Dave Naffziger’s Blog

All three major PPC companies (Google, Yahoo & MSN) distribute promotional codes for new accounts. Of course, these codes can’t be found on coupon sites - their distribution is tightly controlled.

However, it is easy to find the promotional codes. There seem to be two primary sources:

• Outsourced SEMs. Google gives its AdWords professionals coupons that they can distribute to new accounts. I think these typically are around $50. I think you need to give account access to the SEM provider for this to be valid.
• Hosting Companies. I still maintain a 1and1 hosting account and they provide $100 worth of coupons ($50 MSN, $25 each Yahoo and Google). I have the 1and1 Home package which costs $5 /month. I’ve seen forum posts that GoDaddy provides coupons as I expect do most other major hosting companies.

I’m pretty sure that you need to have a new (<14 day) account to qualify for the various coupons.

Where else have you found the promotional codes?

Friends built the Alton Brown flower pot smoker a few months back and then visited this weekend and convinced me to build one for the Fourth.

Getting the parts

While the actual construction of the smoker is trivial, I found that gathering all of the needed items was challenging. Many of the items were hard to source. If you live in Seattle, the guide below should help tremendously. Generally speaking, I would recommend that you try ordering everything but the Pot, Bowl and bricks online.

Pot size selection

The two hardest to source parts drive pot size selection. The terra cotta bowl is hard to find. The 17” bowl is the largest I was able to find anywhere. It is also really heavy so it is impractical to order online.

However, if you can find an 18” bowl, I would be pretty tempted to get an 18” pot. You can definitely fit the Weber 22.5” replacement charcoal grate in the pot (it is actually about 17”) or possibly even the 18.5” grill grate (it is slightly less than 18” in actual diameter). Not only would you get more cooking surface, but you’d also have a much easier to source grate.

 

Parts List

Item	Price	Source	Comments
17” Terra Cotta Pot	$19	Home Depot	They had these at City Peoples, but I didn’t stop there until later.
17” Terra Cotta Bowl	$22	City Peoples Garden Store	Hard to find. Try garden / nursery stores. I think it is also called an azalea bowl. Some people use saucers that they drill into.
Heat Element	$10	Walgreens	There are reports of insufficiently sized heat elements. This is a 1000W element that others have had success with.
16” Grill grate	$20	Sutter Hearth & Home in Ballard	The standard Weber sizes 14”, 18” and 22” are available everywhere. Unfortunately, they don’t fit. Order a 16” grate online well in advance. I ended up using a more expensive ‘grill topper’
Grill Thermometer	$14	Sutter Home & Hearth	Shockingly hard to find. Try ordering online.
Pan (for wood chips)	unk	our kitchen	Should be easy to find. Get as heavy a pan as possible.
Ceramic Pot feet	$6	Stoneway Hardware	These are pretty easy to find elsewhere.
3 Bricks	$1.50	Home Depot	Could be 2×4s or anything else to get the smoker above the base.
5 lb Pecan Wood Chunks	$15	Sutter Hearth & Home	Plan ahead and consider ordering online. I later found Apple and Cherry chunks at Stoneway hardware for much less. We used about 2/3 of the wood.

Getting the Heat Element controls out of the smoker

I wanted to get the controls for the heat element outside of the smoker so that I could adjust the heat without opening the smoker. This approach had the added advantage of getting the plastic base (and overheat sensor) out of the hot pot. This was shockingly easy to do. These instructions are for the Walgreens hot plate which seems to be pretty commonly used (I’m assuming that you’re smart enough not to plug in the hot plate):

1. Remove the screw that connects the burner to the plastic base. There is just one screw and its in the middle of the burner at the top.
2. Disconnect the wires from the heat element. They are meant to be easily disconnected and reconnected. All you need to do is press the tab and pull the wire and connector off of the pin.
3. Place some foil (or preferably a non-conductor) over the exposed base to catch any drippings that may fall out of the pot (we had none escape). Keep the foil clear of the control element.
4. Center the hot plate base amongst the bricks (see photo) and run the wires up the hole in the bottom. Reconnect them to the heat element. I don’t think it matters, but the fat wire was originally connected to the prong that runs to the center of the heat element.

I used both bricks and the pot holder feet so that I could raise the smoker up off the base plate and allow air to flow up through the hole in the pot. I then placed a brick in bottom of the smoker to support the heat element and keep the electrical prongs off the base of the pot. I had to chip the corners of the brick so that it could sit to the side of the hole for air flow.

