TheSmokingMan

This one I didn't know, They advertise condoms on TV? Good thing we don't have TV in my house!

Hey you old geezer, I remember all of that stuff, "This is my brother Larry and my other brother Larry"!, and I have a lot of the Carol Burnett Show on DVD. Funny thing that you mention swearing and cursing in relation to Bill Cosby, he has always been a big advocate against using profanity to get laugh. He came down pretty hard on Eddie Murphy when he first got his start and it made such a big deal that he incorporated the incident into one of his sketches about a conversation with Richard Pryor talking about what Bill Cosby said about his show. Dean Martin was great on his Roasts, he always had people like Buddy Hackett and Milton Berle and Jackie Mason. Although Jackie Mason was a little raunchy, he was hilarious and so much of his stuff was true to life and he does a great Ed Sullivan impression. I still like the comedy shows of Jack Benny and George Burns and Jackie Gleason, the great days of comedy, if only we could turn back the hands of time...

@dlynne, that was nice and congratulations on your success. @Crepitus, Does being able to breathe count as a health improvement? Or walking without getting winded?

Cool, you are always good for things like this. Keep 'em coming!

Making everyone feel welcome is something that I think we all should do and I think that the members here at Vapor Talk have been a great success at doing just that. I have seen very few quarrels here on the forum and I think it's because were all friends here. I do have some input about Macs and Linux. I'm one for new things, I vape don't I? In my experience and line of work and from listening to others who know much more about computers than I ever will. I have always thought that Macs were for Visual Media type applications, best thing to use for editing video or putting together a visual presentation, but that they are limited in the respect that not all software will run correctly on a Mac. So they have been able to create a Windows environment in the Mac OS to be able to correctly run these programs. Now I just don't see how that can be efficient, it's like trading in you pickup truck for a car that gets better mileage then pulling a trailer to get the job done, thus reducing mileage efficiency. I have to state here that I know very little about Macs and I haven't even seen one in about 5 years. There is a construction company that I do a lot of business with and the owner was talked into changing all of his computers (which were laptops for use in the field) to Macs. They made this big purchase and it took their Tech guy (Who talked the boss into Macs) several weeks to adapt the software or the environment or the computer to the software that we use in this industry (MSB and Exactimate). After several months of all kinds of problems, they scrapped the Macs and went back to an IBM Compatible computer (do they still call them IBM Clones or Compatible?). Now I understand the security aspect of the Mac, but hasn't the Mac come far enough now that the virus writers and the hackers are now writing detrimental programs for the Mac? Linux is supposed to be great, and I know nothing about it except the symbol is a penguin, but does it have a wide variety of software written for that platform? I have always used IBM Clones and a Microsoft OS (ie DOS or Windows). I'm too old to learn a new OS, I think that is why OS2 failed twenty years ago because no one wanted to learn something new. Heck I was just getting used to Windows 2000 when they came out with Vista! I don't want to have to relearn something, I want to sit down in front of what I'm comfortable with and get to work. So, do I have it wrong and all of those problems are in the past or have they simply been solved by creating a Windows environment within the Mac or Linux environment? If so, wouldn't that pose the same security risk as just running a Windows environment in the first place? Like I said, I really don't know much about either anymore and I'm not trying to start any crap, inquiring minds want to know...

I have a few attys that don't vape well until they are warm. So the first few drags are kind of weak but when the atty get heated up they vape just fine.

Don't let Keenan josh you about that juice, it was actually commissioned for me and it is known throughout the realm as TheSmokingMan's Mix or TSM Tobacco. I have found that the juice in the carts is not near as good as the juices that you can buy, that perplexes me because most of the juices come from China anyway.

I vape constitantly, I attribute that to the fact that I was a heavy smoker. I have cut down from 36mg down to 16 and 12.5, next week I go to 9 and I'm trying to figure out how to vape Vapor Talk Traditional Tobacco (More commonly known as TSM Tobacco or TheSmokingMan's Mix)) and it not be 16mg. I've been trying some combinations of other juice mixed with the VT Tradtitional Tobacco with a little sucess with some, but it's not the same. All that said Chris needs to get some zero so we can cut our favorite flavors and still vape VT Juice. But I wouldn't worry about vaping more, just keep cutting down on the nicotine levels.

