The Pen Addict 546/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	546
Title:	Getting Together and Doing Pen Stuff
Release Date:	January 11th, 2023
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 546
Audio File:	Audio Episode 546
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 546
Length:	6060 min <br />1 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 546. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace and Pen Chalet. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad. Hey, Myke. Hello, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Hello, Myke. How are you today? You were very abrupt. Like, hi, Brad.

Myke Hurley: Hi, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: I just, I thought I would give it back to you. So, hi, how are you?

Myke Hurley: Good. I like that you're replicating my energy. You're mirroring me, you know?

Brad Dowdy: I'm energized. I'm energized today, Myke. You know, carrying through some energy from Monday and Tuesday this week, you know, trying to...

Myke Hurley: You seemed very amped up in refill in your members newsletter. Yeah, I was. I got that. You're very amped up, so...

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I like... Here's the thing. I like not taking myself too seriously, and that puts me in a good mood. Mm-hmm. And sometimes I let that translate into, like, little silly asides and sentences, and I generally feel good about that when I do that. It's not always the case. Sometimes, you know, sometimes you're just, you know, regular typing on the keyboard, Brad, and sometimes I want to make that keyboard sing a little bit, even if it only makes me smile. Even if it makes me smile, the output is a little bit better, and it's been a good smiling week so far, Myke.

Myke Hurley: All right. I'm happy to hear that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, because I'm actually, you know, processing some items on my checklist and my task list and getting things done. And I actually went this Monday and booked three pen shows for the first part of 2023, as in booked the hotel, paid for flights, bought show tickets, and made plans. So let's do it, Myke. So...

Pen show travel plans and pre-gaming San Francisco.

Myke Hurley: Are we going to do that thing now where on every episode we talk about the pen shows you're going to, or is that going to be later on? I mean... Because we did that. Do you remember we did that for, like, it was like Orlando and one other? It was like every episode. It was like, don't forget.

Brad Dowdy: So we pre-gamed San Francisco very hard. That was the one. Yeah. For like a month. I was like, do you know? And do you know what I'm planning on doing? And do you know who I'm going to see? And look, guess what? I'm ready to pack, and I'm going to talk about that. And hey, I went to the show. Do you want to talk about that? And oh, we didn't get to this thing at the show. So let's talk about that. So it was like six weeks worth of San Francisco and right into Orlando and two more weeks of that. So yeah. I see what you're saying. Probably. It's probably going to happen again. Starting with Baltimore. So at the beginning of March, I have booked my hotel and flights and show tickets for March 10th, 11th, and 12th, the Baltimore Washington International Pen Show. I have been to the Baltimore show before. That was my last pre-COVID show before not going to show for a couple of years, two and a half years or so. So it'll be good to get back. I enjoy that show. So that, Myke, you have not been to Baltimore. And what I will tell you, Baltimore is like, it's like a bigger and better Atlanta show, right? Okay. But not to the overwhelming level of like a DC or San Francisco. But if you took Atlanta and, you know, like if you personally, like if you said, what would you do a little bit different in Atlanta? And I talk about Atlanta this way because it's my home show for those who are just, you know, new listeners to the show. So, you know, you'd put Atlanta all in one big room. Like all the vendors get one big room. And, oh, the hotel has, you know, a little bit more access. You know, it's closer to the airport and restaurants and things like that. And it has a really good, you know, class vibe and a really good, a little better evening vibe, right? That's Baltimore. So it's like Atlanta plus. And I'm looking forward to get back to there. It's one of my favorite shows on the calendar. And I'm glad to be able to go to that. Speaking of Atlanta, that'll be the next show. Like two weeks after Baltimore, maybe three weeks. So March 30th to April 2nd is the Atlanta Pen show. I have booked my hotel room for that. That is a show I just have to drive to. So I'm always going to go to that. And I'll stay a couple nights at the hotel. I'm not going to drive like back and forth to home. It's a little too far for like a daily trip. But, you know, all of these shows, I'm going to arrive Friday and leave Sunday. So that's a new thing for me. We talked about me not working shows anymore, not having to work for a knock booth. Right now, I'm not working for any vendors. You know, maybe I'll mix that in later in the year. You know, I definitely have some opportunities for that. But right now, if I'm just going for me and going to hang out at the show, I'm going to try to arrive the Friday afternoon, you know, early-ish to these shows and then leave, you know, late Sunday morning, right, and get home, right? I feel good about that decision for me not to – what I would do in the past, like if I was working, I'd get in on Thursday night and then not leave until Monday morning, right? So that just really extends the show. It extends your expenses, you know, all the things. So – but it was mostly because I had a lot more prep work to do. And then I was usually, you know, working the show until it ended on Sunday. Then I was just tired, didn't want to have to take, you know, like a late-night flight Sunday, so I'd just go in the morning. So all my shows, at least right now, I'm planning on going Friday to Sunday. So mostly be there Friday night, Saturday night, then leave Sunday morning. So that's the plan.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: I wanted to get back to Chicago for a long time. So looking at the calendar this year, it works for me. So that is the first weekend in May, May 4th through 7th. So I have booked my hotel and booked my flights for Chicago. So that has been maybe five years since I've been there. I don't know. That's – it's been a while. I think – I'm trying to remember when we did Field Notes, the Field Notes event, if I've actually been to a Chicago pen show since our Field Notes event. I must – I certainly have. That was a pretty long time ago that you and I did the Field Notes interview.

Myke Hurley: Did you go to the Chicago pen show during that thing?

Brad Dowdy: No. No, because it was a separate time of year.

Myke Hurley: I was going to say, because why would you have gone but I didn't go? Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: That was a different time. Because I did a family vacation for the Field Notes thing. I took Mary Beth and the kids for that trip. We did a little extended stay thing.

Myke Hurley: Was that when we were doing the tour or no? It was a different time.

Brad Dowdy: That was a different time. That was a one-off. If you were – we planned it to where probably you were going to like Memphis or something like that.

Myke Hurley: No, I was in Chicago for a conference. That's what it was. That's what it was. Yeah, I was at the release notes.

