My dad is rapidly loosing his battle with ALS. He has always loved to cut grass. He has very limited mobility (in some ways he is lucky, most people with late stage ALS are basically paralyzed. His progression is respiratory focuses so he is loosing the ability to breath faster than the ability to walk) but with some assistance has still been able to use my zero turn mower and get a little joy out of cutting my grass.
Just this Sunday he reached the point where he can't cut anymore...I guess he is out of salt :'(
Ouch, this one hurts. I lost my Dad to pancreatic cancer last year and had a very similar experience - he loved jumping on the tractor and cutting the grass on his little farm, but we went so quickly from him asking me do it temporarily while he recovered from surgery to him never getting on the tractor again.
So sorry for what you're going through, and wishing you some peace wherever you can find it. My email is in my bio, please reach out if you need someone to talk to (I have no useful expertise or advice of any kind here, but will gladly lend a listening ear).
I lost my mom to ALS six years ago, and those final months still haunt me.
When the time comes, make sure your remembrance service has pictures of when he was all of himself, the way you want to remember him. One of the worst things these illnesses do is leave you with final memories of a pale shadow of the person you loved, instead of the fantastically colorful person they should be remembered as.
One internet stranger to another, I hope things go as well as they may.
The progression is different for everyone so it's hard to give universal advice but I'll try. My dad is progressing quick, it took almost 2 years to get diagnosed. He was diagnosed in May and I'll be lucky if he is still around for Christmas. It's not that fast for many people (lots of examples of people having it for 10+ years) so that certainly impacts my experience.
Make every day count - you don't how how many are left.
If he isn't going to a multidisciplinary ALS clinic I would look into it. Instead of having to go to 5+ individual Dr. appts my dad goes to one big one and sees the neurologist, occupational therapy, physical therapy, respiratory therapist, nutritionist, etc. all in one appointment and they all calibrate together on treatment. It's a long day but far better than managing individual appointments.
It's ok and often better to start a treatment sooner than you might think is necessary. My dad is on an iVAPS (a non-invasive ventilator) to help him breath and that has greatly increased his quality of life and I wish he could have started it sooner. Some PALs (People with ALS) avoid stuff like that because they are embarrassed, see it as a weakness, etc. but then realize how helpful it can be. The biggest example of that is probably a feeding tube. Most PALs at some point have to decide if they want to have a feeding tube placed. The tricky part is that often times by the time they actually need the tube their respiratory function is too low to actually undergo the procedure. The tube can be placed and not used for years, but often time people wait at the time they are able to eat without issue. Unfortunately my dad was unable to get the tube (due to late diagnosis and fast progression ) and eating is one of his biggest struggles (they want him to have 2500-3000 calories a day but he has virtually zero appetite so a meal for him is like half a sandwich). This applies for almost every step of the journey - voice banking, mobility assistance/wheelchair, and even hospice. Most people think of hospice as being for someone who only has a few days left but it is available to anyone with a 6-month or less prognosis and they provide a large amount of support, this is a decision we will likely be making soon.
There are way more support groups/organizations than I would have ever guessed. I'm generally not one to ask for help but these organizations have helped us quite a bit. Team Gleason provided a my dad a portable electric wheelchair basically no questions asked and it was only about a week from applying and having it sitting on his door step. There are local charities near me that help provide everything from adaptive eating utensils all the way up to giving families wheelchair vans. There is also a lot of useful online content - podcast, content creators (@limpbroozkit on IG for example), etc. that can be very helpful.
I'm happy to answer any other questions, publicly on here or email in my profile.
Sure, I don't love cleaning kitty litter, but if I lost the ability to clean it, and I didn't have the ability to have someone else live-in and clean it for me, I wouldn't be able to have a cat, and that would be _immensely_ saddening to me. The same goes for a cutting a lawn; not being able to cut your own lawn means potentially not getting to enjoy _having_ a lawn, given that part of the enjoyment is presumably in actually getting to spend time in it, take care of it, etc.
