SmokeFree
This is amusing.
I set up the little banner image to the right because...I dunno; I just did. It's not something I'm bragging about at all, since I actually don't care; it's just something to note, I guess.
Of course, it's inaccurate, in the strictest sense. I buy—or maybe bought—cigarettes by the carton, which I haven't done now in about a week. If the Yeti kit hadn't shown up on Saturday, I'd have gone out and got another carton for about forty-two bucks; at about three packs a day, that woulda lasted until right about nowish; instead, the kit showed up, and I've still got the final pack from that carton lurking somewhere in my backpack. So, it's not exactly perfect: in seventy-six hours [I assume it's counting days from midnight, and from the eastern coast], I've avoided 191 cigarettes [the exclamationmark wasn't my idea; it came with the image], and, that being about 95.5% of a forty-two-dollar carton, around $40.10; which to me is meaningless since it's been more than seventy-six hours since I bought any cigarettes.
But I'll run with these numbers. Over time, they'll even out closely enough that it'll make no difference.
I will admit that I hadn't really done the math on this until now. It's not real shocking, but it's something like news. Going through a couple cartons a week, at about forty-two bucks a carton these days, is eighty-four per week, so $336 across four weeks. Which only matters in February. So, multiply that by thirteen sets of four weeks per year, and at current rates we're talking about $4368 annually. Ish. Plus thirty percent of a carton for YearDay, as it were. Plus a pack for that extra six hours per year usually reserved for that fourth year and dumped into February the twenty-ninth. And plus whatever happens to the numbers the next time the soviets raise taxes on all things made of molecules.
Fun Fact: remember a few days ago, before the antisocialists [I'm literally surrounded by idiots...at least in one dimension] got goofy about Hunter's disability pension thing, when I mentioned having seen and started thinking again about another Ninja? $4368 would pretty well buy the bike and insure it for the first year. It might even fill it up and keep it fairly full at sixtyish miles per threedollar gallon. So that's an amusing thought. I guess. At least until the same uppity activists ban motorbikes over the inherent danger. And then skateboards, and eventually shoelaces; welcome to the New World Order of velcro sandals.
So far, across three days, in which I'd have otherwise spent forty-two bucks on a couple hundred cigarettes I'd have smoked, setting me up to go spend another forty-two bucks, the hundred bucks I spent on the YetiKit hasn't really been dented yet. The solids are apparently somewhat infinite: batteries and charging elements and whatever else, including even the cartridges. The only really renewable factor is the nicquid—the actual eyedroppers of stuff you refill the cartridges with—which...I've got two of those here, one unopened, the second down maybe five percent. And that's really only because I've been kinda refilling the one cartridge instead of opening a prefilled one, mostly because I still haven't quite used a cartridge up in the field. Strike that: I did use up one of the chocolate ones, I think; so I filled that up with nicquid and moved on. For that, I've kinda lost track now: I've used up one cartridge and refilled it, and used up enough of another to refill it a few times; all I really know is that I've still got three and a half chocolates and four prefilled tobaccoes, a couple of refilled prefills, and five filled unfilled cartridges here. And, yeah: that all makes sense; just...not to anyone but me.
At a measured guess, given the last few days as a basis, I'd suppose that what I've got here now will last on its own through July. Most of it should last at least through 2009 and probably 2010; but, at some point, the couple bottles of nicquid I've got here will deplete to one bottle, and ultimately zero. And those, shipping aside, are about thirteen bucks per bottle, meaning probably thirteen bucks per month. Which is less than I spend on milk. Which I almost never drink. But the milkman drops off a gallon once a week, which is five bucks. If I even open it before it spoils, it's a little less than a total waste.
It's all irrelevant, of course. Because something I've joked about [I'm not the only one; Doug Stanhope made the same observation, with different wording] is that, if secondhand smoke is as lethal as firsthand smoke [by my longitudinal testing, that means that, after secondhandsmoking about three packs a day for around twenty-five years, you won't be remotely dead yet], then it should be as addictive as firsthand smoke—where overblown estimates place that above the addictive properties of heroin, by the way—meaning that people assaulted by secondhand smoke should be going batshit once we firsthand smokers have cut them off by law. And...kinda; yeah. Hunter doesn't smoke. But I do. Or did. Or whatever. Her parents before that both smoked. So she's secondhand smoked for decades now. And, secondhand vaping being apparently impossible, she's going all batshit. Er. Which is actually pretty funny, to me. Ha, I say; ha.
