ddavelarsen

Thanks Brian! That's going to rattle around in my head all day now too, and support me cleaning house for company tonight. Merry Christmas!

Yeah, there isn't much anyone else can do that offends me. Why would I care? Well, other than trying to control my life or attempting violence against me or my family (or anyone else's family for that matter; violence is not okay), in which case I'll intervene with extreme prejudice. But other than that? Pffft! Go for it. Diversity is what makes for progress. This kind of leads to one of my favorite sayings - actually I wish I could boil it down to a catchy phrase; it's more like a lecture at this point. But anyway, I like to say that if it weren't for diversity we'd still be living in caves, waiting for lightening to strike somewhere so we could cook the chunk meat we scavenged. I think it would be the worst of all possible worlds if we all thought alike. This poor sap is just looking for his 15 minutes in the spotlight. But I'd like to slap him for his effort. He's welcome to believe whatever he likes; he's not welcome to shove it down anyone else's throat.

I'm sorry for myself that I hadn't noticed it. That is a great attitude; thoughts like that are why the Dead are so close to me. I have a sign in my studio that says "Beggar's Tomb." I made it when I was getting out of the Army 30 years ago. (They let 'short' guys do all kinds of wasteful things their last few days. )

I believe that would come under the First Amendment. What these 'wipes don't seem to understand is that the Constitution guarantees free speech (which would include govt agencies); it does not guarantee anyone won't be offended by someone else's free speech. That big f-n' p**sy just needs to go cry himself to sleep and leave actual people with real lives to them. This crap makes me sick.

Whew! I was beginning to think I really am ... special. Good to know you prof! I dig your avatar too. Edit: Man I just saw your sig line - has that always been there? I've been listening to that album for weeks!

That is a great and objective reply, thanks GDub. And man you are right about OS X updates and software compatibility. I did not upgrade to snow leopard for that reason. That means I'm 'stuck' with the OS I have forever more unless I want to spring for Photoshop again - which I'm not going to do. That is a true downside to OS X.

Thank you Gazoo! I'm editing to add a bit. I was not fortunate to be directly involved in my kid's upbringing, but they turned out very well. I'm proud of them. Both are honest, polite, and think for themselves. I'd trust my life to either of them. But I have had some input with my grandkids. Our granddaughter is a little hellion! Her parents are divorced, and it's one of those situations where the parents could be more mature... My granddaughter is pretty confused, what with them playing her off each other. But we get to have her for the weekend occasionally, and work very hard to teach her and show her by example, how to live in a way that is respectful of others. (It makes our life much more pleasant.) It's not easy! She's eight and thinks she's 30. But it's amazing what can be done even with a small amount of open and loving teaching. Truly, children generally want to do the 'right thing.' Their downfall comes from not having been taught what that is, and why it's important. For what it's worth, I've also been around a lot of children who clearly have been taught to be polite and to respect other people. All is not lost.

Cool story.

Thank you for the heads up! I have submitted my comment and will forward the link to my family who also use e-cigs.

Absolutely!

I'll just add my position, which is somewhat counter to others given here. One reason I feel comfortable doing this is that VT is a very open and informed/informative place; the best I've found. My approach to vaping in public is to just do it. I do not flaunt it. I try to be discrete; not let any vapor float away or escape when I exhale. That means no primer puff, and smaller drags. I vape at my desk at work. I've never asked anyone, because I know that HR would outright ban it without doing any due diligence. So I carry a CD around with all the papers and articles I've collected - pro and con - to give to HR whenever the topic comes up, as it surely will. My coworkers have seen the effect of my primer puff and asked about it. They were all very interested and supportive when I explained what was going on. They know how many times I've tried to quit smoking. My boss is a bit uneasy about it, but supports my decision. Afterall, I'm at my desk working about 20% more time now that I'm vaping rather than going to the car to smoke. And I don't stink anymore. I have not vaped in any meetings! Even I have limits. All that being said, I will add that my commitment is to not-vape if the owner of any establishment requests me not to. In such a case I'll whip out my info CD and put my unit away, thanking them for their interest. Hopefully we can be good ambassadors for vaping and help to create a positive view of e-cigs in public. Remember - we do no harm.