This isn't even mentioning the fact that the loss of routine can itself be jarring, and of course all of the sibling comments explaining that the real loss is agency. That said, I think it's worth realizing that even though you and I aren't in the group of people who particularly enjoy chores (and those people do exist!), the reason they exist at all is because they do actually accomplish something useful, and not being able to perform them means either losing those benefits or having to rely on the goodwill of others to take care of them for you. Given that the "others" tend to be those closest to you that you care most about, is it really that hard to imagine that someone might feel like they're burdening their loved ones rather than reveling in the "freedom" that comes from not being physically capable of mowing their own lawn?
I am looking at you like that, because you're speaking without first having thought at all.
Imagine the thing you love most in all the world to do. Imagine losing that - as, some day, you certainly will. Then, if you still feel like it, try again.
I don't think the user you replied to didn't think about it at all. They thought about, and found strange, the fact that cutting grass was the thing someone loved _the most_.
It's sad to see the user be downvoted to oblivion and dismissed completely, especially if the guidelines forbid this. No arguments, just "you're wrong".
It is unsurprising. Seliger was a fairly close presence on HN during the end of his life, and not everyone here is well equipped to understand and account for the effect on themselves of sharing such pathos. It isn't something Californian or American culture handles well in general, and even then HN participants constitute an unusual cohort selected partially (if not intentionally) for a habit of privileging rationality over emotion - which isn't at all the same thing as skill in managing one's emotions, especially at their heights. When someone speaks intemperately in such a moment, as here, in that light it reads easily as if selfish and contemptuous of the entire circumstance, and receives a response in accord with that reading.
I don't think that's unjustified, even if I did take the time to unpack it a bit for our mutual interlocutor here. It was not my first instinct to do so. Someone whom a lot of people here care about was within days, possibly hours, of dying. At a time like that, someone who speaks out of turn may very confidently expect to be slapped down for it. It's worth explaining why that's the case, because all else equal a better understood error is less likely to be repeated. But it was an unmitigated error, and the response it received is the one it deserved.
Arguably, the absolute most human, personal thing we can ever do is choose which things do and do not provide meaning to us. There is no deeper, more inalienable agency than that.
Suggesting that a $700 online course about paleo diet is going to save him is disgusting. The Wahls protocol is generally recognized as a scam with no scientific backing.
That's not how QoS works on a DOCSIS network. DOCSIS QOS is controlled via the DOCSIS config file and is applied to any cable modem, it is part of the standard that all cable modems - so any QOS that would be applied to Comcast supplied modem would also be applied to a customer provided modem.
I don't have any specific knowledge of how Comcast does or doesn't do throttling on their network but it is very unlikely that is happening via the CPE. They may be doing some QOS via PCMM (PacketCable MultiMedia) but that is often used to manage congestion on the cable network and not the backhaul/transport side.
You're correct that there is also DOCSIS QOS being performed and this happens regardless of who supplied the modem, this affects traffic between the modem and the head-end, but past the head-end traffic is shaped using other techniques. QoS is protocol specific, and based on the behavior I've observed I believe they are doing application classification and doing IP QoS on the CPE in addition to any DOCSIS QoS applied regardless. I'm a little rusty on my understanding of the DOCSIS specs, but this is a L2 protocol and QoS applied here isn't based on application classification, AFAIK.
It works because the route to 1.2.3.4 is relatively stable. The routes would only change and end up at data center #2 if data center #1 stopped announcing the routes. In that case the connection would just re-negotiate to data center #2.
Nope - just like about every other protein the key is to not overcook it.
I personally thing spatchcocking the turkey is the way to go. The cavity is your enemy for an evenly cooked bird. With that big cavity you have trapped cold air on the inside and hot air on the inside making it hard to get the inside and outside cooked at the same time. Stuffing the cavity only makes that worse.
By spatchcock you eliminate the air pocket - it cooks more evenly and in about half the time.
This wasn't a typical "someone clicked a link they shouldn't have" attack.
