Why so early? The idea with smoking is that you go “low and slow” – you cook at low temperatures for an extended period of time, giving the meat plenty of opportunity to absorb the smoke from whatever wood you are using. Figureing about 1.5 hours of cooking time per pound of meat, it would take about 9 hours before the meat was done, and then at least a 45 minute wait after coming off the smoker before I could start pulling the pork. I set the alarm clock to wake me up at about 5am, with my goal being that I could eat by 5pm.

Before that though, I had to prepare the meat for smoking. The first thing I did was trim some of the extra fat from the outside of the meat – my reasoning here is that when you pull the pork, the fat is going to get tossed, so any exterior fat that hasn’t melted away is just going to end up on the trash pile. Another reason is that the rub will form a nice bark around the meat, which is usually pretty tasty. If this bark forms on fat, you miss out on that delicious bark! So, knife in hand, I trimmed about half a pound of fat from each of the two butts, leaving me with a 6lb and 4lb piece of meat.

After that, it was time to apply a generous rub to the meat. I used a recipe I got online, which was made up largely of paprika and brown sugar. After coating the butts with the rub, they were wrapped in saran wrap and tossed in the refrigerator overnight. This let the rub mix with the juices of the meat, and by the time I pulled it out, the meat was coated with a nice glaze.

From there, it was on to the smoker. I got the smoker going via the minion method, tossed the meat on, and checked back every half hour to make sure the temperatures were holding steady. I was shooting for a temperature inside the smoker of 225-250 degrees, which I was able to maintain nearly the entire time. This was done via several vents on the smoker – close them to cut of the air supply and bring the temp down, or open them to let in air and get the coals burning hotter. Because I didn’t know what I was doing, I was adjusting my vents every 30 minutes – not a big deal, but it would have been nice to have been able to let it go a few hours on its own and take a nap.

About three hours in, I put the smaller cut on, and after about eight hours, the 6lb butt was at 205 degrees, which meant it was time to get pulled off . It was nearly 2 hours later when the smaller cut was ready. I let them sit for a while while the juices worked their magic and the temperatures dropped a little bit, and then went to town pulling the meat. I ended up doing it by hand, because the meat was so tender. The bones pulled right out, without a single piece of meat attached! I heard nothing but good things about the final product, which was a relief after catching the grill on fire the last time I offered to cook for people. I’m looking forward to doing it again, the hard part will be figuring out what to do next….beef brisket, ribs, turkey….all great options.

We made our way back across to the main building, and waited around for the PAX 10 panel.  It was pretty cool to see the different teams and hear their answers to the questions – the PAX 10 was probably my fav part of the show.  After that, we killed time until the concerts started, and I headed off to meet up with some of the folks I used to play WoW with.  The second night concert was a bust – I wasn’t particularly interested in the first two bands, and had ZERO desire to see MC Frontalot.  I only cared about the minibosses.  The concert was running extra behind, and the minibosses didn’t take the stage until after 1am (concert was scheduled to be over at 1:30).  They played until after 2:30am, at which point we left.  Pope was sleeping across several chairs already, and I had fallen asleep sitting up.  Only ol’ Pasty stayed awake for the whole show.

Sunday (Day 3) turned out much better.  We didn’t worry about getting there when the show opened – we didn’t get there until about 12:30 – just in time to see the PA Q&A session.  It was pretty hilarious, and the stupid questions were seemingly kept to a minimum.  After that, we went to the show floor, and spent a good amount of time demoing the PAX10 games and chatting with the developers – including a good 10+ minutes we spent talking to Richard Garfield, one of the designers of Schizoid (and of course the guy behind M:tG).

The PAX10 was probably the most notable event of the day, show floor-related.  We bummed around the show floor until they kicked us out at 6, and then went and got dinner at The Pink Door.   So that is my long winded, but sparse writeup of days 2 and 3.  Some pictures will be posted later, though I didn’t take too many – unlike the E3 booth babe photo binge of 2004.