Welcome NavyLight! I started with the same unit from V4L that you're talking about. I found it acceptable, and used it more often than I used analogs. My wife still uses it occasionally, but she quit smoking some time ago anyway. I do have experience with the futzing around issue. Last night as we were watching a movie, I kept dripping and vaping. My wife asked, "Do you have to do that all the time?" Yep; it's what keeps my flavor and vapor maxed out. But she obviously prefers the cartomizer since it doesn't require frequent intervention. I have refilled cartomizers up to four times successfully. If you carefully pry off the white tip and remove a rubber gasket inside, you can refill easily. I put a dot on each cart with a sharpie each time I refilled it to keep track. The dots stay on just fine. Good luck with your father-in-law, and congratulations on taking up your new lifestyle.

Oh man, that's just fantastic! I'm going to share that with my family, who all have similar beliefs. BirdDog, thanks for taking a stand. There just aren't enough "parents" around anymore.

That's great! Thanks for my big fat grin!

Congratulations Green! You've made yet another step towards a healthier lifestyle. I use a PC at work and a Mac at home. I've used Macs for about 12 years. I do remember that I had quite a learning curve getting used to the interface in OS X. Finder is the key to your computer; learn to use it and you'll be happy. One thing I really do not like about Macs, and this has always been true, is the menu bar at the top of the display. That can be quite a hassle, just in covering all that real estate with the mouse. But it's a small thing. Often I still have a moment twice a day, mentally switching between the keyboard shortcuts on PC vs Mac. But once you find how stable and secure your Mac is, and how nice it is that all the apps look and work similarly, you'll be in hog heaven.

Getting caught up has been quite a ride! What one day away from here will do is kind of overwhelming. Remind me not to do that again! I'm so thankful to have fallen in with a bunch of interested and smart people. My other forum experience is with custom knife makers. While many of these guys are absolutely mind-blowing artisans, writing isn't generally a strong suit. Making beautiful stuff sure is. You folks have so much diverse experience I can't help but have my mind expanded any time I read in VT. It's great. Thanks for all the wisdom. Between VT and Knife Dogs, I'm becoming an all around better vaper and maker - and a better human.

Amen! Steven Wright has been my favorite comic since the first time I saw him. I have a whole collection of his stuff (on paper) that I use sometimes for sig lines. What a guy.

We had a similar experience with one of the initial Chinese units; button stuck down and the thing fried. I think you folks have a good idea to disassemble things for safety, though I know me and I probably won't do that regularly. I keep my VP2 beside the bed at night just in case I wake up and want a vape, so at least if it started to burn it'd be nearby and I might figure out something was wrong before too much damage was done. That is a sobering story; thanks for sharing it. But while caution is always in order, please don't judge all work by a single example, even all Proteges. Anything that comes from human hands contains the potential for error. Entropy rules; statistics happen. I'd bet that you'll never have an experience like this again - but better safe than sorry!

That's righteous Brian, thanks!

No kidding! I have no interest in cutting down or quitting nicotine, except that nana has a great point - to not let any substance control her. That is totally valid, and one I'm intimately familiar with. Whenever I do decide to taper off and quit the nic, that will be why. Vaping is a gift, one I'm more thankful for than I can adequately express.

