The Pen Addict 29/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	29
Title:	We Were On A Break!!!
Release Date:	November 13th, 2012
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 29
Audio File:	Audio Episode 29
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 29
Length:	4545 min <br />0.75 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello, and we are back. This is episode 29 of The Pen Addict podcast. I am Myke Hurley and I am joined by the returning champ, the king. He is the man behind this podcast. He is the man behind The Pen Addict. He is chief enabler, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: What's up, Myke Hurley?

Myke Hurley: Hi, Brad. Where have you been?

Brad Dowdy: Where have you been? I've been showing up every week, sitting down and waiting. Yeah, every Thursday. I sit at my laptop, I turn on the mic, and I just stare at Skype, and there's no mic, no mic. There's no Myke Hurley coming on at all, and I'm just sitting here and sitting here and waiting. I finally got fed up with it, and I said, forget it. So, you finally got back in touch with me, and I guess we'll get this thing back going again.

Myke Hurley: So, it's been three months.

Brad Dowdy: Has it been that long?

Myke Hurley: August the 23rd was episode 28, and today is November the 13th.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, almost three months. Almost three months. It's gone by fast, I'll tell you. All kidding aside, we talked about me taking a break for a while, and I definitely needed it. It's worked out well, about as well as – it worked out as anticipated. How about that? We talked about all the things going on in my personal life, all good things, moving, home construction, work, and travel, and just stuff, life stuff. And the three months went by extremely fast. I'm still extremely busy, but I've made it into that settling in point where, all right, I know how life's working now. I know what I can fit in. And I know the things I have to say no to. And I've started – I took a – as long as we've been off the podcast, I was blogging very little as well, right? Some ink links posts on the weekends or things like that. And I've started to – I finally just ramped up, got the bug back again, started writing a few more posts. So, yeah, everything's been getting back in order pretty well. So I'm real happy to be back and doing this.

Myke Hurley: Well, we're very happy to have you back on the network.

Brad Dowdy: I missed it. I missed the dulcet tones of Michael Holy.

Myke Hurley: Don't we all? Yeah, no, I'm really pleased that we got to get the show back up and running again. So, unfortunately, we lost cooking with Brett and Myke last week because Brett – he has actually sort of left the network. The show is over. It is retired. It's not on a break. But the silver lining to that is it opened up the time and the schedule for the pen addict to come back sooner than I had maybe planned. I know that we were talking about it, but we hadn't actually had a good conversation. But I was concerned that I wasn't going to have time in the schedule. So, you know, every cloud has a silver lining, as they say, and this was definitely that one for me. So I'm really pleased that we're – well, I say we're – I'm pleased the show's back. I'm very concerned for my wallet. I have not made any purchases.

Brad Dowdy: Really? Really. Like this whole time you've just been –

Myke Hurley: I've stayed away. What's wrong with you? My enabler has been gone.

Brad Dowdy: All right. Well, you're probably going to be in serious trouble then.

JetPens Purchases

Myke Hurley: You know what I did today? I went to JetPens. Oh, okay. At work, and I found a bunch of things that I want.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Okay. Well, we'll talk about some things that I've been using in my downtime and purchased. And, you know, I've bought a lot of things and haven't used.

Myke Hurley: See, because I've – previously, you know, when I was looking at this stuff, I was always looking for the perfect pen, right? Right. And then during the course of the show, I found the perfect pen for me. Okay. So then I stopped looking because there was – basically, what was happening was I would buy new things when you would tell me how great they were. Mm-hmm. And then because that stopped and I had, you know, I had what I considered to be a great arsenal, I kind of stopped. Right. But now I'm going to start again. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I kind of had that same feeling when, you know, we decided to take this break. When I decided to take a step back for a little bit, you know, it was like – it was a culmination of things, right? Just the, you know, the burden of other things going on, you know, more important, you know, in the outside world. So, you know, it kind of dulled my interest for pens and paper and things like that. You know, I would buy new things and they would sit there and I would have no interest in even trying it, right? And then I finally got to the point where I didn't even do that. I just stopped buying things or trying out things. I didn't, you know, I wouldn't on a Saturday morning, you know, grab 10 pens and play around and see what I liked, which was good, what was bad. You know, I didn't do any of that stuff. You know, it just kind of really – that tied in with this whole break time that I needed. But, you know, in the end, I think it was good. I'm recharged, refreshed, and, you know, things aren't going to be exactly the same, you know, with the Pen Attic blog. You know, there's no way I could keep up the schedule I was doing before. With the quantity of reviews and things I was doing previously.

Brad Dowdy: So, but, you know, that's okay. I'm happy to get back and start doing something now. So, it's a good feeling. I'm jacked up about it. I have a passion for the pens again, and it was good to take a step back for a minute.

