The town of West Yellowstone (MT) is the western gateway into Yellowstone National Park. As a result, it is primarily a tourist town. Just about all of its business cater to the tourist trade, which is international in scope. It is not uncommon to hear many different languages spoken as you walk down the sidewalks of its main streets.

As with most tourist towns, there are a plethora of souvenir shops. There are T-shirt shops, of course, plus localized gift shops that have all manner of wildlife- and geyser-oriented themes. And there are many different places to eat.

In the case of BBQ places, there are two choices that I saw on my visit there last week. On the main street in West Yellowstone there is “Buckaroo Bill’s” and the “Beartooth Barbeque” jointz.  And therein lies our Tale of Two BBQ Jointz.

Pam and I first went to the Buckaroo Bill’s place for a late lunch. Since it was the tail end of the tourist season, the town wasn’t very crowded. Buckaroo Bill’s has an outside dining area with picnic tables, and an inside area with about 6 booths, plus a ‘covered wagon’ dining area that was closed (so we didn’t get a look at it). The interior decor is framed pictures and sayings of various sorts. Each booth has a wall-mounted paper-towel-roll dispenser, with salt/pepper but no sauces. Outside is a gas grill in a half-barrel, plus an inside kitchen area.

The menu is standard fare, with BBQ items like pulled pork/chicken/beef, burgers (beef and bison), pizza, and tacos. There is also a child’s menu of the usual items. I got the pulled beef with tater tots on the side, and Pam got a pulled pork with a side salad. The waitress was by herself; there were only three other tables occupied since it was mid-afternoon. So service was attentive, and the food was quickly delivered.

Both sandwiches were hot and drenched in a BBQ-type sauce of some sort. The tater tots were hot an crunchy. Pam said that the salad was great, with shredded cheese, tomatoes, olives, and crunchy garlic-flavored croutons. The sandwiches? They were OK, but to this “BBQ Beginner” suspects the meat was used the crock-pot-cooking style.

I later took a look at the grill; it was a standard open half-barrel with propane gas burners. There was no indication of any smoker on site. I asked the waitress how they prepared their ribs, and she said that they use a rub then bake them in a covered pan, adding the sauce at the end.

Buckaroo Bill’s BBQ joint is a wannabe BBQ joint.

The next day, I stopped into the Beartooth Barbeque joint. It has all indoor seating, with about 15 tables (4 chairs each) and an area for barstool-eating, with about 12 stools. The waitress seemed attentive to the 4-5 tables that were occupied at that time (this was early dinner hour). I went up to the cashier area, and noticed their own branded BBQ sauces in bottles. A look at their menu indicated that I was in a more traditional BBQ joint. Their menu proudly stated that they hand-rub their meat, then slow-cook in a wood-fired smoker.

Beartooth BBQ Beef Brisket with Beans

I ordered a beef brisket to go, along with a side of beans and some sauce. In a few minutes, I was ready to go with my order in a Styrofoam container. Getting into the car, I quickly noticed the smokey smell of the brisket. Back at the hotel, I took a look inside the container. There was a mound of shredded beef brisket, with some large chunks. You could see the smokey ring on the beef chunks, which were easily shredded. The beef was inside a standard-looking sesame hamburger-type bun, with a small container of sauce. I took a taste of the sauce, which (to this BBQ novice) was pretty good with a very slight ‘bite’ to it, and no overpowering vinegar taste or order. As you can see by the picture, there was also a nice slice of red onion (very sweet and fresh), pickle, and more.

The beans were in a medium-thick sauce, quite tender, and a nice flavor, without any chunks of beef. They were quite tasty. And the beef brisket sandwich was tender and juicy even before I added the sauce on top. Overall, a winner of a meal.

So — this is the Tale of Two BBQ Jointz. Buckaroo Bill’s is a tourist trap. Not authentic BBQ, although it was filling. But Beartooth Barbeque appears to be the ‘real thing’ for BBQ in West Yellowstone. We will visit it again the next trip to Yellowstone. Your next visit to Yellowstone (an impressive place in it’s own right) should include a trip to Beartooth Barbeque. I don’t think you will be disappointed.

I’ve been sitting here for the past couple of hours watching all of the comments from people that have their web site hosted at BlueHost. BlueHost has two data centers, and at one of them there was a power transformer failure (perhaps fire). Their local electric utility asked them to shut down the data center (except phones) because of the extra load on the power system, so BlueHost did a orderly shutdown of their server farm.

What they didn’t do was take advantage of social networking to alert their customers. Of course, their phone lines were overloaded, so lots of frustration out there.