There was a vulnerability in the RMM server software that allowed remote code execution. The attackers used the RCE to push the ransomware out to all of the endpoints connected to the RMM server.
The attack is still being researched but it looks like there were two vulnerabilities. The first was an authentication bypass that allowed the attacker to authenticate as if it were an authorised client. That was used to upload the payload. There was as a RCE vulnerability that allowed the attacker to executed the uploaded file. The payload itself modified the SQL database of the RMM software to create a task on the remote endpoints that executed the ransomware.
Looks like I'll end up having to pull brisket off the menu again this summer (I own & operate a BBQ food truck).
Before this latest blow to the supply chain I have already seen a 66% increase in brisket prices in the past 4 weeks ($2.99/lb about a month ago, current price is $4.99). The restaurant industry is already running on low margins so it will be interesting to see how this is all going to shake out.
Raising prices is an option but that is very market dependant. BBQ customers in general are more price sensitive than lobster customers and I would lose sales at a higher price point.
There is a certain price (which I have generally found is $4.50 - $4.99/lb, that is when my food cost for a brisket sandwich hits 50%. Target food cost should be somewhere around 30%) where it just isn't worth it to sell brisket. BBQ is somewhat unique in that you have to estimate your demand ahead of time - you can't just throw on another brisket if you run out and I don't reheat/re-use leftovers. So even if I raise my prices $2/sandwich to cover the increased cost my risk is still higher because any unsold product is now a higher loss.
I'm sure you know your business and market, but I'd just through out an example from my back yard.
Matt's BBQ is the best Texas style bbq in Portland by a considerable margin. I've been a customer and friendly with him since he started out in a pawn shop parking lot with zero foot traffic and almost no road visibility. He charges $13.50 for a 1/2 lb of brisket, similar prices for other meats. Sides are typically around $3.50.
He's up to multiple locations and his own commissary kitchen that's like 2000 sq feet.
He sells out every single day.
It's been really fun to watch his business blow up. It's all been from the strength of his product, and his personal hustle to get the momentum. His customer base is loyal and willing to pay a premium.
He even has a side hustle selling smoker rigs, via a partnership.
I'm enjoying this discussion and I'm glad you brought up your example, but keep in mind the sort of folks ordering BBQ in Portland are a very specific class of customers :)
No doubt, but the reason people do or don't get it vary widely be region. In Portland I expect it's more likely to be a novelty or cultural experience, and therefore the clientele to be less price sensitive than Texas.
Do you have any awareness how obnoxious it is to assert you know my neighborhood better than me? When it's clear you've never been to any of these places, talked with fellow customers, etc?
It's a mixed race neighborhood. For the first couple years his neighbor in the pawn shop parking lot was a soul food cart. The clientele at both looked basically the same in terms of demographics.
While you won't find as much good BBQ in Portland as say central Texas, the Carolinas, etc, it's not some sort of exotic novelty.
I don't know why you are so determined to stereotype this stuff, but it is not helpful.
You living someplace, eating at a restaurant, and having a general gestalt of the local experience does not make you (or any of us) an expert on statements about population-level demographics or the economic implication. There's no reason to get upset that someone on the internet doesn't believe your analysis, or to call them names.
It is a statistical impossibility that any given group in Portland is the same as any given group in Texas on the metrics I mentioned, so your claim is really that these metrics don't influence price sensitivity.
It's statements like this that are revealing:
> People do value authenticity in my town. The big corporate chain restaurants are a lot more sparse here, exactly because the local places are just as cheap, far higher quality, locally owned, and using local ingrediants, etc.
There's no trade-off between chain restaurants and locally owned? The latter is just an unalloyed good and other regions of the country are just making mistakes for no reason? So no, I don't find your analysis convincing, but as I already said I appreciate your input in the discussion.
Dude, it's literally my neighborhood, which I've been in for over a decade. These people are mostly my neighbors. They're who I talk to at the corner store, at the cart pods, at the bar when we're watching the Blazers games.
Just. Stop.