Obviously, the wiring is much more exposed than it was in the sealed hot plate. It is actually very hard to touch the wires during operation, but be careful. Also, I’d highly recommend you ensure that you’re plugged into a GFCI protected outlet (all outdoor outlets in buildings built after the mid-eighties are required to be GFCI protected).

Temperature management and monitoring

The temp at the top of the grill does a good job telling the temp inside the smoker. We kept wireless temp probes in the meat throughout the process.

Metal smokers vs. the Flower Pot vs. the Big Green Egg

You can buy a metal smoker from Wal-mart or other sources for less than you’ll spend assembling the flower pot smoker. I’ve never cooked with a metallic smoker, but based on other comments I’ve read the inexpensive ones are thin and shed heat tremendously quickly.

When we were finished smoking the internal temp was about 210. Two hours later it was 140. Four hours later it was still warm to the touch. The Terra Cotta simply holds the heat really well. The ambient air was in the sixties with a strong wind on our roof deck.

However, the flower pot is no match for the Big Green Eggs. These ceramic smokers are massive. The equivalent size to the flower pot is probably the Large Egg, which has an 18” diameter cooking area, weighs 140 lbs and retails for $700. Plus I can’t imagine I’d have had as much fun as I did figuring the flower pot smoker out.

Recipe

We cooked two 4.5lb Boston Butts on the 4th using Alton Brown’s recipe for the brine and rub. It turned out fantastically well.

Enjoy!

Update
Hamilton posted a series of really good questions alongside one of the photos, and I wanted to include the questions and my responses here as I think they’ll help other people:

I was wondering if you think it would be feasible to run a second Walgreen’s burner through that bottom hole and into the pot. This may give me the potential for more heat and heat control in the winter months when the weather is a little cooler here in South Carolina. Maybe stagger them in the pot (one above the other.) Or even side by side standing up.

I don’t think you’ll need to do this. We had trouble keeping the heat down in the target 220 range and never had the dial anywhere near the halfway point. By the end of the session, I don’t think the dial would go any lower.

Also, these are 1000W burners (9 Amps). Many household circuits are 15 Amps (some are 20), so you’d run the risk of blowing a fuse if you plugged them into the same circuit.

However, if you did do it, I don’t think you’d want to stagger them as the heat from the lower one may melt the solder on the higher one. Side by side would work, but you’d need something else to set the grate on.

Also, when you disconnect the burner from the base, do you have enough length in the wire to connect the burner back to the burner once you’ve run it through the hole with the original connections or do I need to buy some extension wires?

It is tight, but there is enough wire. If you do need to get wire, make sure it is thermally insulated.

What was the highest temp you were able to see in your cooker?

We accidentally let it rise to around 240 (220 is the target). At some point I’ll do a controlled test, but it could definitely go much higher.

Do you soak your wood chips as well as leave water in the bottom of the pan? When do you like to put the chips in the cooker - When the cooker comes up to temp?

We used chunks instead of chips as they are less likely to actually catch fire. I’ve read that you don’t need to soak them, but a friend advised to soak half. This way, the dry ones start smoking early and the wet ones start smoking later. So, you don’t need to lift the top until later in the cooking process (lifting the top lets out the smoke and cools everything slightly).

Do you end up adding more chips to the pan throughout the cooking process? If so, what is your advice for removing the grill surface and the meat?

We added wood once (and only opened the top twice). The second time we lifted the top was to rotate the butts. The meat can be easily removed using foil and oven mitts. We had a plate with foil on the side to set them on.

If you look carefully at the picture of the butts you’ll see two screws sticking up through the cooking surface. We gripped the screws with oven mitts and lifted it directly out (it did take a bit of effort as it was kind of jammed down there).

To remove the upper pot/lid, have you come up with a good “handle” or do you have an alternative method? As your graph shows, I guess it’s a little hot and awkward to fooling around with when it’s that hot.

It shockingly isn’t too hot to touch. The lid measurements are from the interior. The exterior of the terra cotta is definitely cooler. Some people claim that they can use their bare hands, I just used oven mitts, but used my hands to make minor adjustments.

Would it be beneficial to drill more holes in the bottom of the pot to let in more fresh air or do you think that would let too much heat out?

I don’t think you want to do this. You don’t want the wood to burn (heavy air flow), you want it to combust enough to smoke. We had absolutely no problems with air flow.

