The Pen Addict 24/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	24
Title:	Storage Wars
Release Date:	July 24th, 2012
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 24
Audio File:	Audio Episode 24
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 24
Length:	3434 min <br />0.567 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Brad Dowdy: Hello and welcome to episode 24 of The Pen Addict podcast, your weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. I am here with the chieftain, the poomba, the grandmaster, the all-high wizard, himself incarnate, the pen addict, chief pen addict, Brad Dowdy. See, that's getting longer every week.

Myke Hurley: Every week. I mean, we're on episode 24. I mean, you know, in 20 more episodes, we're going to have like a whole show of just intro.

Brad Dowdy: The unfortunate thing is these things, I don't plan them before I say them. I just say them.

Myke Hurley: And I will vouch to the listeners for that. That's why Myke's so good at this, but not to blow smoke up at Myke. Because basically I'm saying that. He just says this off the top of his head, seriously.

Brad Dowdy: I'm saying that through my fear of insulting somebody's religion at some point. That will happen. You are Brad Dowdy. You are The Pen Addict. I'm Myke Hurley of 70 Decibels. This show is brought to you by Squarespace and DocuSign, and we're going to talk about those in just a little bit. Our lovely sponsors. So, Mr. All High Chief Penning Ball, how are you?

Myke Hurley: I'm very good. How about you?

Storage Stuff

Brad Dowdy: I'm very well, my man. I'm very well. Glad to be back with you this week. Doing another episode. We're going to talk a bit about storage stuff.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, yeah. I got an email from a reader last week, and that was kind of a topic we haven't covered. We've talked about just small storage and portable storage like pen cases, but he was wondering more of a behind-the-scenes look at the mass quantities of pens and how I store them. So we will be talking about that today.

Brad Dowdy: Before we get to that, I would like to follow up with you about your portable storage situation. Sure. So what are you using at the moment? Because you bought one of the cases that I have. What is it called?

Myke Hurley: The Lihid Lab Tefa case. That's it. Pen case.

Brad Dowdy: And are you still using that?

Myke Hurley: I did a fair and balanced two-week trial.

Brad Dowdy: That means no, then.

Myke Hurley: And I'm out of it. Yeah. It currently has zero pens in it and is sitting in my pen storage.

Myke Hurley: It's a mental thing, honestly.

Brad Dowdy: As in, the fact that you are mental.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Well, that's exactly right.

Myke Hurley: With that case, so when I go to work, I want to take my favorite pens with me. And, you know, some are nice and expensive. You know, we've got the Vanishing Point and, you know, got Retro 51 and got, you know, my Kaweco AL Sport and some of the nicer pens that I like to use. Yep. And I could not get over the pens constantly rubbing against each other. No telling what was going on in that pen case at night, Michael. Well, but, you know, the way that case is designed, they slot vertically, right? And they're adjacent to each other. There's no separation. They clip onto a strap, essentially, just next to each other.

Myke Hurley: And every time I opened that case, I would just, like, cringe. I'm like, oh, this is killing me. And, you know, I think two weeks to the day, I went back to my nomadic roller. And that way I can put, like, five of them in their own individual sleeve. And then I can put maybe five more of the ones that I don't care. They get, you know, roll around together and bang up in kind of the open section of the pouch. And I've been able to sleep at night ever since.

Brad Dowdy: So this is that, like, holy grail of pen cases that nobody else can buy except you, isn't it?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. That sounds like a good Kickstarter project for me.

Brad Dowdy: There you go.

Myke Hurley: To remake that case.

Brad Dowdy: You should do that. People would buy that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I've gotten tons of compliments on that case. And everyone that was able to get one, you know, really enjoys it. But, you know, there's another. And I don't have the nomadic product numbers in front of me. But there's the nomadic tri-fold pocket case. For people like me, there's two kinds of pen cases, right? There's one where you kind of dump everything in and everything just rolls around. And, you know, just kind of a mass of pens in there. Just kind of a big open case. And then you have other pen cases that separate by individual pens. The Lidhead Labs is kind of in between there to where there is some more organization. But the pens are still kind of banging around against each other. There's one called the nomadic tri-fold. And I forget the product number. But that one, in lieu of the nomadic roll case, I recommend the tri-fold a lot for someone who wants to separate their pens individually. I haven't tried one of the – have you seen, like on jet pens and stuff, the roll wrap cases? Like they roll up. It's almost like a larger piece of fabric or leather or something like that.

