,000 that can rent for $1,200/month, which would imply a price to rent ratio of 12.5. In most parts of the country, price to rent ratio is 15, which means that you'd have to pay $216,000 for that same house. Your property taxes, insurance, and maintenance costs go up proportionately, and you're down to less than 4% return, even assuming you didn't pay brokerage fees for buying the house.

What about depreciation? Well, if you depreciate the property, you have to back that out when you sell, so your capital gains would register that much higher.

(Just in case you were wondering, the price to rent ratio in the Bay Area is currently at least 20, probably approaching 25: it really isn't a good place to buy a property to rent)

Are there any mitigating factors? Yes. If you live in the house for 3 out of the past 5 years, capital gains are exempt from taxes. So if you moved every 4 years and bought a new house each time, and real estate kept going up, you could come out ahead with respect to housing versus saying, buying an indexed fund. But you hardly see any one except John T Reed telling you to do that. Most people, especially families, don't like moving that often.

If you can do exchanges, then trading up is essentially tax free, enabling you to defer paying taxes. That's also nice. But you'd be tying up your wealth in increasingly large amounts of real estate as you do so.

The big reason why most people think real estate makes a huge amount of money is because of personal experience. They put 20% down on a house, watch the house go up in value, and walk out with a ton of money due to the use of leverage. As folks found out when the housing bubble crashes, leverage hurts you a lot as well when the market goes down.

There's no free lunch in investing. Unfortunately, there are lots of people who like to tell you that there is, and they'll make money selling you books, seminars, and other content doing so. Real estate investing has just as many people like that as the financial services industry, so if something you hear (or read) sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Review: Aggressive Tax Avoidance For Real Estate Investors, 19th Edition

While I'm not quite an accidental landlord, since we got married we've had a rental property to manage. There are all sorts of issues with landlording, and I've covered many of the short-term solutions in a previous post. Aggressive Tax Avoidance for Real Estate Investors deals with longer term issues. Logistically, you can buy this version of the book from John T Reed's website, or you can buy a used 18th edition from Amazon. While there's unlikely to be much difference in content between the two editions, if you're running a rental business properly, there's no reason to cheap out since the book is tax deductible for your business.

A good measure of a specialist non-fiction book like this is the ROI. Within the first 3rd of the book I'd discovered that there was a certain approach that I'd not used because I'd succumbed to an old-wives tale and it would have saved 10X the price of the book. Live and learn.

The most useful part of the book is John T Reed's aggressiveness in approaching IRS issues. Basically, he tells you not to be afraid of tax courts, how to do research on tax issues, and how to fight the IRS in tax court if it comes down to it. This sounds really aggressive and it is. If you're renting out a room in your house, you're probably better off not being this aggressive, but if you have significant income from rental or run a multi-family rental property unit you want to take this approach as more conservative approaches would cost you significant amounts of money. John T Reed doesn't just assume this, but walks you through the Net Present Value/Expected Value Decision Tree for most of the approaches he espouses in this book. This is a very rational (one might say hyper-rational) approach to tax strategy and decision making as a landlord (or any other business owner), but you have to be capable of taking the mindset that Reed espouses. If you're easily stressed by the thought of an IRS audit, this is not the book for you, though you might want the managers you hire to read it and use it!

Reed not only walks through all the different types of tax courts, and the probability of the tax payer succeeding in winning the cases at the various courts, he also provides the probability of an audit, depending on the type of rental property you have and how much revenue and income you're generating. If you own any rental property, this type of information is invaluable and is worth the price of admission alone.

As a stalwart member of the 1%, Reed is definitely anti-Obama and anti-Democratic, and doesn't hesitate to write political comments throughout the book. I found this irritating, but tolerable given the usefulness of the information he provides.Then at the end of the book I came across something which just made me chuckle:

When you work at a job, you earn taxable income. Part of which, the government is entitled to confiscate. But if you work at increasing net worth---and refrain from selling the asset whose value you are increasing---the government has no right to confiscate any of the gain... It seems to me that if the taxes on work are too high---and they are---then you ought not to work for a living... (Page 180)

Sounds like a prescription for raising capital gains taxes and dividend taxes and reducing income taxes to me!

