Author Archives: Brenda Bell

Best potatoes ever!

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Slather red potatoes in olive oil in a large bowl and dump in a bunch of sea salt. Use your hands to mix ’em up. If they don’t feel gritty, you need more salt.

Fire up your smoker and get the temp up to 300-350. Throw in the chips, position a grate on top of the plate setter and put the potatoes on the grate.

Close up the smoker and watch the temperature drop to 200. And stay there. Oops.

After about an hour, put your chicken on the upper grate and watch the temperature get stuck at 200 while the chicken just drips its juices on the potatoes.

Wait another 45-60 minutes… screw this… remove plate setter. Oops, potatoes are done and chicken isn’t close. Remove potatoes and wrap ’em in foil.

Continue to smoke the chicken. Aw, crap! Now the darn smoker wants to settle around 350. Insert thermometer and discover that chicken might be slightly overdone. Plate it and serve it anyway.

Uh… anyone want to trade me their potatoes for my chicken? Anyone? Come on, guys… think about your health. Anything that tastes this good can’t be good for you!

Online Clipboard

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Adding a COM port to a Windows Fusion VM on Mac OS X

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This article applies to the following:

  • Mac OS X 10.8.2
  • VMWare Fusion 5.0.2
  • Windows XP SP3
  • RadioShack USB-to-Serial Adapter
  • Macbook Pro Retina

Install the Mac OS X drivers:

  • Download http://www.xbsd.nl/pub/osx-pl2303.kext.tgz and unzip to a temporary directory.
  • Open a terminal window and execute the following commands:


    • cd /path/to/osx-pl2303.kext
    sudo cp -R osx-pl2303.kext /System/Library/Extensions/
    cd /System/Library/Extensions
    sudo chmod -R 755 osx-pl2303.kext
    sudo chown -R root:wheel osx-pl2303.kext
    sudo kextload ./osx-pl2303.kext
    sudo kextcache -system-cache

  • Launch System Preferences and verify the drivers loaded properly. Under Network, you should see a device labeled PL2303.

Since Mac OS X and Windows can’t use the device at the same time, you’ll need to unload the kext. Open a terminal window and execute the following command:

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/osx-pl2303.kext

Note that you’ll need to repeat this command if you reboot your MacBook.

Install the Windows drivers:

  • Download the 260-0183 RadioShack driver from the RadioShack support site. Extract the files to a temporary directory.
  • Use the VMWare menu to connect the Radio Shack USB Device to the VM. Windows will launch the New Hardware applet. When prompted, instruct Windows to install the driver from the temporary directory containing the extracted driver files.
  • Launch Device Manager and verify the RadioShack device appears under Ports (COM & LPT).