people

people are the reason I hate people.

this should not come as any sort of surprise unless you're one of the unreasonably optimistic.

you get misunderstood for opening your mouth, it says "don't try" louder than anything else.

so yeah, I'll go work on that then...

changing laptops - whether I wanted to, or not

I'm not even sure where to start. I stopped blogging for a while out of pure ennui.

This story either begins when the laptop died in August or when I bought it, a refurb macbook air from woot before amazon's acquisition of woot basically nullified them into a mere walmart-clone with a fresh coat of social-media-glittering paint.

Why bother to post my histrionic brain-drippings? I don't know you well enough to bore you with that. Just to wring it out a bit and smear it across this page.

I had a macbook air, 2010 or 2011. Fairly nice hardware, an obvious drop-damaged bent corner that never bothered me, but a piss-poor 720p display that made me want to shove an elbow into it and stretch it out to a bare-minimum 1920x1080 resolution.

I stuck with it though for the small size and light weight. If I was careful I could get it into my messenger bag whenever I found myself out stomping around a major city's streets. I wrote several nanowrimos on it.

Sometime in March it began getting unreasonably hot when being used from time to time, so I'd drop everything and fold it shut and let it cool down. I guess this is a known issue with these machines. Eventually it took its toll. I carried it through airports visiting my people this summer, and within a week after returning from the trip, it died.

I was using youtube or reddit and felt the bottom case get hot. Then the mouse stopped responding. I was all ?wtf? and then saw yellow lines every half centimeter across the screen. I only saw that for a few seconds before it immediately shut down. I let it cool for a half hour and then tried to boot. It gives the 4 tones of death.

I can't even get it to Target Disk Mode to recover my journalling and notetaking from the last few months. It won't let me access the onboard storage. I'll need to resort to some other methods to recover any lost data.

I began to search for a laptop to replace it. I cast a wide net. I wanted something that would run my favorite linux distro, Mint. I knew I'd likely end up with something running windoze. But that's not the dead-end it used to be.

System 76, Think Penguin, Purism, Libiquity, Star Labs, and maybe a Lenovo something or other.

In the end I burned out on the research. I gave up and walked into the local Costco and looked at what they had on the sales floor just to get an idea how the hardware felt at various price points.

I walked out just after Labor Day with a Lenovo Ideapad S340. Within a week I'd hackintoshed it by installing a spare sata ssd I had on hand. I had everything but the trackpad working, including sound and wifi - idgaf about imessage or any of those pointless bells and whistles. It's another OS environment which allows me to get tasks done that are NOT best done elsewhere, and by Cthulu it's not a social media hub or influencer-creation platform ffs.

In less than 10 days Costco dropped the Ideapad price to $449 and I caught $50 refund and used it for the hackintosh-compatible m.2 wifi/bluetooth card I've been using.

Another week later Costco's website had the noticeably superior Lenovo Ideapad Flex 6 in the 14 inch configuration. Usually a minimum of $699 but suddenly $499. I pounced and have been attempting to justify which one will stay ever since. I won't keep both.

I wish I could combine the two experiences. I'd rather have a sata port for a different physical drive to put the hackintosh on. The Flex doesn't have that. It has a better battery and keyboard than the larger model. It also has a metal keyboard deck, not a plastic one like the S340.

I would like the larger battery and the sata port on the mobo. But I can't. So I'm willing to work with just Mint and keep the Flex, reinstall the original wifi card, yank the sata ssd hackintoshed, and return the S340 because it's far more awkward for a writer and blogger than I would have expected to have a 10-key shoving the home-row off the center of the monitor.

Also worth noting is that the Ideapad S340 appears to be a newish model of Lenovo. I can't find much details about hackintoshing it. Otoh there are like 12-15 pages of people who've hackintoshed various Flex models on github alone. That means you don't need proprietary apps to install macos, you can at least BEGIN purely vanilla.

Remains to be seen if I can get winderz, Mint and Mac to share the SAME nvme ssd...

UE Megaboom repair-in-progress

So I was given a gift. A box full of technology pieces anywhere from 3-5 years old. Among the booty was a gently used UE Megaboom bluetooth speaker in the original cylindrical packaging.

I was able to use the device for a couple of weeks without appearing to need to charge it. Although I had less and less confidence when it kept telling me it had 100% battery. That couldn't be true as I kept using it.

Eventually it stopped working. The speaker only work when plugged in if it worked at all. The fact that the Megaboom stopped working sucked for me because I have a JBL Pulse and a JBL Pulse 2 and neither of them are as solid in the bass department as the Megaboom is.

I left it plugged in for a day and it wouldn't charge. Still functioned plugged in, but nothing when unplugged. I poked the internet and pleasantly enough found similar solutions on google and duckduckgo. So after watching a few youtube videos and skimming over several ifixit tuts I pried mine open.

First was getting used to what I saw in those videos. Popping the charge controller board out of the butt end of the Megaboom didn't take too much effort. A couple of little blue pry bars from the ifixit tool kit I have and I could pull it up off the battery and the main board.

The battery wouldn't budge when pulling on its plastic pull-tab. So I got my needle nosed pliers and carefully pulled it out by its connector. I left it disconnected 12-15 hours and tried the method of testing the charging board I'd seen in a couple different videos.

