The Pen Addict 26/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	26
Title:	It's Got Little Curves To It
Release Date:	August 9th, 2012
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	Stephen Hackett
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 26
Audio File:	Audio Episode 26
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 26
Length:	3333 min <br />0.55 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Brad Dowdy: Hello and welcome to The Pen Addict podcast. This is episode number 26. I am Brad Dowdy, aka The Pen Addict, and our normal co-host today, Myke Hurley, is taking a much-needed vacation. And we have a special guest host in today, one Mr. Stephen Hackett. How are you today, Stephen? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm doing really good. I appreciate you filling in for Myke this week. I know it's been a long week for you filling in all the 70 dB podcasts.

Stephen Hackett: Yeah, it's been a wild ride. And we should say, Myke is Thursday. So Myke should be wrapping up his tour of the Grand Canyon this afternoon. And that's not true at all. But he'll be back next week. So you only have to suffer with me just this one time.

Brad Dowdy: No, no, I'm excited about it. I've talked to you over email as we've gotten prepared for the show. And you and I have kind of known each other in the online realm for probably a little over a year, a year and a few months or so. And I've always enjoyed talking to you. And we have a lot of the same likes and dislikes. And we talk pens and paper and all that stuff. So I'm excited to have you on. It's almost like a guest appearance on the show. So I'm going to drill you good on some topics today. So I think it'll be fun.

Stephen Hackett: I'm bracing myself.

Brad Dowdy: Nah, it's painless. It's all fun here at The Pen Addict. But I did have one quick bit of follow-up I wanted to mention from last week's episode, if you don't mind, real quick.

Penmanship Feedback

Brad Dowdy: Last week we talked about penmanship and handwriting and things like that. And it was actually a really well-received podcast. We got a lot of good feedback on that. People like to know how my handwriting style got the way it is, how people can improve their handwriting. And Myke chimed in, talked about Myke's handwriting as well. And he's left-handed and he's kind of got a hook grip. And he's admitted that his handwriting is bad. And I'm totally on board with bad handwriting. I think the majority of us probably do have illegible handwriting these days just because we're not using pens and paper as much. It just kind of does skill that erodes over time. Well, Myke added a picture to our show notes last week that I just want to make sure that everybody who listens to The Pen Addict podcast goes out and sees. Because Myke's handwriting was bad. But until I saw this picture, it was – I don't know. There are no words for this.

Stephen Hackett: How bad his handwriting actually is. I mean, it's a crime. It is.

Brad Dowdy: I felt so strongly about it. I had to share it on Twitter with all my friends. And that's where you saw it, Stephen. And I haven't seen your handwriting. I think I've seen a few notes here and there and I don't recall. But it's certainly not even remotely in this ballpark.

Stephen Hackett: No, I will take a picture and we can put it in the – let me find something in my notebook I can share.

Stephen Hackett: But yeah, it's not – I mean, I don't – Myke got hit in the head or something as a kid. I mean, this is not natural.

Brad Dowdy: It's not. It's not. And, you know, that's – I don't know how to help that. That's pretty far gone. And, you know, I know Myke's not here to defend himself. And that's kind of the point. You know, I wanted to really take him to task when he's not here to defend himself. But we're going to have to have an intervention or a pen intervention of some kind. Oh, my goodness. Oh. And I was shocked. I was shocked. Being as huge of a pen fan. He's a huge pen nerd, right? I mean, you've seen him. Since we started the show, he's really gone off the deep end. And, you know, he's buying stuff left and right. And, you know, but I don't know what pen is going to help that handwriting. So, you know, I say everyone's, you know, not a lost cause and there are pens that can help you improve your handwriting. I'm going to have to have a talk with my co-host here, Mr. Hurley, and see what we can do about this.

Stephen Hackett: Yeah, it's unfortunate.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. But anyway, that's enough being unfair to Myke since he's not here to defend himself. I wanted to talk about you, Mr. Hackett, and get into a couple of things you've written on your blog, 512pixels.net. And I don't know, I don't want to get too off track here, but I know at some point your blog changed from 4kbomber to 512pixels. And I don't know if this post, there's a post I want to talk about called Nothing Doesn't Go In Here from last July. And I don't know if that was an original 4kbomber post or when the cutover happened to 512pixels.

Stephen Hackett: It's hard to remember these things.

Brad Dowdy: It was kind of around that time.

Stephen Hackett: Yeah, it was, 512pixels is about a year old. And this is just literally a Google search away. Let's see. But yeah, about the same time. We'll leave it at that until I find the answer.