Myke Hurley: But you're happy you're back.

Brad Dowdy: I'm very happy. I was – we, you know, we – over the past, I'd say, month, I've gotten, you know, all right. I can see the end is near. I'm buying more stuff. Pens are more interesting to me again. I miss talking to you on the podcast. And, you know, we talk about, God, I don't know, once a week, just a little quick, you know, tweet or email or something. And, you know, I'd say, you know, I think maybe soon. And you'd go, yeah, yeah, I think maybe soon. And, you know, it wasn't really a lot of pre-planning, but we finally just got to the point. I said, I think I'm ready. And you're like, yep, I'm ready. Let's get back at it. And we worked out a day and a time, and here we are. And just for the record, for all the past listeners and regular listeners to the podcast that are rejoining us, and we certainly appreciate that. We recorded on Thursdays previously. This looks like it's going to be our new home Tuesday evenings.

Myke Hurley: It will be a Tuesday evening recording for us both, so a Tuesday evening release. That's going to be the new day.

Brad Dowdy: Mark your calendars. Yep. Because I used to get those, when we were recording before, I used to get those tweets about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, 3 o'clock in the afternoon, Thursday. I was like, where's the podcast? Where's the podcast? Because everyone knew it was on Thursday. I was like, well, we record at 4, so not yet, but coming soon. So update your calendars to Tuesday.

Myke Hurley: Because obviously the last show that we had, we were talking about sort of frustrations and things. And then, because we hadn't planned on it. It wasn't a plan. It was then you sort of sent me a message a couple of days later and was like, I need to take a break. And I was just like, okay. And then we'll start up when we can.

Brad Dowdy: You know, and let's talk about that episode for a minute. Okay. That time in the Pen Addict blog. And I hadn't gone back and listened to it since we recorded it. But I got so much positive feedback from that episode. I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who listened and downloaded and reads the Pen Addict for all your emails, your tweets, your comments on the blog. I had the, you know, the outpouring of interest and just, you know, hang in there and, you know, the positivity of everyone, you know, wanting, you know, to make sure everything was fine. Which it was. You know, I don't want to make this overly dramatic. You know, it wasn't, you know, that serious of a deal. But, you know, it was the support from everyone who listens and reads and tweets and talks to us and emails us and comments was awesome. It was way beyond. I mean, I obviously didn't expect any feedback from that. You just don't expect that when you're doing something like that, you're not doing it for feedback. But the feedback was amazing and I appreciate everyone who took the time to drop me a line around that time. It was hugely supportive and definitely made me want to take that break so I could come back stronger and better than ever.

Myke Hurley: Excellent. So I think that we should probably talk about some of the stuff we've been using and maybe some of the stuff we've got our eyes on. But before we do that, should I thank our sponsor for this week before we delve back into the pen talk? So our sponsor this week is those fine folks over at Squarespace.com. Squarespace give you absolutely everything you need to make an amazing website, blog, portfolio, your home online, no matter what that might be. If you're starting up a page for you to share your own pen reviews, Squarespace is the place to go. If you're starting up a store to sell your pens, then Squarespace is the place to go. And the reason I say that is because they take care of the entire thing for you. They provide you with hosting. They provide you with beautiful templates, which look absolutely fantastic. They take on any device that they're viewed on because of something called responsive web design, where they make sure that your site scales and looks absolutely beautiful and brilliant on all devices. They don't rely on an ugly mobile view which strips out all of the design choices that you've made. They just reformat your site to look as best it can on whatever screen size. They give you a really simple system to create your pages using a drag and drop interface. So you can say, you know, I want this image to be above this text. So you just click and drag it all in the web browser. It really is very powerful. They have mobile applications that allow you to post to your site on the go. And they also allow you to access your statistics so you can see how many people are visiting your page. You have social services built in. So you can, if you write something and you want it to tweet automatically when you post, it can do that too. And if you need any help, Squarespace has 24-7 customer support, award-winning support, that will respond to you in minutes. They also have live online workshops to help walk you step-by-step through everything you need to build your amazing site. There's no credit card required to try out Squarespace. You can just go to squarespace.com forward slash 70 decibels and you can start a free trial. Squarespace is then $10 a month for the standard plan once the trial period is over and $20 a month for the unlimited plan. The information about the differences in those plans is on the pricing information screen. If you sign up for a year, you will automatically get 20% off. If you sign up for two years, you'll get 25% off. So you get discounts if you pay up front. But I can give you an additional discount whether you want to pay for one of the annual plans or for the month-to-month plan. I can give you another 10% off all of that. If you use the offer code 70DECABELS11 at checkout. So it's 70-DEC-I-B-E-L-S-11 for 10% off. Just go to squarespace.com forward slash 70DECABELS to find out more. Thank you to Squarespace for their support. And if you view, I mean if you are a, I'm sure you are, you've all seen the pen addict. Sorry, you've all seen penaddict.com. And you will see the beauty that is a Squarespace 6 site.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so that's one thing I did do on my downtime. It was so simple. It was laughable. Just converting over from Squarespace 5 to Squarespace 6. And I'm really happy that I did it. I like the tools available. I like the speed. And I like the looks of it a lot better. There's always more to be done. I'm not completely thrilled with just – I haven't totally dug in and done everything I've wanted to to the blog. But for starters, it's killer. I'm real happy with it, especially on mobile devices. It looks awesome.