Right!

2. I attempted several times to light the end of my e-Cig with my cigarette lighter - TheSmokingMan

Thanks Joe and to all of you who have responded to this thread. I feel much better about the future health and safety of my data now, I am also glad to see that I am not the only one who had stupid computer problems. As a response to FTJoe's previous post that detailed all that he has done. I have taken steps to ensure that nothing in my home is vulnerable to a lightning strike or power surge. I have three electrical panels that service my property, the main service, a sub-panel in the office and a sub-panel in the house. Each panel has an industrial grade surge protector integrated into the panel with a indicator that shows if it has been compromised or not. The main panel had it built in and the two other panels have it added to them. I have also quad grounded the house and I have a secondary ground for the office. I have driven 6 ground rods on our place, one for the main service, one for the office and four for the house (one on each side. They are all tied to the same point at the main service. I believe in grounding. I do not use a UPS and do not currently have an alternative power source connected in the event of a power failure, when the power goes out I have to drag the generator out of the shed and connect it to the main service and reduce power consumption as not to over tax the generator. A UPS is in my future for each computer. I will take your suggestions on backing up under advisement. I received my information back from the data recovery company and I immediately made three copies of it and it now resides on each computer and the original media that it was returned to me on, which was a WD Passport External Drive. I had a horrific time getting the information off of the drive that they sent. Western Digital made me answer a boat load of questions for registration and then I had to download a bunch of software from them to get the drive to work. After all of that I had to turn off my firewall (ZoneAlarm) to get the drive to show up. In speaking of software like Spinrite, I believe that is a Gibson Research Corp product. Steve Gibson is a great guy, I have spoken to him on several occasions and his web site GRC.com is very informational when it comes to internet security. I do not believe that any software would have helped my condition. I made every attempt to locate the drive on my end and I was unsuccessful at getting it to read, I then took it to a restoration company who also used some sophisticated software to read it and they were also unsuccessful, it then went to a data recovery company who physically disassembled the drive and removed the plates in a clean room and extracted the data from the plates. I received a brief statement regarding the condition of the drive, it reads as follows: "We have determined that your media has the following problems: Servo damage, Electrical damage, Alignment failures. Please check over file listing for requested data." In my opinion the Servo Damage and the Electrical Damage were the main problem where as the Alignment Failures were probably from me trying to get the heads to realign by an albeit Neanderthal approach, I beat it on the desk as it was booting up just to see if that would get it to read, I was really frustrated. The drive was very fortunate that I didn't put a 200 grain Jacketed Hollow Point .45+P slug through it, it would not have done the drive any good but it would have made me feel better. Nonetheless, I have my data back and I am $2,200.00 lighter in the wallet. It has also been suggested by many that I utilize an on-line back up service for a daily automated back up of all files. I am not comfortable with my data and my customers data being on someone else's server. I'm sure that it's all available through other means, I would just hate to be the hole that it leaked through.

That's why I generally backup to an external HD of considerable size, like the 2 250's or the 2 1TB drives that I have/had. both of the 250's were connected to the USB hub along with one of the 1tb drives. The 1 TB was unaffected but both of the 250's were unreadable.

I have had a slight problem with the media material on some DVDs being dissolved or faded by sunlight. Burned copies of DVDs that my son leaves in the sunlight have faded in the past. But it seem that the ones that we have bought have a thicker coat of ink on them when they print the label on them and that would seem to help with the fading of the media material on the top. I have seen CDs and DVDs that have faded completely and are just almost clear disks of plastic.