Stephen Hackett Blog

Brad Dowdy: Well, Stephen wrote a post on here, and I've followed his blog since the 4kbomber days. And he wrote a post that I wanted to share with all the readers. And it's not a very long post to read. So I'm going to read it, you know, pretty much the whole thing here real quick. And it's about how there's kind of a tentativeness or kind of a barrier to get things started in notebooks. And I have this same issue very much so. And I know a lot of readers have emailed me and, you know, sent me tweets about, you know, getting started. And just, you know, cracking open that journal for the first page or, you know, open up a pocket diary for, you know, and starting writing on that first page. And Stephen made a really good post. So let me read it as much as I can. The post is called Nothing Doesn't Go In Here, which actually came from a Back to Work podcast episode. So here's Stephen's post real quick. I have a pair of failed notebooks on my nightstand. Both are moleskins. Both have about eight pages of writing in blue ink. Both are failed attempts at writing for my own good. Recently, I've been realizing that writing for me would be a healthy thing. I got my first batch of Field Notes notebooks in the mail last week. Being so much smaller, my thought was that I would be more likely to carry one with me at all times. I've written less than a page. I'm not really sure why. Part of me still feels nervous about writing personal things in a non-digital format, even though I plan on scanning my notebooks when filled. I'm fearful of losing valuable words and time, maybe, if something were to happen to the notebook before it is a scanned PDF, safe and sound, on my iMac time capsule and off-site backup drive.

Brad Dowdy: Part of it doesn't like the messy feeling of handwriting and bent pages. I always have my iPhone, but I don't always have a pen. Despite all of this, however, I am drawn back to writing in a notebook. I was thinking about this all week. Then I heard the latest episode of Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin's show, Back to Work. In it, Merlin had some great advice about writing in a notebook. I can't give it justice by quoting just part of it. Just go listen to the first half of the show. The point of a notebook shouldn't be the point of a .text file, at least for me. I need to start feeling more free to jot down ideas, quotes, and thoughts without worrying so much about my page margins being even or my writing being neat enough. I want to be free enough. I can tape things into it, tear out parts of pages, and maybe even spill a little coffee on it. But alas, even typing that makes me somewhat apprehensive. I really wish it didn't. I think that last paragraph is the key. For some reason, myself very, very much included, there's this barrier to writing in just like a journal, like a field notes notebook. Look, why don't you feel free to just write down anything you want, make a mess of it? Why does it have to be neat and orderly and organized? Why can't it just be a complete inbox for your brain and just dump it all in there? Why do we have that hesitation to get those things started like that? What is your feeling about how this post came about?

Stephen Hackett: That's really a good question. I think for me it was pretty much outlined in there. It was just a discomfort that I had with kind of letting myself go a little bit. And for whatever reason, like I said, like in hindsight, like reading that now, and we're getting ready to talk about it, but I've overcome the hurdle.

Brad Dowdy: That's the real key that I want to talk about.

Stephen Hackett: But I think for me, writing that out and posting it and having thousands and thousands of people read it was like a big stepping stone towards getting over that hurdle. And I got a lot of feedback about that from people saying the same thing or saying, hey, I've got moleskin or moleskine if you're fancy. And I'm from Tennessee. I can barely get two shoes on most days. I don't know how to pronounce it.

Stephen Hackett: But that feeling of being comfortable with yourself was difficult for me.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and I have that same challenge, and I still have that same challenge to the day. I can get past one page, but I'm kind of in that eight-page barrier still after all these years of doing this. It's about that eight-page barrier. That's a good number. It kind of hits me. But like you alluded to, you posted that in July 8th. So I'm sitting here reading 512 pixels a month or two ago because I subscribe in my reader, and I read a lot of blog posts. And then I see a post come up, and it's called A Year of Field Notes. And all it is is an image stack of Stephen's field notes that he's used in the past year. And it's a stack of 10 field notes notebooks. So something's changed from in the past year where you wrote that post where you can't get past the first page to now all of a sudden you filled 10 of them in a year. So what changed? Did your routine change? Did just your mental approach to it change, or how did that happen? Because to me personally, that's impressive. That's a big deal because I have a very big difficulty with this.

Stephen Hackett: Yeah, I think two things happened. The first was I got a system down where I can scan these things or I can take a photo of a page and capture it in Evernote or Dropbox or in an email even. And so getting the content into the digital world was not as hard as I thought it would be. And that was huge.