I never made any claim about blanket superiority, just described factually what this place is like. You'll find plenty of people and even data supporting that characterization if you want.
Likewise I did not claim anything about equality with Texas, just that your utterly naive assertion that the customer base for the food cart I mentioned must be slanted a particular way, based on literally nothing. It is not.
You don't understand what I've already written if you think that any of this hinges on how many years you've lived in the neighborhood, or high integrated into the community you are.
I do I simply disagree strongly, just as strongly as you would had I tried to bulldoze you with a naive stereotyped view about something you personally are highly familiar with.
In any case, it's clear continuing this line of discussion is pointless.
> He charges $13.50 for a 1/2 lb of brisket, similar prices for other meats. Sides are typically around $3.50.
People in Portland and other liberal cities will paradoxically pay a premium for "poor people" food. When you are wealthy enough to consume whatever you want, the rarest commodity is something that feels like an authentic, meaningful experience. Cuisines that come from poor areas carry that sense of authenticity with them and can charge appropriately.
I don't think you can assume that pricing model will work well outside of a few places like Portland, SF, NYC, Seattle, LA. People that aren't wealthy enough such that they do care about food prices aren't going to pay extra because a brisket is served on a just-so-cute-and-"real" metal tray.
Food carts in Portland are extremely informal and very much a thing for everyday people, including people with low incomes by local standards. In fact it's one of the main drivers of their popularity here.
It's not a matter of wealthy people adopting "poor people's food" as a novelty. It's just good food no matter your situation in life. Matt is charging on the higher end, and a complete meal is still under $20. The best burger in my area is a double bacon cheese for $4.50 that uses really quality ingredients.
I've talked with customers at Matt's that live out in the country and make an hour plus drive to come by every once in a while.
People do value authenticity in my town. The big corporate chain restaurants are a lot more sparse here, exactly because the local places are just as cheap, far higher quality, locally owned, and using local ingrediants, etc.
The genesis of the food cart scene here was the city has some smart policies about making it affordable to start these businesses. Many people who dream of someday having a restaurant start out this way. You can make a serious shot at it with just $50k or so, which is tiny even by small business capital standards. They price their food accordingly.
It's true this place is getting more expensive, but I assure you, if you go out to any of the pods, you'll see a roughly even mix of people who are middle class, and young people that probably make barely enough to cover rent at a service industry job. Everyone will be hanging out, friendly and chatting.
Please don't project your own assumptions onto this scene if you've not been there. This town is pretty grossly misrepresented by a wide swath of media.
That price point is not outlandish. That foodtruck would probably be just as successful setting up outside of bars in Cleveland even. What I've noticed as an adult now visiting friends in various places, high cost of living low cost of living, is food and drink are basically the same exact price. Pints of beer from $6-9 or so. Entrees $12-16 or so. Everywhere in the country has settled at this median pricepoint, no matter what the cuisine.
Is it possible to purchase the cuts in advance and store them frozen or does that noticeably effect the quality? Seems straightforward to through some cuts in a deep freezer to smooth out supply costs. I do that on the small scale at home though obviously the capital costs would be proportionally larger at scale.
That's exactly what I did starting about a month ago - I've got enough on hand to last about a month (most of that is committed to catering jobs that already have a set price - so my forecasting is much easier but if I didn't lock in the price I would have to eat the difference).
As long as they are safely handled I've found no quality difference at all when freezing stuff that is cryo-vaced. More often than not it has already been frozen at least once before it gets to me.
I don't ever sell anything that has been re-heated after cooking though. You can also do that with little to no quality loss but I try to position myself as a premium brand so everything is 'cooked to order'. There are also a lot more food safety concerns (cooing it fast enough, re-heating it fast enough, etc.) that I don't want to worry about. I vacuum seal cooked BBQ at home and it's just as good as fresh but you can't do that in a commercial setting without special permits that aren't available to food trucks (at least not in my area).
> I don't reheat/re-use leftovers. ... any unsold product is now a higher loss.