I reseated the charge board as it was but without the battery inside. Then I attached the USB charge connector to the charge board and it began to flash the white LED charge indicator. So that meant the board was not borked.

After waiting a while I reattached the battery to the board and then reseated the whole shebang inside the main housing. Pressed the board down by its rim where the seal is, trying not to touch the capacitors or the ports on the board.

Once the Megaboom was reassembled I plugged it back in. The charging light blinked for about 30 seconds and then went dead. Nothing happened when I tried to power it on. It wouldn't even power on plugged in, as it had before. So I left it  alone plugged in but not blinking the charge indicator, and went to bed for the night.

Upon waking up again the Megaboom still sat there unblinking. I disconnected the charge cord and pressed the power button. It came on, turned red, and said it was 40% charged. This is the first time I ever heard it say anything but 100%. I thought this was a good sign and turned it back off, replugged the charger.

It did the same thing. It blinked as if it began to charge and then within 20-30 seconds went dead. I left it a while. I came back an hour or two later and it was unblinking. I unplugged it and tried to power it on. This time it was just red, said critical battery, and powered itself off. I don't know what's going on with that battery but I ordered a replacement and I've left it charging.

Weird thing this last time? The little white charging indicator on the bottom right next to where the micro USB cord goes in? It kept blinking. For well over a minute, maybe two before I had to move along to the next thing.

As far as I know it's still blinking away in there now.

Maybe I can recondition the battery it came with, maybe I need to yank its butt off again and stuff a new battery inside. It's painfully clear the battery pack is just a couple of 18650s with a custom connector on the top and a teflon patch over the butt end where they're soldered together. Probably wouldn't take much to rebuild it if I had soldered since high school - I have zero confidence in my soldering skills today, I want a refresher course on that skill.

I don't have the desire to appear on camera and videoblog this content. So I'm'a dump it out in text. More to come. The Megaboom isn't repaired yet...

wherever you go... there you are.

I think I've fallen out of love with mac os for good this time. The hardware is still pretty decent, when they make anything I actually want and can afford... a narrower gap all the time.

I just finally crawled that little bit further from my cobbled together box of donated parts that comprised my first peecee. The first thing I could call my own computer that wasn't a mac, an apple, or a texas instruments. I bought an ultrawide monitor a year ago.

It refused to work with my mac mini from the go. I found out I could reverse track and downgrade my mac os to regain functionality lost in a recent "update." I felt a year ago about as I do now. F.. no!

I pushed the aging frankenbeast box I've been pc-ing on for the last few years across my desk to the ultrawide, slowly gathering dust since the mini wouldn't work with it. Lo and behold Mint Linux has no issue just working right out the box with zero command like tweaks or control panel installs and endless reboot loops the mac mini required to even see flickers of progress.

I'm done with it. Macintosh user experience has been infiltrated by bloat since OS 8. I've spent so many install experiences undoing half of what the defaults are that I've decided mac os is unnecessary, redundant. Windows 10 is less of an issue.

Don't get me wrong, windowz is still a mass-produced product intended for the masses. It is nothing better or majorly worse than mac os. I prefer mac because the colors and fonts are less gaudy and sharp edged. Truth be told I've never liked the color palette or font treatment in windows going back to when it ran on top of DOS. It's always been ugly and grating. Win 10 is no different, just desperately wants to be...

My needs led me past Ubuntu to Mint Linux and I'm pretty happy with it. Minor issues can be solved with minimal education, minimal effort. Compared to some of the bending over backwards I've tried to do in the process of creating, maintaining, and finally failing and giving up on the hackintosh... this is just so far from that howling chaotic mess.

Mint works. Mac OS X is good, and while it used to be clearly better than windoze, now it is only just... and that's a shame. I was once an unapologetic mac fanboy. I just know how little of their default install cruft is useful, and how many other solutions I seek out and install as a "first-thing" after any new install or reformatting mac os x.

Chrome. VLC. Audacity. XBMC/Kodi. Transmission.  MediaInfo. Handbrake. MakeMKV.

The majority of these solutions, apps and such are available for both linux and windows alongside mac. It's far rarer than it once was to find something that doesn't try to be [at least in beta] for all of the big three operating systems...

So yeah. I'm attempting to claw my way out of my own private rut. To stop being so reclusive and participate out in the world some more this year. To complete more projects, read more books, take more walks, and exercise more. Color outside the lines, make mistakes without immediate fear, and try to learn new things and keep growing as a person.

Oh and watch more Rick and Morty... sometimes the masses actually have a point about something. How weird is that?!?!

2017 Cannabis Oil Vaporizer Cartridge Review (25+ brands with commentary)

As promised a fortnight back, this is the 2017 Cannabis Oil Vape Cart review bundle I've been whittling away at for most of the summer, reflecting on several years of adult medical use and all I've learned in the process. (As a fellow metalhead I've known since we were boys -also settling into his fourth decade a little more comfortable being himself- has taken to saying "stick around and stfu youngin' whiles I learn you a thing or two!")

Absolute Xtracts are always reliable, potent, give a nice throat hit and aren’t likely to make you cough even when taking decent sized hits and blowing clouds. Quality CO2 oil, solvent-free and tested with results on the label. Glass tanks, wickless as far as I can see, refillable, comes in a small cardboard box with a small shelf footprint. Their carts have a decent shelf life, they come highly recommended, are widely carried at least in the Bay Area and South Bay. If you can, don’t miss Absolute Xtracts products!