Also, there may be a wild bear loose in our hotel room.  Lord help us.

We headed to the exhibit/showfloor room, and wow. The booths aren’t quite as extravagant as those at E3 ’04, but they are still pretty impressive. We spent about three hours in there playing & watching various games – there is just too much awesome in there to write about, but here are a few highlights:

• Pasty played PMS Missy in a game of quake (The final score: 12 to negative 4), but he at least got a free shirt out of it.
• Free shaves at the Brothers in Arms booth – let them shave and tattoo your head, and get a free copy of the game. We will definitely make pope do this.
• Seeing gabe and tycho walking around – we were standing next to tycho and his kid for a few minutes at the Hothead Games booth, until someone asked him to sign a few books. It was down hill from there, as he got surrounded by people.

We headed out of the show floor a bit after 5pm to head to a panel about writing for games, and on the way, I noticed that Felicia Day was at The Guild’s booth with Sandeep Parikh. I picked up a copy of the guild, chatted with them for a few seconds about stuff (like WoW), and got a picture. Mission accomplished for the weekend.

After that we went to the writing panel which was OK – it was interesting to hear some of the answers from the writer’s perspective. I’ve not much to say about the panel. After the panel, we grabbed dinner at Bayou on First, a cajun / french restaraunt down by the Pike St Market, and it was damn tasty.

We headed back, and got there about 15 minutes before they were going to screen season one of The Guild. We headed to the theater it was in, to see an INSANE line already in place. We figured it was a lost cause, but my adoration for all things felicia day made me get in line anyways. So the line starts moving, and we finally get close and the line stops, and they are only letting people in one or two at a time as they find open seats. Then they say “Only 19 more people are being let in”, and I figured we were doomed. They start counting off people, and its getting up into the teens, and I breathe a sigh of relief – we were #s 17-18-19. Last three people allowed in! Pope however misunderstood his #, and left to go to the concert. It was pretty amusing to watch the guild again, and then the Q&A was entertaining. Felicia Day managed to embarass herself again, much like she did at the Comic-con panel earlier this summer. We also heard about how to get Ron Jeremy to be in your show, the Retarded Policeman, Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show, and the Legend of Neil.

We headed off to the concert after that, and got in just in time to see Freezepop. They put on a pretty rocking show, I only knew who they were thanks to Rock Band, but now I guess I could say I am a fan. After that, Jonathan Coulton played, and I wasn’t expecting much – I mean it is just one guy, right. He put on an amazing show, and I am definitely glad we got to check it out. The highlight? A duet of “Still Alive” with FELICIA DAY. Totally fucking awesome. And he rick-rolled us. Twice.

By now it was after 1am (or 4am in real-people time), and we were all exhausted, so we headed back to the hotel to crash. And now we are awake and getting ready for day two. I’ll upload my pictures to flickr laster, but for now enjoy pictures with FELICIA DAY, and a video from pasty’s phone of “Still Alive”. Peace out!

So, our flight first took us to Detroit, where we had a three hour layover before continuing on to Seattle, and since it was still pretty early in the morning (9:30) we stopped by one of the cafes to get breakfast.  That is when the first gem of the trip happened – Pope ordered a beer with his breakfast.  Now, I have to make fun of him for drinking beer with breakfast. Consider yourself made fun of.

The flight from Detroit to Seattle was pretty OK, just long.  Sitting in a plane for five hours is not fun.  We got into the hotel, and then went exploring for someplace to eat, since we were closing in on 12 hours since breakfast.  We settled on a place called Von’s Grand City Café, who proudly advertised having something like 24 different draughts.  We soon came to realize that it would likely take someone 24 hours to taste just a few of those beers.  The food was pretty good, but the service was absolutely awful.

Now were back at the hotel, and its just about to hit 9pm fake time, meaning its at or past my bedtime in real time (or eastern standard time, as some may call it).  I wan’t to sleep, but I also don’t want to be up at 5am fake time, when the show doesn’t start until 2pm.  That’s a lot of fake time to kill.  Or real time.  I don’t know.

