SteveWilliams

Just two more weeks. Looking forward to this one.

First things first... Welcome to Vaportalk. Now in regards to your question, I am in central Virginia as well (Richmond area). I haven't seen any meets specific to central Virginia, but I have attended a couple of the Northern Virginia meets (hey Mark), which are always fun. The drive isn't too horrible for me. Not sure when they are having their next meet.

Since it's in Richmond, if I miss this one Mark, you have my permission to smack me in the head....hard.

While I certainly agree that a change of the global currency would be devastating the to US economy, and I certainly don't want to see that, can you really blame other countries for wanting to move away from the dollar? When the gold standard was thrown out, and the dollar was adopted as a global currency, there were assurances made that we would not devalue our currency. We have not lived up to our end of the bargain. Late in his second term, GW Bush started printing money like crazy, increasing the amount of currency by astronomical amounts. Obama has continued this trend. I do not blame one or the other, I blame them both. I do not blame one political party, I blame every politician from every political party who allowed us to get to this point and did absolutely nothing to stop it. As for the whole "It's too big to fail" concept goes, my thoughts on that make my blood boil to the point that I am almost scared to post about it outside of the "Mosh Pit" for fear of going over the edge. I will put it simply though. If something is too big to fail... it won't fail. If something is so grossly mismanaged it collapses, then, I am sorry, but it deserves to fail. What ever happened to people accepting consequences? What ever happened to the concept of "you made your bed, now you have to lie in it"? If we had allowed to the banks to fail, what would have happened? The American economy would have fallen on very hard times. Over time though, we would recover, and in place of those large banks would be smaller banks. When larger companies close up, that company's customers still have to go somewhere for the product or service. Where do they go? To the companies that are left. The small businesses -- the entrepreneurs -- the companies that our neighbors own -- the companies that people like Chris own. What's so evil about that? So we think we saved ourselves by bailing out the banks, and bailing out the auto manufacturers, and bailing out other businesses. We haven't. We have slowed the process down, but in the end, we will be hit, and now we are going to be hit harder than if we had never done the bail outs to begin with. Every time the government doles out money for "stimulus" or "bail outs" we are only making the damage worse. It reminds me of my father, soon before he passed away. He would use credit line checks to pay his credit card bills, then use credit cards to make payments on the credit line account. He was paying interest on interest on interest. Every time he did it, he only increased the amount of money he owed without actually gaining anything except a little more time and a larger debt.

Why do I see this sneaking into a national environmental bill before Obama leaves office?

With so many folks talking about the VT Dulcis all the time (and no one really having anything bad to say about it), I finally broke down and placed my order for some along with some low res attys. Looking forward to seeing what the buzz is about. This is also a good opportunity (or is that excuse) to try some juice from a vendor other than the one I have been using.

Just wanted to add a quick note on flavors. If you take a kid who has never had pizza before to Chuck E. Cheese, the kid is probably gonna swear up and down it's the bestest pizza in the whole wide world. Take that same kid to Ginos East in Chicago (which actually has been voted the best pizza in the world), and the kid is gonna learn what great pizza really is. I find myself in the situation of that kid right now. I could easily post a review about how great or how horrible the flavors are, but with no point of reference, that review could very likely be grossly inaccurate, so I will leave the juice reviews to those who have been at this a little longer than I have. Suffice it to say though, that I have no complaints about the flavors I have tried from cigeasy so far.

Thanks for the responses guys. It is somewhat a moot point now, as I just found that the battery I am using is compatible with a 901 Atomizer, so I will just have to order a couple from Vaportalk store and will be all set to try Direct Dripping when I am here at home.

If you remove the cotton or fiber filler from a cartomizer, will the atomizer that's left in the carto work for direct dripping or have you just ruined a cartomizer?