O.pen Vape diversified early so they’re a bit more in need of a complex review. The standard o.pen vape carts were thinned out with PEG in them so you’d get huge clouds and a harsh throat hit but little by way of potency. DGMW, they’re fun enough to toke on, but you’ll blow through a sativa cart in a single afternoon if you’re a head like I am... There’s a kind of humidity to them like the generic Bloom Farm Sativa/Indica preloaded vape carts and I've had probably the widest variation between passably-potent and meh from o.penvape's original not-Reserve and not-Premium Reserve tanks. 

Then there are the Open Vape “Reserve” which are strain-specific 100% pure CO2 extracted oil, and for the most part they’re fine enough. They do a decent job of maintaining the terpene flavor without smacking you in the face with it the way some newer products tend to (Spliffin, 710 King Pen, Kurvana.) 

Open Vape also has a premium reserve cart that’s 510-threaded pyrex glass and dual coil - so it works with a VV battery, either theirs or someone else’s. Comes in a recycled unbleached cardboard narrowbox like a mid-range fountain pen or something. Quality stuff, their reserve carts, and well worth the loot. Not too terpy for me, but plenty potent with a decent throat hit. Zero additives and yet decent clouds. 

Lucid concentrates make oils and cartridges that are high quality glass, wickless, and high potency pure oil. They also sell branded VV batteries and shatter - they’re not just oil makers. Lucid are a dependable brand, but not too widely distributed from what I can see of the South Bay area. Most often found in downtown San Francisco, but well worth picking up if you see them.

Greenrock Botanicals, discovered at the legendary Granny Purps just up the road, make a quality glass cartridge, metal mouthpiece, dual coil wickless bottom-fed draw in a black-sleeved tank with little windows on the sides. They only use pure CO2 oil and they're plenty potent without overdoing the terps. The terpene flavors are present and easy to taste but they're not stomped on and overdone. This is a very well balanced experience. The carts are 650mg for the price of a half gram! Lab test results with a convenient QR code on the side of the box. Tasteful logo on the tank, nothing ostentatious. Even comes with a tiny rubber band with the strain abbreviation on it, a thoughtful addition making their tanks easier to identify when out of the package. Excellent in every way - even refillable.

There is Spliffin’ which are almost always terpene burnt like a smelly marker from 2nd grade shoved up your nose. They’re decent, potent, but they’re way too terpy and they give a harsh throat hit because the terps are cranked up to 11. Glass tank, fatter than most 510s, dual coil, branded tank with their logo all but neon-lit on the tank itself. Comes in a plastic pouch like a bag of peanuts with a peg-hole for the store racking. The mouthpiece is metal and twists off so you can refill them, which is a serious plus, although whatever you chase through the cart is gonna have that too-terpy aftertaste for the first couple dozen hits, be warned.

Kurvana began to be a regularly stocked product about a year and a half ago. They’re also very terpy, though the flavors are less in-your-face than Spliffin’, they are still gonna give you a strong throat hit and larger hits will make you cough. The potency is greater than expected, but the terpy hits make you wanna take your time. These come in a little plastic test-tube with a cork plug on top, a bright label on the outside and a little branded cuff around the metal base of the cart complete with their kpen.co web address - so you can help them advertise. 

Another thing I discovered in 2017 is the 710 King Pen, a full-gram glass cart. I tried Gelato bc it was their only hybrid at the time. I was blown away by how terpy the thing is. It’s a decently potent cart and clearly well-made but it’s too terpy for its own good. A strong throat hit should not be followed by the urge to cough unless you’re taking legendarily massive rips. Even small hits off this thing are enough to make me cough. The learning curve for vaping should not be this high. Kingpen gets a passing grade for potency but needs to tone down the terps. Or I need to vape it through a bong...*shrug*

Another recent product is the Nova CBD 2:1 half gram cart. It’s plastic, it’s humid, and it goes quickly. But it’s also the nearly perfect balance of terpy flavor and potency. Decent quality that could be improved, but it’s a mild throat hit and unlikely to make you cough. At $20 for a half gram they're respectable value for the price. I bought six - you can vape off half and then refill/mix with your favorite oil syringe and have your own remixed CBD and whatever-else-you-want. That's my kind of thing...

Delta 9 come in unique triangular boxes and the tanks are grey matte-finish aluminum with an opaque plastic mouthpiece that also holds the oil mix. It’s an oddball package I haven’t seen for sale in almost a year. I don’t even know if they still make it like that. Delta 9 has a branded battery with the standard 510 threading, despite being a mass-produced product it has decent life and doesn’t overheat, although it’s a fixed voltage. These are amusing in that there are Strawberry and Spearmint flavored sativas, both of which would score far higher marks of recommendation if they were remotely consistent. 

Some of the Delta 9 carts leaked in their mylar sealed triangular pouches, some of them seemed to have dried up partway before I opened them, and needed several dry fires (press button without drawing on mouthpiece) before working at all. Another one was clogged up and couldn’t be forced to draw even after several dry fires. I gave up on that cart and turned the mouthpiece upside down to let the oil run into a little dab-tainer and then I dabbed it on my first ceramic nail to use it up. When they work, they’re awesome. When they don’t is just sadly more often in my personal experience. And none of that is on the dispensary itself, it’s most likely due to something beyond their control. I found an old Spearmint sativa one in a drawer the other day and it still works...so I can’t summarize other than to say that my experience with Delta 9’s carts is all over the map.

