HOWTO Clean and Reuse E-Cig Cartomizers

20 May, 2013 02:37 CST6CDT

E-Cigarette cartridges are an added heavy expense when switching from tobacco products and sometimes breaks the savings associated with vaping with an E-Cig. Depending on the brand of cartomizer purchased, you can expect to refill the tank between 3 and 12 times.  The cartomizers I pick up, single coil 808 tanks, are stated to be refillable 5 times and cost about two dollars each. Don't throw them because after a few months of vaping, the old and grungy cartomizers pile up quickly and most of them can be deemed worthy for cleaning and reuse.

YouTube is filled with video tutorials for cleaning old and dirty cartomizers. In addition, the Internet is filled with a wealth of articles on how to do the same. The method used to clean E-Cig cartomizers is a personal preference. Here is my method, though don't hesitate to experiment with other avenues available.

You will need:

  • Isopropyl Alcohol at 50%
  • A metal cooking pot large enough to hold the cartomizers and alcohol
  • A small bowl to hold the rubber cap (drip tips)
  • Paper towel

Here is my procedure to clean e-cigarette cartomizers:

  1. Remove the rubber cap drip tips and place them in a bowl of Isopropyl Alcohol so that they are submerged
  2. Place the tanks in a metal cooking pot and submerge them completely with Isopropyl Alcohol for one (1) hour
  3. Remove the alcohol from the metal pot containing the tanks and fill with cold tap water so that they are submerged
  4. Boil the tanks in water heavily for fifteen (15) minutes
  5. Remove the tanks from the stove and rinse with running tap water several times - filling and dumping the metal cooking pot
  6. Blow out excess water from the tanks - this can take a while and can be exhaustive, somewhat like blowing up several balloons
  7. Let sit upside down (opened side down) overnight or longer on a couple layers of paper towel
  8. Remove the drip tip caps from the Alcohol and wipe dry with paper towel

After sitting, draining, and drying, your expired cartomizers should look bright white, smell and taste clean, and ready to be filled and used once again.

Projects  Article & Comments

Smileomizers - A Look at Long Lasting E-Cig Cartridges

09 May, 2013 06:48 CST6CDT

Over the past year I had been using 808D size cartomizers with my range of e-cig batteries. I have no problem keeping them in good condition for a few re-fills of e-cig e-juice however they are not as inexpensive as I would prefer, especially compared to the very inexpensive price tag of e-juice liquid in comparison. The price of a 30mL bottle of e-juice is just about the same price as a 5 pack of standard cartomizers depending where they are purchased. This didn't make much sense, though I still felt as though I was new to this cigarette alternative and I was not quite ready to go big with a wick type tank. I then noticed a product that Vapor4Life was marketing and the expense game shifted slightly – they call it the Smileomizer, and I felt ready to give this cartomizer a try.

Smileomizer Electronic Cigarette CaromizersVapor4Life appears to be marketing the Smileomizer in three ways. The smileomizer has a large rubber drip tip cap that appears to be similar in size to a large cigar. You are able to chew on the tip almost as you would a tobacco cigar. I imagine some would chew on the e-cig to calm nerves or to just chill out between vapes. I also imagine for those trying to switch from a tobacco cigar to an electronic cigarette, this would be the avenue to travel however I had never been much of a cigar smoker.

It is stated that you are able to refill this tank 12 plus times (3.5mL of liquid) compared to around 5 refills with most standard blank cartomizers. I always try to refill a standard 808D cartomizer before it gets too burnt and foul tasting so I on average get about 8 to 10 tank fills. If I am able to follow the same procedure with hints of an empty Smileomizer tank, I hope to get around 20 e-liquid injections before they burn.

The amount of e-cig juice it holds persuaded myself to make the Smileomizer purchase. The large tank can hold up to 70 drops of e-juice. This was true the first time I filled a tank, though I fit around 50 drops on average with a re-fill after the first use. One filled cartomizer lasts an entire day with the way I vape – habits, nicotine content, and occupations that play a factor. Whether I get a 12 (as advertised) or 20 day life span is yet to be seen as I have only been using the Smileomizers for one week.

The Smileomizer gives an amazing hit and produces an impressive amount of vapor. You can hear the sizzle and the occasional pop of this cartomizer similar to smaller size units for those whom have become comfortable with this experience. I have tried the Smileomizer on both 808 and 510 (with adapter) threaded batteries and from what I have experienced, I find no performance impact when compared to a regular size cartridge.

I did receive one Smileomizer that does not perform as well as the rest. The draw on this particular one makes it too difficult to use with the way I inhale the vape. I have seen a couple of other reports of issues apart from this such as burnt out of the box duds. I will most likely keep this one on standby and if I find myself needing a vape ASAP, I am able to inhale through a brick wall anyway.