Capture Form

Stephen Hackett: Secondly was I stopped – I wrote this thing that kind of got some traction called the capture form. Like how I used to take notes on my computer or an iPad in a meeting. And since posting that, I've stopped doing that. And I just take a field notes and a pen with me into meetings. And unfortunately, a lot of what I do at work is meetings. And there's no barrier to entry with a notebook because people, A, are already used to people writing in meetings. And when you bring technology into a meeting, people always wonder if you're paying attention or – and it can be distracting, especially with things like iMessage. And all of a sudden I'm getting texts on my computer and it's crazy town. And so for me, taking a notebook into a meeting with me to take notes in, A, meant I was filling them up a lot faster because I go to a lot of meetings. But B, it made the notebook more of a part of my workflow than it was before. Before, if I was just quote-unquote journaling in my notebook, that really wasn't part of my workflow, wasn't critical to my day. And now it is. Now I don't go into a meeting without it. It's literally always in my front left pocket. And because they're scanned, I have them in Evernote. If I need to go back and look at a past meeting, I can find those notes pretty quickly and go from there.

Brad Dowdy: So do you keep mostly just work stuff in here or do you mix it up? So that's the thing. That's one of the difficulties that I have. It's like I use field notes or dome paper, the smaller utility-size notebooks. And then I end up getting myself, well, I want to have a project, so I'm going to start it in this notebook. And then I end up finding something else to start another new notebook. And I end up with four notebooks with four pages filled in each. And to me, I go back and look at myself and just tell myself, you're just being ridiculous.

Stephen Hackett: Yeah, so what I've done is I've started looking at whatever field notes I'm carrying with me as just an extension of me. And so for instance, I just started this one the other day. So I'm only on page 12. So I have some meeting notes. I have information for a dentist appointment because I have a tooth that's acting up. And that's now on my calendar. But I was on the phone with the girl, so I couldn't type on my iPhone, so I wrote it down. I have two pages of Mac addresses and IP addresses. I was helping a friend of mine do some networking and was just jotting down notes. And then I have the rest of it is basically show notes for the podcast this week. So just like link to this, link to this. I now have a page where I'm writing a letter to your fans so you can see my handwriting. And so it really depends. Some of those notebooks are a lot more work-related than others because maybe I was busier at work than others. Or some of them will have four or five pages of one journal entry. It just really depends on what's going on. I really try to view it as just an extension of whatever else is happening.

Brad Dowdy: That's awesome. I think that's the key. If you want this to work, like if I really want this to work for me, I have to incorporate it into everything. Not try to segregate it out and try to everything has a, you know, I'm in the, you know, we're both in the IT field. And I tend to be, you know, really, you know, anal and anal retentive about things and, you know, particular on details. And I end up trying to put everything in its own little bucket. And when I'm trying to, you know, just have like a, you know, a capture item, an analog capture item, you know, like a field notes notebook. It's like I still try to use those same strict rules that I use at work or, you know, trying to, you know, figure out something on the job and trying to, you know, slice up my notebooks the same way when it's really, I need to, you know, it's a piece of paper in a notebook. Loosen up, dude. You know, let's like write down your notes and, you know, use it as an inbox and then things that need to transfer out. You know, like you said, you wrote down a calendar entry. Well, when you got off the phone, you transferred into your calendar and you just kind of keep everything rolling through there. I think that's a pretty awesome system.

Stephen Hackett: Yeah. And, you know, and there's lots of notebooks out there. Sometimes I get asked why I chose field notes. You know, is it because I'm a Mac blogger hipster? Well, sure.

Stephen Hackett: But I just, I really like the size that, you know, it's not much bigger than an index card. And I like that it's soft. So if I wear my skinny jeans out, I can sit down, which goes back to the Mac hipster blogger thing. That's right. But I don't know. The form factor just works for me. And so I've got a yearly subscription and I keep, I have a gallon size Ziploc bags of empty ones and a gallon size Ziploc bags of full ones. And eventually they make the switch.

Brad Dowdy: Cool. And then you scan them into Evernote, right, when you're done with them?

Stephen Hackett: I do, yeah. So we've got a big, huge scanner at work. And I scan them in and I name the file with the start date and the end date of the notebook. And so far that's worked pretty well.