Myke Hurley: It looks great on the iPad mini.

Brad Dowdy: Yep.

Myke Hurley: Now also, now the show is back, get to have my weekly moan at you to redirect thepenaddict.com to penaddict.com.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, you know what? Okay, I'll do that because I have the domain.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, because I have convinced you to buy it in the first place.

Brad Dowdy: I didn't realize I didn't have the redirect in there. And then as soon as you – you caught yourself a second ago.

Myke Hurley: Yes, I did. So I thought I better go check it because I said it.

Brad Dowdy: But see, it's funny. I guess I've been doing it so long. It doesn't even register with me. I never say thepenaddict.com.

Myke Hurley: I think because what changed was you started doing a podcast called The Pen Addict. Right. So I think that made – well, at least made the change for me. Instead of going to penaddict.com, I would type in thepenaddict.com.

Brad Dowdy: So yeah, I will put that redirect in tonight.

Pen Arsenal

Myke Hurley: So let's talk about what we've been using during this time period. Now, I mentioned that for myself, I found like I had the perfect arsenal, right? So I didn't feel like I needed anything more. That's maybe why I haven't looked. That's not changed for me in any way, as you can imagine. I'm still using the Retro 51 products. Okay. So I'm still using the Retro 51 Tornado ballpoints and fountain pens. Okay. I use them every day.

Brad Dowdy: And love them as much as before.

Myke Hurley: I have absolutely no complaints, quibbles, problems. The Tornado continues to be just an amazing product line. There are some new styles that I've been able to force myself away from buying for the time being. So it's been very difficult. But what I've got in the Tornado line for me is I have both a beautiful working fountain pen and a beautiful working ballpoint. And between the two, I've got the pens for any occasion for me, really. Basically, when I sit down at my desk now, I reach into my pen case and bring out the Tornado fountain pen and one of my ballpoint collection.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Good. That's impressive that you stuck with. And that says a lot about how good that product is. And we've talked about that ad nauseum in many episodes, how much we love that. And that shows you just the quality that it is.

Myke Hurley: An interesting thing. Picked up the Vanishing Point last week to use for a while and found it incredibly uncomfortable. Really? Yeah. It's the clip. Because of the way I hold the pen.

Brad Dowdy: Well, you originally had a slight issue with that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. See, I had a slight issue with it. And then I got very used to not using it for a long period of time. And then when I picked it up to use it again, I found the way that I was holding the pen to be very uncomfortable. Very pleased I've got it because it's like a work of art. It's a very beautiful instrument. But I've had my eye on the... Is it the Lamy 3000? Is that what it is? Is that the stainless steel one? Is it the 3 something?

Brad Dowdy: It's the 2000.

Myke Hurley: What's the one that they've got that also is a retractable?

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. You're right. Yes. I know what you're talking about. The Dialog 3.

Myke Hurley: Dialog 3. I knew there was a 3 in there somewhere. Yeah. And I've had my eye on that pen for a long time, too, because it's another absolutely stunning retractable. Yeah. But because it's got a clip there, I know that I'm not going to find it comfortable. So I've stayed away from it.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. I mean, and that's the gotcha with retractable fountain pens, right? I mean, I've read that there's modifications you can make to remove the clip. And I just, I mean, it doesn't, for me, it doesn't bother me, obviously. But that's a huge, I mean, that's the number one issue on whether you should buy this pen or not, which is why, you know, I wouldn't ever recommend someone to buy this pen sight unseen without holding it and trying to write with it for a while. That's difficult, though. Mm-hmm. Do you know? It is. That's why I bought mine at a pen show, right? And, you know, I waited six months or a year from when I knew I wanted one to actually buy one because I wanted to hold it.

Vanishing Point

Myke Hurley: The Vanishing Point is still the number three most popular fountain pen and jet pens, and I still feel like we are to blame for that.