The Smileomizer is not cheap as it retails for $14.95, although Vapor4Life's products are constantly on sale. I paid $7.50 a piece for them on sale and purchased three of them. With one of the three being almost considered a dud, only time and e-liquid re-fills will tell if I will make a permanent switch to the Smileomizer. So far I am sold.. As of right now, I am very impressed with the performance of these tanks and happily astounded with what I stated earlier, the ability for one tank-fill to last an entire day!

http://www.vapor4life.com/ecigarette-smileomizer

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Day to Day  Article & Comments

Sprint Customer Appreciation

03 April, 2013 14:49 CST6CDT

I have been a happy Sprint customer for over four years - time does fly, as I realized when I received a personalized, hand written, greeting card style letter in the mail from a representative at this company. The card reads:

Dear Andy,

As a Sprint employee, I want to thank you for being a Sprint customer for more than 4 years. We don't take your choice for granted and will continue to work on earning your loyalty.

We appreciate your business!

K. Hoffman

Sprint Customer Appreciation

Inside, the letter contained a business card directed towards their career website. I may want to register and see what opportunities they have posted. My mind is blown away that an employee took busy time out of a day to hand write the envelope addresses and the personalized message. I will surely be a customer for some time to come, and I am now assured that I am an appreciated Sprint customer.  Thank You!

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Day to Day  Article & Comments

E-Mail Greylisting Considerations

14 March, 2013 12:27 CST6CDT

Greylisting is a mechanism for e-mail delivery that is capable of filtering incoming mail from remote host based on one or more access control lists (ACL) in hope that spammers will stop attempting delivery of potentially unwanted e-mail messages.

Greylisting uses a process of deferring incoming e-mail for a specified amount of time before accepting it for delivery. Many spammers will give up before this set time occurs. Once an e-mail is delivered successfully, the sender may be whitelisted for a specified amount of time in which e-mail will be accepted immediately. If the sender does not attempt or need to send another message to a recipient in the time allotted while whitelisted, the sender will then return to the default greylist stage and will again be deferred. This idea behind greylisting assumes that a legitimate mail server will adhere to the SMTP protocol specifications and therefore the e-mail will ultimately be delivered successfully.

Milter-greylist is one of several applications that may be used to greylist, whitelist, or reject (blacklist) e-mail and is supported by various mail transport agents (MTA) such as Postfix. Based on the RCPT stage, before the data transfer stage of an incoming message, milter-greylist is capable of performing various actions triggered by the sender domain, recipient domain, server domain, DNS records, sender IP, SPF checks, or remote 3rd party tests (DNSRBL) among many others. Milter-greylist is capable of performing actions based on e-mail body content while in the read operation of the DATA stage (dacl) if no RCPT stage ACL (racl) is matched first.

Considerations

The majority of spam originates from dynamic (changing) IP addresses that normally would not act as an MTA to deliver e-mail - sometimes because these computers or devices have been compromised by some means. These IP addresses usually originate from an Internet service provider for residential customers and in some cases small businesses. Having a dynamic IP address does not always mean that the sender e-mail message is spam, and therefore delivery of legitimate e-mail originating from these sources must be taken into consideration when greylisting.

Some legitimate MTA sources of incoming mail may be broken. A “broken MTA” will sometimes pass the e-mail it wishes to send onto a different internal relay with a different host name. Even though the sender and recipient e-mail addresses remain the same, the IP and DNS host name of the server that it is relayed to has changed. In this case, a new greylist entry is created and the defer time is reset resulting in an additional delay of delivery. Because of this, a broken MTA will sometimes need to be whitelisted, often in conjunction with another ACL, to fine tune the delivery of a message. A “broken MTA” may also be defined as an SMTP server that does not adhere to sane e-mail delivery. For example, a host that would continuously and without pause try to deliver an e-mail after being asked to come back later.