Brite Labs is another quality product. I bought the package including a cartridge and a standard 510-threaded battery with stylus tip, same as the first o.penvape battery I ever owned. The oil is pure and additive free, although somewhere in the 40-50% THC and thus a thinner, clearer oil than higher concentrations. The flavor is present and not overpowering, not too many terpenes and not any of them cranked up loud. The cart is metal-mouthpiece, high quality clear plastic or glass in the tank itself, and single coil as far as I can tell. Unstuck, openable and refillable, a cartridge worth reusing. I haven’t seen the brand in a minute but I still have their branded battery and it hasn’t died yet fwiw.

CO2 Clear was a favorite of mine earlier this spring. They also seemed to strike an admirable, almost addictive balance between the terpenes, the potency and the replay value. I bought 10 of them in various flavors and blew through them pretty quickly. Highly recommended, if you can find any!

Lola Lola were doing a demo day at the dispensary a few months ago. I bought a few carts. They’re packaged like perfume in flowery boxes. The carts are glass. The vape is okay, sometimes a little terpy, sometimes a little bland. They’re hard to quantify and sometimes made me cough no matter what size hit I was taking. I don’t think I’ll be rushing to buy them again right away but I ain't hating - I hope they improve and I'd try them again someday.

Then there’s the Pax Era pods. A universe unto itself, incompatible with 510 threaded standard vape cartridges. Think something made by Apple, sleek and short, metal and skinny. Small enough to hide in your hand. A mouthpiece combined with the oil tank not much bigger than a nib of licorice. The little brother of the Pax herb vape, battery started off at like $50 but I've seen it since for $15-20. Charges via standard micro usb like most phones and takes a charge fast, too.

Bloom Farm seemed to have a stranglehold on the Pax for a long time. It was only possible to find generic black/white indica or sativa, same frustratingly mediocre contents as their 510-format plastic vape carts. Then somehow the dam broke. First there was a yellow label Gorilla Glue from Bloom Farm for Pax Era. Then there were several other players stepping up with Temple Extracts bringing strain-specific carts like Blackberry Kush in a very reasonable formulation - CO2 oil but without the terpene burn some others might have felt necessary.

I'd complain about Pax Era pods being stuck shut, but they're so small you could fit four in a tic tac box. At least 3 dispensaries that carry them offer a credit for bringing in your empties and one of them claimed the pods can/will be recycled. Add in that they come in a funny little square box-shaped bottle with a child proof lid? I don't have an issue with it when their half grams last longer than any 510 I've ever used. The Pax Era pods sip oil and still give decent, potent hits. Add in that their wee little battery has 4 different voltage settings and we have a clear winner in the form factor olympics.

It seems Bloom Farm stepped up their own game because only recently I’ve begun to see “Legion of Bloom” strain specific indica, hybrids, and sativas with more flavor. They step up the terpenes from almost-there to clearly present, but without blasting them on 11 like a kid with his first car stereo. Legion of Bloom Pax Era pods are quality, potent, recommended.

I know it sounds confusing (only because it is) but Bloom is another brand. Not Bloom Farm, and not Legion of Bloom. Just Bloom. They’re strain specific full gram plastic carts in a cardboard box big enough to have a battery inside but without one. More the size of cigarette packaging than the tiny AA-battery sized Absolute Xtracts boxes. I will have more to say about Bloom’s full gram cart, but I just bought my first one, Girl Scout Cookies, and have yet to take it out of the package. It is clear, bright yellow-amber oil in the package, not foggy or cloudy like generic Bloom Farm or Nova CBD.

Then there’s the Bhang carts, diversified but logically - not in a confusing way like O.penVape or Bloom Farm. I’ve tried their entry-level product and they’re decent, respectable, reliable. I’d easily grab a Bhang cart if they’re out of Absolute Xtracts. They’re not quite the same but they’re damned close. And Bhang has a Reserve line as well, usually twice as potent and clearly so when you can hit them a few times and set them down and forget them right on your lap. 

The Bhang Reserve carts also have clear lab test results on the side of the little flip-top box so you can see how much higher the THC percentage is than the standard Bhang cartridges. Bhang Reserve are up in the 70% THC range, so obviously well worth snatching up if you see them. Strain specific in glass wickless cartridges with black plastic mouthpieces, and are refillable.

(If you'll forgive me a fanboy moment I think Bhang Black, the ultra high potency premium-shelf quarter gram very short carts, is the one Sarah Silverman was nonchalantly showing off on the end of her vape pen while being interviewed on the red carpet at an awards show within the past few years. Of course she called it "pot" just like screeching fingernails down a chalkboard, but wtf...she's still smart, funny and hot. And a fellow st0ner, fellow patient, woke human being.)

Bumblebee - a stainless steel finish with little windows on both sides, a matte finish metal mouthpiece on a standard 510 threading. Acceptable, leans toward the terpy side, hardly anything to shout about. Comes in amusing yellow and black plastic bag. Not too terpy, not too strong. Sometimes makes me cough. Your mileage may vary. I wouldn’t hesitate to try them again. If they had been my first, I would undoubtedly have more to say, but I'd been around the block a dozen times before they appeared on the scene. I wish them luck.

