I had never heard of the BBB method before looking at this site. After reading pretty much everything I could find I found out that the recommendation of the folks on this site was spot on.
The BBB method is Bleach, Borax, Baking Soda and Muratic Acid. Muratic Acid is by far the nastiest substance, it's sold at lowes individually or in a four pack. Bleach can be found at wal-mart in 10% grade. Baking soda can also be found at wal-mart in 12 lb. bags. For the Borax and Baking soda, I recommend getting a measuring cup and determining the weight of a cup, that makes the math a bit easier than my bad guessing. I ordered the Borax through Amazon.
Muratic acid can be added directly to the pool in front of a return fitting, by moving as you pour it in or by mixing the acid using a bucket of water (if you are lowering pH). I haven't figured out yet which is the best approach. To lower Alkalinity, I understood that you pour the muratic acid in a column. I haven't had to do this yet. Since I have a new pool I am constantly lowering the pH, I'm hoping that comes to an end before to long.
After I saw the CYA creep on my own pool, I switched over to pure bleach. As others have recommended, I'd use the pucks for when I go on vacation or if the CYA of our pool gets down to around 30.
I became more convinced that shopping at the local pool store was bad for two reasons.
Went to the local pool store and the guy in front of me spent over $175 on a powder shock for his pool. Not only was that expensive but he was also adding additional chemicals to his pool in the form of the powder (could have been calcium which is hard to lower). If he had followed the BBB method he could have just used bleach and saved a lot of money with less long term impact on his pool.
Second, my neighbor had a CYA of 176 and they gave him one of those algae products at $50 per pack. He used five. When he went back to the store after using the first two, they told him it had dropped his CYA to 120 so he bought three more. I ran the test using the LaMotte Water Spin after all five had been applied and the CYA was over 176. He's draining his pool now and switching over to the BBB method.
The only thing I'll get from the pool store now is their water bottles for collecting samples, they work great.