Pencil Cases

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'm looking at one. Like the most purchased pencil case at the moment. It's called C-Play 7 Roll. And it's all sold out. It's leather.

Myke Hurley: Yep. I've never used one of those. I like the idea of them, though. It's kind of like that. The nomadic tri-fold is similar to that. But it doesn't roll. Like it says, it's a tri-fold. And I like nomadic's nylon and Velcro construction. It's very utilitarian and durable and fairly priced. But same with those roll pin cases. Those provide you individual storage for each one of your pens. You just can't carry a mass amount of pens. The Lit Hit Labs, you can – it's an impressive case for the amount of storage that you get out of it. I should have weighed my pin case. I've never carried a heavier pin case in my life because I could put so much in there. Right? I filled it to the hilt because I didn't want stuff moving around. So on both sides, on both straps, I had it – I couldn't squeeze in another pin. I think that case must have weighed like two pounds. It was pretty heavy.

Myke Hurley: But you're still using yours, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I love it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I think there was something wrong with you.

Brad Dowdy: Me and you are going to fight one day.

Myke Hurley: Hey, I got another quick topic that we didn't discuss beforehand that might get us off track.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Myke Hurley: You want to hear it?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Vanishing Point Pens

Myke Hurley: So I have a reader that bought a vanishing point. And he bought it with the EF nib replacement unit. So I have the F nib and you have the M, right? Or do you have the B?

Brad Dowdy: For what, sorry?

Myke Hurley: The vanishing point nib.

Brad Dowdy: I have the bold.

Myke Hurley: Okay. So I have the F, the fine. He bought the extra fine, which I don't – that hasn't always been available, I believe. I think it's just come out in the past few years.

Brad Dowdy: The stabby edition, as I like to call it.

Myke Hurley: It is. And he – that was his first vanishing point. And he said, I probably went a little too far there. And he didn't care for it. So I said, I've always been interested about that. Maybe send it to me. We can work out a swap. I'll try it out, see if I like it. And I'll send you my F nib unit. So he sent it to me. And I can't use it. It is really crazy. It feels like I'm stabbing a hypodermic needle into the page sharp. It's – even for me. And you know, it almost can't get too fine for me. That was a little much.

Brad Dowdy: That must be – I mean, if you have a problem with it, I can only imagine that I would sooner pull my eyes out.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, for sure. Because, you know, I thought that would be something I would buy a nib unit down the line. Because you can just buy those, right, for – I keep the same stealth barrel and just swap out the entire nib unit. They're like $60.

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Myke Hurley: So I thought, you know, down the line I'd pick up an EF one just to try. And I figured I'd probably like it. And this was a good opportunity for me to test it out. And I thought for sure – I thought it was going to be a no-brainer. I was like, oh, yep, love it. Let's switch. And I used it for like three days in a row. And I just kept looking at it. I'd write and I'd just look at it. And I was like, it just doesn't feel right. It is really, really fine. I've never seen anything like that on a fountain pen before. So I went back to the F nib and I was like, oh, okay. There we go. Much better.

Myke Hurley: So that was an interesting test run I did. And I appreciate Philip for letting me test his out for a few days. And, you know, unfortunately the swap didn't go through just because it wasn't a good fit for me. And I guess he's probably going to look at getting an F or an M nib unit for his vanishing point. So anyway, I just thought I would share that with you that I have tested out the EF vanishing point nib unit. And it is crazy.

Brad Dowdy: Cool.

Brad Dowdy: There you go.

Squarespace

Myke Hurley: Yep. So let's talk about our first sponsor and then we can get into the meat and potatoes.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. And let's talk about Squarespace. We love Squarespace, don't we, Brad?

Myke Hurley: We love us some Squarespace here at the Pen Addict.

Brad Dowdy: So the things that we have loved historically about Squarespace, we love their rock solid hosting. They're easy to design. Wheezywig tools. They're fantastic iOS applications.

Brad Dowdy: They're beautiful statistics packages. Well, what if I can give you all of this with their brand new features, Squarespace 6?

Brad Dowdy: Surely I'm just going to blow everyone's minds. What more do I need to say? I don't think I need to say anymore, but I'm going to anyway. So they have beautiful new templates. You can see these at new.squarespace.com forward slash templates. Or you go to mikehurley.net, you'll see one in action. I absolutely love the work that Squarespace have done with the new templates for the new Squarespace. Squarespace. I love that when you are using mobile and it's all responsive. So you go to my site on an iPhone and it scales everything down, makes it fit the pages nicely. I like that when you're scrolling as well, the page content kind of slides behind the header. And there's like a little transparency there. It's cool. Really nice design. What they've done is they've taken the excellent tools that you have to customize Squarespace designs. You've still got all of those. And they kept the essence in that a Squarespace site doesn't look like it's just come from a blogging platform. And then they've taken it to the next level.