Some of the details surrounding the rescue of the FARC Hostages are beginning to come out. News outlets convey slightly different stories, but the general theme is consistent: Colombian intelligence agents tricked the FARC into giving them the hostages (and two leadership personnel).

These two articles are great reads: How the Colombian military tricked Farc and rescued Ingrid Betancourt without a shot(TimesOnline) How Operation Check Mate Worked (WSJ).

A snippet from the Journal article:

Colombia’s army, having infiltrated the FARC’s highest ranks over the past few years, sent coded messages to various guerrilla commanders in recent months that the commanders believed were from the FARC’s highest ruling body, the secretariat.

The messages told them that the hostages were to be transferred to an area where Alfonso Cano, the new FARC leader after the death in March of the FARC’s founder Manuel Marulanda, would be in charge of them. The commanders were told the hostages would be used by Mr. Cano in on-again, off-again negotiations with the government.

Since the guerrilla group doesn’t have helicopters of their own, the hostages were to be transferred to Mr. Cano on helicopters used by a sympathetic non-governmental organization. The organization, in fact, didn’t exist and was really the Colombian military. To avoid arousing suspicion of the local FARC commanders that held the hostages, the military told them that two FARC commanders would accompany the hostages during the transfer.

Om recently stirred the pot with his post on the problems that they’ve been having with Gmail / Google Apps.

At BrandVerity, we’ve noticed several of the problems that he highlighted, but always assumed that it couldn’t be Google. In particular, I’m seeing:

• Spam Handling. I also think that Google Apps spam handling does a poorer job than regular gmail. I don’t have hard data to back this up, but I rarely get spam into my gmail account and regularly get spam in the Google Apps email accounts.
• Trouble loading the inbox. The blue loading bar would literally run from 0 to 100% 10 to 20 times before the inbox would appear. I was running FF RC3 at the time and the problem seems gone now so that could have been the issue.

I am not happy about those two, but they frankly aren’t critical. These next two are critical.

• Email sent is not being delivered. We use Google’s Apps Email as a dev/test SMTP server. Some mail simply never gets delivered. And it is isn’t consistent. Sometimes the emails get through, sometimes they don’t. And yes, we’re way below account limits. We obviously do not use this for production, but it is annoying nonetheless.
• Email is not being received. None of our transaction notifications from Authorize.Net get delivered to the inbox or spam folder. It is possible that other senders create similar problems.

In both cases, the problems seem to stem from automated systems that send from or send to google apps email accounts.

I’m getting pretty fed up dealing with the issues though and don’t really have any sense if a near-term solution is pending.

Although I haven’t written on reference checks yet, I feel that they are an essential part of the hiring process. They should always be conducted by the hiring manager, and should rarely follow a script.

When conducted well, they provide an unmatched opportunity to learn about the candidate in ways that you simply cannot in an interview.

Some companies have HR do the reference checks. These conversations rarely provide insight about the candidate. I’ve always had better conversations with the hiring manager, and have always felt that the HR personnel were simply checking boxes.

The worst possible way to do a ref check is over email. The email exchange below was with an HR rep from a well-known Valley startup. If this exchange is indicative of how they are hiring, I’m pretty frightened of their long-term prospects.

Hi David, I’m the recruiter for XXXXX and we are considering XXXX for a role on our XXXX team. He gave me your contact details as someone who could share some insights in terms of his past performance. Would you mind commenting on the below?

I really appreciate your help
XXXX
XXXX|recruiting

Candidate Name: XXXXX
Position considered for:

Reference Name: David Naffziger
Title:
Tel:

Professional relationship to candidate:

Dates worked together and where?

Please briefly describe his/her role?

How would you rate the candidate’s overall performance?

What were his/her strengths or greatest achievement?

What were areas for growth/improvement?

How did he/she get along with team members?

Describe his/her communication skills written/verbal?

Would you choose to work with him/her again?

Comments/Other:

I initially presumed that they wanted to talk on the phone, but after a quick exchange I learned that they did in fact want me to write an email recommendation.

A seasoned reference would never say anything negative in email because it could expose him and his company to a lawsuit. You’ll only ever get positive comments in an email reference.

My response:

I’ve worked with XXX for XXX years and recommend XXX wholeheartedly and without reservation. I’ve never done an email reference and I’d prefer not to fill it out via email.

If you’d like to gain a deeper understanding of XXX and why I feel he is a stellar prospect, I’m more than happy to talk on Monday.