As for the cause, that is what "Jack" told me on the phone a while ago. The information is already extracted and back in Houston, I am required to make the payment tomorrow, regardless. I don't think that I have been poked, this company comes to me thru a trusted customer and they have a good reputation, albeit there is always a chance that it's not Kosher. I'll have more information tomorrow when I pick up the information, hopefully there will be a cause and diagnosis sheet with the information, for that much money I'm expecting some paperwork from the lab in Austin. I couldn't see the drive at all, It wasn't visible in MY Computer or the Data Sources section of the Administrator Management section in the Control Panel. I also opened a DOS window and using my ancient DOS skills looked for the drive and it was absent there also. I did this on two computers and couldn't access the drive. After it went to the guy "Jack" in Houston he called me and said that he couldn't get into it with the "special" software he had and it would have to go to a lab where there was a clean room and they wold disassemble the drive and remove the plates and extract the data from them using specialized equipment. However what is done is done, I just need to put a redundant system in place that will prevent this in the future, $2,200.00 will not bankrupt me, but I will feel it in the coming months. I appreciate your input in this matter, as I do have a lot of trust for your advice considering your experience.

I don't think that it's dumb to do this it's just requires the least intelligence. A CD back up is a good thing to have and I probably had the first 10 years or so on CD here in the office somewhere but finding it in the sea of CDs that I have #1 and then eliminating that data from the information that I wanted off the drive would have taken 2 weeks for me to do, on top of the other projects I'm working on. Like the 26 freaking hours of video that my mom wants me to convert to DVD with menus before Christmas. I finally finished the first DVD last night.

A tape back-up? Really? I'm not knocking it, but I haven't seen a tape drive since that old Commodore 64 and VIC 20 that I had in the 80's

Data IE Information in this digital age is something we can't seem to live without. Now, I'm not the most computer literate person and I'm not "Computer Stupid" either. I spent two years working on my BS in computer science back in 89-91 in college. I have several (3) computers that I am always having to do something to each week just to make them do the simple tasks that I depend on them to do each day. As some of you know I own a business and the computers in my office are crucial to the workings of my business. I have sixteen years of information on my computers, I back them up regularly. My method of backing up was to dump everything on a Western Digital 250gig External USB Hard Drive. I have four such drives 2, 250 gig and 2, 1 terabyte drives. They have been faithful servants to my information storage needs thru the years. Last Thursday the computer that I use the most started acting flakey as computers do from time to time. They seem to get overcrowded and confused by the little bits of information stored on them by websites, programs and interface with the network that I have setup here at the Home/Office that links everything together so I can fix my wifes computer with out getting up our of my nice comfy office chair out here in the office. So, I decided to make a back up of the information on my internal drive to my external drive and just restore the computer the way it was when I bought it from HP. This always seemed to me to be the easiest way to keep all of the junk that I don't need off the computer and causing problems, I have to do it about once a year. I have what I have always thought was an excellent army of software that keeps me invisible on the internet and kept my computer free of all of that junk. ZoneAlarm for a fire wall, Spy-bot S&D for a spy ware monitor, Piriform's CCleaner to scrub out the cookies, misplaced files and to scrub the registry. I run a virus scan and a spy ware scan everyday, keep current on all updates and clean my registry at least once a week. I use a browser that strips advertisements from websites and creates a bubble or a pseudo-environment for web pages to be displayed in and they never (supposedly) have access to my computer. All of these safeguards that I had in place all of the time I have invested in backing up my data. After backing up my information Thursday, I started the process of wiping the internal drive and restoring it. Of course this wipes out all of the updates from Microsoft and you have to spend an eternity and ten thousand reboots to get current. When all of that was finally done or almost done, I was bushed so of to bed I went and left the computer to download and reboot from it's final update. Friday morning I return to the office and the computer is hung, not normal, but it happens sometime. After restarting I got down to the business of reloading my information off of the external drive on the internal drive. But alas, the drive was sitting on the desk, but it was not showing up in the My Computer section where all of the other stuff shows up. That's odd, I thought. So after plugging and unplugging it a few time and going thru some motions to see that drive I couldn't see it or access it. I unplugged it and the other 250 gig that I couldn't see and moved them to another computer, same thing, couldn't see them or access them. I call a buddy that is "Super Computer Literate Guy" he said it sounded like a physical problem with the drive. He asked if it was making any noise, I told him that it was clicking. He said "yep", your going to have take it somewhere and have them extract the information, that drive is probably shot. Being in the insurance restoration business, I work with companies that use electronic restoration companies that do this sort of thing regularly. Off the drive goes to them. They couldn't fix it so they sent it to a company in Austin, Texas that has a clean room and they could take it apart and extract the data. I got the call earlier today, they were successful in extracting the data off of the drive and I could come and pick it up at anytime. The bill? Well, that is why I'm writing this. The bill is $2,200.00 for about 40 gigs of data that they took off of the drive. They determined that the drives failed because of a series of bad sectors that were written when the computer failed to boot properly from that last update and that it was not so smart to have the drives plugged into the USB port when doing the updates, who knew? Now, I'm not looking for pity, I just don't want this to happen to one of you. Make a second back up if your going to do something major or use one of those on-line backup services that automatically back up your information every night or whenever you schedule it to. It will save you a lot of money in the long run. I couldn't loose this information, it was everything concerning my business, financial, correspondence, job records, everything. One thing that my wife doesn't know, was I had all of the pictures of the kids, cats, dogs and our life on that drive too. So be smart, redundant backups are they way to go. If any of you techie people out there that want to give me suggestions on how to effectively back things up, I'm open to options as the methods I have used in the past, failed me.

