Friday Night Links: Big, Fat edition (9/5/2009)…

This edition was so big and fat, I had to do it on Saturday morning instead of my usual Friday night posting.

• Homemade BBBQ Smoker – The extra B stands for BYOBB. That extra B? That’s a typo. Its a Simpsons quote, folks, look it up. Simpsons quotes aside, anytime you can build a $1,000+ ceramic smoker for $50 is a good day. Metal smokers shed heat like crazy, but the ceramic will give you all the insulation you need to get that slow-cook goodness.
• Canadian Cellphone Contracts – While we have it pretty good here in the US as far as cell phone contracts and service go, our friendly neighbors to the north don’t have it quite so good. However, a group that represents the carriers of Canada recently proposed a “consumer bill of rights.” It includes contract opt outs or grandfathering if a material change in pricing is made, better customer service, and privacy improvement. As usual on these sort of things, the proof will be in the proverbial pudding.
• Buying a Chef’s Knife – This includes everything from various types of knives to maintaining the knives to how to select a cutting board. Very helpful around the kitchen.
• Discounted HDTVs – This one is a little late, but you still have some time. Best Buy is massively discounting all its TVs, most likely to make room for new models that will be gracing the showroom floor shortly for the upcoming holiday season. If you aren’t sure what TV is best for you, you can always contact The Digitante and we can figure out what you need. Just head to the About page for contact information.
• Disk Defragmenter – As you add and delete files from your hard drive, the pieces of those files can’t always go right next to each other. A defragmenter will move those  pieces next to each other and really speed things up. This is especially important if you have solid state hard drive such as the hard drives that come in some netbook laptops. Lifehacker has a weekly feature where they ask what everyone uses for a particular task and then declares a winner. Defraggler won the battle of the defragmenting programs.  Check it out and speed things up.
• Bulk Hard-Boiled Eggs – Technically they’re not boiled at all, but cooking eggs in the oven will speed up the process and hopefully provide you with easy to peel eggs.