Brad Dowdy: And the stuff that they've done behind the scenes as well, next level. Like the whole experience has received this lovely lick of paint and it's absolutely beautiful. All of the back end stuff is really simple. Like if you want to create a new page, you just open a new page up. You drop in the elements that you want. You just drag and drop them in. I want to put a contact form here. I want to put some social widget stuff here. I want to just drag it all in, drag it all in. Configure it all. Excellent. Love it. Social media integration now. So you can sync with your social media accounts. So you can, for example, tweet every post that you write out. You can do that straight out. Link list support. So if you want to have the daring fireball style links, this is where the header, the headline of your post is an actual link out to the source material that you're talking about. I have markdown by default. If you write in markdown, you use that markup language. Then you can now enable this by default into your posts. I love it. Custom domain names when you sign up for a year or more of Squarespace. That's all still there and it's all integrated seamlessly. I can give you 10% off your first purchase of Squarespace if you enter the code 70decibels7. That's 70-D-E-C-I-B-E-L-S-7 at checkout. And I can also give you a two-week free trial to try all this stuff out if you go to squarespace.com forward slash 70decibels. Thank you to Squarespace.

Myke Hurley: Thank you, Squarespace.

Brad Dowdy: So we're going to talk about organization outside of the pencil case.

Myke Hurley: Right. So the question was – let me see if I got the email here.

Brad Dowdy: Sorry. I know.

Myke Hurley: Sorry. I was on a different screen. This is from Craig. Craig says, He must be a Brit because he uses S in organize. So I'm going to go with that.

Myke Hurley: He says, Perhaps you could talk about useful ways you found to contain the horde. He says, I don't have a vast collection myself, but my fountain pens are quickly growing in number along with the stuff that tends to come with them. So I'm always interested to hear ideas that might be useful either now or in the future.

Myke Hurley: So my storage – and if you followed me since the beginning, you've seen me kind of do some pictures and maybe some tweets of how I store my pens. And it is very, very unimpressive and just kind of getting the job done type of storage. So I probably have – I mean I've never counted how many pens I have. It's – I don't know. Let's say a few hundred.

Myke Hurley: And that's just some mass market pens where you buy four packs and five packs or dozens. And they just all kind of pile up and you just get numbers and numbers and numbers. And at the house, I don't have a lot of storage. So I tried to consolidate as many pens as possible into one storage bin. So what I've done is taken – like if you go to the store in like a Walmart or Target or something and they just have the plastic storage bins, right? Just like – I don't know how big this thing is. 40-gallon, 50-gallon, somewhere right there. Something that's about two or three shoeboxes in size if you can picture that. I'm sorry. I don't have the right gallon measurement or liter measurement. But what I've done is taken one of those boxes and early on when I started the pen addict and I started acquiring these pens, I'd sort them out by – most of the time by brands. So like Pilot, Pentel, Zebra, Muji and different things like that. I took that bin. I took a box of Ziploc bags and I sorted them by brand and put them back in the bag.

Brad Dowdy: I bet that was a fun day though.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I mean that's the gist of my storage. And I can tell when I'm getting too many pens when I can't close the lid on the bin.

Myke Hurley: And I get tired of saying, oh, I wish I had this pen today and have them to dig to the bottom of the bin and have a lot of Ziplocs to go through. But I just use the clear Ziploc so I can see what's in them obviously. And the regular size, standard size Ziploc is the perfect width for a pen, right? So they store them in there tightly.

Pen Paraphernalia

Myke Hurley: I separate them by brand. Then I have like a – I'll have like a separate bag of just like refill stuff. That's the paraphernalia he's talking about. Refills come in individual packaging or sometimes you get an extra refill when you buy a pen. And I'm always losing those or set them to the side.

