ddavelarsen

Yay! I found my hero for yesterday! Cripes folks, I started having connection problems about this point last night and just gave up and went and watched "Paranormal Activity" (which is one scary freakin movie). So I didn't get to appoint DAYVAPE last night. But you're it buddy.

I know where you're coming from nana; I don't like the hard plastic either. I think of them as 'bits', as in a horse's mouth... Ugh. (That's a word.)

I wouldn't get too concerned just yet nana. Uma lives in the country, where God is her neighbor; she only gets into 'town' where they have electricity and stuff every so often. Uma knows how to live. I'm so jealous! Even weather in the mountains isn't always as bad as it seems from under a roof. One can hunker down and deal with it, grinning all the while. Mostly, anyway. She'll be okay.

Well, maybe I'm just a grouchy old man. It had to do with their policy on rebates for a Droid phone. The price was $300 with a $100 rebate. Okay, I can live with that - except the rebate was a Visa debit card. What a load of crap. I don't want a debit card, I want a check. You ever tried to get your money out of one of those things? Last few bucks are just ... theirs. If I may understate the situation, that kind of gets under my skin. So I told them how I felt, walked out, and went to Best Buy and just bought the phone for $200. Stupid, arrogant companies. What's really funny is the person in line before me had the same reaction - and she walked out too. Rant off.

Sorry man! That was my befogged brain, not your communication. I'm still waiting for my 510s so I can try them on both the VP2 and VP PT. Then you guys will finally get the Real Facts, the Final Opinion, on which is the better atty. I'm sure you're waiting with baited breath, right? I know what I think of the 801s - they're inconsistent, even among the same batches. And I've never, so far as I can tell, gotten the same kind twice, even subsequent orders from the same supplier. I have maybe one 801 that always works, gives good flavor and vapor, doesn't leak...and that's the only one I've ever had and probably will ever have. It was one of the three I got from Arno when he first got them in after that long wait. The later ones are nowhere near as nice. Sigh. One of the things I'm anticipating the most about vaping is when US manufacturers start making attys. Then we'll see consistency and decent life from them. Of course, an atty will cost $40...

Congratulations Vacker! Wow, that's just almost unimaginable to me - a whole year vaping! I bet you've really seen some changes in the industry during your vaping year. Buying yourself a Spade is a sweet treat and well earned. When you said "spreadsheet" I got my biggest grin of the day - 95% of my working life is spent in spreadsheets; it's my defacto tool for almost everything at my desk, whether here or at home. I started one too, by default last weekend when I wanted to add up what I'd spent so far. Maybe I'll follow your lead and keep it going. Will have to organize it a bit better, but it sure makes sense to do it that way. The idea of saving almost four grand is really a great incentive! I think I'll show your post to my wife. Congratulations again, and vape on!

What a load of double-speak! What a freakin jerk. How in the world do you go from a law prohibiting sale of tobacco to minors to making e-cigs unlawful? That doesn't even makes sense. I read it several times thinking I must have misunderstood the context of the e-cig part, but if it does make sense, I don't see it. Who is this 'wipe? And did someone actually vote for him before?? Does CA require lobbyists to register and its legislators to report donations? That whole thing just smells. Time to start wrting again?

Frankly, thatwas the first thing I thought when I saw your candles - "I wonder what kind of juice she'd make?!" So keep us posted your favorite recipes! (Unless you take on a sideline juice business, in which case some of your formulae might be quite proprietary... )

I'm going to give TastyPuff a try too! Thanks for the heads up. For what it's worth at this point, myfreedomesmokes.com has double-strength fruit flavors in strengths 24-48mg. That's where I've been buying all my juice for a couple of months. Prices are not low, service is decent though not 100%. The one issue I had though, got cleared up after one reminder. I think they've gotten very busy since so few vendors sell juice strong enough for former heavy smokers.

This is cool Uma. I haven't had the guts to mix flavors together yet but it sounds like fun. I'm really glad this is working out for you!

Very cool! Glad to hear your experience. These guys really are great; they want and appreciate our business, kind of unlike, for example, Verizon who P-Oed me so bad Monday I walked out the store. But anyway. Thanks for the happy vibes! Small companies rule.

Congratulations nana! I'm so happy for you I'm grinning all over my desk. I know what you mean about the hard tips, but can't tell you where to get soft ones for sure. My limited experience suggests that most vendors don't get the same things repeatedly and it's just a toss up whether what you order the second time from anyone is going to be like that last thing you got from them. That can be very disappointing, but it's one of those things that will work itself out as this industry matures and things become more standardized. I just keep reusing the ones I like. And tossed the ones I don't (yes, that was hard). I got blank carts from Arno last, and they do have soft tips.