And now, SkyMall pictures.

I have two Thinkpads. My R51 is, for the most part, dead. Whenever it is left on for more than a few minutes, I get a BSoD and have to power it down and leave it off for a while. I’m assuming there are cooling issues, but I’m too lazy to do anything about it since I hardly use it.

My other Thinkpad is an X41 Tablet. I like that one. It’s my baby. So I’m sure you can imagine that I was quite upset when the same problem began to occur on that machine. Leaving it running for more than 10 minutes or so was causing blue screens, and the same thing happened when it came out of stand-by mode. As I’d do anytime I encountered a blue screen, I cussed loudly and powered the machine down.

I recently began using my tablet PC more often, so these frequent errors started to get on my nerves. I decided that it was time to reload Windows to see if that would help. I started going through all of my files to see what needed to be backed up to my desktop, and I went through all of my applications to see what I’d need to download and reinstall.

As I was looking through my files, I made a discovery. The solution to my problem became obvious. I opened up my display properties, hit the screen saver tab, and disabled this.

I had installed it many months ago and totally forgotten about it. The best part is that when I installed it, I thought it was the funniest thing ever. I figured people would see my idle laptop on my desk at work and say “Oh no, your laptop crashed,” and I’d be all like, “PSYCH! It’s just a screen saver, dumbass!”

I guess I figured out who the real dumbass is.

The battle started off with a Red Blok Nakovalny charging into the middle of town and firing upon the U.N.A. Fire Toad that crossed its path. The attack had little effect on the Fire Toad, and dealt significant damage to the Nakovalny in it’s return volley. A Karman Easy Trike quickly joined the fray, and it was not long after that the Nakovalny was completely destroyed.

A unit of UNA White Stars came across the battle, but realizing that their weapons would have little effect on the heavily armored vehicle, they instead focused their weapons on a unit of Karman Wendigos that were hiding nearby. After several exchanges of fire, the Fire Toad was destroyed and the Easy Trike was rendered immobile.

Meanwhile, a unit of Red Blok Spetsnatz Kommandos were sneaking around town, trying to get the drop on the infantry battle that had started between the White Stars and the Wendigos. The White Stars had power in numbers, and were able to overwhelm the Karman forces with no casualties. They then turned their sights onto the advancing Red Blok infantry, and let loose with their attack.

Though evenly numbered, the infantry of the Red Blok were no match for the weaponry of the UNA. The White Stars quickly routed the Red army, suffering just a single casualty. With their victory at hand, they left the battlefield, knowing that the immobilized Trike posed no threat.

I was up until about 1:30am on Friday night getting my deck together (which is very late for me), and about 4:30am, I was awoken several times during the night by thunder, and later tornado sirens. After a night of very little sleep, I woke up around 8am on saturday and made the short drive down 315 to the convention center and signed up, knowing that I was only going to be embarassed. I certainly managed to pull it off, with flying colors. My deck was cobbled together from whatever cards I’ve managed to pull out of the packs I’ve bought so far (save for the few cards i traded for before the tourney started – which came back to bite me). I was playing a Warrior deck, as this was my fav class when I played the MMO the card game is based off of, and while I had a strategy in mind for the deck, it was a very poorly realized strategy.

The first round, I went up against a Mage deck. This means nothing to most of you I realize, so I won’t go into the specifics. Needless to say, he beat up on me pretty badly. My saving grace was that I at least made it a match, and we went the full 1 hour allotted for the round. At that point the judge came by and let me know that since I was losing, I had four turns to take out my opponent. That didn’t happen, so I got a loss for round one.