Sung to the tune of "Get Back", off of the "Let It Be" album. Notice Paul was the only one with a red background on that one, the rest were black. That was my first Beatles album. Paul is a dead man, miss him, miss him, miss him.

I use it regularly, on every post, except on a few by accident. The spell checker when replying is the check mark with the ABC above it in the upper right hand of the reply screen. Also, I make it a strict rule never to correct another members spelling even when quoting, it's just rude to make fun of someone's mistakes in public. Now my children hate me because in the house I'm the grammar and spelling Chief Of Police.

I think I will catch in a few months, I'm sitting at about 1800 spent on eCigs thus far, that's approximate not exact. The last time I added it up I was at 1400 and something, I have since placed a few orders since then and I am getting ready for that one last thing, yeah right!

You know Brian, it's people saying things just like that that make my time here worth it. I surely do not have as much invested in this forum as Chris does, but the friends I have made here and the help that I'm am able to give back make me feel privileged to be able to enjoy VaporTalk (at Chris' expense).

The Spade is fitted for a 510 atty whereas the VP2 is fitted for an 801 the VP1 is also fitted for an 801. I have a 901 adapter for the VPs but I like the 801 Low Bridge atty better than the 901.

You're a nut!

I made the conversion very easily also, I can't understand why if eCigs is so easy to switch to that the FDA will not look into their benefits rather than trying to ban them? I kept a few packs of analogues around for about a month before I got rid of them. I actually smoked one every now and then to see if my tastes had changed. Every time I smoked one the worse the analogue tasted. Just be careful not to try to light an eCig with a Bic, I almost did it several times. Chris was saying that he actually threw an eCig out the window of the car when he was finished vaping because it was just force of habit. This is very common and I dealt with it for about a week, also your mouth will taste funny when you first wake up and you will long for the toothbrush. But the longest I have ever heard that anybody has had to deal with that stuff is about a week. Then a few weeks down the road your lungs will start to expel all of the old tar. If you bought a cheap pass thru from china I can understand, but if you bought a good quality pass thru from an American manufacturer then you could probably return it and get it repaired at no cost. The encouragement part is what were here for, most of the members on this forum are interested in your success with eCigs, we are more than glad and willing to help you with every step along the way. If you have any questions never hesitate to ask here on the forum, you will be overwhelmed with responses.

If you are looking for a long battery life IE: extended vaping time, take a look at the VP line from VaprLife. I use the VP2 with an 801 Low Bridge atomizer, I am a very heavy vaper. I get a great vape and a lot of vapor production out of my VP2. I can vape on a fresh battery for 8 to 9 hours with the VP2. It runs at 3.7 volts. The VP units are larger than the 801 batteries but they are not awkward. The VP unit is sized just right to be a manual and fits my small hand perfectly. I will have a VP1 in the next few weeks and it is much smaller than the VP2. I understand that it's battery life for constant vaping is somewhere between 4 to 5 hours.