Anyway, if you own rental property that's more than just a room in your house, you need to buy this book. It will save you multiple times the cost of the book. If you run a business, you need this book just to understand the approach to taxes and how to do the NPV decision tree. Highly Recommended.

Review: 3M Command Strips

I never really was into hanging photos or artwork on the walls, even photos I took myself. It wasn't until recently that I figured out what. It turns out that nailing holes in the wall is a somewhat permanent act, and I didn't like the irrevocability of putting a photo up.

One of the helpful folks at Orchard Supply inadvertently pointed that out to me when I asked about buying hanging fixtures. Thinking that I rented an apartment, he told me about 3M Command Strips, which are essentially matching sets of Velcro backed by sticky tape. The clever thing about the Command Strips is that there's a tab on the back of the sticky tape which stretches the glue in the sticky tape so that the entire strip comes cleanly off the wall when done.

A few things are necessary to get these to work right. First, you should use them only as recommended for their weight ratings. Secondly, you need the surfaces to be clean. Lastly, you actually have to follow the directions. We've hung a mirror and 2 pictures with these trips, and I'm very happy with them. I haven't actually tested the removal, but judging from the Amazon reviews, that's not actually a problem.

Recommended.

Long Term Review: Schlage Keypad Locks

It's been 3 years and a little bit since I installed the Schlage Keypad Locks in the house, and sure enough, the battery on the front door has gone out, which reminded me both to change it and that I needed to write a followup review.

Changing the batteries turned out to be fairly straightforward. You unscrew the back, and the cover pops off. The battery is located in a bracket, and is a standard 9V battery which are fairly cheap to get from Amazon. When removing the cover, make a note of the orientation and make sure that you have the handle in the correct orientation when replacing. Otherwise it just won't go back in. Obviously, I use the front door of the house a lot more than the back door, so the battery for the back door is still going strong.

As for the product, I like it so much that I replaced the rental unit's lock with a Schlage unit, my parent's house also now sports one, and my wife's house also has them. I cannot recommend them highly enough, especially if you own rental property --- no more re-keying your unit between tenants, and even better, your tenant will never call you up in the middle of the night after they've locked themselves out, because they can't. It's also great if you're in the habit of exchanging your home with someone else on HomeExchange, or renting out your home on AirBnB. You set up a code, give them to your exchangees or renters, and delete the code when you get back. You can also set up specific codes for house-cleaners, etc and other trusted personnel and delete those if you ever switch providers.

Home ownership is in general a pain, but being able to replace the standard keyed locks with one of these is definitely a bright spot. Highly recommended.

WM2016 Followup

Our LG WM2016 somehow became unleveled, so I called the GeekSquad and had them come over. The technician first showed me how to level the machine myself, and then told me about several issues:

• Don't use bleach for cleaning the tub. Use dishwasher fluid instead. That gets rid of oil, which bleach doesn't do. Run the machine in "Hot Wash"/Cotton mode. You only have to do it every 2-3 months.
  
• Hair tends to accumulate at the bottom of the glass door. You must clean off the hair, or it will eventually cause a door leak.
  
• When using detergent, use half of the "1" line on the Tide cup. The machine is a small machine, and using too much detergent would eventually destroy the machine. A 96 load version of the Tide bottle will last 1-2 years.
  

Wow, I didn't know quite so much about the machine even after reading the manual. I guess the extended warranty/GeekSquad coverage wasn't as much of a waste of money as I expected!

Review: PlayStation 3 + Accessories

So I succumbed to Amazon's Black Friday sale and bought a Sony Playstation 3 with 2 games for $290. The way things work out, this meant upgrading the TV as well, and my mom's company was blowing out LG's 42LH300C for $575, so I opted for one. This in turned drove the purchase of a HDMI cable and a Wii Component cable as well. This kind of spending cascades is why BestBuy and Amazon have such high revenues.

It took a bit of wiring to set up. The nice thing is that my system is now actually simpler, since the TV comes with its own digital tuner, so the old Tivax and CRT TV got sold. Unfortunately, the Wii component cable did not come in splittable form, so I had to plug the Wii into the TV and then route audio from the TV back into the receiver, resulting in my audio latency being much worse than my visual latency (35ms versus 22ms). Unfortunately, despite the component cables, the Wii doesn't look all that great!