Before round 2, I got pulled aside by the judge and was told that the deck list I turned in before round one only added up to 58 cards, which a tournament legal deck has to contain at least 60 cards. In these tournaments, you have to fill out a list ahead of time telling them what cards are in your deck, and they take it pretty seriously if it doesn’t match up to what you are playing with. I had made my list the night before, and checked it twice. However, those trades I made before the tournament started came back to bite me in the ass. I rewrote my decklist after the first trade, so I could use my shiny new cards, and then had to rewrite it again after making the second trade. Somewhere along the line I left two cards off the list that were in my deck. This constitutes an illegal deck, so I went into round 2 already down 0-1 in our best of three match. I played another warrior who made quick work of me, and just like that, I was 0-2.

Round 3 I went up against another warrior deck. Neither of us had won a round yet, and we had a good laugh that at least one of us would have a mark in the win column after the round was done. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the cards for that win to be mine. We played for nearly the full hour allotted, and I at least put up a fight. Ultimately though, his deck with it’s solid strategy and carefully planned out cards was able to beat out my meager deck. After three rounds, I was 0-3. In those three matches, I had lost 5 games, been disqualified for one (the decklist), and won zero. I was feeling pretty good about myself.

Round 4 match ups were posted, and in a sign that my time was up, I received a bye. There were 17 people in the tournament, with the top 8 getting the ‘good’ prizes. Places 9-16 got a consolation prize of a promo/extended art card that are kinda nifty. Knowing that there was a good chance I was going to come in 17th out of 17 people, I decided to cut my losses for the day and salvage what was left of the afternoon.

I had a decent time, though the amount of people there for the Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament was frightening. Reminded me very much of the scary people you would see at the Magic tournaments back when I played. Fortunately the WoW crowd seems to be far more ‘normal’, which probably explains why there are so few people that play. There’s a pre-release event on the 21st for the new set of cards that comes out in July, and then the following weekend there will be a few tournaments at the Origins gaming convention. And then theres another one of these regional qualifiers in August. Looking forward to making a better showing then (and looking forward to writing more of these tournament summaries for Matt’s reading pleasure!).

So, we have a dual-inductee post here. First up is Shirt.Woot. Woot, if you don’t know, is a site that posts a deal a day, of a random (usually) tech-oriented item. Earlier this year, they started up a new site, where they put up a shirt for sale every day. I needed some new tshirts, so I was browsing through and picked out a few – four to be exact. This was on October 4th. On the fifth, I get emails with four tracking numbers for each of the four shirts I ordered – there is no way to buy multiple items in one order, so each one is shipped individually.

Finally on the 10th, one of the tracking numbers worked. On the 11th, another one worked – both of these showed the shirts being picked up on 10/9. A few more days go by, and the other two tracking numbers still don’t work. So I email them on 10/14, asking whats up with my other two shirts. This is the ENTIRE response that I received this morning, 10/16:

“I apologize that you received tracking numbers for these 2 shirts. We are out of the XL. We are currently waiting for them to be reprinted so we can get those that ordered both designs in those sized shipped out.”

Now, if the shirts were out of stock, don’t you think you would email your customer to tell them? Why did I have to contact them? How did their system even let them send me a tracking number? What the fuck? If I hadn’t emailed them, would they have ever even known that they didn’t send me the shirts, since they had already given me tracking numbers?
So I get home today, and there are two Shirt.Woot bags sitting outside my door. Twelve days after placing my order, two of my shirts had finally arrived – or had they? I open the first bag, and saw three skulls looking back at me – as expected for shirt number one. I open the second bag, to see a shirt with a car and a clusterfuck of flora, a snake, a woman, and some playing cards. Not even close to the shirt I ordered.

So here I am, with one of the shirts that I ordered. No doubt that it I will hit the 2 week mark since ordering before I hear back about their shipping screwup. So I’ve sent them an email, asking where I can send this brown shirt back to, and how I can get my $45 back for the other three shirts they have been unable to deliver in a timely manner. I can’t wait for the response.

For the record, here is the shirt I was epecting to be in the second bag (titled “Stop Digital Piracy”, get it?), followed by what was actually in the bag:

And here are the other three shirts I ordered – the only one I have received is the first one:

I really liked the Hot Wings shirt, I’m kind of sad that I won’t be getting it (unless woot refuses to cancel/refund my order).