Brad Dowdy: I think so. I think so. Because it wasn't that high. I still get a lot of comments.

Myke Hurley: It wasn't that high before.

Brad Dowdy: No, and mostly because, I mean, it's a costly pen.

Myke Hurley: The next most expensive pen in the top ten is $55, so less than half the price.

Brad Dowdy: Right. I've noticed at jet pens, and, you know, for those who are new to the show and happen to be picking it up today for the first time, I used to work for jet pens. And so, you know, and it's still my favorite place to shop for pens online, so I'm always on the site, but I don't really have a lot of contact with them anymore. But, you know, being behind the scenes and watching what, you know, all the new products coming in, I've noticed a lot more higher-end fountain pens coming in than in the past.

Brad Dowdy: And I noticed that, you know, they don't get a large quantity of them because I noticed that they sell out real quick. So that's a good sign, I think, you know, that, you know, that type of buyer is out there that's starting to get interested in fountain pens. And all of our fountain pen friends know this, the people that, you know, read and listen to fountain pen geeks. I mean, they probably, you know, would laugh at our gel pen and rollerball pens and things like that. You know, they know, they understand how great fountain pens are. But, you know, people that are more in our shoes, it's not, you know, fountain pens aren't second nature to them. It's really, I think they're really making an impression in the marketplace, at least from what I've seen just, you know, outside anecdotal evidence just from paying attention, I guess, if you will.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So what have you been using regularly during this period?

Brad Dowdy: On that same theme, I never thought I would be like a real serious fountain pen user. But I found myself using fountain pens, I'd say, 75% of the time. It's crazy. And I never in a million years would I thought I would go that direction.

Brad Dowdy: You know, I've kind of taken a break from the vanishing point. I still bring it with me and, you know, break it out and make sure, you know, the ink's not dried up and things like that. But I've bought so many, a lot of new things that I wanted to play with. The pen I go back to time and time and time again is the Kaweco AL Sport. That's, I don't know, that's just one of my favorite all-time pens. And they came out with two new colors. Well, they came out with a bunch of new colors for it. They came out with two that I liked. Well, one is a matte blue body and one is the, do they call it chrome? What do they call it? No, glossy silver Kaweco AL Sport.

Myke Hurley: That's the one that, now, this was something that we had actually been speaking about for a while. Because you saw it, didn't you, in a tweet.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. My friend Patrick Ng in Hong Kong, who writes the description blog, he's in the, you know, I don't know him. I just know him from online and sharing emails with him and chatting with him some. He's basically, he's in the stationary business. I don't know if he's on the marketing side or the purchasing side or whatever. But he gets a lot of, he gets a lot of advanced products. And I don't know, it had to have been six months ago at least. He sent out a tweet or did a blog post of this Kaweco AL and looked just like a mirror. You know, the body of the pen was just totally reflective, like shiny chrome. And I was like, holy cow, that is the coolest pen I've ever seen. And it's pretty awesome. I'm having some, I don't know if I'm going to go, I haven't reviewed it yet. Right. So I bought it a few weeks ago. It sat around for a couple of weeks, didn't ink it because I didn't. With the Kawecos, I haven't, I want to try different inks in them. Right. And there's no converter for that size pen because it's a smaller compact style pen. So I've drained a couple of cartridges and it took me a while to decide what ink I wanted to put in there. For some reason, I'm real weird about that. I won't just, I'm not the kind of guy that likes to clean a fountain pen every day and switch out the inks. You know, it's not, I want to pick something and stick with it for a while. So unfortunately for me, it takes me a week or two to decide what ink, to what ink I want to get into a committed relationship with on a pen. As silly as that may sound. But recently, the J. Herbin came out with a new anniversary ink. It's a blue ink called Blue Ocean. And I put that in a syringe refilled for the first time. One of the short international cartridges to go in the Kaweco AL. So I'm using the Blue Ocean J. Herbin Anniversary Ink in the glossy silver Kaweco AL Sport. And I've been using that religiously for probably a week now, I guess. Something like that. Maybe not even quite that long. Maybe five or six days. And it's really awesome. I mean, the pen itself is no different from any other AL Sport that I've used in the fact that it's built incredibly well. The nib is super strong and very smooth. And it's absolutely one of my favorites. This is an EF nib that I use on those.

Brad Dowdy: It's fine enough for me. It actually seems finer than the Lamy EF nibs.

Brad Dowdy: And it's super smooth. Now, with the glossy silver, it may not be as good in use as it is in pictures. And you can probably imagine why. I mean, a body that shiny and that chromed out, if you will. I mean, it's going to get fingerprint-y. Yeah. Scratches. It's, I mean, nicks, dinks. You're going to see everything that touches that pen. What is it actually made out of?