Level Blends also comes in a plastic pack, grey and green when I grabbed one. Several different blends, Spark, High, Float, Dissolve are the THC dominant ones, and then there are Remedy, Uplift and Radiance for the 1 to 1, 1 to 2 and 1 to 3 THC to CBD ratio carts. Bright, clear, pure CO2 oil in real glass half gram cartridges. Quality built, titanium coil, cotton wick, no compromise to be found. The vape itself is consistent, potent, flavorful without being overly terpy. The best to be had in the plastic-bagged category, these tanks ARE reusable. The one I have here is Float and it is 70% THC, which is a lot higher than many - frequently the typical cartridges max out at 35-40% THC which is an entirely acceptable standard strength dosage on an average day.

GolDrop - every time I’ve seen them they come packaged in a standard dube tube with a printed paper label indicating the strain and lab test results. Pretty high terpene factor. Strong, but too terpy for me to take more than a few hits before it makes me cough. Quality CO2 oil product by knowledgable people, if terpy is your thing don’t miss this. If plastic cartridges are not your thing, GolDrop does have other concentrates they’re probably even better well known for, shatter and wax.

Americanna - a very standard experience. What used to be the type of experience only offered by O.penVape’s first generation of PEG-additive 510-threaded cartridges has stepped up in quality since those early years. Americanna is another quality oil product in a plastic cartridge with a business-card sized cardboard insert that tells you the strain and lab test info, their website and graphics. A little terpy, nothing like Brass Knuckles or Kurvana. Decent throat hit, moderately strong. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen more than half grams.

Oasis - another that’s in the same type of plastic packaging with cardboard insert as the Americanna and several others. Plastic 510-threaded single coil cartridge with quality oil inside. Leans toward the terpy but isn’t overblown. Moderately strong, but still easy enough to vape up in a day or two. I’ve only ever seen these as half-grams also.

Fresh off the Bud - Again, same packaging and cardboard backing card as the Americanna and Oasis. Plastic 510 threaded single coil cartridge filled with their own oil. Still mostly solvent free, lab tested, strain specific. I’ve tried a couple different flavors and they seem a little terpy but more like Absolute Xtracts for potency. If you don’t mind bright terpenes, give this one a whirl. Again, only ever seen half grams of this cart.

In a category nearly but not quite by itself is a unique package called DUO by Duo Vapor. This is a full gram in two cartridges divided into AM/PM sativa/indica for daytime vs nighttime use. My particular pack had Green Crack and Blueberry in it and both were respectably potent, not too terpy, and easy to vape without throat burn or coughing. Getting a full gram of quality for less than sixty bucks is a welcome treat. This cost less than fifty before tax. The tanks are standard plastic single coil, but refillable fwiw.

Care By Design (CBD) is a recent discovery. When this text began to congeal in my brainspace I hadn’t yet tried it. A quality product, I’ve tried the 18:1 CBD to THC mix and it’s potent, has a decent throat hit, feels like an AbsoluteXtracts or Pop Naturals oil in the throat. Not too terpy but has its own subdued flavor without that coppery aftertaste some vapes can’t avoid. Glass cartridge, dual coil, metal mouthpiece. Branded tank with their logo on one side and a big white 18:1 on the other side. In case being stealthy matters, these are not quite stealth. Highly recommended, very reasonable price considering the value. CBD heavy concentrates almost always cost more, but these are still within the lower end of that price bracket - not 80 bucks for a half gram as some places might try to charge.

W vapes. high end, pure CO2 oil, lab tested, premium glass and metal vape tanks, also a disposable is available. Only tried the brand once but it wasn’t overpoweringly terpy and seemed pretty potent. Haven’t seen them in over a year.

IVXX - another 2017 thing I hadn't seen before this spring. A nice GDP CO2 oil in a plastic, refillable tank with a chrome metal mouthpiece, single coil. Comes in a cardboard box in a plastic sleeve. Strain specific every time I’ve seen it. Potent and flavorful with a decent throat hit, won’t hesitate next time I see them but my first was the last one the disp had - they sold out quickly. Refilling the cartridge with a thicker oil seems to mean it has trouble flowing unless it’s hot. I'd buy this and enjoy it again, I'd just be careful what I refilled it with.

Ganja Gold Honey Oil - iso hexane extracted oil I found to be very terpy, too much to enjoy more than a few puffs at a time. Took getting used to. Ganja Gold have a CO2 oil extract that they call live resin but I have not tried it yet, and I can tell you from the places I’ve seen it - it’s premium priced for a half gram. Comes in a little leafy green box and has ads in all those glossy free monthly cannabis product magazines. I haven't tried enough to be able to comment on potency from batch to batch, they're only carried in certain dispensaries.

Pop Naturals - pure, solvent-free CO2 oil, lab tested and strain specific. A bright clear red or yellow-orange in easy to use syringes for a long time, now comes in a plastic applicator that looks like a fat tube of lipstick or a binaca breath spray. Quality product. You can hit it off a nail or put it in your favorite vape tank or cartridge and vape away. Barely thin enough to flow, but easy to vape on the go. I’d call Pop Naturals a close second to Absolute Xtracts. Their reliable quality and potency, availability and value are strong reasons to be repeat buyers. Don't hesitate!

