It has different flavors people like. And yeah it's dumb, but so is smoking cigarettes in general and no one starts out addicted to that.
I used to smoke Marlboro Reds. I quit in '98.

I was nicotine free for about 11 or 12 years. Then hookah bars started getting cool. So I'd go out with my friends. Then some of them bought hookahs for parties at their house, so I did the same. Then I started smoking at home when there were no parties happening. Eventually, I found myself coming home from work, packing the hookah, and keeping a coal on it all night until bedtime. At which point, I made the obvious realization: "I'm smoking again."

Around that time, you could get e-cigs from china, but they weren't a "thing" in the US yet. I'd heard about them because my step-son got suckered into a $70/month subscription to some fly-by-night chinese e-cig service on his bank card, and I had to help sort it out. Which led me to to doing research about them.

They had a lot of the characteristics I liked about hookah: Cool flavors, less harsh smoke, not smelling like an ashtray. So I started vaping and put away the hookahs. Sometimes, my liquid or atomizers would be seized by the FDA, even though they really had no leg to stand on. But what can ya do? I wasn't about to start smoking cigs again. And even with the occasional lost shipment, it was still cheaper than smoking too (by a ton).

Eventually, we reached the state we're in now, which is nice. There's a lot more technology around the vaping devices--they equipment is safer, has better features, and atomizers now last me 8 weeks instead of 5-7 days (for the same approximate cost per atomizer). I can fill a tank which usually lasts me half a day (instead of dripping 20 drops of liquid into the end of a cartridge every half hour or so). And, unlike cigs, I don't find myself winded or short of breath after exertion, and I have just as much lung capacity as when I was smoke free (which is very noticeable as a woodwind player). So, it works for me. I don't even have to buy batteries. I work in IT, and I took home a box of dead laptop batteries, ripped them open, got out the multimeter, and pulled all the good 18650's from the shell. I ended up with about 15 good batteries.

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Takes care of the "sucking on a smoking stick" craving for some people. Anecdotally, I know multiple folks that quit nicotine by switching to vape, and slowly tapering the nicotine dose. Has anyone gotten around to studying whether this is a (statistically) working path for cessation?
I think e-cig companies are resistant to that idea--they'd rather be "alternative nicotine devices." If they were bonafide smoking cessation devices, they'd be regulated as a medical device instead of a vice.
 
But both a cigarette and vape-thing have nicotine?
They can, if you want them to.
Cigarettes vaporize/aerosolize stuff via combustion, which generates smoke (smoke is an aerosol), which is then inhaled, but cigarettes are pretty much limited to being made of tobacco (plus whatever additives).
Vaping allows you to vaporize/aerosolize whatever stuff you put in it, not limited to tobacco, and instead of being carried along with smoke, it is carried by water vapor (which is less harmful). The debate is about whether breathing vaporized oil/glycol (the carrier liquid which is added along with the water vapor) is less harmful than breathing smoke in the first place.

--Patrick
 
They can, if you want them to.
Cigarettes vaporize/aerosolize stuff via combustion, which generates smoke (smoke is an aerosol), which is then inhaled, but cigarettes are pretty much limited to being made of tobacco (plus whatever additives).
Vaping allows you to vaporize/aerosolize whatever stuff you put in it, not limited to tobacco, and instead of being carried along with smoke, it is carried by water vapor (which is less harmful). The debate is about whether breathing vaporized oil/glycol (the carrier liquid which is added along with the water vapor) is less harmful than breathing smoke in the first place.

--Patrick
I don't think the debate is about propylene glycol being dangerous so much as it is about all of the chemicals in the flavorings. PG has been extensively studied and is "generally recognized as safe" by the FDA, which is their most benign classification.

https://www.ecigarettedirect.co.uk/ashtray-blog/2016/02/propylene-glycol-e-cigarettes.html

And now that e-cigs are getting a lot more attention, there's been some studies there, too.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3937158/
 
Funny story: I went through the drive-thru at some chain (don't remember which), and the cashier saw I vaped. And so he started going off on his custom mod, and the sick clouds he could make, and how he was in a vaping competition.