Spent another hundred bucks. Or whatever it was. She grabbed a YetiKit [mine's busy being mine] and whatever else I'd ordered last Thursday. Though the nicquid this time is the chocolate stuff, since that's simply yummy. Which kinda delays the need to order more nicquid yet again. Even where I'm kinda chainvaping here, in much the way I'd otherwise be chainsmoking [except that, tossing a Yeti into the ashtray to type with two hands, I don't lose half a cigarette to a microbreeze in here], she while waiting for her kit to arrive shows up here in the office once every couple hours or so to get a hit off my Yeti, then goes away again. So I'm guessing she's gonna average maybe a cartridge a week, that being approximately a couple packs of cigarettes. But who knows.
It's a little weird to think about, of course. Someone who never smoked getting into developing a nicotine habit. On the surface, that sounds a little dumb, maybe. Except that, apart from drinking enough straight nicotine to become poisoned, there's no way to overdose on this stuff, or really develop any detrimental symptoms. No law yet bans these in public [I say yet since, here in Colorado, the idiots you other idiots listen to have banned chewing tobacco in restaurants, over concerns about secondhand smoke—how fast are people chewing this stuff, anyway], so that's not a problem. So, I guess, we're just talking about someone already spending at least a couple bucks a day on CocaCola getting into spending maybe a dollar a month on nicquids. Possibly thirteen bucks a month if she gets into chainvaping. Pushing the household to around 150% of the money spent on milk no one ever seems to drink. Over something approximately as harmless as a milk addiction. Maybe moreso: more people are lactose inolerant than allergic to anything in an electronic cigarette.
All of which might eventually lead to that remaining evidence that people are morons. The Yeti being useful enough that we've ordered another starterkit less than a week after ordering the first, I'm still waiting for BluCigs.com to do anything the hell at all about the order I placed on June the fourth. At this point, people who ordered the same thing I'd ordered as early as June the tenth have been reporting receipt of their stuff. Which is meaningless. Call BluCigs.com, ask them why that's happening, and you'll get, over and over, 'I don't know why that would happen, but I apologise for the delay; we should have your order shipped out this week, but I can't give you an exact date'; of course, I've been hearing that they should have my order shipped out 'this week' since June the fifth.
To put this a better way, but for their lies, as of 3.16AM on Tuesday 30th June 2009, supposing the order I placed on the fourth, within hours of buying a carton, would have arrived as quickly as the YetiKit later did, before I finished the carton, I'd as of this minute have saved about $327.60. Instead, I spent sixty bucks, and I'm still waiting for anyone at BluCigs.com to put a shippinglabel on the damned box. Even though, a week and a half ago, a lying moron at BluCigs.com told me that the shippinglabel for my specific order had been affixed on Friday night—currently eleven days ago now—but just too late for usps.gov to have picked it up before Monday—that being now eight days ago.
These people are frauds. Based on everything I've seen and haven't seen, it's the only word I can get to apply to them. No pesky suing me before getting me the thing I ordered four weeks ago, Frauds.
What time is it...three days and five hours; $40.59 and 193 cigarettes. Sounds about right, I guess.
It's not perfect, of course. The Yeti. Well, it really almost kinda is. But measuring its perfection is tricky. The kit showed up right in the middle of my reaction and speedmathing to the news of morons.gov's libel and idiocy. And I'm not really over that yet. If I were in a good mood [it does actually happen], I might be happier with the Yeti [I might be happier with the BluCig, if it were magically here already]; instead, I'm bothered enough that, if I were dealing with organic cigarettes, I'd probably be going through four or five packs a day. So I'm having trouble working out whether the Yeti's really any good, when as of right now nothing would be really any good. If and when the world in general gets good again, I suppose I'll know more. So that's something to work toward.
Also, I should probably get back to plotting that all out.
More later....