Best,
Dave

I then received this choice bit back from HR:

That’s fine, I’ll let the hiring manager and XXX know that we will delay moving forward until then. Also I would be happy to copy your responses onto the the below which is what we are asked to include in a packet for our executive team. We have a similar system to Google where we review a number of candidates at once.

Kind regards

XXXX

I think that was an attempt at a guilt trip.

The person that I was giving a reference for did get the offer and fortunately turned it down.

I climbed Mt Adams again last weekend with Rahul, Matt and several other friends. The climb up on Saturday was pretty brutal, as was camping at 9K feet in very stiff winds. Sunday was gorgeous. Read the full Mt Adams trip report or view some photos from the hike.

I want to apologize now to all the people to whom I’ve lauded Mozy. I take it all back. I am far from alone.

Mozy is actually a succubus, a demon sent from hell to suck the life out of men (coincidentally, one of the top 5 South Park Episodes ever). Your relationship with Mozy begins much like one with a beautiful woman. However, one morning your hard drive crashes and you realize that you’re married to Roseanne Barr. Except that she has your data. And she’s sitting on it.

My hard drive crashed. It’s been 3 weeks and I just finished recovering my data. After this experience it is pretty clear that Mozy has invested heavily in backing up your data, but had the interns write the recovery code.

My story of woe follows if you’re interested in the details. The executive summary is Don’t Use Mozy. I strongly regret having bought an annual subscription for 2 computers (instead of paying monthly).

I’m still trying to find an alternative solution. JungleDisk (S3), Carbonite and Crashplan seem to be the leading contenders.

Restoring Via Mozy

Day 1: I installed my new hard drive and used the opportunity to install Vista. I installed Mozy to restore my files, but it didn’t recognize my computer. Online help files had no information about this instance. I emailed support.

Day 3: After a bit of back and forth they sent me instructions to uninstall Mozy, reinstall it partially and then run an attached script that edited my registry. Fine. A little inconvenient, but acceptable.

I ran the script, started Mozy and went to restore my files. There were no files to restore. Nada. Not a single of my backed up files could be found. I began to grow concerned and this time I used their painfully slow live rep support IM. After much confusion, they told me that I could only do a Web Restore or order DVDs (but that my files were safe). The DVDs would cost $100 and I had no interest in waiting for physical media to be mailed, so I chose the web restore.

The first step in the web restore process is to ‘build’ a restore. I kicked off the restore and refreshed the page a few times waiting for the downloads to be ready. After 10 minutes of this I gave up. 7 hours later, my status still said 0 of 18K files ready. I was a little concerned so I emailed support.

Day 4: No word from support, so I used IM to ‘speak’ with a rep. They told me that it usually takes a day or two for restores of my size to complete. Later in the day, support emailed me back and informed me that my download was at 17.9K of 18K files. Almost there!

Day 8: Still at 17.9K. I emailed support again. A day later I was told that the issue had been escalated.

Day 12: Still at 17.9K files. Still nothing after escalation. I emailed support again.

Day 13: I’m pretty pissed at this point so I IM support. They first tell me to do something that I cannot do (start a second restore). After we get over this confusion, the rep logs into my account and uses ‘extra priviledges’ to start a new restore without canceling the first.

Day 14: My files are ready (both restores)! But I’m traveling. Mozy is quick to tell me that I only have 7 days to download the restore files before they are deleted and I have to rebuild.

Day 19: I get back to my PC under restore. All I needed to do was download 30GB in 10 separate files. Unfortunately, Mozy seems to allot more bandwidth backing up files than for downloading files. Using Flashgot, Mozy would only give me 300-400 Kbps - about 10-20% of my measured available bandwidth. Not to mention the countless timeout errors that I received from Mozy.

Day 20: After many problems downloading, I finally got my files. A handful of hours unpacking and my files are back in their rightful place. Later in the next day, Mozy emails me to tell me that all of the restores have been deleted.

Yes I did get my files in the end. But restoring files took so much time and energy on my part that I may as well have been running my own backup system. Their support utterly failed (not for a lack of good intentions though). I’m now looking at alternative solutions and will switch over as soon as humanly possible.

Update:
I should add that Mozy is re-uploading every single file. So, according to the backup client, I have 6 more days until the cycle is truly complete.

Actually, I have no idea. However, I do know what it is like to watch the game in Larry Lucchino’s seats.

I was back in Boston for MIT’s reunion weekend and a friend that works for the Sox got us the best seats in park. One of our friends turned off his cell phone that morning and didn’t learn what he missed until after the game.