Did you ever figure out if your neighbor used wet wood on purpose or just didn't know any better? In my experience, I had a buddy who swore by soaking apple chips for ribs until the bark turned out like wet newspaper and he finally listened to a competition pitmaster who said wet wood just makes steam. Your mileage may vary, but I've found that dry chunks give a cleaner smoke that actually sticks to the meat instead of turning into a rain cloud.

Man that sucks, I've been there. The cheap ones are always a gamble, but I'd expect an $80 tool to last more than two jobs. If you still have the broken piece, you might be able to weld a nut onto it and back it out that way, or try a slide hammer with some vice grips if you can get a bite.

My 2003 iPod’s battery would last three hours now, but @shane_nguyen I still defend it like it’s a family member.

The SPIVA report you mentioned actually shows something even crazier when you dig into the survivorship bias... about 30% of hedge funds just straight up closed or stopped reporting numbers over that same ten years. So the 85% failure rate is actually being generous because the dead funds got wiped out of the averages entirely. That made me rethink chasing any "smart money" manager who claims they have an edge. Now I just look for total market index funds with expense ratios under 0.05% and call it a day.

Tracked it once for a week @adams.barbara and hit 47 "real quick" add-ons before I lost count. Now I just embrace the chaos.