As a newcomer to the wonderful world of vaping, I was fortunate enough to have someone who was already vaping recommend a supplier to me. Actually he recommended two, cigeasy.com and volcanoecigs.com. Since I knew he used cigeasy, and it also happened to be the first one written down, that's where I ended up. So far, I have not been disappointed. The Product My initial starter kit was their Cig Easy Elegant, which looks very much like the eGo. From the pictures I have seen of the eGo though, there does appear to be one difference. Where the threads on the cartos used on eGo appear to be male, the cartos for the Elegant are female threaded. The batteries (2 are included with the kit) are manual batteries rated at 750 mau and can easily last all day, even with heavy use. The kit also includes a USB charger with an AC adapter that can be used to plug the charger into the wall, although I found the usefulness of this to be limited at best because the USB cord is only about 10 inches long. The unit does seem to provide consistent vapor all the way from the first pull from a freshly changed battery, up until the flashing blue LED tells you it needs a recharge. Also included with the starter kit is a box of 5 prefilled cartos (all one flavor of your choice) and a 10ml bottle of fluid (again, your choice of flavors and does not need to be the same as your cartos) as well as 2 empty cartos to use with the fluid. The Service While I have not had the need to seek customer support, the service that has been received has been very good. I have placed three separate orders and all three were received within two days. Orders are shipped from Grand Terrace, CA via USPS Priority Mail and package tracking information is sent via email as soon as the order is shipped. When placing an order, he also has a habit of sometimes throwing in an extra pre-filled carto of an alternate flavor to sample. Not a huge deal, but it's a nice way to find flavors you might have otherwise missed out on. The Shortcoming Okay, for some of you vaping gurus this will be a non-issue, but for a newcomer like myself, it made things slightly more difficult. While his site is laid out in a logical way and it is easy to find what you need, it is somewhat lacking in information. This is part of the reason I ended up finding this site. For example, when ordering empty cartos, one of the options is Soft Cap or Hard Cap. Needless to say, when seeing that the first time, my reaction was, "Ummm...what's the difference? How should I know what I need?" Unfortunately, the answer to that question was not to be found on his site. Summary In summary, I would give cigeasy.com very good marks in both product quality as well as their service. The lack of information for newcomers though pulls the overall grade down from an A+ to an A-. A great place for someone who has been vaping for a while, or at least has done the research to know what they are looking for. Not quite as good for someone who is trying to get into vaping for the first time.

In the short time I have been vaping (just over one week now), I have found that I am vaping more and more. I pretty much vape all day. Luckily, the unit I got has a nice long battery life. I dunno that I can say I vape more than I smoked, because, working at home, there was rarely a time when I did not have a cigarette lit. The only exception being in one of my two vehicles, which I simply refused to smoke in. I was easily going through 2 cartons of cigarettes a week. If my stress level was high or I was approaching a deadline, I could go through a carton in under 3 days. Needless to say, vaping is saving me a good deal of money, not only in the cost of cigarettes themselves but also in home maintenance. The cost of constantly painting walls, replacing air filters, etc adds up quickly. That's not to mention the fact that it is very likely saving my life.

As my sig indicates, I am new to vaporing. I have been doing a little research, but you know what they say "assumption" is the mother of, so I wanted to ask here just be sure I am not misunderstanding something. Assuming you are using a cartomizer that is compatible with the E-Cig unit you are using, are the juices pretty much universal or should you stick to juices from the same supplier as your e-cig for best results? I am very happy with the unit I have, but his selection of juices is not as varied as I have seen other places. On the same lines, I have heard that some of the juice suppliers use questionable ingredients in some of their juices. Are there any recommended suppliers that tend to offer high quality juices and, on the same note, any in particular that should be avoided?

If you are referring to the method in Chris' video, he takes the Cart Caps off, and then takes the white plastic piece out of the end. That's what he was using the push pin for. That way you are exposing the filler. You may also want to take a look at the video I linked as an alternative fill method that doesn't require any disassembly of the carto at all.

One note on battery life. With any rechargeable battery at all, whether it's your laptop, electric razor, cell phone, rechargeable power tool, or yes, your e-cig, you are better off running the battery down as low as possible before recharging it. Recharging a battery that is already nearly fully charged will actually reduce the duration it is able to hold a charge. Some of the E-Cig batteries will actually tell you via a flashing LED when they need to be recharged. In this case, you should definitely wait until it tells you it needs a recharge.

I am brand new to the vapor scene (and therefore, obviously to Cartomizers as well), and I found the Doctor Vapor video on using the Cart Cap Fill method to be very useful. Doesn't require disassembly of the carto and it's quick, easy, and mess-free. To give credit where credit is due, this method was originally developed by Dogsbody.