Myke Hurley: So that has its own bag and that's a pretty large bag. And then I have – I use one of my pen cases like we were talking about before. I mentioned earlier just one of the – like an open style pen case. And that holds like all my fountain pen ink cartridges. That way I can dump them all in. And I know if I need a fountain pen ink cartridge, that's where I go to grab it. But I mean it's – I don't have some kind of uber, you know, awesomely engineered storage system. But it really works. And the thing is I can just take that bin, store it in the closet. And when I want to do some pen reviews or I have to go through some of it and rearrange, you know, I can just take that out in one shot, carry it into my living room or wherever, kitchen table, wherever I'm going to work on this. And everything is organized. I can pull it all out, see it right there on the table. When I get new pens, I tend to just set them on the top of the bin until I get the time to open the bin and organize the new pens into the right spot. So I'm anal in the fact that I want – I've set up like things to be with like things, right? I just don't throw all my pens together and have to fish through them. That would drive me berserk.

Brad Dowdy: So you just arrange them by the brand, you said, right?

Myke Hurley: Generally. And even more so in the particular product. Like Pilot Hitec C has its own bag probably because I have 30 of them. You know, Unuball, Sino DX, same way. Pentel Slissy has got its own bag, Sleechy. But then for smaller brands where I don't have the mass thing, I'll just put them all together. Like all the zebra pens, they go in one spot because I don't have, you know, 30 of the zebra Saracic clip or something like that. So I just try to – I want to be able to find the stuff that I do have when I want to find it. And then I want to also be able to have the parts and replacement parts and other things in one location because that stuff does tend to pile up, which is kind of what Craig's alluding to. Not only do you have the pens, but then you get a lot of extras. And when those things get separated and you're looking for that refill that you bought or that extra refill or this other ink cartridge that you had or anything like that, I keep those nearby too. They all live in the same bin.

Myke Hurley: So now there's – the one thing I haven't figured out storage for and the one thing that's going to – yeah, I talk about it's going to get me in trouble, but I've been kind of lax on it. It's fountain pen ink. Like I have no clue on how to store that. I don't keep it in the same bin because it kind of rolls around too much. I mean because it's not in a separate container. It's almost like I need to own – my fountain pen inks need their own box. But I just worry about them shuffling around and jostling around. So I actually just have them sitting on a shelf in a closet. But I've only got like maybe five or six bottles right now anyway. So that's not too huge of a problem, but in the future it might be. So if any of you have heavy fountain pen users out there who have 20 and 30 bottles of ink, I'd be interested to see how you store quantities like that, especially not out in the open. I understand if you have a desk or a workspace or an art table where you can keep a lot of that out. But if you're storing that away in a closet, I'd be interested to know what you use, what are those options. So that's my pen bin. And I could probably find some old pictures to link to you. And I'll see if I can get you some for the show notes just so people can see what I'm talking about because literally this system hasn't changed in probably four or five years. It's been the same since the beginning. When the bin gets too full, I purge it. Either my kids get the pens or I take a big batch to work and give them away to everyone at work who they're always excited to get that. And then they come, ooh, I like this one. And they wonder what it is and how did I find it and where can they get it. And then they're like, you really have this many pens? And I'm like, yeah, pretty much so. But they're well aware of my problem now. And now they seek me out at work, which is kind of funny. I'm not an in-the-closet addict anymore.

Brad Dowdy: Not in the pen closet. Yeah. I don't really have a storage system. I haven't got enough stuff. I have a pen cup that I made out of Lego. Oh, cool. And all my pens live in there or they live in the – that's the stuff that I keep at home. And then obviously I have my – the Hit Lab case where all my good stuff lives. And then people are going to hate me for saying this. But I keep all of my stuff on a windowsill.

Myke Hurley: Ooh, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Including my ink. Yeah. Yeah, I know, I know.

Myke Hurley: That's a terrible idea.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, but I only have one bottle of ink. Okay. And the rest is just cartridges in their boxes. Yeah. So I don't think it's going to get too hurt there. And you've got to remember where I live. Right. We get like four days of sun a year.

Myke Hurley: Exactly. Exactly. But, I mean, it gets hard to manage it when you get all this stuff, which I'm certainly not complaining. I like all my stuff. But it can get away from you quickly once you start accumulating, just like anything else. Once you start accumulating, that gets crazy. The one thing I do do is when I have new pens or pens that I haven't reviewed, those stay completely separate from that whole batch of stuff because I don't want to get them lost. I kind of keep – I have a pouch that I keep – I have a to-be-reviewed pouch that I keep in my desk drawer. So I don't have to go – when it's time for me to sit down and do pen reviews, I don't have to go searching through my big box of doom. But, yeah, I use – that's the big size container. I wish I had the size, I could tell you. I think it's 50 or 60 gallon. Which is not as big as it sounds. And then I use, like, two of the similar width containers but about half the size. And I use those for my notebooks. I don't have a lot of stray storage just, like, laying around. You know, the notebooks either – like, one of them has larger size, you know, like your 8.5 by 11s or that size, that dimension notebook just stacked up in there just so I can move them around easily. And then the other one has, you know, all my dome paper utility journals, field notes, you know, the smaller footprint notebooks just lined up, you know, vertically through there. So the entirety of my pen storage and paper storage consists of those three cases. And I could – if I stacked them on top of each other, I could carry them around, holding them all together. It's not that much stuff. So, Craig, that's my highly engineered solution for my pen storage, zip locks and plastic bins.