Brad Dowdy: I believe it's aluminum still. They must just do a different finish.

Myke Hurley: So it's got more of a weight to it than the plastic one, right? Because that was my... Oh, yeah. Basically, I picked up my Kaweco today and remembered how beautiful they are and how great they feel in the hand. But it's just a bit too light.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So... The AL is actually for, stands for aluminum. Of course, yeah, because I have the sport. Or aluminum. Did I get that right?

Myke Hurley: Aluminium, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, thank you.

Myke Hurley: Chamfer.

Brad Dowdy: I believe that's what it stands for, at least on the AL. Yeah, it's got to. Yeah, they're much... They're a much more substantial pen, which is why I have the classics. I have a few Kaweco AC classics.

Brad Dowdy: They're great pens. They are soup... They're like... I don't know. It's like you set them down and you think they'd float away. They're very light. These are more substantial pens without being heavy. They're very... They're sturdy and strong. You know, you can carry them around in your pocket. You can bang them around on your desk. That's why I like the build quality of this pen almost more than any pen I own. That's why I...

Myke Hurley: Have you seen them?

Brad Dowdy: I now have... I mean, this is my fourth one of these. That's how much I like them. And it's the same pen. It writes the same. I just buy the different barrel colors because I love this pen so much.

Myke Hurley: Have you seen the carbon fiber ones? Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I don't like them.

Brad Dowdy: That's just a lot of money.

Myke Hurley: They don't look good.

Brad Dowdy: The red one looks horrible, I believe. There's a champagne-looking color one that looks even worse.

Myke Hurley: Because they have them in solid color, but I don't know why you would do that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. The black on black one.

Myke Hurley: That's even lighter, isn't it? Carbon fiber.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I've never even held one of those. But, I mean, they're... Excuse me. They're, you know, another $50 or $60. These are... The AL sports are expensive as it is, especially when you own four of them. They're like $75 now or something like that. And the carbon fiber ones are up around $130.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, $122.

Brad Dowdy: $122?

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm.

Brad Dowdy: And I...

Brad Dowdy: It doesn't interest me. I guess it's the easiest way to say it. I mean, the cost... The aesthetic appeal in relation to the cost doesn't do it for me. I'd rather have more of the regular AL sports than the carbon.

Brad Dowdy: So, especially the new ones. The new ones are really ugly, in my opinion. I just don't get it. But, you know, I watched them come in at JetPens, and they sold right out.

Myke Hurley: Interesting.

Kaweco

Brad Dowdy: The red ones did. I don't think the... Do they call that other one champagne? I don't know if I'm using the... It's kind of a copper looking... Yeah, champagne. That one's especially ugly.

Myke Hurley: I've signed up to be... I did this earlier. I signed up to be told when the glossy silver broad nib comes back into stock. But I think I might get the rare chance to blow your mind about something.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Myke Hurley: You know that they do a Kaweco converter now.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, do they? Yeah.

Myke Hurley: The small one? They do.

Brad Dowdy: Are you sure?

Myke Hurley: I'm very sure.

Brad Dowdy: Because I think I've had this conversation with somebody.

Kaweco Pens

Myke Hurley: Fountain pen converter for the Kaweco special AL fountain pen. Oh, really? Student fountain pen and Kaweco all-rounders. Converter is not... Okay. Is that... Is the Kaweco special AL, is that the larger one?

Brad Dowdy: Yes. See? That's the conversation I had. I think I had this conversation with Anna from the Well-Appointed desk. She said, hey, there's a converter now. And I said, I don't... I think it's for the big one. The naming convention there is pretty confusing. Because the special... It certainly leads you to the belief...

Myke Hurley: The special is their standard fountain pen with a nib. Yep. With a lid, sorry. A cap. Yep. Yeah, which is a shame. I don't really know why they make that pen either.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Seems weird to me that they do that.

Brad Dowdy: I think it's just part of the history of the company. I think it goes... All of their models that they're introducing now really go back a long time. And they're just kind of reintroducing them and making some updates and modifications. And modernizing a lot of the pen lines that they had back in the early 1900s and things like that. I'm not fully up on the Kaweco history. But from what I've read, a lot of these pens existed in some way, shape, or form previously.

Myke Hurley: Because I did see that they do a pen called the All-Rounder now, which is a standard fountain pen with a cap. But it doesn't look like any of the others. And it's a real good-looking pen.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. They're definitely some of my favorite designs. And I just haven't... It's like one of those things. I like the AL so much. The AL Sport. It's like I almost don't want to ruin it by buying a different one and going... I'll always have to compare it to the AL Sport.