Absolutely - your nic level. I'm the local poster boy for real nicotine; I use 48mg and it barely gets me by some days. Like today; I've been about to bite someone's head off all day, and I know it's because I'm not getting enough nic - I can feel it. It really depends on how much you smoked. If you were doing a pack a day of regular - not 'light' - analogs, you probably need at least 36mg. That's hard to find; I guess vendors are mostly light smokers so they're concerned about customers getting too much. That's too bad, because it sets a precedent for low nic levels when the FDA gets its chance to regulate this stuff; then we're not going to get anything above 24mg, would be my guess, because that's what most people seem to think is "high." BS! I've never vaped anything that made me feel even close to getting 'enough' nicotine. One reason I'm planning to DIY my own juice. I just can't get satisfaction all the time. It can be very frustrating. I smoked about 25 Pall Mall non-filters a day, and that was not enough nicotine for me. I smoked until I choked, and that was all I could do. Vaping has sometimes been a real struggle for me, just trying to keep even. So anyway, that's probably what it is. What device are you using? If you're not getting huge clouds of vapor that might also make a difference. Keep trying, you'll get it figured out.

Thanks for all the good time replies my friends. Cripes, what a day. Vaping soup was just the beginning... At least our LordVapor had a good one though! Hat's off to you bro; I'll try to get over there before I have to go to sleep. BirdDog, in fact it was pizza today. Not bad, but not homemade soup. Sigh. Schizo, I'm with you man - not putting my stuff in anything but my pocket anymore! I do have a kind of 'man purse' - it's a WWI Swiss ammo case, beat up leather, not too girlie-boy stuff. I can put my VP2 and juice and spares in it just fine, PT - not quite. I'll just hang that around my neck and hope I don't get into an accident on my commute. Brian taking the rest of the day off was in fact my plan - until the workday intervened. Sheesh. Classic Monday. Oh wait! ... Well, freakin Monday anyway. I appreciate all the good humor, this was a prime day for it. Vape on!

V4L was the first place I bought anything from, and they're good folks. Always sending bonus stuff. I just gotta have a lot more clouds of vapor than I got from the KR808s, but at least they have 36mg juice and cartomizers. Not enough of that going around. Glad you got your stuff in and are back on comfort wright! I hope your mother likes it too.

LOL! (Literally)

So my wife made some typically superfine soup this weekend and naturally I looked forward to my lunches this week. Because I'm no power-mad suit carrying a briefcase, nor am I some sneaker-wearing parent with a ballistic nylon lunch kit, I carry my lunch and whatever to work in a plastic grocery bag. Suits my proletariat leanings quite nicely. This morning I packed my lunch, the bills to mail, the "quick start" guide to my new Droid, some other notes of stuff I needed to do today, and my VP PT & juice in a trusty plastic grocery bag. And headed out the door. Before I backed out of the driveway I hooked the PT into the car's outlet and dripped some juice onto the atty. Dang thing dripped 'juice' all over my slacks! And had a really wet hit. Yuck, I thought, time to clean this atty. But there was sufficient vapor to get me to work. When I set the bag on my desk and started pulling stuff out of it I noticed ... everything was wet! And smelled like soup... Rats! Frantically I got stuff out of there and everything was covered in soup; notes, bills, vitamin jar ... PT. Cold and greasy soup. Sloshing around in the bottom of the bag. A 6 ml bottle of watermelon just below the surface of the little lake in there. Sigh. Okay, long story short I blotted all the paper stuff dry, took my PT to the sink and used damp paper towels to clean it off, stuck the corner of a paper towel into the atty, cried a little, and went back to my desk. I debated a moment to decide whether I wanted to risk a short pluging that thing into the company's computer, but I figured that was better than risking my own. Hey! It lit up! So I screwed the atty on it, dripped some nice watermelon onto it ... Hey! It worked! Tasted a little bit like wet socks - actually, old wet socks - but it kicked out some vapor so I was heartened. To shorten this some more, the soup-flavored atty has finally come all the way back around. I'm certainly relieved.