Perfect yesterday BBQ meat! Coming from USSR/Russia with its food shortages in 198x-first half of 199x i still kind of mentally shudder reading such things even after 21 years of living here.
It’s not waste in that it goes into the trash - it’s just a sink cost that I’ll never recoup. Anything left over I keep for myself, give to friends/family, or donate (which is actually more difficult than you would expect since it is perishable)
I’m only open once or twice a week so secondary uses (beans, chili, etc) unfortunately don’t work for me.
That's because lobster roll customers are rich yuppies. BBQ is for poor people who cannot afford good cuts of meat so they resort to pulverizing bad cuts of meat with smoke heat and sauce.
Yup, there is craft everything now. For example, macaroni and cheese. To me, that will always be the poor folk food of my youth, even though my friends rave about eating it at fine dining establishments. I'm sure soon we'll have artisinal sloppy joes as well -- why not, with high quality ingredients and a creative chef, you can make any dish interesting.
You're exactly right that BBQ is popular and that's why BBQ is getting worse. I know I sound like a salty hipster but bear with me for a moment. There's some "show me the incentives I'll show you the outcome" reasoning behind my opinion.
When a thing becomes trendy among moneyed demographics there is now stupid money to be made selling a caricature of that thing to people with too much money. BBQ is one of those thigns becoming just another experience for yuppies to talk about in the break room on Mondays. When you're running a BBQ joint you're not selling meat cooked in a particular style, you're selling an experience. People don't care about whether your BBQ is a career long refinement of what grandma made. They care about whether it's something they can brag about. They're looking for an experience and if you want to stay in business you're gonna sell it to them. It's not about doing your thing well, it's about presentation and show. Many of the people running these restaurants hate bastardizing their craft and leaning into an image/stereotype like this but it's what pays the bills.
Maybe I'm just jaded from growing up in a tourism economy but money uncritically thrown at something tends to ruin it.
When I go looking for a restaurant I go for <censored>, <censored> and <censored>, because those three genres aren't trendy right now and any business specializing in them has to succeed on its own merits, it can't just print money by looking the part.
Fortunately, BBQ in particular is one of those cuisines that with close attention to detail and some hours spent researching on the Net, you as an individual can turn out a brisket that, if not as good as say Snow's or Franklin, is more than Good Enough for an extremely satisfying experience when done with some friends and family as a group effort. One of the glories of our current age is this outcome can be reproduced with many if not all other cuisines and dishes.
No less a pit master than Aaron Franklin will tell anyone who cares to listen that they individually can absolutely turn out a brisket that is equal to or better than what he serves up at his eponymous restaurant. He takes pains to point out it only takes caring attention to detail to that single brisket, which is why I think I run into a greater proportion of BBQ enthusiasts in hacker circles compared to my other communities when categorized by interests. He freely admits his and other pit masters' "secret sauce" lays in how they scale it up and keeps it close to what they produce when they are making only one brisket at home for family and friends.
I generally consider BBQ competitions overblown affairs that are arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. To me, after a certain point it is quite good enough, and any further optimization for "better" doesn't pass my personal cost-benefit filter, and I'd rather spend the cognitive effort on my dining companions.
It is either that, or I possess a philistine palate. The latter is quite possible because I hold a similar opinion of many of the fine dining establishments I've eaten at, from quite fine kaiseki, omakase, Chinese, Michelin-starred French, various fusions, steak, and other restaurants, some with pretty eye-popping per-diner prices. That's mostly because I believe that we're at the nascent, fragile stages of achieving post-scarcity (by no means assured, and still many generations away), and part of that journey involves the elevation of increasingly finer experiences (perhaps some requiring ever-greater cognitive effort to appreciate that I'm not aware of) to a mass market.