Pop Naturals have their own cartridges pre-filled, but rather than their very first tanks which were refillable, their new ones are glass, dual-coil, but not refillable, stuck shut and less useful because of it. Quality cartridges with quality oil inside, but forced to be single-use landfill-filling is nothing to be proud of. So I take a mark away from PN branded carts for that major failing but overall they're still a quality reliable lab-tested product. I just prefer syringes to their stuck-shut carts even when made with premium parts.

SC Organic / Always Organic CO2 oil carts and gramcules. My secret. Discovered along the winding roads in the hills above Santa Cruz, this dependable extract is equal to Absolute Xtracts for potency and reliability. I’m hesitant to even name it in a semi-public forum bc I wanna keep the secret to myself. But yeah, they’re fecking awesome. Snip the tip on the gram-cule and squeeze that thin capsule-shaped bulb end to push a skinny flow of pure oil into your favorite tank, your favorite nail (or even a joint.) Minimal packaging, maximal value! Can’t recommend it highly enough.

+++

First in closing I'd like to say that I purposely didn't link the websites for all these products bc I'm in no hurry to have them seeing me in their referred links - if that's even still a thing. The vast majority of them have some kind of web presence but I have an abundance of faith in your ability to google them yourself. How you think I learned half of this stuff? When the IRL world failed to answer my questions I went to google or duckduckgo. 

And some of these products aren't trying to be corporate barcoded things available in any state who'll allow their sale, some are grassroots indies like homegrown organic tomatoes that could disappear tomorrow, that's just how it is...

There are still more varieties of vaporizer cartridges on the market I haven’t tried, and more dispensaries everyday are offering their own in-house flavors and mixtures for various prices and at various potencies. Don’t go thinking I made a clean sweep of the category or anything like that. The cannabis cat is really out of the metaphorical bag now, I would hope, in ways that other people seeking profit by growing and selling can stomp on any threat coming from Attorney General Seff Jeshions and his permanent day-glo klan hood.

There is a subset containing the HappyJack, the Vaporette, and a few others whose name escapes me at the moment, as well as countless in-house products at various dispensaries in the same category. What category is that, you ask? DISPOSABLE one-piece vaporizers like their nicotine counterparts. You can't call them "single-use" because even the cheapest ones usually last 40-50 draws - but they usually limit you to five second draws. Disposables usually use the cheapest battery and materials, sometimes with a window to see the oil, most often just a wad of wicking with - if you’re lucky a quarter to a third of a gram of oil or oil and additive mixture - dripped onto it and a simple silicone disc slapped over the end of the tube for a mouthpiece.

There are probably half a dozen different ones, all mostly the same. They’re landfill-filling just lurking on a shelf waiting to poison the groundwater. I can’t help but see them as not just potential plastic garbage but very nearly ALREADY plastic waste let loose on a planet nearly poisoned already by the goddamned Petroleum industry and their robber barons of the double-M post-millennial American corporat-ocracy. 

Unless the situation specifically needs me to use a disposable vaporizer, I refuse. I understand why they have a minor place to exist, but if I won’t vote for them by spending my money on them, maybe there will be fewer of them in the ground before they put me there. Just a thought.

It is ultimately the long-game future I consider when suggesting that a plastic or glass/metal vape cartridge can be re-used in the first place. Who else is gonna think about that tomorrow before it comes? The people not yet born but who nonetheless get to live with our sins like their unwanted baggage? How about we let ‘em get born first and worry about cleaning up our own goddamn messes? 

Better yet, not make any messes we can’t clean up now, like you know, petroleum spills in lakes, rivers, streams and oceans ffs...I don’t mean to get screamo on anybody, but welcome to what it’s like inside my unfiltered head. (Dig it or gtfo, I don’t care. Hopefully u learn something. Otherwise there’s plenty of NASCAR and porn on the internet, I’m sure they know how to find you...just fart a little louder and wish really hard!!!)

In closing I’ve already remembered that there’s a category of batteries, whether or not there’s a branded custom or branded mass-produced battery, and what kind or type it is. I just haven’t combed through the whole thing with that in mind yet. It’s marginally important and most brands don’t have them anyway.

There are more brands introduced everyday and there are plenty I plainly and clearly missed. If the staff at a dispensary are helpful and informative and have the time to answer questions, I will avoid stuff that’s gonna be too terpy. I’ve stayed away from brands that seem to be determined to over-terp their products when a knowledgable source warns me first. I don’t need to buy something moderately expensive to cough and choke and sputter trying to vape it.

And then there’s the brands who are more into shatter and wax than oil, or only do oil sometimes. I have used several brands of shatter and that’s another rabbit hole for another day. I’m not sure I need dabs in my life, although they’re an experience I’m glad I’ve educated myself about. From time to time they can be amusing, that chest-expanding almost head-rush is like little else in the world. It’s just not an everyday thing, and seeing people do multiple gram dabs at once makes me think it's become the new beer bong. Ugh!

Get just enough of whatever you need to be the best whatever-the-hell-you-are, biochemically at least life owes you a certain equilibrium even if heredity and biology are against you, a clear mind and a body freed from its defects should be a universal human right. Imagine a world that acted like it knew...

cannabis oil vaporizer cartridge review pre-ramble

I wanna start a vape review page and for now it’s gonna reside right here at  writemore.morewrite.org dgmw, this isn't it YET...this is the preamble. Or in my case, the pre-ramble...

