Hi, you mentioned several excellent accessories in your post. BBQng, like any other task, can go much smoother and easier if one is equipped with sufficient tools. I don't profess to be an expert, but I have been grilling and smoking meat for the past 10-12 years, and have picked up a lot of good tips here and there. Regarding your question aboout whether the flavored woods do any good, plus your inability to produce decent smoke,what kind of cooker do you have? It would help to know before attempting to answer your questions. Thanks. Mike

Your other thread indicates you have nothing showing for Trend Micro when looking in the 'Program Files' using Windows Explorer. Is that right? If that is the case it would be very unlikely there are remnants running or causing issues. Did you do as you suggested in your original post here and try to remove and re-install MS Essentials? What happened?

DH is a Weber charcoal grill afficianado - I pretty much stay away from the grill - which pleases both of us. So BBQ forums are one thing I don't do much with. We recently got a Big Green Egg however which was kind of my idea based on all kinds of things I won't bore you with. One thing we learned about when we were looking into the BGE was lump charcoal vs. the briquettes we'd always used. Now that we've used it I would never go back to briquettes - we now use it in our Webers and our BGE. So that's something you might want to look into if you aren't already familiar with it.

Baking soda on leaves = usually safe in low concentrations(The Cornell Formula), I've tried it and it seems to reduce powdery mildew and black spot. Baking soda in the soil = the sodium and high pH are bad, I've never tried it though. I've read on other forums that people are using a 81mg aspirin per quart or a 325mg per gallon, it has to be non-enteric(no coating) though. I once tried to crush an enteric coated aspirin but it's rock hard, I then tried dissolving the enteric coated aspirin in hot water...it just laughed at me. I've also read that club soda or seltzer is good for plants, the CO2 helps the roots absorb nutrients. Maybe mix some club soda and aspirin in water, it's a good hangover recipe so maybe it will work on plants. I don't have any idea what ethanol will do but I think I will save the beer for me to drink.