Brisket prices have been going up for quite a while now, not least since the pandemic started. This event is likely going to be a blip. That said, typically one of the ways to hedge against volatile prices is through forward contracts. If you have a float, have you thought about pre-paying for brisket to get a discount? I only mention this because I remember reading a story told by Nick Kokonas, who co-owns Alinea, a famous 3 Michelin starred restaurant in Chicago. When he discovered he had a float, he decided to pre-pay his vendors instead of taking net 120 and in the process got a 50% discount on beef. (because pre-paying improved his vendor's cashflow and reduced their risk, they passed it back to him in the form of savings)
"Food costs money. But the way that everyone (in the F&B industry) looks at food costs, and paying for food is very weird. When COVID started, every famous chef that went on TV said, “This is the kind of business where this week’s revenues pay for bills from a month ago.” So when we started to bring in money from deposits and prepaid reservations, I suddenly looked and we had a bank account that had a couple million dollars in it — of forward money
"I started calling up some of our big vendors for the big, expensive items — like proteins: meat, fish; luxury items: like caviar, foie gras, wine and liquor, and I said, “I don’t want net-120 anymore, I want to prepay you for the next three months.” And they had never had that kind of a phone call from a restaurant before.
So how much should they discount it? So let’s say we’re going to buy steaks. We’re going to pay $34 a pound wholesale for dry aged rib-eye, we get net-120 (normally). So I call the guy and say “I’m going to use 400 pounds of your beef a week for the next 4 months, for our menu, which is about about $300,000 of beef, what (would) we get, if we prepay you?” And he was like “what do you mean?” I’m like “I want to write you a check tomorrow for all of it, for four months.” And he was like, “Well, no one has ever said that.” So he called me the next day, he said “$18 a pound” … so … half. Half price.
I went, “I’ll pay you $20 if you tell me why.” And he said, “Well, it’s very simple. I have to slaughter the cows, then I put the beef to dry. For the first 35 days I can sell it. After 35 days there’s only a handful of places that would buy it, after 60 days, I sell it $1 a pound for dog food.” So his waste on the slaughter, and these animals’s lives, and the ethics of all of that, are because of net-120! Seems like someone should have figured this out! As soon as he said that, everything clicked, and I went “We need to call every one of our vendors, every time, and say that we will prepay them.”
Prices had come back down to pre-pandemic levels up until about a month ago. Nationwide easing of restrictions has increased demand faster than the supply chain has been able to keep up.
That is an excellent idea (having more than just a transactional relationship with you food vendor is a good idea in general) but my volume is way too low to have that type of leverage. The best I can do (and fortunately what I did when I saw the prices increasing) is pre-buy and freeze as much as I can to lock in the then-current pricing. Right now food supplies aren't even able to fill many wholesale orders because they don't have enough supply so I'm not sure pre-paying would help if they can't even get the product. For example one major vendor has changed their order cutoff time from 11PM to 5PM so they can spend that extra time allocating their available stock across all the orders because they don't have enough for everyone.
BBQ is my side hustle so I'll be ok either way - but if I was paying my mortgage via food service I would be alot more concerned.
Yes, a supply crunch does make it difficult to execute on these types of strategies. And you're certainly right that having a relationship with your suppliers is often advantageous -- very often, including upstream parties in one's system boundaries increases one's surface area for cost optimization.
Also, just thinking aloud, during normal times, if you happen to know other hobbyist BBQ folks, I'm wondering if there might be opportunities to enter into an informal group-buying situation where you pool your collective brisket demand and bulk buy at a discount. That wouldn't work right now but perhaps it might during normal times. There are websites based around this idea. Best of luck.
It would be very interesting to see a followup report from Nick on what happened with COVID. Did they refund those customers who pre-paid for dinners that couldn't happen? Were they left holding the bag for the dry-aged ribeye that they then couldn't sell? I would love to hear the story.
I don't have the full story on what happened to the tickets and the dry aged beef, but on several podcasts, Kokonas talked about how they pivoted hard to takeout and actually did some of their best sales during COVID than at any other time.
I think you have a well-reasoned, thoughtful post here, but perhaps the person who operates a BBQ food truck might not be the best positioned to take futures contracts out on brisket?
Also, aren't forward contracts by definition unsecured as compared to a futures market?? If the supplier genuinely doesn't have supply or goes out of business, you've lost your money, right?