Brad Dowdy: That's cool. We mentioned at some point in one of our episodes, Myke and I mentioned that about scanning notebooks in Evernote. And I got a ton of questions on that. So maybe that's another episode sometime we can dig into that more. But actually when Myke and I mentioned that, the emails just started pinging me like, wait a minute. People are doing this and how does that work and all that stuff. So yeah, maybe we'll save that topic for another day for another guest hosting spot. Well, cool. I really wanted to hear about that because it was a pretty good change. It's very obvious on how there was such a barrier a year ago. Then all of a sudden, boom, as we say. There's 10 notebooks filled in the past year and I'm impressed. I think I need to loosen up a little bit in my requirements for writing things down in my notebooks. And stick to one notebook, let it all be in there and roll from there. I think you've done something that a lot of us can't do and that's overcome that one little barrier to getting the pen on the page.

Stephen Hackett: Yeah, definitely a work in progress. Right now they're lasting about five or six weeks, which is pretty good. They're a little pricey, but so far that's worked out.

Brad Dowdy: Well, cool, cool. Well, now I want to talk about the nuts and bolts of what you're using to write in these field notebooks. But before we get into that, you want to knock out our sponsor for this episode?

Squarespace

Stephen Hackett: I'd love to. I'd love to talk about Squarespace for a second, if that's all right.

Brad Dowdy: Absolutely.

Stephen Hackett: So Squarespace is back supporting the network. Once again, love those guys. And today I really want to talk about their mobile applications. You know, Squarespace is famous for having all the things you need to build a great website right in your browser. You have the design. It's easy as drag and drop. You have editing and markdown or HTML. You have all your management tools for things like comments and stats. All that's in the browser. But it's also all in Squarespace's free mobile apps that run on iOS and, if you're so inclined, Android. Now, these apps bring everything that's in the browser, just about everything, to your pocket. So with the apps, you can post and manage both blog posts and pages. You can preview them. So, like, for me, for instance, I love writing on a template so I know exactly what it's going to look like when I hit publish. The Squarespace apps lets you do that. You can edit in text, markdown, HTML. Whatever language you're used to, whatever your workflow is in supports it. You can deal with comments. You can mark them as spam, reply to them, delete them. You can do this in batches. So if you have a bunch of comments that you want to mark spam all at once, you can do that real easily. And you can even receive a push notification for when new comments are posted. And finally, and what I really like the most, is that you get all your site stats with you in your pocket. A lot of blogging platforms, the stats are a separate package, a separate app. With Squarespace, it's all built in. You can see your unique page views. You can see people coming back. You can see search terms. All right in the app with your content. It's your whole Squarespace experience right in your pocket. Now, you know, Squarespace is well known for being affordable. They've got two plans, a standard plan and what I like to call the big boy plan, the ultimate plan. And the start, just $10 or $20 a month. If you sign up either annual or even for two years, you get a discount. If you use the discount code 70decibels8, you get an additional 10% off at time of checkout. So check them out, squarespace.com forward slash 70decibels. You can sign up for a free 14-day trial. Try out the app. Try out the website. And I really think you'll be impressed.

Brad Dowdy: Absolutely. And I'm a Squarespace convert. And Myke and I have talked about it over the months here, you know, about my transferring over to Squarespace. So we've talked about it a lot. And one of the things I keep going back to time and time again is the iOS apps, the mobile apps. I mean, that's been a killer feature for me. And it's actually changed my blogging workflow completely. And the way I, you know, at least, if nothing else, the way I manage comments. I mean, I turned off from my old type ad blog. I had every comment emailed to me. You know, just so I could see. You know, I didn't, I just wanted to see what's going on. I like to, you know, you know, comments in the blogosphere is about 10 other episodes. But, you know, I keep comments on because, you know, I get a lot of questions and have a lot of back and forth with the readers. And, but it would end up, you know, just, that's just a constant flow into my inbox. And that's just, it just became kind of, it kind of got in the way of, you know, just my regular inbox. So the Squarespace mobile apps allowed me to yank that out of my general email inbox, you know, on my computer and put that on my iOS device. And I could actually manage it better. And it actually works out a lot better for me. And I can see when the comments come in and I can choose when to reply to them. And I don't know, I've been really happy with the mobile apps for Squarespace. So thank you, Squarespace, for continuing to sponsor us. We're obviously huge fans.

Stephen Hackett: Absolutely.

Brad Dowdy: So let's talk about pens.

Stephen Hackett: That sounds good.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That's seeing it as the Pen Addict podcast. You know, I, one of the first times I talked with you was when I was employed by JetPens. And I sent you out a few pens to try out. And, you know, at the time, I think you were using, I think you were using the .7 G2, Pilot G2. And Blue Ink. Sure was. I haven't looked this up. I'm just, I think that was right. So I'm glad that was right. It is.