The Playstation 3, however, is a different story. Watching Veronica Mars on DVD looked great, since the PS3 upscales the visual. Plugging the PS3 into my receiver was a cinch as well, and to my relief, I could use both analog audio out and digital TV out (through HDMI), which enabled the sound to go directly into my amp. It sounds as good as you might expect. Stick in a Blu-Ray disc, and the picture quality is nothing short of amazing. It's not quite 70mm quality, but seriously, when was the last time you saw 70mm film projected in a movie theater?

But that's only the tip of the ice-berg. You can rent HD videos for $4.99 on the PS3 (it's hooked up to the internet, either through a wired connection or over Wi-Fi), and even better, I had a PlayOn license for $10 from a Halloween special that enabled me to stream YouTube, Hulu, and any other media sitting on my PC's hard drive to the TV. I guess I will never have to pay for cable TV again. Apparently, you can stream Netflix movies to the PS3 as well, but I'm too cheap to pay for Netflix too, so I'll probably wait until I get a free trial to play with it.

And then there's games. The Black Friday special included inFamous, which is so far quite interesting. I have to set it to easy so I can actually play it --- yes, I'm a lame gamer --- but I've known that ever since John Carmack gave me every weapon in Quake and came after me with an axe and axe-murdered me. When my Dad first heard my system through the PS3 he thought the simulated earthquake on the PS3 was real! The bundle also included Killzone 2, which seems like a game too hard for an oldster like me. Valkryia Chronicles is more my speed. Roberto loaned me a few games (and blu-ray movies) and I'll check them out as well.

The PS3 even supports my bluetooth headset, though I haven't had the occasion to try it out yet in a group game. The one complaint I have is that both the Wii and the PS3 are blue-tooth devices, while the TV, receiver, and soundbridge are infra-red controlled devices. So now my universal remote isn't universal any more (now the PS3 controller has to sit next to it). This is hardly a deal killer, and there are solutions, but I'm done spending money for now.

Which makes me wonder: who the heck is buying the Apple TV? For $70 more, you get a fantastic game machine, a blu-ray player, an upscaling DVD player, and access to pretty much the same movies, plus Hulu and YouTube (for a $30 PlayOn license if you didn't get the $10 license that everyone else gets), and whatever other media you can download to your PC's hard drive. I guess Mac owners can't run PlayOn (though it does run on VMWare) and are made of money anyway.

Review: LG WM2016 Washing Machine

One of the benefits of owning a house is that I now get to have a washer and dryer. Prior to moving into my house, I had been doing laundry at work. At one point, I even would rig up a trailer to my bike so I could ride in with a load of laundry and get it done. It felt a bit ridiculous, but since I had absolutely no room at my apartment for a washer and dryer, I felt entirely justified.

When I moved to Munich last year, the office there didn't have a laundry machine at work, so I was forced to buy a used washing machine. Talk to a European who's lived in the USA about washing machines, especially a German, and you'll get a lecture about how German washing machines are much better in terms of cleaning laundry, energy efficiency, water efficiency. A typical German would tell you, "The only thing the American machines are good at, is not washing your laundry very well quickly!" German machines took a long time to run.

To my surprise, when I started shopping for washing machines, the one that stood out was the LG WM2016. It was the lowest priced machine that qualified for the PG&E energy efficiency appliance rebate. In fact, for Santa Clara county, the water company chipped in for a grand total of a $200 rebate, so the fact that it was $600 cheaper than all the other Tier 3 machines meant that it was a no-brainer. Consumer reports said good things about it, as did all the other web-sites that rated energy efficient washers. I bought the machine at BestBuy, in part to get the delivery and installation taken care of (these high efficiency must be properly leveled, so it's worth the $30 to get them to do it for you), and in part to pick up a 5 year warranty. I don't usually pick up extended warranties for products, but my brother convinced me that these front-loader units (at least the ones sold in America) are still not fully debugged, and since I intended to get a renter, I decided that the reviews on epinions meant that I should get a warranty.