A lot of people were complaining about lost revenue for their sites. And I am thinking: what was their plan for a service interruption of their web site? Do they have a backup data center? Is their data even backed up? Or are they just relying on their hosting company to take care of everything?

Admittedly, there are things that a data center can do. There can be properly configured backup data generators (with a transfer switch to isolate them from the local power grid). There can be a disaster plan whereby there is better communication to their customers (such a Twitter / Facebook / web page status hosted elsewhere). The BlueHost folks didn’t do well in the communication department; it took until about 2 hours into the outage for them to start Tweeting.

But, all of the whining people out there saying that the outage is costing them money … what is your responsibility to keeping *your* site up for your customers? What data backup plans do you have in place? How are you communicating with *your* customers about problems with *your* site? Do you have a plan? Have you practiced your plan?

We’ve talked about data backups here before. We’ve mentioned that we use Carbonite to back up the data on our home computers. I manage several sites, and I have database backups emailed to me daily (and I have used those backups to recover from damage database tables). My backup plan — my Disaster Recovery Plan — is not perfect; it could use some tweaking.

But — what is your plan?  Comments are invited.

Got a new computer for back to school? Is it safe to use? Is it ready for the evil hackers that are out to get you? Here’s some advice to make the new computer a bit safer. This is also good advice for ‘old’ computers.

My mantra has always been ‘safe computing’, as my two (or three) regular readers know. I’ve posted safe computing tips for years. And I have set up a lot of computers over the many years since I got my first IBM PC back in the 80’s (that’s the 1980’s, smart-aleck!). Here’s what I do to make the computer safe. (This advice is for Windows-based computers. For all you Mactivists, please go someplace else. You too, Linuxists. I just don’t want to argue with you.)

After taking it out of the box, I start it up, and remove any excess software. That’s all the trial-offers and limited-use stuff that usually gets installed on a computer. This includes any limited-time anti-virus software, or anything else. Just remove those programs.

Next step: connect to the Internet (through a wired connection if possible, because it’s faster) visit Microsoft’s www.microsoft.com/protect site and get all of the updates. Set up for getting and installing Microsoft Updates automatically. This may take a while, and a few restarts, but go ahead and do it. Very important. Read a book while it all gets done.

After all the MS updates are installed, get back to the Microsoft site and install Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). It’s free, works really good, and you don’t need any other anti-virus program (that’s why you uninstalled any anti-virus software that came with the computer). Check for any updates again, and do a full MSE scan of your system. (That will be good for another couple of chapters in your book.)

Now, go to www.adobe.com, and installed the latest Adobe Reader software. You can also install the latest Adobe Flash software. Then start each program and use their “update” choice to check for the latest stuff.

If you want, go to www.firefox.comand install the latest Firefox software, if you want to use that as your browser. Do the update thing there too, just because.

At this point, your computer will be fairly safe. Install any other programs you want, check for updates. Then do another MSE scan (a ‘quick’ scan is OK here) to ensure all is well.

Your computer is now ready, and probably the safest it will ever be. The next part involves the ‘safe computing practices’ that are done by the entity between the keyboard and the chair. (That’s you!).

Don’t open email attachments that you didn’t expect. Be wary of anything that asks you to install some add-in to view the latest video. Stay away from the web sites that you don’t want your mom to know you visit. (You know which ones those are.) Don’t join Facebook or Twitter or other ‘groups’ that ask you for your personal information. Make sure that your passwords are changed and fairly complex. You should also change the default passwords on your router (that’s the box that connects you to the Internet). Set up your wireless connection with WEP encryption, with a password that is not the default. (Go ahead and write the password on your router, is case it is forgotten.)

And then think about how you are going to backup all of that data (your music, documents, pictures, etc). What kinds of things will you lose if your hard disk dies. Or your computer is stolen. Or your house is flooded, or burns down. Maybe you think those are remote possibilities, but they do happen. (I use the Carbonite backup service, because it works and I don’t have to think of doing backups.)

Safe computing practices are important. Unless you don’t care about everything on your computer (or your bank account) just disappearing without a trace.

Be careful out there.

I was alerted to a site called “You Rea Der” (www dot you rea – der dot com ; site url obfusticated – no links from me!) that displays content from your web site (blog, whatever) without attribution. Nor is there a way to ask for removing your site from their list.

It’s like they are using the Tools, Page Source (in your web browser) to grab all of your HTML code, then inserting that code in their web pages, with their web advertising. They have a search engine that will display search results similar to other search engines, but the content is delivered from their site, rather than redirecting to your site.