Probably makes more sense to do it as a text based blog type thing, maybe with graphics. I’m not really social enough to bother with youtubing myself despite persistent middling-to-serious interest in video processing and editing. Preservation and archiving. (But enough about the man behind the curtain...)

I know how much I like to watch various other people do vape videos where there’s actual tangible INFORMATION within them, not just another drunk-a-like stupid-stoner blowing hit after vapid hit in your face and cackling like a NASCAR fan, hooting like a hairy cheerleader while banging their hands on the table. Nobody needs to see that. Only thing interesting about that stooge is that he uses gatorade for bongwater, what with his white-trash tapout snapback and a mullet. smh

I just don’t care enough to get comfortable with putting my face in a video. So I won’t go that a-way. But I will take a breath to thank youtubers like Bubbleman's World and his Hash Church series. A decent amount of information to the entertainment ratio in his content. Dude knows his shizz. 

Come to think of it, I ought to thank The Vape Critic on youtube. He's also running a high quality AV production with a high information-to-entertainment ratio. Pretty concise and clear with a wide variety of higher-end devices given rigorous inspection and thoughtful comparison. It becomes clear quickly that he knows what he's talking about and he isn't taking free stuff to write puff pieces about. He will be honest and tell you when something is not what it claims or not what it ought to be. Don't miss it...

I know some things myself about this stuff, have for a minute now, and I think it's a shame it only lives inside my head. I ask a fair amount of questions at the dispenaries I visit. I ought to let those answers (along with the ones I'm smart enough to look up and verify or figure out for myself) be useful to a larger audience. Maybe even somebody who can take it and improve upon it. Mental damage and social phobias aside, this is useful information, dammit. I won't let my defects keep it proprietary...from this point forward I refuse.

Taking my cue from thoughtful, studious st0ners like VapeCritic and bubbleman, I'll try to show-and-prove without too much shuck-and-jive.

I should make it clear this is a Californian’s perspective on 2017 and the previous few years vaping whenever smoke of sufficient quality that it didn't make me cough wasn’t available - but oil was. Things have come a long way since 2012 and even local and regional laws have evolved in unexpected ways. Having other states where products can originate is a relatively recent development. I’m very thankful that the allegedly free market has given us greater access to a wider variety of products and resources in the concentrated cannabis medicine market. 

And I’ve never understood the fear and loathing approach of some fanatical drug war types who claim access of anyone, even registered patients to concentrated medicine is somehow a danger to all citizens. It’s nothing more than Extra Strength Tylenol in a slightly different dimension when considered with the slightest amount of logic and reason. Higher concentrated medicine means I can rely on a consistent dose and not have to spend all day using inferior methods to solve the health issues for which I escaped big-pharm-ylvania in the first damn place.

The ultimate goal of my use of medical marijuana products is a healthier, more active lifestyle. I’ve sustained various injuries and have conditions inherent to my genetic lineage which are greatly alleviated, if not remedied entirely, by the products I’m discussing here. If you’re looking for a strictly recreational review, this probably isn’t gonna help you much. I can’t and won’t be telling you which one gets you most "fcuked up" or which one passes for using at the casino betting tables like some kind of overgrown fratboy blowing vape in errybody’s face. Nope.

I use enough, and just/only enough of whatever I’ve written about here to get back to whatever my life needs me to be doing. Whether that be writing this post, digging into classical chiptune remixes on youtube, doing the dishes, the catboxes, 8-hour marathon sessions of Zelda, or whatever one does to get through their days. I don’t sit around like the stereotypical stoner invented by the opposition to scare otherwise rational people into acting against their own self-interest by keeping the dinosaur of the drug war going to this day. A concept that was out of date in the 1980s...still won’t be allowed to die by a hard-right squad of mostly white whackos when the rest of us are out here getting on with our lives, they’re stuck in 1968 flogging everybody but themselves. smh

Personal baggage aside (as if?!?), I should be able to give a brief review of 15-20 or more different brands of vape cartridge at this point. Just by shopping around and doing my homework. I’ve only seen a few youtubers doing vape reviews and they’re not focusing on popular products. I wanna see which ones are plastic vs glass, single vs dual coil, half vs full gram, additive-laden vs pure CO2 oil, and whether or not they’re single-use landfill-destined or if they can be re-used/re-filled.

I know people say you shouldn’t re-use vape cartridges and they have many legitimate points. If your cart’s coil goes before you use the second filling, how you gonna get your premium-priced unvaped oil back out? Even in the purest oil aren’t there still random particulates that eventually clog up any coil, isn’t it wise to change them? Without going into a whole mini tutorial on using oil and cartridges everyday, I can agree to a point. It’s not good to use a cartridge for more than a gram or two of oil. They should be changed, rotated, whatever keeps them from getting old and clogged up. 

But I do believe it’s possible to re-use half and whole gram vaporizer cartridges, whether you buy standard nicotine vaporizer parts to fill with Cannabis extracts or you prize high quality hand-made coils and variable voltage batteries for your own oil. Many of the glass cartridges sold and almost all of the plastic ones are able to be easily opened and refilled if necessary. I wouldn’t ever use a cart for more than 2 grams before replacing it, but that’s really just common sense. 