Operating the machine is pretty straight forward: stuff all the laundry into the drum, close the door, drop in some detergent and bleach, and push the play button, and all the defaults will do the right thing. This machine was more sophisticated than my German machine in that it gave me a time estimate for when the laundry would be done (and yes, expect it to take at least an hour).

The trick lies in the various rules you have to abide by if you want to keep your machine reliable. First of all, you must use HE-rated detergent. This is a big deal because normal detergent generates too many suds for these machines, eventually clogging up the machine's outbound pipe, and resulting in a dead machine. I thought the detergent would be more expensive, but it turns out that Safeway sells a 96-load pack of HE detergent for $10 under their house brand. To prevent the renter from cheaping out and using normal detergent, I've simply folded the cost of detergent into her rent, so she uses ours.

Next, when you're done with laundry, you must leave the laundry door open. Actually, all washing machines have to be treated this way, otherwise, mold will grow in the machine and your clothes will never smell clean again. It's just that a top-loading machine would typically have its lid open when laundry is done without interfering with anything else, while a front loader's door could get in your way. I solved this problem by putting the washing machine in a place where the open door wouldn't be an issue.

The machine has all the functions you might expect --- separate settings for washing towels, delicates, even a hand-wash mode. You can pre-rinse, pre-wash, add an extra wash cycle, set spin speeds, and decide what temperature of water to use. When it first starts up, it will turn the drum over --- that's the machine weighing your laundry so it can figure out how much to use! The result is the machine is very quiet, extremely water and energy efficient, and takes forever to do laundry. That would have driven me wild if I had to share a laundry machine with 10000 other Googlers, but for just Lisa, me, and the renter, it's just fine.

All in all, we've had the machine for 4 months now, and it's working like a champ. We're not heavy laundry users, maybe doing a couple of loads a week, but we're quite pleased with it. I'll post a long term report after a few years to see how it goes.

In case you're wondering, for the dryer, we just went with whatever scratch-and-dent unit Best Buy had in stock and went for the cheapest one. There's no difference in energy efficiency amongst gas dryers, so that's the correct selection method.

Review: First American Home Buyers Protection

I was very pleased that my home came with a 1 year Home Warranty from First American. Unfortunately, I found out exactly how much it was worth: nothing.

We had a water heater break down in the in-law unit. Since we were planning to rent it out, we had to fix it. Pardo diagnosed the problem as being a 120V water heater hooked up to a 240V line (yes, the contractor who wired things up was an idiot --- unfortunately, it was owned by the previous owner), and the heating element was burned out. On-line, a 240V heating element didn't cost that much, but since I had a home warranty, I thought I should use it.

I called First American Warranty, told them what was wrong, and where, and they immediately sent a plumber out the next morning. The plumber showed up, charged $55 for the visit, and then proceeded to tell us that he was a plumber, not an electrician. He further called First American and told them that the inlaw unit wasn't covered by the warranty.

I ended up calling a contractor (the same one who worked on my house's flooring), and buying a 1500W 12V heating element from Amazon for $7.99, and he charged me $50 for the repair.

Needless to say, I do not recommend First American Home Warranty, for picking such stupid contractors, and charging for a visit where nothing got done, when the repair could easily have been done for the same amount charged. I am one unhappy customer, and if you're buying a home and the seller offers you a warranty from First American, I recommend that you either deduct the price from the house (as the warranty is pretty useless), or buy your own insurance.

Review: Roku Soundbridge

After the prior disappointment with the Logitech Squeezebox, I decided to give the Roku Soundbridge a try.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much. The vacuum fluorescent display looked cheesy, even on Amazon's web page, and the remote definitely wasn't the snazzy WiFi-compatible one that the Squeezebox had.

The good news is the packaging is very nice. Not nice the way Apple defines it, where unboxing is supposed to be an experience in itself, but nice in the way that I like it --- the plastic box snaps open, pieces aren't wrapped in fancy packaging, and it comes with all the cables I wanted. Even the power plug plays nice with my power strip.

Unlike most dedicated audio systems, there aren't RCA jacks but instead there's just a 3.5mm mini plug. That didn't bother me, since I already had one of those plugged into the receiver for MP3 players, phones, etc. I already had a Firefly server running on my NAS, so I plugged it in and turned it on.