Brad Dowdy: Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. So that was a long time ago. So I think I've been to the Chicago pen show since then, but I think literally it's probably been five years since I've been to Chicago. Chicago is along the lines of a Baltimore show. Really good medium-sized show, bigger than Atlanta. You know, really – like it's not in the city of Chicago proper. Like it's like I'll land in O'Hare, then you got to go like 30, 40 minutes out of the city. Like that's a little bit of an annoyance. But technically the hotel is in a good location for people going to the show to where you can walk out the door and get food and things like that. So like even though it's not in the city proper, which, you know, that helps keep the rates down. So like I'm okay with that. You know, if I wanted to spend extra time in Chicago, I could book a couple extra days and just go stay in the city and do stuff. You know, I'm not this time. I'm just, you know, again, Friday to Sunday. So I'm excited about having a full travel schedule this year, which for me usually entails like five to six shows. If I start creeping up into like seven shows, we're getting – we're doing a lot of travel and, you know, that's about it. But some of them will be flights. Some of them will be drives. So, you know, I try to mix them up. There is a pen show this weekend. Like I couldn't make the Philadelphia pen show. That's this weekend, you know, looking at the calendar. That just came up too soon, right? It's like I started thinking about this like a couple weeks ago. I was like, oh, when's Philly? Maybe if it's at the end of the month I could get there. And I looked and I was like, oof, it's like in 10 days from when I started looking at it and like the hotel was sold out and like other people are staying at like other hotels around. I prefer to stay at the show hotel. It's just easier, simpler.

Myke Hurley: I mean, especially if you can do it and especially where like, you know, I was just like poking through while you were talking because you never in other locations. It's like the Chicago pen show is like it's one of those ones. It looks like it's just so far away from.

Brad Dowdy: It's in the boonies.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Philly's the opposite. Philly is smack in down. Philly is an awesome location show.

Myke Hurley: The one we're about to talk about, which I've not heard of before. We'll talk about it. That looks that's pretty decent.

Discussion of the California Pen Show and its history.

Brad Dowdy: It looks like I wanted to go to the California pen show.

Myke Hurley: I feel like I have never heard of the California pen show before.

Brad Dowdy: And that's why it's in the show notes. We should talk about this. In the past, there has been the L.A. pen show. Right. That has historically been a show and it's historically been tough. Like this is one of the shows where they only have a Sunday public day. So, but they start the show on Thursday and it's just really strange. And the promoters historically been tough to deal with. And, you know, the event has, you know, had some ups and downs and weird hotels and weird spaces and things like that. He, the previous show promoter is not involved with this new California pen show. So, the previous show promoter was unable to get a hotel for, I guess, the normal hotel. I don't know all the details. So, that had an opportunity for a new promoter to come in, find a new space, work with new people, and launch this California pen show. Which it's still in Los Angeles, right? It's just not called the Los Angeles pen show. So, this is around the same time of year. The L.A. pen show has historically been in February. And I've been to the L.A. pen show twice at least. Maybe three times. I'd have to think about it. It's, I've always liked going to L.A. It's a good crowd. It's just a weird show. And it's kind of like problematic from a retail perspective to only have the public one day. Well, this California pen show was designed to make it into a more traditional pen show experience from what you and I would experience. And what listeners of the show would experience to where, hey, you know, we can have, you know, vendors can get in Thursday night. And Friday, you know, people can start, you know, the public can start going. And you have a Friday, Saturday, Sunday show that's, you know, pretty much open to everybody, right? You don't have to buy a weekend pass to show up on Saturday afternoon, right? You can just buy a Saturday ticket, which in the past you couldn't do for L.A. You had to buy the whole weekend if you just wanted to go on Saturday afternoon. It was problematic. So, the California pen show, it looks good. I really wanted to go to this. I have a conflict that weekend. Otherwise, I would have been booking tickets for this. It's like a month away. And I, you know, my friend Mario Campa is running the show. And, you know, as part of a group. And, like, he's been emailing me, you know, and I've talked to him on the phone. And, like, he's going to do it right.

Myke Hurley: What's it going to take to get Brad Dowdy to appear? You know what I mean? What's it going to take, Brad?

Brad Dowdy: I mean, that was literally Mario's sentence. Like, he knows. And I told him I would come if I could. And I checked my schedule, and I can't. So, maybe next year I will plan on the California pen show. We'll see.

Myke Hurley: I would put this one on the list of future pen shows. Basically, as well, just through a bunch of scheduling things, at least for the first half of this year. Like, I'm not going to be able to go to any of these. There's just, like, a bunch of stuff with the house, other potential travel this year that I don't know yet and need to try and budget for. And we have some exciting family events going on in the Hurley family. Like, my brother and his wife are going to be having a baby in the spring. And so... Nice. Nice. I know. It's like, I would love to go to Chicago, but it's basically that time, and you've got to prioritize. But, yeah, so that's also to say is I'm not going to be coming out to Atlanta this year. It's still something... All right, let me... I'm just going to be real with everyone about why I'm not doing this. Yeah, jump into it. Because me and you have spoken about it. Yes, we have. People want to know anyway, so... So, the Atlanta Pen Show has obviously been, like, our big thing. And we'd actually, I think, made reference to the fact that we would like to do it and come back again, right? But here's the situation as I see it.

Myke Hurley: The show is different now that Brad isn't exhibiting. So, if I come down, I don't have as much to do, right? Like, I can go and look around the show or whatever, but that's like a one-day thing, and I've kind of seen all I would need to see, by and large, right? Mm-hmm. And so, then the rest of the time, I would want to be there the whole time, and there's just, you know, we're not going to have as much to do. I'm not going to come in for just Friday and Saturday. It's like so much to, like, travel for that. And then, if I'm going to be... If the two of us are going to be at the Atlanta Pen Show together,

Myke Hurley: we would naturally be recording a live episode of the show. It's kind of the whole point now. Mm-hmm. The problem I see is the space that we have is a unventilated hotel ballroom. Now, I do figure at some point we will get back to doing that. My issue is for the first live show that RelayFM has put on since 2019, I'm not sure that's the right first step. So, like, we would maybe want a bigger space where it just doesn't feel so enclosed. And I'm not saying that, like, one has more chance of exposing people to coronavirus than the other. It's more for me of, like, how it would feel for that to be the first live show. Now, of course, I would love the Pen Addict to have the first live show because it was. Right? Right. Like, all of the first live shows you've ever done were the Pen Addict. But the problem is I just don't know if that particular setup at the Atlanta Pen Show works. Like, say, like, when we did San Francisco, way bigger room. Like, the thing with the Atlanta Pen Show, we finished those shows and we're just, like, sweating. It's, like, so hot in that room. Yeah. Right? Which just proves the lack of ventilation that's going on in there. Not a knock against anyone. We pack it out. Right? We go to, like, fire marshal limits every time. Right. I just don't think this is the right setup for the first live show. So, we're going to skip out on this one this year. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, like, it's just not the right time or place. And Myke and I are in 100% agreement on this. You know, we hope to get back to the Atlanta Pen Show, doing live shows, doing other events, doing things like that.

