^thats a flat out embellishment about throwing wood and food inside the BGE and leaving it for a round of golf and a brew session..
For low and slow cooks, you forgot to mention properly building your fire, sweeping the ash out and getting the pit stabilized at the desired temp. I'd be very reluctant to leave the pit unattended for that long w/o a pit controller as well (stoker/guru).
I've got a guru, but before I did, I did several long cooks with a butt/picnic and left to go play a round, and never had any issues.
Properly build a fire? How hard is is? I put a couple large chunks in the fire box, fill my chimney starter with a bunch of high quality dense charcoal like Wicked, and light it.. 15 minutes it's ready to go, dump it, close the lid, adjust the dampers, and go grab your food to put on it.
Obviously if you are a new owner, you won't have an idea of where to put the dampers and how much or how little to close, but after a while you learn, thats the only "time eater" I can think of.
Ash wise.. I pull ash the day after a cook, or the evening when I clean it all up and put the cover on it. If you leave it, then pulling ash takes 5 minutes at best. Use a good wood, and you won't have a ton of ash anyways, find what works for you and your style of cooking. Cowboy aint bad wood, it lights fast, burns hot and fast, but makes a fair bit of ash.
I wasn't knocking a pellet cooker, just commenting on someone that wanted something that was easy to do everything, which a kamado style ceramic cooker can do, and does it well.
Some people don't like gas or electric smokers... doesn't mean you can't have some world class Q off of them because they don't use the gold standard of seasoned wood and fire.