None Found

As I’m writing this post, I’m celebrating the 2nd month of my new healthy lifestyle. I had been a smoker for about 8 years, and I smoked an average of 20 cigarettes per day. The longest I was able to quit smoking was less than 48 hours, which means I was never able to not smoke for even 2 days in a row!

Improved Quality of Life

Guess what! it’s been 8 weeks and I haven’t smoked a cigarette! And what’s even better is that I don’t even feel like smoking at all! This has improved my life dramatically in a number of areas:

• I’m sleeping much better and waking up pretty active. Since I’m breathing so much better at night, I no longer wake up wishing for more sleep.
• My breath no longer smells bad! I used to avoid chatting with people 10 to 20 minutes after every cigarette, especially when I visit the United States. Many people are allergic to smoke, and passive smoke can still seriously bother some people (just the residual smoke in your lungs after having a cigarette).
• I’m saving $6 every day! That’s around $2,200 per year. I can spend a week in Las Vegas instead of buying cigarettes! I can’t believe I spent around $20,000 on cigarettes my entire life!! And was willing to spend more…

How did I do it?

I don’t deny that I love smoking! I’m attached to it both psychologically and physically. I tried the nicotine patch, didn’t work, I felt the urge of inhaling the smoke. Same for pills! Whenever I tried to stop smoking, I started shaking and couldn’t get it out of my mind.

If you are a smoker, you know exactly what I’m talking about! A couple of years ago, I tried the e-cigarette, I didn’t feel that it was ever going to replace my real cigarettes, so I threw it away!

But a few weeks ago, I decided to give a new brand a try. I figured it’s been 2 years, they must have improved it! So after doing some thorough research online, I discovered Green Smoke. And apparently it was the perfect choice! Oh God! It’s exactly like a cigarette, only better!

How Electric Cigarettes Work

Well, it’s an electric cigarette. So it has a battery and you insert a little nicotine + flavor filter inside, and then you puff it just like you would a normal cigarette! The battery is rechargeable and will last about a day. You’ll want to get yourself multiple batteries so you have extras for when you go on a trip or are going to be away from the charger for a while. Also, get some refills for the nicotine because you are NOT going to want to run out or you’ll revert back to the real thing!

By the way, when you take a drag it looks like you are smoking, but the only thing you’re breathing out is harmless water vapor with virtually no smell! It’s NOT SMOKE! Though it looks like it. Sometimes people can detect a little scent of the flavor you are smoking, but it’s no more than if you were chewing flavored gum.

This little video will give you a good overview of the experience and how it works.

Advantages of Electronic Cigarettes

I can’t possibly overstate the advantages of these eCigarettes!

• No tar, ash or flame.
• No carbon monoxide.
• No complaints from non-smokers.
• No smelly cigarette butts.
• No foul odors that stick to linen, clothing, walls, cars etc.
• Save a TON of money compared to real cigarettes.
• They come in multiple flavors like chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, coffee, and more!

And maybe the best thing… You can smoke inside most restaurants, bars, airports, etc. – even in places where smoking is banned! I am able to smoke while riding in the car with John P., and he’s deathly allergic to cigarette smoke! (You should see him suffer in Las Vegas…)

Where to Get Em

While I was visiting the US I did notice that there were kiosks in a couple of malls. So you may be able to find some locally, though I’d caution you about what brand you are buying. Personally I hated the other one, so I’m only really endorsing the Green Smoke brand because it worked for me.

If you’d rather just save the hassle of looking for them, you can follow one of these links to get yours online. It’s what I did…

• If you’re in the US you can use this link for 10% off your purchase over $100, or 5% off any other purchase.
• In the UK you will need to use this link for 10% off.

Full disclosure: I get a small commission if you do give it a try. But that is NOT why I wrote this post. If you give it a try, and decide to spread the word as well, you can become a Green Smoke referral affiliate too. I can’t come up with a good reason NOT to.

If you’re a smoker you definitely need to give this a try. I promise that you will thank me (the people you hang out with will thank me even more) and end up an evangelist too!

None Found

Ok folks, I’ve been a little slow in getting this out, but before I leave on my weeklong trek to the Indy 500 I wanted to get the announcement out about the iPad contest winner!

Congrats to Mishaal Al Gergawi from Dubai! He lives in a place I would very much like to visit one of these days, but in the meantime I shall just have to send my iPad instead.

Um, can I just stop to point out that Mishaal has one of the coolest freakin profile photos in the universe? He kind of looks like an Arabic James Bond. He’s a good looking guy with this look like, “I’m trying to decide if I should kill you, or let you into my inner circle.” By the way, I have GOT to get me an outfit like that. Except that my pasty white skin probably wouldn’t work. Maybe I can get it in black?

Anyway, thanks to Mishaal for entering my little Twitter contest! And the iPad is ON THE WAY!

Hmmm. You know, since I’m going to Indianapolis, I believe that I’m going to pick up a little something while I’m there and give it away to one of you guys. Let’s see… travel can get kind of lonely, so all you have to do to possibly win whatever I find is participate in my Indy 500 discussions. You can leave comments here on the Indy 500 blog posts, or on Twitter, or on Facebook.

I’ll put some more info about it up on the Free Stuff page. Feel free to help me spread the word! That will definitely count in your favor when prizes are being dished out. ;-)

None Found

When we are recording Wealth Nation, we often conduct interviews via Skype. Of course, we’ve got a fairly sophisticated microphone setup going on, and I get everything tweaked just the way I want it before getting on the call. But then, in the middle of recording a show Skype decides to start changing microphone volume levels on me!

I’m not just talking about changing the volume level in Skype! I mean Skype reaches out and changes the main volume level on the laptop through the System control panel! It’s amazing. You can sit there and watch your microphone settings going up and down while your sound quality is all screwed up.

Well, I finally found a fix. It’s actually pretty simple.

• Quit Skype
• Open the following file with TextEdit: ~/Library » Application Support » Skype » shared.xml
• At the very end of the document, you’ll see an area that looks like this (but probably with more MicVolume numbers):
  <VoiceEng>
<MicVolume>77</MicVolume>
</VoiceEng>

• Add one new line immediately after the <VoiceEng> that says <AGC>0</AGC>: It should now look like this:
  <VoiceEng>
<AGC>0</AGC>
<MicVolume>77</MicVolume>
</VoiceEng>
• Save the document, restart Skype, and enjoy your new peace and tranquility.

What this does is disables AGC, or Automatic Gain Control, by setting the variable to 0. Use “1″ to enable it. The MicVolume can range from 0 (mute) to 255 (full volume).

None Found