Brad Dowdy: So, what are we going to do, Myke? Are we going to do something where we can get together, go to a show, or have some other ideas? Hopefully. We think we have a really solid idea for 2023. It involves me traveling instead of Myke, specifically. But we're not ready to, like, announce anything yet. But we have a general idea of what we'd like to do for 2023. Because we want to do something. We enjoy getting together and doing Pen stuff. And, you know, having stuff for the podcast and sharing stuff with our followers and listeners.

Myke Hurley: That may be in the latter months of 2023 that I will be able to travel and we'll go to a Pen Show together. Like, I don't know which one that would be, but I would really like to do it. But I just, I can't commit to it yet.

Brad Dowdy: You know what? You should go to Orlando one year so you can go to Disney World.

Myke Hurley: Well, I do want to go to Orlando one year. When is the, see, the problem for, see, I would do this. That's a terrible time for me. Terrible time. Could not be a worse time. Right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, there's two times that are terrible. And it's usually WWDC time. I mean, September is just the worst. Right?

Myke Hurley: Because, like, in June, it's just that one week that's the problem. But for September, not only is it iPhone, it's Podcastathon now, right? So it's just, like, September is the very worst possible month.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's not even, like, a weekend. It's, like, literally the month. The entire month.

Myke Hurley: You know, if the Orlando Pen Show wouldn't mind moving their show to August or October, that'd be great. Okay. Work on that. Just a personal, I'm just trying to manifest. Right? I'm just putting that out there.

Brad Dowdy: So, you know, maybe in 2024, just on the short list, like, Baltimore, Chicago, and LA, aka the California Pen Show, I think those three should be on our list. Baltimore is always tough because it's early, right? It's early in the year. We tend to, like, to go later in the year. Chicago, May. California's in February, which is also tough. So, I don't know. This is all stuff we can talk. We're now just having a meeting.

Myke Hurley: I mean, the LA show's going to be high on my list because I love LA. So. Right. It's an excuse to go to LA.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. So. All right. I think that's where we're at for Pen Show travel. I have shows booked. Myke and I's plans to get together are up in the air. We're going to try to do something together this year, though. And then maybe next year, we'll get back to a Pen Show or two or maybe late in the year, whatever happens. So. That's the plans. Because I know people have been asking now that Pen Show season's kicking off this weekend in Philadelphia here in the U.S. So, it'll be fun. I think Kimberly's going to be in Philadelphia. So, we should have a write-up on PenAddict.com coming up late next week, maybe. So, yeah. I feel like it's a fun show. And I can't wait to see how it goes this year.

Pen purchases and reflections on San Francisco and Orlando shows.

Brad Dowdy: What do you do at Pen Shows, Myke? You buy pens. And that has been... I'm still recovering from San Francisco and Orlando 2022 of all the things I bought. So, I haven't really bought any pens for myself since the Orlando Pen Show. I was joking with on Twitch, and I probably said it here on the podcast, that I still have a couple of pens that I bought in Orlando that I have not inked up yet. That's just how it's gone.

Brad Dowdy: But I did make my first purchase of the year. I was peer pressured. You know me. It takes a real twist of Brad's arm for him to buy a pen, right? Oh, Brad, you should buy this. Okay. And that's how it was with the Jinhao X159. So, if you're familiar with Jinhao, they make low-cost fountain pens. A lot of them are very similar in style and design to popular pens. You know, they're not necessarily coming up with original exterior shapes. Myke even has a comment we will talk about here momentarily.

Brad Dowdy: But yeah, like Jinhao is an entry-level pen maker, and I've known of them for years. They've been around for years. They actually make the Shark Pen, Myke. That is very, very popular as like a $2 or $3 pen that people will buy to either test inks. You know, if they want to ink up 10 pens with 10 different inks at a time, the Jinhao Shark Pen is a great idea. If people want to practice their nib maintenance and work on nibs, well, that's $2 or $3 is a good way to get a bunch of nibs in to mess around with. So, they've been around a while. People like Jinhao for those reasons, for their low-cost pens. So, why did I buy the X159? Great name, right? No, it's not. Memorable. It's X159. I have to keep looking it up. But what made me make a purchase of this was that this model comes with a number 8 size nib, Myke. So, that is bigger than like your number 5 nib that you get in a Kaweco Sport or a Lily Putt, something like that. It's bigger than your number 6 nib that you get in like the Kaweco Student or your most of your Franklin Kristoff pens or, you know, any of your Maker pens. Like number 6 is kind of like a standard size nib. That's what you have a lot of and I have a lot of. Number 8, you can imagine, it's a little bit bigger. And I'm generally not a big nib fan. There's exceptions, right? Sailor King of Pen is a great example of that. They have to be done correctly in conjunction with the size of the pen barrel because when you have a number 8 nib, everything is larger, right? The feed's larger. The housing's larger. So, that makes the barrel diameter larger. I'm generally not a wide diameter barrel person. And this pen has become popular because it was a cheap way to try out a number 8 size nib. And in particular, this one comes in extra fine, which is a weird combination, I think. You know, the bigger the nib, generally like the wider the tip size you like. It generally works that way.

Myke Hurley: Is the extra fine relative?

Brad Dowdy: No. So, it's a regular extra fine, but just a huge nib. It's not accurate to, like, say, a number 6 experience or a number 5 experience. Yes. So, like, the end result is consistent with what I would expect from, like, a Western extra fine nib. Like, a Twisby extra fine nib. It matches that line width, no matter the size. So, yeah, the size is not relative to the broader size. And it's great. Like, this, it writes really, really well. So, I don't love the barrel. It feels cheap, right? But I paid $12 for this pen. So, it is. That's the other thing. It's literally cheap. It doesn't feel like hot garbage or something. Like, it's completely fine. Like, this is a good entry-level pen. Now, like, it's hard for me to recommend it because you generally, you know, you're buying it from Amazon or, you know, AliExpress or somewhere where you're not going to get support, right? Like, Goulet pens does stock them, which kind of says a lot to me, right? This one particular model, they stock. But, you know, it's cheaper if you shop around. You can actually get them in, like, this under $10 at certain times and places. Like, it's not an expensive pen. But I thought it was fun to play around with. I enjoy it. It's never going to make any, like, pen list of mine, you know, any top five or top 10 anything. But for the price I paid, which I think I said I paid $12.50, and it comes in a bunch of different colors. Like, what did you think when you saw my orange barrel?