UPDATE – 10/25

So, I emailed woot, asking for a refund for the three shirts they didn’t send me.  Their response?

“We will have the correct shirt shipped out today overnight at no charge.”

Thats it.  That is all they have to say.  That email was on the 17th, and I received the digital piracy shirt on the 18th.  A few days later, I received the Sore Thumbs shirt.  Still no word on the Hot Wings shirt.  They ignored my refund request all together, and have ignored the email I sent them on 10/20 asking why they ignored my refund request.  I sent them another email, if no reply, I guess I file a complaint with the BBB and dispute the charges over the 4th shirt.

I purchased a new ‘home theater’ setup at the end of August – HDTV, receiver, speakers, dvd player. I did most of my research online, but I wanted to see what the local stores had to offer. I go into Circuit City, and walked around their TV section for at least 5-10 minutes without a single person offering to help me. There were two merch guys setting up new TVs, and two employees standing about – one on a computer, the other playing with TVs. Never at any time did they so much as look up from what they were doing to greet me, a customer, who was going to be opening their wallet very soon and shelling out a large amount of money on expensive toys. So, I left, and I bought my TV from Best Buy, as much as it pained me to do so.

So, yesterday, I decided I want an Xbox 360. I thought about ordering it from Amazon, since I have a trial of Amazon Prime going on, which means free shipping, and no sales tax since its Amazon. But I don’t want to wait, so I consider my local options – Walmart, who is evil. Gamestop, who can kiss my ass. Best Buy, who isn’t getting my money again if I can help it. So, there is Target and Circuit City. I stop in Target, but all they have are the Elite systems, and the Halo 3 versions. I want a Premium system with HDMI, so I move on down the road to Circuit. Again, I walk in, and I stand around the video games for 10 minutes or so, but nobody comes around. I see a red shirt guy standing over at the “Firedog” desk, talking to another employee behind the desk. I look over, make eye contact with the guy behind the desk. The red shirt walks away and disappears.

I walk over to the desk, and tell the guy I want to get an XBox 360, but they don’t have them on the shelves, and the only Premium system they have tagged is a bundle with Table Tennis, which means its an old system and doesn’t have HDMI – I want to make sure I get a new system with HDMI. He says to just go tell the cashier I want one, and they will get it from the back for me. I go to the cashier, and tell him I want a Premium 360 with HDMI, and he asks if I mean the Elite. I say, no, i want a premium with HDMI. He informs me that the Premium doesn’t come with HDMI, only the elite does. O RLY. I ask him why they have the premium listed with HDMI on their website, as a separate listing from the non-HDMI premium. He asks me to show him, which I do.

He goes into the back, comes back out, and says they have no HDMI premiums. He looks at the website again, asks another employee. I reinforce that the Premiums have HDMI, and have had it for the last month or so. The other employee is just as clueless as he is, and isn’t aware of any HDMI Premium system. They both kinda stand there looking at me. So, I left, with no 360. Instead, I came home, ordered an HDMI Premium through their website, and picked it up at the other circuit city a bit farther away.

It is such a hassle to get people to sell me things – this is why brick and mortar stores are going to fail. I don’t have to deal with any of the idiocy when I order online. Click a few buttons, and get my stuff, simple as that. Don’t have to deal with clueless employees, the crazy asshole who cuts in front of me going 25 in a 45 zone, or the public in general.

Circuit City, welcome to the Hall of Shame.

This one reaches back all the way to last summer. I had Roadrunner internet at my old apartment, with no cable TV. One day, a sales guy is going door to door, offering a special on digital cable, so I take him up on the offer. Things were fine for a month or two, then I started noticing that I was losing channels. They would just come in as a solid black screen, no video, no audio. Eventually it got to the point where the only channel I had was ESPN – out of a hundred and thirty or so channels.

