Difficulty Following Directions :: Pot Melt - Take I {one-of-a-kind fused glass art, Knoxville, TN}

So, have you ever researched how to do a project on the Internet and thought that even though 10 different people pointed out the importance of a particular step you didn't think it was important and skipped it? Yeah, I never did that either...until Saturday.
I decided to do my first fused glass pot melt and I researched for quite some time to determine the proper firing schedule (heating and cooling rates of speed and hold times for the kiln) and how the glass should be placed in the clay pot and how the shelves should be prepared and even how to prepare the clay pot. Apparently there is a big reason every set of instructions or tutorial I came across indicated that I would need to make the hole in the bottom of the pot larger...and that reason is that the glass, when in its molten state, is thicker than molasses and runs just as slow.
So here are some photographs to show exactly what you can expect if you don't have a large enough hole in the bottom of the pot for the glass to flow through. It sure does make an interesting glass sculpture....
Clay pot filled with red and yellow opaque glass, sitting on prepared kiln shelves, and ready for melting.

This is not how it was supposed to turn out, but it is rather cool looking. Don't you think?

The disc came out just like I planned, except for the clay pot on top of it. How am I going to get that off of there?

The glass that didn't make it out. Interesting...

I will have to cut the "stem" of glass off and grind it down a bit and then re-fuse the glass onto maybe a disc of black to make it look really cool. I have learned that I need to follow instructions or be prepared to accept the results I get. They say you learn something new every day so I will consider that my new thing for Saturday, May 2nd, 2009.