Brad Dowdy: Cool. So what more do you need?

Myke Hurley: I know. I know. It works for me. Like I said, when I first started, I knew I had to have some type of storage. And this is what I landed on in the beginning. And I've had no reason to change it ever since. So it seems to work fine.

Brad Dowdy: If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

Myke Hurley: That's right.

Brad Dowdy: You're going to need to find me an image.

Myke Hurley: I do. I will find one. I know I have two or three because I've shared them out before.

Brad Dowdy: Good stuff.

Myke Hurley: So I have to come up with one.

DocuSign Sponsorship

Brad Dowdy: Now, our second sponsor this week is DocuSign.

Brad Dowdy: Now, DocuSign, they provide you with the easiest and most secure way to add signatures to documents no matter where you are. DocuSign is used in over 180 countries, and they have more than 20 million users. They allow you to upload your own documents from your own hard drive or from cloud services like Dropbox or Google Docs and stuff like that. So let's get into a little bit about the features. So I know that Mr. Dowdy right now is moving home. Now, I know that with a house purchase, you have many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many pieces of paper.

Myke Hurley: It's endless.

Brad Dowdy: That you have to sign an initial and put your name on and put your address on and then put your blood type on. Right? Now, what DocuSign does is they give you the power to control those documents without the paper. So imagine this, Brad. So that 275,000-page contract that you had to sign, imagine instead of that being delivered to you on six different trucks, imagine if you got an email, you opened that email, and it said, Steve Fredson, who is your real estate lawyer, would need you to sign this document, and it's been sent to you via DocuSign. So you go, okay, fine. You click on the email, you double-click it, because Steve was able to upload it from his hard drive, and he put it into his DocuSign, and he sent it to you by email, because that's the way that you send out the documents to the people you need their attention. You open it up, Brad, and it takes you to the DocuSign website, and it shows you the document that you need, and it's got it all there, all the pages there. And then it will take you step-by-step through every part where you need to sign, every part where you need to put your name and address. It just takes you all the way through it so you don't miss anything. So it's guided. It's guided.

Myke Hurley: Oh, that's cool.

Brad Dowdy: You sign by either using your finger on the trackpad, or you use one of their iOS apps, or their iPad app, or their... I have an Android app, too, so you can sign with your finger there on the screen, and you can also access all of your documents there as well. You sign it all. It gets sent back to him. It goes to the other people. Like, say, it needs to go to your wife, or it can also go to her after you're done. It goes back to your real estate lawyer, and it's legally binding.

Myke Hurley: Done. That's good stuff. That would seriously come in handy over this past month. The amount of documents and hoops I've had to jump through to get all the things done, and the driving around and the managing the files and getting all the signatures and forgetting to sign in certain places, and wow, that would come in handy big time.

Brad Dowdy: So DocuSign, they have plans that are available for different types of users, depending on how many people you need to have access to the files, and different plans that are tailored to different business sectors, like they have DocuSign for real estate. Now, they also have loads of support documents and webinars as well. So if, for example, you work in a company and you want to try and convince your co-workers to start using DocuSign, well, they have webinars and stuff to try and show how DocuSign can be effective in your business. Now, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial of this application, this web application, that allows you to sign anytime, anyplace, and on any device, which is totally safe, secure, and legally binding, which is DocuSign, and you can sign up for a 30-day free trial at DocuSign.com, which is D-O-C-U-S-I-G-N.com forward slash 70 decibels. That also helps support us. Go there to find out more and sign up and try it out. If you have documents that you need people to sign, this is the only option for you.

Myke Hurley: Fantastic.

Brad Dowdy: There you go.