You can contract around anything, including penalty clauses. But yes if there isn't any X to be had, your agreement to take delivery isn't really helpful today.
Quite right, it's just the seed of an idea. As for scale, that can be achieved through pooling (i.e. group buys), though it wouldn't work right now due to supply constraints.
A lot of folks work like mad in tech to build up a small nestegg and then go pursue a passion. Starting with a food truck is a great way to suss out and ease into eventually owning and running restaurants. It's like the MVP of a cuisine/restaurant idea.
I still have my tech job and don’t plan on going full BBQ anytime soon. I do it enough that it keeps me busy but I can always say no to a catering job or event so it’s still enjoyable and not a chore.
The right opportunity would have to come along for me to jump onto the restaurant world. It’s definitely something I’ve looked into but one thing I have learned is that the BBQ is the easy part of running a BBQ business - it’s everything else that is tricky. Right now I don’t have to worry about employees, rent, etc. so someone with those strengths would have to make a pretty good pitch to get me to open a restaurant.
The short answer is BBQ is “hobbies gone wild” for me.
My “9-5” is in IT and that’s what pays the bills by BBQ is my passion.
I’ve being doing BBQ professionally for 10+ years. It started out just done some small catering jobs and has grown from there. Through BBQ I’ve been able to do lots of cool stuff that I would have never imagined when I started. I was heavily involved in competition BBQ for several years and through that I’ve worked with several big brands . Currently I’m focused on my food truck and rub and sauce products. I’ve also done several BBQ classes and hope that as we turn the corner on COVID I can start that up again soon.
Growing a passion into one that makes money isn't rare. One of the optical engineers I work with is a master brewer at a local brewpub, working on recipes evenings and weekends, after decades of home-brewing. He does his side gig because he wanted to go bigger, meet more experienced people and try new things.
If you don't want to fix it yourself Thermoworks will repair it for next to nothing. I think I paid like $10 to have one with a similar issue fixed. Normally it is something with the case around the pivot point that causes it to stop turning on (try squeezing it in that area to test that theory).
The speed compared to most other thermometers is that that is uses a thermocouple vs a thermistor. The cheaper ThermoPop uses a thermistor and takes about twice as long to get a reading.
I'm a professional cook (I do professional BBQ competitions and own a food truck) and I own at least 5 Thermapens and several other Thermoworks products.
For me the Thermapen is worth every penny to me. It's fast, accurate, and reliable. I know that if I pick it up it is going to work and that alone is worth a premium. I've also had good experiences with their customer service - they will replace or repair them with little or no hassle.
Yes they are expensive but my oldest Thermapen is at least 10 years old. If you keep an eye out it's not hard to get them 25% off or more.
I use a thermometer that looks like a thermapen knockoff and costs about $15. I’ve used it regularly (but not professionally) for four years and I’ve seen it give the exact same readings, swiftly, as one more expensive thermometer of the same kind, a cheaper one, and a body thermometer to measure fever. What makes the Thermapen worth every penny? I haven’t had this break, but if it does I will probably order one of the same, which will arrive in a day or two without needing to (a) contact support or (b) send something in the mail. What am I missing? As a professional, what would you be missing if you used a cheaper model?
I think it is mostly an issue with quality control. I've had horrible luck with thermapen knockoffs. Temps all over the place, battery compartment loose, miscalibrated out of the box. If you found one that works, awesome! But I'd venture to guess that most people weren't that lucky.
Excuse my complete ignorance but how does measuring the temperature of food help you with cooking? When I do a BBQ, I've only ever judged by colour and appearance. Usually the challenge is not to burn the outside while the inside is undercooked.
Large chunks of meat are best done by temp. A brisket, for example, can look the same if the internal temp is at 150 vs 210. One is pretty much inedible. Same for large chunks of pork. You want to cook these to where they are tender, but not dry. For brisket, that is normally around 203-210 when measured at the largest part of the flat. You would just be completely guessing without a good thermometer.