Stephen Hackett: I still have one in my back. It's still kind of my fallback.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly. Exactly. And I sent you a few things to try out. And, you know, there's kind of some middle ground there. You know, there were some likes and dislikes. But since then, you've kind of latched on to definitely one of my all-time favorite pens in the Zebra Sarasa push clip in blue-black ink. Is that right? Is that kind of your go-to workhorse these days?

Ink Properties

Stephen Hackett: It is. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's what my handwriting sample, which will be in the show notes, is written in. Oh, cool. I like it for a couple of reasons. I mean, it's a comfortable pen. You know, just the mechanics of the pen are nice. The clip is really good. But I love the color. And I love – it feels as fluid as the G207, but it doesn't run as much, which is especially nice in the little notebooks like field notes. So you're often kind of riding back over where you were or your hand is up where you were riding because the page is kind of small. It keeps it from getting on your hand, which is nice. And that was something I always wrestled with, with the G2. It seems to dry a lot quicker.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. And with the – are you using the .5 millimeter tip?

Stephen Hackett: I'm using the .5. And, you know, so it's not scratchy in the field notes or really on anything. But, you know, it's a nice weight.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And that's a good point, too, about the .7 G2. I don't think you'd make it five or six weeks using that pen in the field notes. You know, the smaller tip size gives you a little more page room to write more things. And you'd be filling those up super quick, I think, you know, with a wide tip pen. I'm a huge fan of the Zebra Sarasa. I recommend those all the time when people are looking for a really good quality gel ink pen. And it's really hard to be beat for the price. I mean, I guess it's – compared to a lot of other pens, you know, that you buy from online retailers like JetPens or something that are imported, it's very inexpensive. You know, compared to, like, pens on the store shelf, it's pretty much in line. You know, it's not an overly expensive pen. It's not a dirt cheap pen either. But quality-wise, it's super. And it's one I carry with me a lot and have at my desk at work. It's one I have handy a lot.

Stephen Hackett: Yeah. And for a gel, they seem to last a long time. Like, I've used other gel pens where I feel like I've blasted right through them. But I'm getting a pretty good life out of these, which is nice when you're spending a couple bucks on a pen.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And you sent me another one recently that I was actually kind of surprised you enjoy. And it's one that I like and another one that is a real workhorse for me. And that's the Uniball Jetstream, the .7.

Stephen Hackett: They're really different from each other.

Brad Dowdy: They are. They are. And that's kind of a hard thing. And if people are looking for a specific fit or asking me for recommendations, it's usually going to be one or the other. Those usually aren't going to work together. Yeah.

Stephen Hackett: I would definitely say the Zebra is the go-to pen, especially like in a notebook or just to have on me. I find myself using the Jetstream a lot. And the gel doesn't always work on all surfaces very well.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly.

Stephen Hackett: And so it's nice to have a ballpoint, I found. And a lot of – like when I'm doing a lot of – I have to do a lot of like contract work, you know, actually work like on contracts like editing and signing a bunch of stuff. And I found the ballpoint is just maybe a little more – I don't want to say professional but kind of is a better fit for that I think.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, no, I agree with that completely.

Stephen Hackett: And so it's nice to kind of have a grown-up pen around. I mean the Zebra doesn't like shoot glitter out of the end of it or anything. No. And sometimes it's just nice to have a change. And even though the weight is heavier, even though it's a 0.7, it doesn't feel like a 0.7 to me. Like it really feels smaller. And so I can write pretty small with it and not be a problem.

Ballpoint Tips

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and actually just for your info, and I get this question a lot, the ballpoint tip sizes, you know, while they're the same physical measurement, the different measurement is the line width. And when you're talking about a 0.7 millimeter ballpoint, the line width is going to be similar to a 0.5 millimeter gel ink pen. Got you. A 1.0 millimeter ballpoint is going to be similar to like your 0.7 G2. So they're kind of – the line width is kind of going to be a notch down. That's good to know. A lot of people see me talking about the Jetstream 0.5 millimeter, and then they go out and buy it, and they're like, oh, no, I hate this pen. Yeah. Because it's like – it's super, super fine. I mean like poke your eye out, you know, with a needle, fine. And I've actually had some people – some people, you know, I talk about them, and, you know, people go out and buy them. And I was like, hey, I bought these Jetstreams, and I don't like them. Can I just send them to you? I'm like, sure. I think I've had at least two people send me those because, you know, because they buy it thinking it's going to be like their 0.5 millimeter gel ink pen, and it's going to be way different. So that's just something to keep in mind out there because that question comes up a lot. You know, people buy a 0.7 and are like, ooh, this is really thin and scratchy. But the 0.7 Jetstream I think is the sweet spot for me. That's an awesome writing pen. I love it.