Trusted MTA hosts should be taken into consideration when using a greylist system. If an e-mail will ultimately be delivered without question from an MTA with or without the use of a greylist system, it would be wasteful to defer these servers from delivering mail if it does not match any other ACL. While it is not feasible to bypass greylisting for all trusted hosts, large e-mail providers such as Google, Hotmail, and Yahoo could be considered for a source whitelist if appropriate. An MTA on a local network or a known network, including the local host, may also be considered as a trusted source. In addition, an authenticated user would normally be considered a trusted source.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) may be used in a greylist policy. SPF verifies that the sender e-mail address is sent from an authorized mail server for the e-mail address domain by means of validating authorized MTA host addresses from a DNS TXT record. This ensures that the sending e-mail address was not forged and sent by a rogue MTA. A problem arises when someone sends an e-mail using an outside relay that is not listed in a SPF DNS TXT record for a sender e-mail address domain. For example if someone@gmail.com sends an e-mail using a work relay server because outside MTA access is forbidden, the sender would then fail an SPF verification check. This is just one of many practical examples. Using a 3rd party e-mail relay is legitimate and is a very common practice, especially where the interest to use an outside of domain relay is of obvious or convenient choice. From what I have seen, at least half of all failed SPF tests seem to be legitimate, non-spam e-mail messages, and a default SPF greylist policy would not be of best interest. If you choose to use SPF verification globally, the greylist system may whitelist SPF compliant e-mail, bypass any other ACL, and deliver the message immediately. If SPF verification is not a global greylist policy, an ACL could be created to check for SPF compliance of one or more particular sender domains, or by means of any other ACL mechanism available to your greylist system such as recipient matching in relation to sender domain matching.

Remote 3rd party real-time blacklist (RBL) tests, otherwise known as DNSBL, may be used to set a greylist policy. Their are several services available to check IP addresses of the sender that could confirm a friendly or an unfriendly host. An unfriendly host may include: an open relay (unsecured), source IP addresses known to send spam, an ISP network known to host relaxed mail services, and dynamic IP addresses. You may query multiple DNSBL resources and whitelist, greylist, or blacklist based on the return result. For example, if you were to query Spamhaus XBL, an exploit block list, and the sending host is contained in the list, you could greylist (defer) for any amount of time – 1 hour, 3 hours, or you could blacklist the sending host based on the query result.

In addition to the mentioned greylisting considerations: location based resources may be used, regular expressions may be used to provide tighter grain control over an ACL, combined ACL lists may be used, to name just a couple of additions. However you may choose to implement your greylisting policies, their is sure to be a server software application to suit your needs. I recommend milter-greylist. Cheers!

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Software  Article & Comments

IRONIC - KRTV EAS Zombie Attack Replayed on La Crosse, Wisconsin, Radio Station Triggers an EAS Zombie Attack Rebroadcast on WKBT TV

12 February, 2013 12:14 CST6CDT

A TV station in Great Falls, Montana, fell victim to a prank in which someone announced over the EAS (emergency alert system) "The bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and are attacking the living."  The station posted an apology on their website immediately following the alert.

In an ironic twist of events: Z-93 (WIZM-FM), a local radio station in La Crosse, Wisconsin, joked about the EAS event that occured in Great Falls and proceeded to re-play the audio of the prank EAS Zombie attack.  The radio station Zombie attack audio then triggered the EAS at WKBT, a TV station in La Crosse, Wisconsin, through an up-link which then re-played the Zombie attack audio with yet another EAS alert.  Hilarious!  Mid-West Family Broadcasting-La Crosse, issued the following statement:

"This morning, Z93 inadvertently triggered an EAS event on WKBT. We apologize for any confusion we may have caused your viewers and certainly didn't intend for this to happen. We've spent time with our engineers this morning to make sure it doesn't happen again. Our programming department has been brought up to speed and we've checked to make sure our EAS equipment is properly programmed. I'm told that the EAS boxes can be programmed to not relay any expired or out-of-market alerts."

Original KRTV EAS Prank Video

Zombie EAS on WKBT with Z-93 Audio

Updated 2013-02-12 13:42:03

Lake Superior Community Broadcasting, Ishpeming, Michigan, released an update stating that their EAS (emergency alert system) was accessed through a back-door security vulnerability.  It is now known that KRTV, WNMU-TV 13, and WBUP/WBKP have had their EAS compromised separately through this security vulnerability with a similar Zombie payload.  WBUP/WBKP noted "ABC 10 – CW 5 will continue to work with federal and state agencies, including law enforcement and security experts, on the investigation of this incident." and that "Additionally, the manufacturer of the EAS equipment has been contacted to evaluate the attack."  This brings the total television stations affected by this EAS vulnerability to 4, and effected television stations to 1 (WKBT).

Updated 2013-02-15 17:58:55

Reuters reports that the emergency alert systems were breached by simply using the factory default user-name and password.  Amazingly WBUP/WBKP did not take this into consideration before releasing a statement saying that a back-door was used by a manufacturer defect/flaw.  Reuters also reports that TV stations were effected in at least 4 states: Michigan, Montana, California, & New Mexico and according to Mike Davis, a hardware security expert, at least 30 other emergency alert systems were in the Google search index on Monday with no standard security measures taken to secure the devices. - Reuters Article

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