Myke Hurley: Punishing the name.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I don't want to set myself... I'll be setting myself up for disappointment or something. And plus, I'm to the point now where I'm not just going to buy anything, which I never really was. I only wanted to buy things that I wanted to use. So I don't want to buy... I don't want to spend $50 to $100 on a pen that I'm going to test out and hate and never use again. Right? Because I'm not... You know, I'm not working for JetPens and getting a lot of these products for free or anything like that. I'm paying for all this out of my own pocket, which is fine. And that's actually how I want things to happen. So I'm very cognizant of the fact that I'm not just buying things on a whim.

Myke Hurley: Is there anything else of note that you've got at the moment?

Brad Dowdy: There's a new pen that I got that actually kind of blew my mind. Wow, can you hear that?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I can hear the pen truck leaving.

Brad Dowdy: Do you know what it is? What is it? It wouldn't be a Pen Addict podcast without the UPS truck.

Myke Hurley: Did you just get a delivery?

Brad Dowdy: It's like a planet.

Myke Hurley: Have you just got a pen delivery?

Brad Dowdy: I don't know. UPS just came. I don't know what it could be. Most of my pens don't come UPS, so they come...

Myke Hurley: Hand delivered. They come hand delivered.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, special delivered. Jeeves delivers them in a limo to my front door.

Myke Hurley: Oh, Jeeves, you have another pen delivery for me.

Mini Pen

Brad Dowdy: I got a pen that I didn't think much of when I ordered it. It was just one that looked interesting I wanted to try. That actually has greatly, greatly surprised me. And it's the Monteverde Poquito Ballpoint Pen and Stylus. And what this pen is, and I ordered it off JetPens.

Brad Dowdy: What this pen is, the pictures don't do it justice. It is really, really tiny. It's a tiny, compact, portable mini pen. Whatever terminology you want to use for a small pen.

Myke Hurley: Oh, wow. Yeah, I can see. This is a small pen. Because there's pictures of it, and I thought they were holding it up to a tablet, but they're holding it up to a phone.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. You can't... When I ordered it, from when I ordered it, I had a mental expectation of what the pen looked like. To when I actually opened the package and saw it come out, I was like, what? Did I order this? I honestly thought it was a mistake. I was like, what is this pen? And then I read it closer. I was like, oh, yeah, this is that pen I ordered. Wow, it's way smaller than I even imagined. I mean, honestly, it's really hard to tell by the pictures just how tiny this pen is. It's unbelievably well made. It writes. I've never used a Monteverde ballpoint cartridge before. I don't think I've used any Monteverde cartridges before, I don't think. The black ballpoint ink is killer. I mean, it's dark and smooth and doesn't skip and doesn't blob. And the problem I've had with pens like this before that I've reviewed, like mini pens with styluses on them. I've had styluses that are completely unresponsive. I don't think I've had a miss with this stylus yet in a touch, tap, or swipe on my iPhone or iPad. I kept doing it just going, okay, this is going to stop working here in a minute. And it never did.

Brad Dowdy: This was an awesome pen. I haven't been shocked by a pen in a while. Based on my expectations, right? I mean, this pen, in the grand scheme, it's not that big of a deal. But my expectations were it's just going to be a pen. Whether it's turned out, I think it's an exceptional pen, which doesn't happen. I don't get that surprised that often. I usually know what I'm getting into when I get it and have a general idea. You know, like I just did a big review on the new tool pens. I generally knew going beforehand, you know, this is going to be pretty good. And, you know, I know how these write. I know how they wrote in the past. You know, they made some cosmetic changes and, you know, made them a little bit better. This one, completely off the radar surprise pen. So I'll throw that out there as a big shock to the system.

Myke Hurley: So are you going to be getting any of the new Field Notes stuff?

Brad Dowdy: The leather or the boxes? No. And here's why. I have a Doan leather utility cover that I bought last year and that I love. And it fits the same size notebook. It fits all that pocket size notebook. And those things are expensive. I mean, I think I paid probably like 70 something for the Doan cover. I don't need another 80 or 90 dollar cover. I'm not going to carry two of them in my pocket. Put it that way. Because I use the Doan one still all the time. That goes with me constantly.

Brad Dowdy: The box is interesting.

Brad Dowdy: I'd have to buy two of them right out the gate.

Myke Hurley: Oh, really?

Brad Dowdy: So that's kind of a negative if I wanted to store all of that.

Brad Dowdy: And the most interesting, I think, is the pouch. If I bought any of those products, I thought the pouch was well done.

Myke Hurley: It looks beautiful.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: What a beautiful leather color.

Brad Dowdy: What's that?