I possess plenty of deep-seated hippie recycling spirit, just paired with the knowledge that you can’t practically depend on any of these mass-produced vape tanks for more than three full tank cycles even with just nicotine juice, as far as anything I’ve read.

The rabbit hole is many, deep and varied on what type of tank, coil, and battery you wish to use to vape. You could lose a whole afternoon several days in a row just watching very opinionated, however often silly, vape users describing and demonstrating their techniques. On pocket/portable vapes, desktop vapes, nails, nector collectors, volcano vapes with ten foot collector bags, stone nails with massive reclaim rigs and honeycomb percs...the variations are literally endless.

No matter how elaborate the setups can get, I prefer the portable ones because I can take them anywhere. The Pax Era wins the form-factor olympics at this point, for being stealthy enough that you can usually palm it and hit it right in front of security at a concert and they just think you’re pensively holding your chin for a second or two. I love the stealth factor of the Pax Era.

I do like a variable voltage battery, but it’s nowhere near as necessary to my methods as I thought it might be before I actually used one. It’s nice to have a few options, but the entire spectrum hasn’t been ultimately necessary for me. I love my Cool Fire IV Plus battery because it’s blue and it fits nicely in the hand, and it holds a massive charge that can get me through even the heaviest of vape days. It also charges fast and allows you to continue to use it while it’s plugged in and charging. My previous battery, a Lucid that looked purple in the display case but seems pink in the hard light of day, while also variable voltage/wattage didn’t allow pass-through functionality, IIRC it needed downtime to charge.

I’ve had plenty of luck with glass and metal vape tanks, something like the Gladius with replaceable coils. Those you can run three or more grams through on a single coil, but you can fill them to 1.5 grams as well. Most of the typical 510-threaded standard width tanks max out at a full gram, or to maintain the same width they’d need to be longer than a crayon, wider than your hand. The Gladius is more the thickness of your thumb in the tank but with a narrower, still thick metal mouthpiece. 

I could even veer into a tangent about how I hate hate hate getting a syringe full of oil only to get it open and find it has an unthreaded tip and can’t have a proper narrow tip screwed onto it in order to fill a tank with a narrow opening (find one that doesn’t aside from the phat tanks like a Gladius or a Kanger) because shitty syringes might be able to squirt out a blob of oil into your mouth, your bowl, or onto a hot nail - but they’re not ready for prime time, can’t be used for more than a few specific tasks, and they ultimately suck ass. Don’t use unthreaded syringes people, no matter how much less they cost. Think of the end user who just wants to fill their tank with no muss/fuss and get on with their lives, please!

Before I sidetrack myself again...

This is what I've sorted out as probable criteria:

• PRICE vs amount/potency, value; 
• strain name / brand name or both; 
• packaging, whether or not lab test results are present; 
• corporate, global or interstate product with a bar code versus an independent, in-house one; 
• tank style - plastic or glass or metal or some combination thereof; 
• wick type - cotton, unclear, wickless, etcetera; 
• dual coil, single coil, titanium coil, no idea because the design makes it unclear or the packaging doesn’t specify; 
• is it stuck shut or can it be opened and refilled?;
• recycle-able or return-for-a-credit type of plan for the eventually consumed cartridge; 
• additives (polyethylene glycol, some other WTF) or pure oil?; 
• terpenes in proper proportion to the rest of the experience, or cranked up to 11?; 
• reliability/variability from one batch to the next; 
• access -  instagram, facebook, twitter - any in-store demonstrations, promos or give-aways. 

Anyway, this is just to say that the rest is churning about in the cement mixer of my primitive editing mind. I've already given it a draft or two, but am still finishing it up. Soon to come, right here on this page...an attempt to collate my experiences vaporizing cannabis concentrate products available for the medicinal use of an adult patient in 2017 and a few years preceeding.

a weary policeman & a comedian through a bullhorn

what would he mean by a post titled like that?

chewing on the lemons in your mind. flicking trumph pinatas at your head.

listening to vid cropped and pitchbent to duck the bots just a little while longer than the last ups did.

the content is still there. it's a different skill to listen through the pitching than dodging AM radio static. but the brain remembers both, may no longer be capable of missing the former. but appreciating the span and the changes that happened nonetheless.

of course nothing happens by itself anymore and nature may abhor a vacuum but ever-evolving brains covet layer upon layer of stimulus. unless we keep them fed, our intellects can consume us with their urge to correct ignorances with education.

don't dwell on the stories of emaciated netizens whose bodies gave out on them due to neglect while they pursued the internet into eternity. the stories are true. and they are lies. assume all outcomes and you begin to approach the zero line.

when you can transcend the moment and think outside yourself, the product of meditation becomes obvious. you don't even care who to aim at anymore, you appreciate that you can know when to step aside as they destroy themselves.

the path has never been clearer, even in the darkest times.

the world's policeman is weary and deserves to withdraw and regenerate. the suit can hardly speak loud enough to satisfy himself. the jesters jibe through someone else's public address systems.

amplification irritates the powerful, and the people aren't plugged into anything but each other this time. good luck unplugging that with some swollen powers and illegal unpersons with wings delivering death nobody ever allowed them to create in the first place.

peak indifference, may it come to pass. life can reprogram the empire if it imagines a better tomorrow.

will it?