Myke Hurley: Well, you posted it on Instagram a few days ago, and I just naturally, before reading the description, thought it was a 1911.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, that's, it's actually closer to king of pen size in the barrel. Okay. Like, if you had a 1911 king of pen, royal tangerine king of pen, it's that size. It's much lighter. Like, it's a thinner plastic barrel. You know, more lightweight. It doesn't have all the internal hardwares that, you know, like, king of pen has. You can't compare the two other than general size. But yeah, it's a big pen, and it comes in a bunch of colors. And yeah, it's fine. Like, I like it. I'm glad I bought it. It's something to mess around with. I don't need another one. Like, I'm good. Like, number eight nibs. Like, I've confirmed that it's fine. It's just not for me. I don't want all my pens this size, right? The generally, the smaller, the better. The narrower the grip section, the better. And it's pretty good, though. I would, if you asked me, Brad, would you recommend this pen? And I would say yes, right? It's just, I'm never going to tell anyone for it to be their first pen, right? I want a little more safety with that, right? Like, I don't know if I'm going to do a proper review of mine, but like, the tine is cut crooked on mine, right? It just is. And that happens with Yovo nibs, too. This is not a Genal specific thing. You know, I've had expensive gold nib pens where the slit and the tine has been cut crooked, right? So, it's not specific to that. But like, I'm not just going to blindly recommend this to like, someone's very first fountain pen. But for someone who kind of knows their way around fountain pens, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this pen. It's shockingly good for $12.

Myke Hurley: I mean, it's $12, right? Like, it's $12. Like, even if you're just mildly curious.

Brad Dowdy: A lot of people will just buy it to remove the nib and put it into other things. So, really? It kind of matches like a box fitting.

Myke Hurley: Like $11 for the nib. Exactly. Okay.

Brad Dowdy: That's, yes. That's a completely fair way to put it. Which we do a lot, you know, in this business, in this hobby. A lot of times you pay, you overpay for like the singular piece and then that being the nib. And then sometimes the barrels are afterthoughts. And then sometimes the barrels are the upgrade piece, you know, compared to the nib. So, yeah. It's all a balance. But yeah, you're paying for this number eight nib. You're paying about $12 for the nib. And I would recommend it. So, like, I think it's a pretty positive experience. So, I definitely had low expectations. And those expectations were exceeded. I think that's probably the best way to put it.

Myke Hurley: This episode of The Pen Addict is brought to you by Pen Chalet. They sell all of the products that you're looking for at the prices that you want. They have fast and reliable customer service. They have fountain pens and ballpoints, mechanical pencils, roller balls. They have inks and converters and every kind of accessory under the sun. They're adding new styles of pens every month. And they're also doing discounts twice a month. You'll be able to find special discounts, closeout specials. You've always got to keep your eye on Pen Chalet because you're never quite sure what you're going to find. Like, what new thing have the Pen Chalet team been adding on there? What incredible prices do they have? It's why you've got to keep going back. And it's why we tell you about Pen Chalet every couple of weeks. Because of, well, for the incredible deals that they give just for Pen Addict listeners. If you go to penchalet.com, that's P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com, and click the podcast link at the top of the website and use the password Pen Addict. You will find a list of special offers just for Pen Addict listeners and get a code that you need to save 10% on anything else over at Pen Chalet. Pen Chalet have free shipping on orders of over $75 in the U.S. and they sell internationally with very reasonable shipping rates. Pen Chalet has low prices on high quality pens and offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Brad, what have you come across? Have you stumbled on so far?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I have high expectations for Pen Chalet and Ron delivered this week. Number one is the Estabrook Triple Nook Pen Carrying Case. These are a hard-sided boxy slide case. If you're not familiar with this, I implore you to go look at this. And the price is really, really good on what this case is, how it's made, what it offers. I adore these cases. This is a steal on the Navy model case, which has a good alternate red stitching, red internal lining. It's an awesome case. One of my favorite products. A product I recommend a lot. And then if you scroll down, Myke, there is a really, really interesting, and I'm saying this to myself, Brad, look at this pen. It's the Visconti Rembrandt Ecologic Fountain Pen. Now, I'm not totally familiar with the Ecologic model of the Viscontis. The Rembrandts have traditionally been, you know, like painting related to the very wild, interesting, you know, acrylic swirlies. These are more basic in like a black and a red barrel, but the price point for these is much less than like what the standard Rembrandt goes for, like $100 less. And that's a pretty darn good price for these Visconti Rembrandts that are very, very popular as the entry-level Visconti pen. And like I definitely recommend those. So those look fantastic. And then if you scroll down, there's just a million more things down here. I can't even get to everything on this list, but those two stand out to me. Ooh, there's the Y Studio Resin Fountain Pen, one of my favorites. So, yeah, go check out everything. Yeah, go check out everything over at penshalet.com. This is a wonderful, wonderful list of items on our page today.

Myke Hurley: That's penshalet.com. Click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter the password penaddict. Well, thanks to Penshalet for the continued support of this show and RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah, I'm still scrolling because this page does not end. The Visconti Woodstock. I've never seen this pen before, but it looks like an acrylic barrel gold nib Visconti that's at a price point that only Ron can pull off. So, yeah, yeah, definitely go browse around. This is a very, very extensive section this week over at Penshalet. So, thank you, Ron.

Myke Hurley: All right, so you put a link in the show notes that I looked at today that I clicked it and it took me to an Instagram post from Pentel. And it's a picture of what looks like a box of mechanical pencil refills like leads and just a wall of Japanese text.