Myke Hurley: A beautiful leather color they've chosen.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. If I love all those products, and if there's any one of them I purchased, it would be the pouch. I thought that was pretty cool. I just can't figure out how I would use it, but it's pretty cool.

Brad Dowdy: The other products, I'm covered on the cover and the box. I just think my plastic bins are doing fine, I think, for that. I don't – it's not a showpiece, I guess. I wouldn't have it out. It would just be stuck in the closet. I don't need a $35 wooden box to stick my field notes in a closet in, or two of them at that, because I would blow out the quantity count of the first one. I forget how much they hold. They hold quite a bit, but I have more than that.

Myke Hurley: $60.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'm around that, too. But I will say – we should do a – we'll mark this, make a note to do an episode. This is one of the episodes I want to talk about coming back is field notes collecting. You've probably seen some of my tweets, and I made a post, and I've been talking to a bunch of people that were trying to track down a bunch of the older model field notes, and it's become a big collector's thing, which is kind of crazy. You'd be shocked at some of the prices I've been offered for some of my field – some of my old field notes.

Myke Hurley: Really?

Brad Dowdy: That I turned down.

Myke Hurley: Please note that down. I think that would actually be a really interesting episode. Yeah. But I'll just mention before we – I was going to say here that if you want to find the show notes that I've mentioned and all of the links for the pens and the items that we're talking about today, just go to 70wrestlebells.com forward slash thepenaddict, and then you can just find episode 29 from the list there, and you'll see all of the links. I really love the new field notes stuff, and I've been really – I feel like I've constantly gone backwards and forwards about field notes. Because I really want the subscription, but I just don't think I would use that many notebooks.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Then I'd feel like I'm wasting them.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I mean I obviously don't use that many notebooks. I just like the style and design, but I don't do the subscription because I don't order them if they're not pleasing to the eye to me. There's been several editions where I haven't ordered just because I didn't care for it as much, didn't like it, or just wasn't my style. So I didn't want to be tied into the subscription model if I didn't really want that particular product. I'm willing to whatever small monetary penalty there is to buy them as they release them. I'm willing to do just to get the ones that I want.

Myke Hurley: So what is the subscription price at the moment?

Brad Dowdy: $125 annually for four releases. Is that right?

Myke Hurley: I'm trying to find it now. I'm sure it's in – for some reason I can't seem to find it, which is peculiar because I can always find it when I don't want it because it just pops up and I'm like, oh, no, I'm going to buy it again.

Brad Dowdy: Plus, you know, I like to manage the quantities too. Sometimes I buy extras.

Myke Hurley: Right.

Brad Dowdy: So I'd rather – I vote – I'd rather pay more to have the freedom. I guess that's the easy way to say.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Field Notes Colors subscription is – oh, man, why is this so difficult to find? Yeah, I got it right here. Oh, it's $97 at the moment. Okay. I think they've got it on set. It was $129.

Brad Dowdy: It was $129, so I guess that's where I got the number from. So $97 gets you four quarterly shipments of two three-packs each.

Myke Hurley: So you get six notebooks every three months for $97 a year.

Brad Dowdy: So what's that, $20, $40, $60, $80? It's really not even a break because they're $995 to buy them individually. Plus, I guess, does that include shipping?

Myke Hurley: I don't know. I think the idea for it really is they sell out quite quickly.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah. Shipping is included. So you're basically guaranteed to get the color and you get free shipping.

Field Notes Editions

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Like, for example, the Traveling Salesman Edition, which were Octobers.

Myke Hurley: They had 24,000 of them that sold out. Yep. So I quite wanted those, but I didn't get around to buying them. Oh, okay. And just because it looked really nice and now they're sold out. So that's how they roll.

Brad Dowdy: I never noticed this before until you had me go look at this color subscription, that they list the edition size on this page. I'm looking at how many editions they printed of each run.

Brad Dowdy: So I'm looking at some of the old ones.

Myke Hurley: It's interesting that the National Crop, they did 7,500 and you're just still available.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Well, because you have to – that's a higher cost of entry, right? Oh, is it? You have to buy six notebooks. It's like a $25 purchase, not a $995 purchaser.

Myke Hurley: Right.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I think as well people like the surprise of receiving the field notes, you know? Yeah. What are they going to look like this time? Because they've definitely – in the last year or two, they've been a lot more ambitious than they were originally.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: You know, they like to do ambitious things. Yeah. Get little bits with them. It's a really cool company. And if I use notebooks more – because I use notebooks all day, but I tend to use the larger ones. If I used – because I have field notes – if I use my field notes books more, then I would definitely get the colors. But I just feel like I would probably waste them, which is the only reason I've not done it. Yeah. But I really like the look of some of the other bits that they've got.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I've always told you I wanted to get Aaron Draplin on here who designs the field notes for Jim Koodle.