The setup process is intuitive and easy, and really short. Select language, region, time zone, and the wireless network. Then the system reboots itself, and automatically picked up my Firefly server! Sweet! Streaming 320bps VBR MP3s, it sounds great, and I can't complain. It even displays the Japanese song titles on my Miyuki Nakajima tracks!

The downside is I have to create playlists on my Firefly server instead of just importing it from iTunes or Media Monkey. I can live with that. I paid $165 on Amazon's web-site just 2 days ago, but it looks like the price has gone up. Even at $199, though I'll give this little machine an enthusiastic 2 thumbs up. Highly recommended!

Yes, I'm aware that the Soundbridge is an orphaned product, but seriously, if I got 3-5 years out of it, it'll be money well spent. Maybe someone will steal the design and make a clone. Something this good deserves a second chance.
[Update: Greg says you can buy the Soundbridge at Roku's store for $130. At that price, it's a steal.]

Review: Squeezebox Duet

Short summary: DO NOT BUY. STAY AWAY

When I first bought a nice stereo system, someone recommended that I try a Squeezebox. I didn't bother because in the apartment, my computer was so close to the stereo I could just plug it in, so why bother.

Well, now I have a house, and the office with the equipment closet (NAS, wireless router, cable modem, and the EEE PC running Skype) is far away from the living room, so something like the Squeezebox makes sense. I ordered one and got it on Thursday, hoping that if it worked out, Lisa wouldn't have to deal with CDs while I was in Japan.

The box contains 3 items: a charging cradle for the controller, the receiver, and the controller. The first sign that the product was sub-par in quality was that the cradle was too big for the controller. What this meant was that when you put the controller in the cradle, the controller wouldn't charge! I had to resort to tearing up little pieces of paper and wedging them into the cradle so that the controller would have a good contact with the cradle's charging posts. This felt very silly, since if Logitech couldn't get their manufacturing act together, they should have used a simple, mini-USB port on the thing, skip the cradle, and everyone would be happier.

OK, then I had to install the SqueezeCenter software on either the EEE PC or my NAS. I installed it on both just to see which one would give me a good experience. Both installations went very smoothly --- products that rely on servers are usually nightmares, but this phase of the install went really well and I started looking forward to it.

I then connected the controller (which runs over WiFi, not infra-red) to my WPA network, started playing music, and all was well. Well, all was well for about 15 minutes. I showed the controller to Lisa and she loved it. Then midway through one of the songs on our playlist, the controller said, "Music stopped." That's it. An attempt to play got us nothing. The SqueezeCenter also would do the same thing. I rebooted the controller, and it got stuck at "connecting to Music source". I let it sit overnight, and woke up the next day to find all was well again.

For all of 15 minutes, then the controller started dropping out of WiFi. This time, though, controlling the receiver from the SqueezeCenter software worked. But the whole point of the deal was to be able to run music from the controller! My guess is that Logitech cheaped out on the Wifi Antenna for the controller (which is insane, given the price, but companies have been known to do insane things). I did a quick web-search and discovered that indeed, this was a common problem, and not isolated to just my house (which has great WiFi coverage everywhere, as you might expect --- it's just not that big!).

Well, at that point, I quickly packed everything backed into the box, printed an Amazon return label, and shipped it back. Logitech made way too many poor decisions in this product.

The standard system for this kind of stuff, according to people who would know, is Sonos. But at $1000 for a basic system, that's insane! I could buy another EEE PC, have it connect to the Firefly server, and dedicate to playing music, and still have enough money to buy a round trip ticket to Zurich for that! (Sure, the EEE PC won't have a remote, but I think I can write code to allow anyone to control the EEE PC from another PC)

I think my next step (to be done after I get back from Japan) is to try the Roku Soundbridge. It won't have as nice a remote controller, but it also won't break the bank either. If anyone has experience with this, let me know.

The Joys of Homeownership

I'm going to start a series of blog posts about owning a house. I'm learning about this homeownership stuff as I go along, and it's amazing how much there is to learn. Most of it, unfortunately, has to do with the house being a financial burden in unexpected ways.