Brad Dowdy: Can I tell you that this is the single most exciting link in the show notes today for me? This is why I am the way that I am, Myke. So, this is the Pentel official Instagram. The Pentel official Instagram has 94,000 followers on their page. This graphite, the Pentel Ein, which is their premium graphite for their mechanical pencils, already has over 3,000 likes on this image. And it's not just an image. They put up a 10-image slideshow of a graphite update for mechanical pencils, and people are going giddy, including myself. Let me tell you, do you want to know why, Myke? I would love to know why. Absolutely no reason. Okie dokie. Other than we love stationery. Are these in colors? They do make color ones. I don't recommend the color ones. But they have this slide open case, which they're marketing that a little bit. And they said they did upgrade the graphite stick formula to be just kind of completely in the middle, like a very universal, you know, completely in the middle as far as smoothness, breakage, stability, color. Or all of that. So, you know, they spend a lot of time on the little slide open graphic, right, if you go through this. And, you know, they say, you know, it's going to last a little bit longer. If you read the product descriptions, you know, they're just talking about, hey, this is, we've upgraded the graphite to be, you know, very stable, very good. But this is their mainline premium graphite. It has, boy, can I do this math? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28 sizes and lead grades of a single graphite. But that Pentel does this for a single mechanical pencil graphite product, this fascinates me. Like, I just stared at this, read all the translations. I'm glad you can do translations in Instagram. You know, and I just wanted to put this link in here. If you want to know why I like stationery, all you have to do is go look at this Instagram post. And just smile at, like, what is taking place here.

Myke Hurley: And there's some of these images, Brad. I just cannot fathom what they're referencing. There's one where it's, like, there's these pieces of...

Brad Dowdy: The molecular one?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, and, like, some is red in between, some is green in between, and the red one sparkles. It's like, what does that mean? It seems like a brand X kind of thing, but...

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's a stronger graphite, Myke. That's what I'm assuming this picture is. It's molecularly stronger on the inside in the graphite. So, yeah, like, if you want to know why I like stationery so much, this one Instagram post encompasses all of it. So, it's fantastic. I wanted to put this in the show notes. So, now, guess what? I'm going to have to go buy some of this. Like, I've used the AIN lead previously. Pentel makes the best mechanical pencil graphite in the ones that I've tested. Like, I've done... I haven't done, like, completely extensive tests, but I've tested, you know, maybe 10 or 15 different graphites. Pentel's stock graphite, just not even this... The AIN... I don't even know if I'm the correct pronunciation. AIN is the premium. Even their Pentel's base graphite is better than most companies' premium graphite. So, I have high hopes for this one, and I have some of the regular sticks of this one. But I am all in on whatever Pentel is selling me as far as mechanical pencil graphite goes. So, yeah, this is beautiful. This is beautiful. Highlight of my week, Myke.

Myke Hurley: I don't get it, man. I don't understand this one, but I'm not gonna.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I know. Hey, at least 3,170-something other people, you know, are down with my sickness.

Myke Hurley: And that, I'm happy about.

Brad Dowdy: So, while that made me, like, super happy, this one caught me off guard in a very strange way. So, one of the things I do frequently is look at new arrivals on jet pins. And I was like, oh, here's this new Pilot Friction that is... It's a crazy, ridiculous name. Pilot Friction Ball Knock Zone Retractable Gel Pin. Okay? Like, okay. Like, enough, Pilot. Three was. There's a lot going on there. It's the Ball Knock Zone Pilot Friction. Ball Knock Zone. Yeah. I am very concerned with the Ball Knock Zone. So, it's a premium kind of friction. Like, it's a $7 friction, right? It's a little business-y, a little fancier than...

Myke Hurley: Oh, they do a $41 one.

Brad Dowdy: That's what we're getting at. I had the same reaction. This is the point. So, I started clicking. I was like, I need to update my friction thoughts, right? Because it has become really insanely popular in Japan, right? We talk about it with Hobonichi. Hobonichi making paper to work the best with the friction. More than fountain pens, more than anything. They want to work with the friction.

Myke Hurley: Just as a reminder, the friction is a gel ink, right? Yes. Where it can be erased. Yes. Kind of.

Thermo-sensitive ink and erasable notebooks.

Brad Dowdy: What's it called? Thermo-sensitive ink. Yeah. So, it's basically a heat eraser.

Myke Hurley: This was the one where that company made a notebook, which they said to put in the microwave, and it would erase your notes, but would only let you use the power friction.

Brad Dowdy: I have lots of thoughts on that, as you can imagine. So, anyway, I was like, well, I need to pick up some new frictions and get some new thoughts, because they did improve the ink. So, they're doing the ink color saturation is supposedly 30% greater now, right? So, that's always been a knock on the friction, pun intended, to where if you had a black gel ink friction, and you just put it up against a black gel ink G2, like the black gel ink 2 is so much darker, right? The ink is just much darker. So, the friction is working on that. So, I was like, okay, let me pick up a couple. And I started, what happened was, so I clicked on one of these $7 ones, and I started scrolling through, and I was like, why did this pen all of a sudden go to $41? And I was like, taken aback, and I was like, what is going on here? It's like, okay, I see the swirly grip. What they did is took like some of the acrylics that they've used recently, like these acrylics look very familiar. They took some of these acrylic spare parts, like from some of the Pilot Custom fountain pens that we've seen, and made resin grips for the friction. And I absolutely ordered one of them. This is obscenely ridiculous. And I'm in, like, it's dumb. Like, I don't, like, when I saw this, I was like, $41? What is happening? Well, they took these same materials, like the blue swirl, the green swirl, the gray swirl, the red swirl. These swirls, if you're familiar with Pilot's fountain pen lineup, these look exceedingly familiar. And they should be. Why didn't they just do the whole pen, man? It's essentially off the chopping block, right? And then you go down even further, and they do something that they have traditionally done, is have the wood grips. Did you even make it that far? Yeah, yeah. So they have the wood grips, which that's a classic Pilot thing. They've done that for decades, right? Have a pen barrel style, and then they'll have, like, the wood grip section style, right? I have a bunch of old pens that way. They've been doing that for a long time. That's to be expected. But then they dropped these acrylic parts on there. I totally ordered one to see what this is about. It's ridiculous. So I wanted to point that out because I had the same exact reaction to you. I'm clicking through, looking at the colors, looking at the colors. Why did the price change to $41? Oh, my God. It's in, like, a fountain pen acrylic grip section.