Myke Hurley: Get it done.

Brad Dowdy: And – well, no. We've talked about this. We'd have to change our tag to explicit because every word out of his mouth is F. He's awesome. He's awesome to listen to. He seems like a legitimately cool dude. But every word out of his mouth is F or MF or –

Myke Hurley: Maybe we'd have to do a special episode.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. We'd lose our rating.

Myke Hurley: Or I could just tirelessly edit the thing.

Brad Dowdy: But yeah. Anyway. But that's pretty cool. So yeah. We should do an episode. So we'll do an episode on this because I've had some conversations with some people that are doing some collecting of this. So that's a whole episode for sure. Excellent. Yep.

Pen Usage

Brad Dowdy: What else have I been using? Not too much. Honestly, I went during my downtime. I didn't use a lot of different pens very much. I just wasn't into pens. I used my Render K Hi-Tech C pen a bunch. And about the only other pen that stood out during this whole time that I've been kind of taking a break was – I don't know if we talked – I think we mentioned it. I know I reviewed it on the pen. I think it's the Pen Attic previously. It's the Oto Graphic Liner. It's just a needlepoint drawing pen. That's been a really good pen for me. It's just a real cheap low-end. It's like an art pen with a steel needle tip and liquid ink that actually works well. That's kind of a hard – that's a really difficult combination for manufacturers to get right. To have a super fine liquid ink pen that's not a felt tip. It's like in a metal tip roller. That's an impressive little pen. I use that – when I'm not using a Hi-Tech C, I use that because they're very similar in style and performance. So that's been kind of it. That's been the main thing. I've got tons of other products that I've got into review that I just haven't had the time to spend with yet. But I've definitely got some other neat things in the hopper, but yeah, that's been the latest. And really, all this stuff I'm talking about has really just been in the last two or three weeks that I've really gotten back into this. I mean I took a serious, serious hard break from doing a lot of the pen-type work at the house and things like that. I mean it was – it wasn't cold turkey, but it was pretty darn close.

Myke Hurley: Excellent. Well, are you going to be back next week?

Brad Dowdy: We are definitely going to be back next week. I've been waiting for this for days. I've been pretty excited. It's like is it Tuesday yet? Is it 5 o'clock yet? Is it Tuesday? Is it almost there? What are we going to talk about? Oh, it should be pretty easy. We've got a lot to talk about. We can just riff.

Myke Hurley: I think there's a lot of people that have been sharing that. And it's nice that as much as I've hated letting people down every week when they ask if the show is coming back, it's nice that people have been asking. And I hope that everybody is happy that the show is back. And if you have friends that have listened, that you know listened to the show and haven't for a while, check that they know that The Pen Addicts is back because I know some people, quite rightly, after three months or so would have maybe deleted the show from their podcast player. Yep. Absolutely. Especially if they don't follow us on Twitter or anything like that and they might not have known the show was ever going to come back because it went away. And we weren't really sure. Yep. Yep. So thank you. Thank you for sticking with us.

Brad Dowdy: Absolutely. We definitely really, really appreciate it. And, you know, we enjoy all the feedback that we get. So definitely, you know, get in touch with us via Twitter. You know, I'm at Dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. Myke's at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. You can also find us at penaddict.com, 70decibels.com. So, yeah.

Myke Hurley: You're not on the app.net, are you?

Brad Dowdy: I am not.

Myke Hurley: Well, I am iMike there as well.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. How's that going for you? Not to hijack the show. Just give me a quick…

Myke Hurley: It's good. It's fun. It's a nice environment. It's very much like old Twitter.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's actually, you know, I didn't tweet as much, I noticed. And I didn't use the computer as much, I noticed, when I was, you know, I was busy doing other things. So, I've enjoyed actually getting, sitting down with my laptop and opening up Twitter or, you know, TweetBot and, you know, reading Twitter.

Myke Hurley: Catching up on two months of Twitter. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: Opening up ByWord and writing a blog post. I was like, hey, that's new. It feels good again. So, yeah, it's good.

Myke Hurley: Sometimes you just need to take a break.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Sometimes you just need to do it. For sure. And this is something, I knew it wouldn't go away completely. I just had to figure out where it fit in properly. And I think I'm back into that place. So, yeah, all systems go.

Myke Hurley: Excellent. Well, I'm happy you're back. I'm happy we're back. And thank you very much for listening to episode 29 of the Penelope Podcast. I am Myke and he is Brad. And until next time, bye-bye.

Brad Dowdy: Bye-bye. Bye-bye.