Entity reference

I'm using Entity reference [users option]. I need help with two things.

1. I do not want to use the widgets that are available (select and autocomplete). I just want a text field for my users to enter a username. Allowing the default Drupal validation to determine if the username is correct upon Save and error if it does not. Reason: hypothetically if I have 200,000+ users autocomplete and select will be a heavy draw on resources.

2. If I can get #1 accomplished then #2 may not be an issue. Issue: Entity reference displays (in the form) the username PLUS their UID in parenthesizes: Danny (3343). This is with using autocomplete currently. I can begin typing in a username and when it appears and I select it Danny (3343) is what gets displayed. I do not want that. I just want the username to be appear. Again this is in the form. I have the display hidden and so not an issue on the display side.

I will be putting these changes into a custom module, but not yet. For now this will be a hack. So if the answer is as simple as "comment out this line: ...." that will work.

Don't know if more than the .module is needed but you can quickly see it here

https://gist.github.com/t9nick/ffaf8a559e810f5a2da3

Thank you.