I mean, if you know what you are doing because you have made for instance BBQ many times before, especially even on the same equipment, it's not exactly "completely guessing".
People did make good BBQ for many years before digital thermometers existed, and without using meat thermometers! I suspect professional experts barbequing all day probably still don't use thermometers. They are have the same heat source many times, and know how it cooks and know how to judge the size of meat, because they've done it hundreds of times.
But yeah, for those of us who are less expert, a meat thermometer can get us much better results.
You can go by feel and sometimes appearance (and pretty much have to for some things like pork ribs), but the size and shape of large chunks of meat vary quite a bit, so does the weather, heat source, etc...
If you're a restaurant that is constantly smoking meat, you probably don't need a thermometer, but you probably have one. If you're an ordinary person, I would recommend a decent one at least. I have a thermapen. I don't regret buying it. If my fire dies and I don't feel like chopping more wood, or if I just put the brisket in the oven to finish overnight after it gets smoke, I can still know exactly when it's ready. I don't have to repeat the exact same process every time for a good result.
Sure, if you have the same heat source, in an environment with the same atmospheric conditions, working on a piece of meat similar to what you've cooked many times before, you likely don't much need a thermometer, not that it'll hurt.
But a thermometer let's you transfer those skills much more easily to environments with varying conditions, It's especially common for professional cooks to be expected to cook in varying conditions.
Not a professional, but I find meat thermometers even more useful because I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what every type of meat looks and feels like when cooked, especially with different marinades and seasonings changing the appearance. I also hate overcooked meat. With a thermometer I can try a new technique and always pull the meat off at the right time. I'm also more comfortable letting the outside get crispy if I know I'm not overcooking the inside.
Everything I cook is temperature + feel. For example on pork once it hits 200-205 (depending on what temp I'm cooking at, the higher the cook temp the higher the finish temp) the thermapen becomes an expensive toothpick to feel for tenderness. Color is used as a element when I might move on to the next step but not at all for when it is done - for example I wrap pork once it hits 160 + has the color I want.
It has to be a repeatable processes, especially if you are doing it commercially and you need to train other people. Temperature is a measurable thing vs look or feel which is subjective.
For some things accuracy is extra important, one or two degrees won't make or break a pork but but can greatly impact something like steak.
In every modern recipe for cooking almost any type of meat, there is an internal temperature listed at which the meat can officially be considered "safely" done. Restaurants, etc., have to follow such guidelines per government food safety standards.
The difference between amateur and professional grillers is that professionals use instant-read thermometers for everything. One, because the difference between a rare and medium-rare steak is only about 5F internal temperature, which is too small to eyeball. Two, because if you’re not checking internal and hold temps, then it’s way too easy to poison your guests.
The first except for Blackberry. Before IOS or Android even existed Blackberry had granular per app permissions.
I don't disagree with your argument though, of the modern mobile OSs Apple moved to towards the per-app model before everyone else. I just find it interesting when Apple or Android gets coverage/credit for a feature that has long existed but was forgotten or ignored.
Actually, BB10 had an even better feature, you could provide dummy data to wrapped Android applications. So you could fill the Android contact data with an empty contact list and the app would be none-the-wiser. This feature was never advertised.
I did not know this, thanks for teaching me something new! It goes at least back to BlackBerry OS 4, running on the BlackBerry Pearl, released in 2008 (but likely further back):
> You can set permissions that control how third-party applications on your BlackBerry device interact with the other applications on your device. For example, you ca control whether third-party applications can access data or the Internet, make calls, or use Bluetooth® connections.
My dad is rapidly loosing his battle with ALS. He has always loved to cut grass. He has very limited mobility (in some ways he is lucky, most people with late stage ALS are basically paralyzed. His progression is respiratory focuses so he is loosing the ability to breath faster than the ability to walk) but with some assistance has still been able to use my zero turn mower and get a little joy out of cutting my grass.
Just this Sunday he reached the point where he can't cut anymore...I guess he is out of salt :'(