Wow man, I dig these long paragraphs. Makes me think of Henry Miller. There are a few things about the various OSes I'd like to point out. The most important of them being security. Mac OS X and Linux share a common origin, and one of the most important aspects of that is their architecture. When you are working in windose, you're running at the "root," administrative level. That's because windose doesn't have any other layers. So whenever some malware wants to take over the machine, it takes over at the most fundamental level. In Linux and OS X, you're logged in as a user; admin privileges have to be manually evoked. The short value of that is that no software can install on the machine without the user's express consent, and then it generally only installs at the user level - not at the core of the system. So the worst that can happen to a Mac or Linux machine is to have the user account corrupted. That's much less traumatic to correct (though deeply traumatic all the same) than losing the entire drive. Windose is fundamentally flawed in that regard, from conception. It was never meant to be a networked OS, and M$ has never taken the hard step (like Apple did when it switched to OS X) of starting over from scratch from a secure base. Like you mentioned it is possible to emulate windose in OS X and Linux, and you nailed it when you said that is a less than stellar experience. And for business purposes, particularly for legacy windose applications, it's 100% not worth the pain to try to make windose apps run in any other environment. I feel sorry for your customer's experience; his tech guy was either just an Apple fanboy or an M$ hater that didn't have the experience - or respect for his own responsibility - to make a wise choice. That's really too bad. One of Ms greatest successes has been ensuring that their customers are life-long captives. While we might rue that reality, it's real and trying to migrate a windose installation to some other base strikes me as deeply foolish. The smart choice would be to fork development going forward and make that transition through attrition and careful planning and testing. Things like that just give alternative OSes a bad name, when the reality is it's a creation of M$ - a brilliant one that works fantastically well. That being said, there is absolutely no reason that a small company, at least, couldn't run its business successfully in an OS X environment. And there's so much great software available for OS X that for personal computing purposes, no one has to live with a crappy crashing and insecure experience. Prices for Apple machines are higher, no doubt about it - though when you compare apples to apples, so to speak, the price difference between a Mac and an equivalent machine running windose is much less than you'd think. Apple makes kickass, powerful computers, while most commodity windose machines are stripped down, built from lowest-common-denominator hardware. That's the real source of the price difference. Apple does get a premium for its brand, but that is something that they can overdo, ultimately losing sales to a better value somewhere else. Like Linux. And there are so many heavy-duty business applications available for Linux that no company has to be stuck with windose. The entire internet runs on open source software; so does Wall Street. And the NSA. OSS is the best kept secret in the world. That windose is so prevalent in business is not a function of best fit, but of criminal activity. Brilliant criminal marketing. Linux is relatively new to the game but make no mistake: It's the future and nothing M$ can do is going to stop it. Linux - and open source software generally - is simply better, more innovative, faster to evolve and less expensive. And you're blessed with the freedom to change without those horrible business-killing experiences that come with a windose legacy. I don't want to start my M$-education rant here, though no doubt you'll all get bits and pieces of it over time. Let it suffice to say that I believe that any ethical person that truly understood how microsoft conducts its business, would never - Never - give them another dime of their honestly-earned money. Except for business subject to critical application lockin, where it's much more difficult to escape. If anyone is ever interested, I can share enough court documentation to change your mind forever. At one time I thought "what's the big deal?" when people talked about how corrupt M$ is. Then I started reading court documents, and I soon made the decision that I would never again support them with any aspect of my life. I abhor microsoft with every fiber of my being. So! How 'bout them Bears?

Man that's exactly why, when my body woke me at 2:00 am, I didn't just go back to bed. It's a whole new day! And I want my piece of it. I love being alive.

Ah... Well. Let's not get carried away! Being suddenly able to climb stairs is one thing - but enjoying it? There was a reason I didn't go out for basketball all those decades ago in high school. One afternoon running up and down stairs convinced me. Oh yeah! I get that too. And oddly, my sense of smell is intermittent as well. I hadn't realized it though. "Joyful" - that is a good way to feel. I think this is one of my favorite threads - and that's saying something.

At this point it looks like it'll be Ubuntu for me too. I just like the way it looks and it seems that (until 9.x anyway) it 'just worked.' There's been some question in my family whether Shuttleworth got the boot; do you have an opinion, or better, inside information, on that? I'm just curious. That one took me by surprise.

Ha! That's great! Thanks Brian.