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Emergency Medicine in the 2020 Match: How competitive was it?

Historically, Emergency Medicine has been regarded as a competitive specialty, nowadays more and more so as medical students gravitate toward fields of medicine that offer what they perceive to be a good balance between work and play. For these reasons, EM - with its

tech

The T620 Plus dies: the search for replacement pfSense/OPNsense x86 hardware on the cheap

An older Dell SFF PC from eBay makes a fine replacement for my old pfSense box.

email

Bypassing Exchange/Office 365 email forwarding restrictions or: How I learned to stop worrying and love fetchmail and msmtp

Once upon a time, my school migrated all of its students and staff from a self-hosted email system to Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud. I used Outlook Web Access and its forwarding feature to redirect all mail to my personal Gmail account. Everything

tech

TTL modification for outgoing traffic with OpenWRT

Introduction Do you often find yourself in the position of having to access the internet by tethering your 4G/LTE smartphone? I sure do, because my local cable ISP sucks ass. Unfortunately, however, cellular carriers have a number of tricks up their sleeve to

openvpn

An extra layer of privacy: setting up a private, in-tunnel DNS-over-TLS proxy for your OpenVPN clients

As concerns over privacy and government surveillance become more and more relevant, the use of VPNs have become increasingly popular. While VPN software such as OpenVPN encrypts and protects "first-hop" client traffic from the prying eyes of ISPs and the increasingly widespread use of

usmle

How to (potentially) find out your USMLE Step 2 CS score early

A quick walkthrough of a method to (potentially) find out your USMLE Step 2 CS score early.

python

Download all emails from Exchange or Office 365 with Python and exchangelib

Need to import your emails into a local email client? Getting fired from your job and need your old emails for legal proceedings? Just want a backup of all your emails? Whatever the reason, it's not difficult to do in Python with the excellent

vps

ServerCheap Pure SSD KVM VPS (2GB) Mini-Review

I recently decided to move most of my personal/non-production sites and services to ServerCheap due to their very competitive pricing - $3.60/month (after applying their 20% off coupon) for their entry-level KVM 1 VPS, which comes with the following specs: 2

Why Doctors Should Stay in Their Lane

By now the spat been physicians and the NRA has been well-publicized, days after the NRA published a tweet in response to an American College of Physicians position paper on reducing firearms injuries and deaths in the United States. Someone should tell self-important anti-gun

hardware

The HP T620 Plus Thin Client: A hidden gem in the world of pfSense hardware

Build a low-power, quad-core, AES-NI capable pfSense machine with recycled hardware for less than $100.

hardware

TP-Link TL-PA7010 AV1000 Powerline Adapter Mini-Review

Introduction The TL-PA7010 is one of several offerings in TP-Link's portfolio of Powerline adapters. This particular model complies with the HomePlug AV2 standard and advertises a theoretical maximum speed of 1000 Mbps with gigabit Ethernet support. It can be found widely in the US

hardware

High Speed, Low Drag: Building a home pfSense/OPNsense box on a budget

Putting together a DIY pfSense/OPNsense box for less than $200.

nbme

Cracking the NBME Shelf Exam: Neurology

For many, if not most medical students, neurology is perceived as a difficult subject due to the combination of anatomical minutiae regarding the brain and the nervous system and the challenge of localizing lesions. Make no mistake, I headed into the clerkship with this

vps

Linode Nanode 1GB VPS Performance

I recently signed up for a Linode VPS for the purpose of hosting an IPv4+IPv6 dual-stack capable OpenVPN server. Linode currently offers eight locations - in the interest of geographical proximity, I went with Newark. Since this server will be used only by

openvpn

Windows 10 and Microsoft Office Weirdness When OpenVPN is Connected

In order to maximize my personal privacy and security and prevent my ISP from interfering with or redirecting my HTTP requests, I usually run all my traffic through a personal OpenVPN setup I have running on a VPS. For the longest time, I was

nbme

Cracking the NBME Shelf Exam: Family Medicine

Medical students across the US often like to rag on Family Medicine as an "easy" specialty, but the NBME shelf exam for FM is anything but. The challenge lies in its breadth, covering mostly ambulatory/outpatient topics from internal medicine, OB/GYN,

ucpd

Violence is Violence

By now, the police shooting of fourth-year University of Chicago student Charles Thomas after Thomas charged at a UCPD officer with a metal pipe has been covered extensively in the

ssd

Inland Professional (Microcenter) 240GB 2.5" SATA SSD Review

If you've been to Microcenter recently, you might have noticed SSDs for sale under their Inland house brand. These Inland Professional SSDs come in 120GB and 240GB capacities and are sold for $39.99 and $59.99, respectively, in-store only. I recently had the

nbme

Cracking the NBME Shelf Exam: Internal Medicine

The most challenging aspect of the Internal Medicine shelf is its breadth. From cardiology to nephrology to gastroenterology, the rule of thumb is that if there's a fellowship for it, there's almost certainly going to be a few shelf questions on it. Since most

vps

VirMach Black Friday Elite+ OpenVZ VPS Benchmark

For Black Friday 2017, VirMach is offering their Elite+ OpenVZ VPS for 80% off, which translates to the amazing price of only $8 per year. (They have an even cheaper 384MB RAM plan for only $4/year!) Specifications 1GB RAM 2x vCPU @ 2GHz 30GB

vps

HiFormance.com Black Friday Special-VZ1 VPS Benchmark

HiFormance.com is a relatively new hosting provider. For Black Friday 2017, they've posted a number of specials, including the following Special-VZ1 plan for the low, low price of $9 per year. Special-VZ1 OpenVZ 1 CPU 0.5GB Ram 20GB SSD 1TB BW 1Gbps

ammunition

Winchester USA Forged 9mm Ammunition Review

Introduction The USA Forged moniker represents a relatively new line of ammunition from Winchester. It's dually noteworthy for being steel-cased ammo that, as the name implies, is manufactured right here in the United States. Typically when one thinks of steel-cased rounds the first brand

nbme

Cracking the NBME Shelf Exam: Pediatrics

General Thoughts: The Pediatrics shelf isn't extraordinarily difficult, but it's not a cakewalk either. Because pediatrics is a broad, primary care specialty, you're more than likely to get a few wildcard questions out of left field on things that you might not have encountered

medicine

Stop Feeling Sorry for Unmatched Caribbean MDs

If you get newsletter emails from Doximity, you might have noticed this article from the Skeptical Scalpel blog making the rounds recently. Contained within is a familiar sob story that can be summarized as follows: anon goes to Caribbean medical school, anon graduates from

nbme

Cracking the NBME Shelf Exam: OB/GYN

General Thoughts: The OB/GYN shelf is generally considered to be relatively easier compared to some of the others (e.g. surgery), but don't let that be an excuse for slacking off - OB/GYN contains a lot of domain-specific topics that you might