Wow wright that's awesome! Good on you! Gold star day. I'm hoping you get your new cartos today and all is sunshine again. It's fantastic that you folks are so committed to vaping that you'd never pick up an analog. I don't think I'm in that boat yet; let there be a wrinkle in my vaping experience and I'd find an analog and choke it down with no backward glance. Vaping is still an effort for me, regardless all the wonder of it. Analogs are just so easy, and so prevalent. The only thing that saves me some days is taking a hit off someone's cigarette; that sucks so bad it's obvious which I prefer. But I still need that reminder occasionally. Ugh. (I think that's a word.) To take that thought a little further, I've been trying to figure out analogy for analogs vs vaping, a catchy phrase. Too bad I'm not very creative. The best I've managed so far is, "Smoking is to vaping as a Sahara afternoon is to moonlight." Ack! That really truly sucks the big one, and I wish someone with a decent command of English would come up with something that works. I want a nice catchy and enticing phrase to lead off my vaping info sheet. I have not used mine!

Probably not the best member to reply to this as I'm in "nic rules!" category, but I would expect some basic physical withdrawal symptoms for 10-14 days if you go cold turkey. Beyond that it's all mental. I have some experience with addiction, and really what it comes down to long term, is conviction. There's some evidence that replacing one harmful substance with another that is not harmful does work, but there is so far little evidence to show that once the palliative is removed the former addiction won't reassert itself. Freedom from addiction really is nothing more than a decision that you make -- every second. (After a while, that can become a habit too, which makes it somewhat less in-your-face in my experience.) I quit smoking once for five years, and next thing you know - I was smoking again. Just like that. Tapering off nic and continuing to vape at 0 seems to me a totally viable way to get away from smoking and nicotine addiction. One day all the hassle of vaping may possibly also become too much to maintain and one might slowly vape less and less, until it just becomes an occasional nostalgic practice. That's my theory anyway, and I'm sticking to it until I hear someone else's.

Boy I really hate giving govt agencies more power. That just never seems to go well for regular folks.

Hi yourself! I think the best policy, for men at least, is to address the fair gender as "Ladies" and be happy they're out there.

Oh yeah - gotcha covered. I hate to be the one to point it out, but eventually we Will be paying tax on nic liquid at minimum. There is no doubt. So I'm doing my best (on hold temporarily) to stock up, as much as is rational given expiration dates, on juice and DIY supplies.

Yep, that's my policy too. Saturday I had breakfast with a bunch of IT guys (that's a story in itself). I always just set my VP2 and juice bottle on the table when I sit down and vape whenever the notion takes me. These guys still comment on it -- largely curiosity and amazement my brother and I don't smoke, and partially I think because they're concerned someone is going to take offense. No restaurant person has ever commented. Anyway, there were two retired [assumption] couples seated at the next table. I was letting fairly healthy* clouds of vapor go, and though they noticed they said nothing. No smell, no problem. And the VP2 is obviously not a cigarette! I think people often mistake it for a medical device. *pun was lucky, not intentional Wow, good point! I'm adding that to my HR arsenal. Asking forgiveness rather than permission is definitely my standard decision mode. My theory about vaping at work (which would not work everywhere) is to just do it and establish up front that there's no ugly social consequence. My only concern is that HR gets wind of it before there's a critical mass of vapers, and applies the standard knee-jerk position response: Niet! As it stands, I'm the only vaper among a thousand employees in our building. Not the most favorable odds. But I am arming myself with rational arguments. The day will come - sooner than later I expect - when smoking is prohibited on the entire campus. My goal is to establish vaping as a viable alternative for the smokers. (I've tried to inform them about it obviously, but no takers so far. As usual, I'm standing alone. I'm good for it.) As you can see, stealth vaping is not my choice. If nothing else I believe it sets a bad precedent that we think there's something inherently not-okay about it. I will not take that position. There is nothing wrong about vaping and I'm not going to act like there is.

Actually, no - no 510s yet. But they're on the way. Tell you what; I'll just take your word for it and leave the tip in it. Okay? Thankfully I bet our friend Phaseman will too. Whew. I've tried both using the cart-less tip that comes on the atty, and trimming off the white plastic. Either is fine. But I'm just lazy and haven't had the melting problem with 801s. Maybe that's more a 510 thing? I guess I'm going to find out pretty soon. Thanks for saving Phaseman some potential grief Brian!

Okay, I added it up and I'm just a little behind the eight ball. Hardware - KR808 kit, VP2 kit, VP PT, attys &c - 443 Juice - 290 Total - 733! Amt saved on analogs - 462 Depth of Hole - 271! Yikes! Sigh. I'm sure it'll catch up eventually - right? I have to say that $42 of that was totally wasted on crap attys. And I have a boatload of juice to last several months, for sure. But I'm not done buying PVs yet, much less juice and DIY supplies. So, maybe it'll take a bit longer to break even than I thought, eh?