Myke Hurley: It just really bugs me that they only did the grip section. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yep, yep. So it's super strange. So I'm in. If you look even closer on this, Myke, so what Pilot has done, and this is another reason I ordered it. I ordered some of the $7 models, too. They're doing something different in their design, and they're putting a clutch in the tip of these pens. And I'm going to have some real thoughts about this design when I get it. I want to see how it works. So they're marketing it as, you know, to prevent, like, tip rattle, which we talk about as, like, a big detractor. Pilots never had, traditionally not had a problem with that. But I saw this close-up of the nose cone and the refill. I was like, what is this sticking out of here? And then I looked at the marketing, and there is an actual clutch mechanism to tighten the grip on the tip. And, like, that's fine. I just, we'll see. We'll see. Like, it seems like an overkill situation. But it's just kind of randomly popped up. It's like, not only are they doing these weird grip sections, they added a clutch mechanism into this model. So we'll see what it looks like. So I am very anxious to get these. I have ordered them, so I'll have them next week or so. So I'll be talking about them soon.

Brad Dowdy: One thing I did talk about recently, Myke, was my love for ink cartridges. I feel like we need to have the talk. It's like the ink cartridges are, like, the talk you need to have with, like, fountain pen friends. Because traditionally, cartridges are thought of for beginners, right? They ship with your pen. The first time you get the pen, you know, you pop in an ink cartridge. They're very easy to use. They're portable. There's lots of positive things about ink cartridges. I love ink cartridges. But in moderation, right? I don't want a million little plastic ink cartridges littering my desk or littering my storage area. They generally, over the past few years, they've started to have more variety. Like, Diamine is making, you know, a wide range of colors for them. But the key with cartridges is you just, you don't want to go overboard. I mean, that's for anything. I mean, that's common sense on anything. But cartridges are a poor value, right? They're poor cost per milliliter ink value. That's why people buy ink bottles. If they write a lot with fountain pens, they're filling them up from ink bottles. Because it's more cost effective. You know, it's more environmentally effective, right? Not a lot as much plastic waste. And then you have something like the Pilot Orochizuku ink cartridge, which kind of blows every other ink cartridge that has come before of it out of the water in every aspect. Number one, it's amazing ink, right? The Orochizuku lineup is at the top of everyone's, like, favorite ink list. It's also obscenely priced. Like, a six-cartridge pack of Orochizuku ink cartridges is $12.50. And that accounts for, what did I say, 4.8 milliliters of ink? 4.8 milliliters of ink for $12.50. You can get 50 milliliters of ink in a bottle for $25, right? Like, it's bad. It's bad. That is egregious. It is egregious. That's the correct word.

Myke Hurley: That is so bad.

Brad Dowdy: It's like $2.50 a milliliter.

Myke Hurley: Someone's sitting there just rubbing their hands at Pilot Corporate, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: It's ridiculous. Like, if you took, yeah, it's really, really bad math. But I really like these. It's like the cartridge tax or something, you know? It's a huge premium tax.

Brad Dowdy: But I'm good with the one box that I have, right? There's a specific color I wanted for a specific pen, and I don't mind using cartridges. So, like, I bought the one box, and I'm very happy with it. But, like, under no circumstances do I need more of these. And that's the point I wanted to kind of get across with cartridges. There's a lot of great reasons to use cartridges, right? They're portable. Again, like I said, they're just easy to use. Now you can get some fun colors. But, yeah, a lot of times, and I've done this in the past, and I'll do it in the future. You know, if you have a cartridge, you can refill it with a syringe from an ink bottle, right? If you want to continue to use a cartridge. Because a lot of times, a cartridge will have more ink capacity. Let's take Pilot, for example. Some of their converters are half the capacity of these ink cartridges, right? So, you can reuse cartridges by filling them with ink. So, yeah, it's interesting. So, this was a good, like, conversational review. Not necessarily reviewing the ink, per se, but more just having, hey, let's talk about ink cartridges. And, like, why they're good. Like, there's a lot of positives. But, boy, these are the most outrageously priced, one of the most outrageously priced products I've seen. And it's a little bit ridiculous. So, I'm good with my one ink. I will use all of these ink cartridges. I don't know if I would buy another pack of them. You know, I might just go back to refilling it from the bottle because I have a bottle of this ink as well. So, yeah, but a one-time purchase, cool. But, like, I don't need all the colors of this, nor should anyone for that price. So, there you go.

Myke Hurley: Man, that math is just wild. But I understand where you're coming from, right? And that's probably something that they're betting on. It allows for people to be more flexible. It's easier. But, look, I have no doubt that it costs more to do the packaging. 100%. But not this much, surely. Yeah. It's crazy. Crazy. All right. This episode is also brought to you by our friends at Squarespace, the all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. With Squarespace, you'll be able to stand out with a beautiful website, engage directly with your audience on your terms, and sell anything. Your products, services, and even the content that you create. Because Squarespace has got you covered. It is so easy to get started on Squarespace. You just choose from their beautiful portfolio, their, like, gallery of wonderful templates. You just pick the one that you want that best suits the type of website that you're looking for or your business. It's very easy to, like, separate them out like that. But you can choose any, and you can customize it to fit your needs. You can change the colors. You can change the layout. You can change the fonts. You can change the sizing of elements. And this is all done just in the web browser, or you can also do it in the app, too. And it's very easy to do. It's what we... I don't know if they mention it this way so much anymore, but it used to be the way we'd talk about it, which is WYSIWYG, which is a style of, like, design. What you see is what you get. So you actually, the way that you design it, you're designing it live, and that is how it's going to look. If you drag, you can just click on an element and drag it, and it will move. It's fantastic, and it is, for me, the way I always want to build websites. It's how I have built websites for over a decade now because I have been a, you know, I am all in on Squarespace, and always have been. And they continue to expand their offerings over time, which is awesome. You know, we mentioned the store. You can sell physical or digital goods. They've got all of that. If you want to send out emails, you can do all of that because they have an email campaign system. You can encourage your visitors to sign up as email subscribers, and then you can start them on the journey to becoming loyal customers, loyal readers. You just start, again, with an email template. You customize it to suit the way that you want it to look. Then you're able to send everything out, and you get built-in analytics as well to measure how they're being received by your audience. Squarespace is the best around. Go and check it out for yourself. Go to squarespace.com slash penaddict, and you can sign up for a free trial with no credit card required. Then when you're ready to launch, use the offer code penaddict. You'll save 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain. That is squarespace.com slash penaddict. And then when you sign up, use the offer code penaddict to get 10% off your first purchase to show your support for this show. A thanks to Squarespace for their continued support of the Penaddict and RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: So last week in our outro, we're not ready to outro yet. No. You quickly stumbled over some changes. Oh, I'm such a disaster.