I suspect that they are generating revenue with their advertising surrounding your content. Even though your content, including advertising, is being displayed, any click-tracking or site visits metrics that you have will not register visits through this site.

But there is a way to fix it, although it’s a bit technical. It will work if you have site hosting that belongs to you (so, for instance, it won’t work if your site is on a place like blogger.com). You will need to have access to your site host’s “Control Panel”.

In the Control Panel, there is usually an application called “IP Deny Manager”. On this screen, you can specify the domain name (or IP address) of the site you want to block from accessing your web site. On my host, the IP Deny Manager explains it thusly:

 “This feature will allow you to block a range of IP addresses to prevent them from accessing your site. You can also enter a fully qualified domain name, and the IP Deny Manager will attempt to resolve it to an IP address for you.”

So, to block access of the evil “You Rea Der” site, I just entered their real domain name on that screen. (Thier IP address to block will show as  168.144.109.7 . )  Now, if you go to that evil site and do a search for “BBQJointz”, you will see search results for that word. But if you click on the search results, you do not see the content of BBQJointz (www.bbqjointz.com) .

So, go to your host’s control panel, look for the “IP Deny Manager”, and add an entry for the evil site. If needed, you can ask for help from your host’s support gang.

Let me know how this works out for you.

Been working on another ‘stealth project’. This one came to mind one evening. Looked for a domain name, found it, then started thinking about how to implement it. Couldn’t sleep that night, so got up and registered the domain name. Then started the build process.

Started out with a ‘wireframe’ of the site design by creating the CSS styles to implement the design. Created a couple of databases, built an input form, then started tweaking from there.

One of the features of the site is a voting process. Looked around the Interwebs for some code, and found one possibility. A day’s worth of work and troubleshooting and still couldn’t get it to work, but found another (and better) solution.

So, the ‘stealth site’ was finished today, just a few days after thinking up the idea. And it’s ready for testing by any of my two (maybe even three) regular readers.

Introducing: “MadBecause.com”. A place where you can easily enter things that are bugging you. And look for things that are bugging other people, with an easy way to vote “thumbs up.down” on each item. Try it out at www.madbecause.com . There’s a few things I want to add, but it’s ready for testing.

Who knows if it will be popular, but there’s always hope. In the meantime, I learned a few more things about programming web sites with PHP and Javascript, plus a bit of Ajax. So even if the site turns out to be relegated to the dim recesses of the Interwebs, it was worth the effort due to lessons learned.

I did some more minor tweaks to this site. If you use FireFox, you’ll notice the shadow effects on the posts and pictures. There is a CSS style shadow parameter for IE, but it doesn’t seem to work correctly, which is why the right and bottom sides of the posts are blank. I need to change the borders to use a graphic image, rather than the CSS parameters.

I also figured out how to change the menu bar background to match the header image background (those blue stripes). Once again, the Atahualpa theme that I use on this WordPress installation has proven to be most versatile. I’ve used that theme for at least a half-dozen sites, and each site looks different, which is easily attained with that theme.

There’s also a new link in the “Posts to Remember” box over there on the right. The tri-tip I cooked yesterday was really excellent — tender and juicy and full of flavor. And it is quite easy to do on a gas grill. Give it a try!

Other than that, today was sort of a lazy day. I really need to mow the lawn, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Or maybe the next day.

Juicy and Tender Tri-Tip

After several successful attempts, I believe that I’ve got the technique for grilling a nice and juicy and tender tri-tip. Just ask the family, who have participated (and approved) in this series of experiences. But first, a word about what a ‘tri-tip’ is:

The tri-tip is a cut of beef from the bottom sirloin primal cut. It is a small triangular muscle, usually 1.5 to 2.5 lbs. (675 to 1,150g) per side of beef. In the United States, this cut was typically used for ground beef or sliced into steaks until the late 1950s, when it became a local specialty in Santa Maria, California, rubbed with salt, pepper, garlic salt, and other seasonings, cooked over red oak wood and roasted whole on a rotisserie, smoked in a pit, baked in an oven, grilled, or braised by putting a pot on top of a grill, browning the meat directly on the grill surface before and after the braising. (The tri-tip is still often labeled the “Santa Maria steak”.) Most popular in the Central Coast of California and Central Valley regions of California, it has begun to enjoy increasing popularity elsewhere for its full flavor, lower fat content, and comparatively lower cost. (Wikipedia)

I based my procedure on one found at Continue reading →