It's always a gamble at yard sales. I've picked up a few bootleg movies over the years and they rarely work right, seems like every other house has a stack of them now.

Wait, you mean I'm not supposed to cram half a bag of frozen nuggets in there like it's a game of Tetris? I did the exact same thing with chicken wings last month. Thought I was saving time but ended up with sad, floppy wings that tasted like steamed rubber. Now I do two batches and it takes a bit longer but seriously, the difference is night and day.

Didn't someone say you're more likely to get hurt with those than with a knife, @the_hugo?

You ever notice how people always want to skip the expensive fix until the problem smacks them in the face? It's like when my buddy kept ignoring his check engine light, then his transmission blew on the highway. Same thing with liners - customers think they're saving money by skipping replacement, but that soot buildup is just the check engine light for their chimney. Once they see the black crust eating away at the flue, they finally get why the old timer's advice is gold. Some lessons you just gotta learn the hard way I guess.

Yeah, "straw pellets get super dusty though" is a real issue. I tried them a couple years back and yeah, you get that fine powder that floats around everywhere, plus they break down to mush if the bedding gets even slightly wet. What I ended up doing was mixing regular shavings with pine pellets. I get the pellets at a feed store for like $6 a bag, and one bag of shavings lasts me twice as long when I mix them 50/50. The pellets soak up the wet spots way better and keep smell down, and the shavings give some fluff so it's not just hard pellets. You gotta watch out for dust with the pellets too, but it's way less than straight straw pellets.