Myke Hurley: Every show that I'm trying to finish right now is just a nightmare for me.

Brad Dowdy: So I said at the time, I said, okay, let's this week, let's at least put a link in the show notes and talk about some of our changes. Well, I'll talk about my changes. I don't know what your changes are. Because, you know, a lot of times we'll lead with like, hey, what's the Twitter address? And like, I'm still on Twitter. I'm using it very less frequently than I used to. I'm still answering messages and DMs and things like that. And I have a couple lists over there that have not translated to new services that I'm using, which I'll talk about momentarily. But like, I'm not deleting my Twitter account or anything like that. I'm hopeful in a year or two, the, you know, the funkiness that's happening now will go away. But that's been a good way for us to get feedback in the past. So we have a new feedback form, which we'll talk about momentarily. So I wanted to put in a link to my current social medias that I'm using and talk about like the frequency of things. More importantly, since I'm using Twitter less, I will see your message if you add me. But I'm usually not putting like fresh content on Twitter as much. But I'll reply and do things like that. I'm using micro.blog a lot, which has been a past subscriber. Excuse me, a past sponsor of us.

Myke Hurley: Just so you know, they're also like they are sponsoring next week's episode of the Panad. Oh, you didn't know this, but I'm just telling you just like so that is a thing.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Yeah. Well, that's good. That's good information. I was an original Kickstarter backer of micro.blog. So that tells you what I think about the service. I have been leaning into that. So I've created a page where I'm listing all these things that I'm about to tell you about. It's called penaddict.omg.lol, which Myke will talk about in a minute as well, I think. It lists all my social media sites. That's the quickest way. But I'm most active on micro.blog and Mastodon. So I have spent some time to get into the Mastodon ecosystem. I have found it very useful, very functional for what I need from my social media. Now, I'm not someone who like looks at Twitter or any other social media thing as a marketing tool. Right. If I did, I would have different answers for this. I would probably still be like hardcore on Twitter and, you know, doing other things. I just don't use social media for marketing much. Right. I use it for learning and for fun and for, you know, taking a break and just seeing interesting things. And, you know, you know, thinking about things differently and learning from different people and, you know, being silly. Right. All those types of things. I don't use it for marketing. So Mastodon I've been using a lot and micro.blog. So you will see how those services.

Mastodon usage via micro.blog.

Myke Hurley: Mastodon. You're using Mastodon via micro.blog.

Brad Dowdy: Both. So I will I have my micro.blog linked to my Mastodon. So that's why I'm kind of micro.blog is my home. Right. Because I can just post there to cross post over to Mastodon. But then I will post separately on Mastodon sometimes just to like reply to people. Mastodon has a really good way of being able to follow hashtags. And you can just follow like a like a fountain pen hashtag on Mastodon. And you can follow people who use this hashtag without necessarily following them. And it's been like very useful to go look on Mastodon and see all these feeds in my posts like about fountain pens. So what I get from Twitter was like I follow a lot of Japanese sites and get a lot of new stuff. Right. Like I'm not getting sailor.co.jp over on Mastodon. Right. So like I'm still use. And if I have a use for Twitter in that aspect. But I just want to give them as as little attention as possible. You know I've definitely cut back on that.

Brad Dowdy: So yeah those are my main things. I'm obviously still you know streaming on Twitch and have my Instagram account which you know I post you know fun stuff on and things like that. So yeah all that stuff's good. But that's this is the long way of saying I have a link called a pen addict dot omg dot lol that has all of these things on it and you should go check them out. But you'll finally find me mostly on micro dot blog and Mastodon. But I'm still hanging out on Twitter making sure I don't miss any messages things like that.

Myke Hurley: So yeah omg dot lol is a thing you told me about and it's you can use it to do a kind of link tree kind of thing which is exactly that that's fine. But there was another thing that it does that I was really in like I thought was really cool. Are you still using the status part of it.

Brad Dowdy: Absolutely.

Myke Hurley: So how do you get to that again. See that's the only thing is they their URLs are a bit complicated but the tools you can actually set up the URLs the way do you want them to as well you can create redirects. It's the service it's like twenty dollars like a bunch of interesting things like you can create these web pages or you can. Yeah it's just I would recommend checking it out just because it's like a fun little weird thing and like yeah 20 bucks or whatever I was like I'll give it a go. I can I've only like poked around of it. I want to do a little bit more but I'm just I'm not sure what I would use it for. Like I like the status thing that you set up but like it being real to myself I don't know if I would keep it up to date like so right. It's interesting though.

Task management and use of Todoist.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I have an item every Monday like in Todoist I'm back on Todoist which that's probably a whole segment we could talk about to update my status page and that's penaddict.status.lol. So this is again what Myke's saying there's lots of different services you can use all with this this one account and you just go to this and it lists all my live schedule updates and like if I have to make a change I can post this on there and I update this there's a link at the top of penaddict.com called status.

Myke Hurley: Right.