Stephen Hackett: Yeah, and I've got it in blue. I don't have any black pens. Really just because I mark up documents so much at work that the blue makes it easy for my eyes to find where my notes are and kind of, you know, on the page of if it's a blueprint or if it's a contract or something.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah, and I'm with you on ballpoint. I almost exclusively only use blue ink. For gel, I use mostly black and blue black and almost never regular blue. But for ballpoint, I almost only use blue. I think the black ballpoints are usually never dark enough to me, and they usually skip. And I have a lot better luck with the blue ink ballpoints like the Jetstream for sure.

Stephen Hackett: Yeah, and it's a good-looking barrel too. Like I kind of like – it's kind of – this is going to sound so weird. It's kind of got little curves to it, you know? Yeah, no, exactly. And like the little window in the side where it's got the – it says – I don't have mine with me. It says Jetstream like in the little window, doesn't it?

Brad Dowdy: Yep. It's like a little cutout in the side.

Stephen Hackett: It's like the pen from the future.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's really good. They do a really good job. Uniball probably makes – they make some of the best-looking barrels for me. And they're more – they seem to be more durable than a lot of the other pens too, especially for the price. I mean these are not expensive pens, and they're really sturdy and solid, and they really feel good when you're writing. There's not a lot of bouncing around or rattling around or extraneous noise and things when you write. It's just a real, real solid pen. So, yeah, that's a great one.

Stephen Hackett: Yeah, so they are different from each other. But I like them both with the Zebra pulling out a little bit ahead.

Brad Dowdy: Yep.

Stephen Hackett: But it's close.

Pen Carrying

Brad Dowdy: Yep. And I – like you said, you use different pens for different things. And I carry a ton of pens with me. But the ones I keep like in a pen case in my backpack, I might carry 10 pens, but they're all going to be very different for if I get on a whim and want something specific, I have it with me. You know, there's no point in carrying five different ball – 0.7 millimeter ball points from five different brands. You know, I find the one gel ink pen that I like the best, and I carry it with me. And I find the one ballpoint ink pen, and I carry it with me. And I find the one, you know, plastic tip pen, and I carry it with me, things like that. So, yeah, that's cool. That's cool. Were there any other pens you've been using recently?

Stephen Hackett: That's pretty much it. I've found – kind of found what worked for me, and that was it, you know, not trying to tinker too much.

Brad Dowdy: That's a good thing. Yeah, Myke and I definitely have the tinkering bug. You know, there's always something new to try out and things like that. But, you know, people still revert back to they want that one pen, you know. What's going to be my pen? And, you know, I think you've picked a good one in the Zebra Sarasa. That's an excellent choice and one that I know listeners of the pen addict, you know, they like that pen a lot. And if they haven't tried it out, they definitely should because it's well worth it. And, you know, I just want one comment on that. It's the one that Stephen's using, the Zebra Sarasa push clip, is different than the Zebra Sarasa you find at Staples or Office Max or things like that. And I can't explain why, but it absolutely writes differently. It's a much better pen of the push clip version of the pen. So I just wanted to point that out because someone will say, you know, I bought this Sarasa and, you know, I don't think it's doing as well. And I was like, you know, which one did you buy? And they're like, well, just this one. And I'm like, it's a different pen. And it just is. I can't – I don't have an answer to that, to why, but it is – trust me, the push clip is a much, much better performing pen than the regular Sarasa. So anyway, that's my pen tip for the day. But I think that's about God. Stephen, is there anything else you want to talk about? But we definitely need to talk about where everyone can find you online.

Pen Reviews

Stephen Hackett: Yeah, well, let's just dive into that. I'm on Twitter at ISMH. And as mentioned, write 512pixels.net.

Brad Dowdy: And you can find me on Twitter also at Dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. And, you know, all the pen reviews and other fun stuff is at penaddict.com. And I also have a contact there, you know, penaddict.com forward slash contact. Y'all are all free to email me with your show recommendations, pen questions, pen reviews, anything that I can help out with. I'm glad to do it. And I really appreciate you filling in today, Stephen. It was a pleasure.

Stephen Hackett: Yeah, glad to do it.

Brad Dowdy: All right. Well, I'm sure I'll be talking to you soon. Have a great day.

Stephen Hackett: All right.

Brad Dowdy: You too.