Here's an example: we had the house remodeled (put in central heating/AC, a laminate floor, and double paned windows everywhere) before moving in. When I got the first water bill on Saturday after moving in, I was stunned by how much it was. It turned out that the previous owner had put in a new lawn, and new lawns have to be watered frequently while they establish themselves. Well, they don't have to be watered that frequently after a month, which was when we bought the house, but of course, I didn't know to turn down the water frequency. Sigh.

Then there's the Radon problem. Turns out that the ground under many parts of California is radioactive. Not in a directly harmful way, but enough so that irradiated air can come up into your home, since your home has a lower pressure than the outside. Well, breathing that air can be pretty bad for you, so we have to do some radon testing. The state of California subsidizes the test, so it's only $5 for a self-test kit. But it's one of those things that nobody seems to know about (about 12% of homes are affected, so it's worth your while to get tested!) Mitigation is relatively cheap, but it's non-trivial.

On the plus side, when it was 90 degrees on Saturday and Sunday, I really enjoyed having a well-insulated and air conditioned home! Boy, it was worth every penny. And it turns out that you can sign up for the smart AC program and get regulation of your AC system at peak demand times, which is pretty cool. And of course, not being in a carpeted environment is expected to do good things for my allergies as well.

I'll get into other housing annoyances as I find them, and I'll try to keep in mind that I really do enjoy living in a house as well.

Review:Schlage Keypad Locks

We've had contractors in and out of the house to remodel it before moving in on Saturday. One of the last things to do would have been to change the locks. Then on Sunday I saw Amazon advertise a fingerprint door lock, and thought, hey, that's not a bad idea --- I can go key-less, and then authorize or de-authorize users as I please.

I quickly ruled out fingerprint readers, however, since all it would take is one flat tire on the way home from work and I would not be able to get into the house on account of dirty fingers. A keypad system, however, seemed to be the ideal compromise. For the front door, I chose the dead-bolt, because I wanted locking to be an explicit decision --- I didn't want to walk out to fetch mail and then end up having to press four buttons to get back into the house. For the back, I had no choice but to go with a self-locking handled setup, since the back door didn't have a dead bolt.

Incidentally, the place to order from is factory locks. They charge a bit more, but if you order more than one lock, they'll automagically key all the locks to the same key, which is very nice. Furthermore, if you order more locks in the future from them, you can give them your order number, and they'll key the new lock to the same keys! That's worth the extra cost in my opinion. They also ship extremely fast --- I got mine in 3 days.

I got the locks today and they were installed immediately by one of our contractors. The system works as described by the manual, though programming it is a little tricky because you really have to wait for the interface feedback before proceeding --- since there's no LCD display, you have to wait for the buttons to flash or change color before you start the data entry. But the results are very slick! It's amazing how freeing it is to not have to worry about keys when I leave the house any more. It's also nice to give each contractor and/or cleaning person an individualized pin that you can then enable just for the day of their visit and delete after they're done.

One potential flaw that someone pointed out to me was that the keypad itself could become worn down after a while, and if you stick to using the same pin over and over again, it suddenly becomes apparently which keys are frequently used, so you should switch pins every so often. And then there's the problem that there's a manual key override. What this means is that the lock system combines the security flaws of both the physical keys as well as the security flaws of the keypad system. You could disable the physical key system, but then now you have no backup override if you went for a vacation and the battery on the system drained while you were gone! My take on the whole thing is that security is a massive boondoggle anyway, and the real security you have is to buy in a neighborhood with low crime, because if a really determined person wanted to take your stuff, they'd just break a window and climb in. So I'll just not worry about it.

The big flaw I can see in the system so far is that the batteries will have to be changed, and it's not an easy battery change. You basically have to unscrew the whole door knob or dead bolt to put in a new 9-V battery. If the batteries last for the specified 3 years that's not too annoying, but it does mean that you should leave a manual override key with a relative just in case you go on vacation and come back to find yourself locked out.

Despite all these flaws, this is an incredibly slick system. I really like it, and it's the first thing about buying a house that hasn't been incredibly costly and a major pain in the neck. That makes it highly recommended.