So, the technician comes out, tries a few things, and is able to fart around with my cable box to get some channels to come in, but the signals are very bad and are subject to a lot of artifacts. He tells me that they recently switched to all digital broadcasting, so as I was losing channels, it was because they were being switched from analog to digital signals. ESPN was the only remaining channel still on an analog signal. So, I was paying for “digital” cable, but damn near all of the channels were being broadcast in analog? What the hell is that? False advertising if you ask me. Anyways, after they switched to all digital, the line running into my apartment building wasn’t able to handle all the new bandwidth from all the digital signals. So, that was why I had black screens. They would have to rewire the building. I was told I should hear back in about two weeks. This was mid-october. I never heard another peep from them. I called once, and the rep on the phone said she could send someone out to look at my problem, but that she had no record of any other work done, or scheduled to be done, at my building. I moved out in December, and it still wasn’t fixed then.

So, on to the new apartment. Again, I had roadrunner setup, no cable TV. This time in Dayton, not Columbus. Right off the bat, I noticed that every once in awhile, the modem would lose its signal, and would sit there trying to reconnect. I was going through training at work, and didn’t have time to schedule a service call. Then I got in the car accident, and was out of town for three months recovering. When I came back in May, the problem was worse. The modem would lose it’s signal, and it could take hours for it to come back. I schedule a service call, and of course, they have no convienent times available. I take an 11am-1:30pm time slot, and tell them to call me before they come out, because I am at work, and will take my lunch break and come home for the service call. So, they call me shortly after 11, to let me know the technician is on his way. I head home, and sit around. And sit, and sit and sit. No technician shows up. My cell phone was dead, and I had left my charger in Youngstown. So, after my hour lunch is up, I head back to work and call them up.

The service rep on the phone sees no problem with the fact that they didn’t show up, and only tells me that they have until 1pm. What about the PHONE CALL where they said a technician was “on his way” to my apartment over an hour ago? Shit happens, she can call and see where he is and when he is going to arrive. I tell her no, because I am already back at work, and have taken my lunch break. I can’t go back home because of their bad service. She asks if I want to cancel my appointment then? CANCEL? What is there to cancel, they missed their appointment. Oh wait, no, because they have until 1pm, even though they called OVER AN HOUR AGO saying someone was on the way. They were completely unapologetic, and didn’t care that people work during the day, and can’t sit around for 2 hours waiting for someone to show up at their home. She offers to reschedule. I don’t want another daytime appointment, as I can’t rely on them showing up. So I take a saturday appointment, only the coming saturday has no openings, so I have to wait for the saturday after that.

So, finally the Saturday comes. Again, I have an 11-1:30 time frame. I sit around, and sit around, and sit around. Nobody shows up. So, at 1:30, I call them up and again, I get a completely unapologetic service rep. She offers to find out where the technician is. I tell her no, its 1:30, he was already supposed to have been here. He missed the appointment, for the second time. She says they haven’t missed the appointment, as the appointment was for Saturday, and that the time frames are just an estimate of when they think they will have someone there. Completely unacceptable. I don’t care if all that was on my agenda for the day was sitting around in my underwear eating donuts – if I have to put on clothes and clean up the donut crumbs for the repair guy, I want a solid time frame for this, so I can get back to my agenda of underwear donut eating.

She offers again to call the repair guy, and find out where he is. I tell her no, I don’t want the repair guy to come, as he missed his scheduled time. “Do you want me to cancel your service call?” NO, YOU CAN’T CANCEL MY SERVICE CALL AS YOU HAVE ALREADY MISSED IT. There is nothing to effing cancel! Don’t you know it, a few minutes after I hang up with the lady, TWO time warner vans come rolling into my parking lot. They sit in their cars for a few minutes, then one guy gets out, and comes and knocks on my door. “Hi, I see you had a service call scheduled, but it was cancelled”. Yes. “Are you still having the problem?” Yes. “Do you want me to take a look at it?” No. And with that I closed the door, much to his puzzlement.

The next week, i went up the street to the AT&T/Cingular store and signed up for DSL, and kicked TWC to the curb, right where they belong.