I am sadly allergic to pine and ceder
So is your snake... never use either of those.

The VE-100 is a on/off style thermostat, this means that it won't hold terribly consistent temperatures. I would suggest that you look into the Herpstat intro, it is a better/more accurate thermostat for only $10 more.

http://spyderrobotics.com/home/products.html

Ultratherms are good quality UTHs, you shouldn't have any issues with them as long as you are using them correctly. (UTH's cannot increase the air temperature in the cage. this means that if the room the cage is in drops below 75 degrees a secondary heat source will be required (like a heat lamp))

Paper towels/newspaper works best with UTH's, the thinner the substrate layer the better. If you use aspen, Eco-Earth, or cypress you will need to keep the layer 1/2" thick or less.

Check out this thread on cage heating: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...t-Thermometers