Brad Dowdy: And you just go to that and you look at live schedule week of 1-9 you know and it has my Tuesday Wednesday Thursday live schedule stuff so I'd like to have that written out there. So yeah this OMG LOL like there's like a lot of people use like there's a whole built-in pastebin feature like for like people who like code and want to like share like data and text and things like that. It's wild how much you can do for so little price and they are not sponsoring us but like I really love this service. It's been super useful. So all that's to say that's I'm still very active on social media. It's one of the things I enjoy the most is talking with the community and talking with friends online and you know either just being silly having fun or sharing information and I find all this stuff very valuable. So that's kind of my my one place that I'm going to have anything where I'm active on social media will be linked on that page. On top of that Myke mentioned last week we have penaddictfeedback.com. So previously as Myke was alluding to a lot of people are using Twitter less and we have an Ask TPA hashtag that will auto scrape into a spreadsheet for you to ask us questions to answer on the show and we want to give people an opportunity to give us direct feedback where you can use Ask TPA still and people have been able to email me directly hello at penaddict.com which is completely fine. You can still use that but we now have a direct web page where you can go for feedback and it's either just general feedback. Hey you're terrible. You're you know you you know ink cartridges are the best thing in the world. What is wrong with you? You know you can send that to us at penaddictfeedback.com. You can tell us how how great we are as well. You know I appreciate those feedbacks. I print those out Myke and read them before bed every night and you can also go give us your Ask TPA questions in there. That's where your questions should go. Hey I'm having a trouble with this or hey I need to find this. So that's a great place to do that. Myke and I are actively reading that information and it's been great so far from what I've seen.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So this is also either the first or second link in your show notes as well and this is just on the RelayFM website. Like that's what's going on here is we've created a page on our website for shows that want to receive feedback this way and it just goes into our CMS system and we can go through and look through the stuff. This is like a 1.0. We have a bunch of features that we want to add like so in the future you would be able to say like this is follow up. This is feedback or this is an Ask TPA. Like so if you want to you'll be able to choose like as a when you're sending it in. But at the moment just send in stuff like send it in like it's a tweet right. That's the way to do it right now. But like in the future we're going to have like filters and stuff on it and we're just trying to see how people use it and then we're building more. And realistically in the future this is going to be I think the only this will be the main place I will ask people to send feedback and it will be the one that I would definitely check. Others will probably become less so over time because. Agree completely. I just want everything to go into one place and like we're working on maybe hopefully at some point being able to like pull in questions from Discord into this system. But we have to see if that's possible. But what won't ever go into this system in my opinion is tweets, Mastodon messages, that kind of stuff. It's all too complicated and just changeable. And so like you know in the essence that RelayFM owns and operates its own publishing system which is not a thing people do today. We are now also going to be owning and operating our own feedback mechanism. Like you know these days you just go with one of the many podcast providers and they just create websites for you and go for it. But no we make our own system which is very complicated, time consuming and expensive. But it makes sense for us as a business. We like it that way.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly. Exactly. And this all kind of ties into the broader picture of you know you want to own as much of your stuff as possible because things break out of your control and then you know you're running behind now all of a sudden it's like hey let's build things that are in our control and use them. So it's great.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Penaddictfeedback.com. That is just like a domain forward that takes you to the part on the RelayFM website. It's also like you go to RelayFM.fm slash penaddict. There's a button that says submit feedback. You can just tap that or just use the link in the show notes. And so yeah if you have follow up if you have questions for us send them in that way. We're both looking at it and that's probably going to be the best way going forward. And it's a tool that will make better over time.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I know we'll wrap it up here but I think we can go ahead and scratch this one as TPA off the ledger mic via Fibber. If Twitter shuts down or lots of people leave where would the text-based penaddict community go? Well what do you think about that? I think we just cleared our answers.

Myke Hurley: Well no because when I put this in the document or when I saw this in the document I was thinking more specifically the stuff that you're probably still using Twitter for which is like sharing press releases and like you know like where is what's going to happen to that do you think?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah I don't know yet. So I follow some larger communities say like one of the things that has not transferred off of Twitter is sports right? Because it is very live information based right? So the people who have run different like sports accounts need those live interactions and to like move a community from Twitter to a different service is doesn't seem to be in their best interest right now which sucks for me. Following this I'm like if I want to see something I have to go back over to the Twitter and look at this whatever. So I don't know where like all of the follow all the people I follow who are like in the Japanese stationary industry where are they going to go? Like they don't I don't find that stuff on Mastodon or or anything like that. So yeah I don't know that I have a complete answer. I don't think it's going to necessarily stop on Twitter. I'm hoping like I mean obviously my pipe dream is that we just have a bottoming out here over the next year and then then some new ownership comes in you know a year or two for now. So I'm not in a rush to proclaim anything right? I'm just I am doing what I what I feel is best for me for now and just kind of slow playing that and seeing what happens.

Brad Dowdy: But I'll still get a lot of that information. I can get a lot of that information off Instagram which admittedly has problems of its own right? But like that's a really good community for something someone like me who is looking for information on stationary. So I can I can figure out the non Twitter areas. But like you know Instagram is useful in you know just listening to podcasts and you know we're going to talk about podcasts next week. That's a topic I have for next week. We got some new podcasts in the space Myke. Nice. That that we need to note. So that'll be coming up next week. I'm sure I'll get some questions about that. So yeah. Like do I have a direct answer for for Fibber? No.

Brad Dowdy: But I think we'll start seeing some migration hopefully over to like Mastodon services and different things like that.

Myke Hurley: Well my assumption would be Discord servers like. Yeah Discord. Like you know large Discord servers focused around certain topics will pop up and then. Yeah. There's a lot of stationary based Discords. Yeah. Like the like the cooperation and like of different people who can correlate information from different places and bring them in. Right. So like if 5% of that Discord is still on Twitter they'll find out what's on Twitter and then right. Just bring it into the Discord.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Reddit's a good place for that. Right. Reddit and Reddit for example. Like I get a lot of like news links off of Fountain Pen Reddit because they found the link somewhere you know and it could be random. So let me make let's let's end it on this and on a request you can go to penaddictfeedback.com. Yeah. Let me know what Discord servers you use for stationary. Let me know what your favorite Reddit subreddits are for stationary. Things like that. And we'll we'll share a grouping of them because I don't I'm not in many stationary discords. You know we have obviously have the penaddict slack you know as well. So like what other resources are you using to communicate about stationary outside of Twitter. And hit us at penaddictfeedback.com and we'll we'll share some of those next week for all of us for for myself included.

Myke Hurley: All right. So if you want to find Brad online go to penaddict.com go to penaddict.omg.lol and you'll find all of Brad's stuff. Find Brad at twitch.tv slash penaddict three times a week. Go to spoke design.com. If you want to find me online go to mikeheldy.net. I recommend going to cortexmerch.com because if you're interested in the Mark 1s we have the Cortex Mark 1s in stock right now. Obviously it's also journal time and hey penaddict listeners just keep your eye on that store over the next couple of weeks. That's all I'm going to say. Yeah. Yeah. Something's coming. All right. You just keep your eye on it. Buy all of them.

Brad Dowdy: I might even I might even have to place an order.

Myke Hurley: Oh no that's fine. I mean I could send you some if you want but yes. There's a thing. We've been working on it for two years. We're probably going to be soft launching it in the next few weeks.

Myke Hurley: Thank you so much to Squarespace and Penchelle for the support of this episode and we'll be back next week. Until then say goodbye Brad. Goodbye Brad.