I looked at him and said "Do you see how old I am? I could give a shit about any of that. All I wanna do is get the nicotine in my face in a way that hopefully doesn't kill me too soon."
Custom mod? What for? How the hell do you competitively vape?

And yes, I'm feigning ignorance of its existence because I refuse to believe it's true.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Oh, I wanted to mention, I tried my hand at lockpicking for the first time this weekend.

Speaking as a complete and utter novice with only a tentative grasp of the theory behind lockpicking who got a Masterlock padlock open in 30 seconds of clueless flailing (and shut it again, and got it back open again in 15), don't buy Masterlock.
 
Oh, I wanted to mention, I tried my hand at lockpicking for the first time this weekend.

Speaking as a complete and utter novice with only a tentative grasp of the theory behind lockpicking who got a Masterlock padlock open in 30 seconds of clueless flailing (and shut it again, and got it back open again in 15), don't buy Masterlock.
They're really easy to shim.

--Patrick
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Oh, I wanted to mention, I tried my hand at lockpicking for the first time this weekend.

Speaking as a complete and utter novice with only a tentative grasp of the theory behind lockpicking who got a Masterlock padlock open in 30 seconds of clueless flailing (and shut it again, and got it back open again in 15), don't buy Masterlock.
I've watched quite a few videos from https://www.youtube.com/user/bosnianbill/videos and it looks like a pretty cool hobby.

Masterlock is a repeated source of ridicule on his channel:
 
Probably for the same reason Microsoft gets all the virii. They're the most commonly used.

--Patrick
No, I think it is because they are objectively crappy locks.
And in both cases they are perfectly adequate for 90% of their intended use, even with their lack of high security. When you start thinking about protecting your $50 bike with a $250 medeco lock you've clearly gone off the deep end.
 
I may have a decent shot a pretty good promotion at work. We'll see if it pans out, but if not I've talked to my boss and hopefully I can get back on the developer track.

I'm not on the phones much any more, but I've been doing support/customer service for the last 15 years. I don't mind it, but I'd like to finally move on to something more.

Hopefully this can go to a win thread soon.
 

fade

Staff member
Oh, I wanted to mention, I tried my hand at lockpicking for the first time this weekend.

Speaking as a complete and utter novice with only a tentative grasp of the theory behind lockpicking who got a Masterlock padlock open in 30 seconds of clueless flailing (and shut it again, and got it back open again in 15), don't buy Masterlock.
Yeah, the first time I tried lockpicking a door with two paperclips, I fully expected to fail. I was more surprised that as a complete novice I did not fail, and in fact picked it quickly. This concerned me greatly.
 
A friend asked for help with an art project. She sent me what looks like a professionally prepared digital art flyer thing and brought me gigantic piece of Bristol board. I have both my fancy and cheapo pastels, graphite pencils, my sexy coloured pencils and some spray fixative.

Wish me luck:)
 
A friend asked for help with an art project. She sent me what looks like a professionally prepared digital art flyer thing and brought me gigantic piece of Bristol board. I have both my fancy and cheapo pastels, graphite pencils, my sexy coloured pencils and some spray fixative.

Wish me luck:)
Luck and good mockups.

--Patrick
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Other funny radio news: I have a share in my dropbox that a local church uses to send me their church program for the coming sunday.

Moments ago, my dropbox popped up with a notification:
"Pastor Ken has added Track01.cda to your dropbox."

Followed 10 seconds later by:
"Pastor Ken has deleted Track01.cda to your dropbox."

:rofl:

Some things never change. At least he realized his mistake immediately. I expect in another hour or so, it will notify me that he's added an MP3.
 
This is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more work than I had expected.

I think tons more than she thought too. She brought over a big poster board and a professionally designed piece of art. I think she thought I would whip it up in like an hour. I had thought maybe an evening. I want to help and all but I'm fucking exhausted and I have a doctor's appointent in the morning and an art class with my daughter tomorrow night. One all night for a good cause is cool and all, but I have been at this for hours and I haven't even gotten out the pretty colours yet. I am not a good judge of how long these things take.
 
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