Listener Question

Brad Dowdy: So, next topic.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I need the readers, I always say readers, the listeners help on this. Readers and listeners help on this. I have a gentleman that sent me an email, and he's very, very specific on what he wants. And let me just go through his hit list because it's reasonably straightforward. I mean, it's a very detailed list, but it's a pretty normal thing. So, he wants ink that's archival in his pen. You know, water-resistant, acid-free, UV-proof. He wants it, you know, these journals. You know, if he's going to use it for a journal to last a long time, or if he writes a check, it's not going to wash out, things like that. He prefers a liquid ink, like a rollerball ink. He does not like gel and does not like ballpoint. And not too light in color. You do tend to find that with some liquid inks, especially blues. Blues tend to be lighter in a lot of rollerball liquid inks. Won't explode on a plane. That's a kicker. That shortens the list greatly. Looks halfway decent. Something, you know, he'll enjoy using, breaking out, and, you know, giving to someone else, let someone else use, things like that.

Myke Hurley: He says right now he uses a Uniball 207 that skips and is way too light. A Stadler pigment liner, which is not smooth, but, you know, that handles the archival ink qualities. It's also, I guess those types of pins are plane safe. I'm not positive. And he uses a Fabric Castle ballpoint, which is airplane safe, because the ballpoint inks really, I haven't had any, no one really talks about the ballpoint inks linking on a flight, although I guess they would, but not as much as liquid or gel ink. So when I read that, the easy answer for me was there's a pin called the Uniball Vision Elite. And I know we've talked about this pin before, and I can't remember if it was called something differently over there in the UK, and I'm thinking that it was, but I can't remember. It's the one that Uniball markets as airplane safe. But it's liquid ink, rollerball, uses archival ink, right? It's their Super, Uniball Super Ink technology. They've started to put all of their pins now, including the Vision Elite. Obviously won't explode on a plane. And, you know, it's reasonably good looking. It's a plastic barrel pin, but it's one of the more professional looking pins that Uniball does. And I mentioned that, and he said, yeah, he's tried it. And he said what he would really like is to find a rollerball that uses refillable ink cartridges.

Myke Hurley: And have you ever seen a pin like that, Michael? Just a rollerball pin, a rollerball tip or a nib that uses an ink cartridge, like a fountain pen ink cartridge.

Brad Dowdy: I've never heard of it. Okay.

Myke Hurley: So Kaweco, I don't know of many. Kaweco makes all of their, let's see, classic, ice sport, all of that entry-level fountain pen, the plastic barrel Kaweco, the classic, and that entire line. They make that, all of those pins in a liquid ink cartridge rollerball. And I have one of these, and I've reviewed it. And I'll send you a link to that for the show notes.

Myke Hurley: And it's just as you imagine, it's the same body, the same ink cartridge as the fountain pen, but just has a rollerball tip. Now, what this gentleman would like to do is refill those ink cartridges with his favorite ink, which I think is, you know, the Noodler's, like, bulletproof black, you know, super dark archival. You know, that's his favorite ink.

Myke Hurley: And it's not going to, this isn't going to fit his airplane safe criteria. There's no way that this is going to be an airplane safe type pen. But for everyday writing and journaling, that would be his perfect solution. Now, the only other pen I've seen like that is Zebra has actually started to make one that they've put on store shelves, like Walmart and Target. I don't have the model number. I'll also give you a link to that. I've reviewed it as well. I was not impressed with it, but it is basically a stainless steel body pen, like, you know, in the Zebra style that they make. And it's just got, you know, black ink cartridges that just snap right in. So what I'm wondering is, those are the only two I know of. There has to be, some manufacturer has to make a higher end rollerball with an ink cartridge refill. So that's my question for the listeners. If you know of any other pins that take, any other rollerball pins that take ink cartridges, please let me know because that's not something I'm too, too familiar with. Like I said, I've reviewed a couple, but those are, you know, lower end entry level type stuff. Is there something more substantial available for that type of pen? So, I mean, it's good in theory. The two that I've tested, I haven't been impressed with the feel of the rollerball, right? They both felt not as smooth. The ink flow has been fine, but the rollerball does not roll very well, in my opinion. Like there wasn't enough, I don't know if it's lubrication or if it's just the design that it was that made it feel scratchy. I didn't care for it. I like the idea of being able to use different inks. Like I like Kaweco's blue-black ink, which is what I used in mine. And that was cool. But just overall, I was, that's not a pen I would use very frequently. It just didn't fit my needs.

Brad Dowdy: So, hmm.

Myke Hurley: I guess we'll throw that out there, right? I know there's something else out there. There's got to be other things out there. So, I'd be interested to see. Would you ever use something like that?

Brad Dowdy: Well, I find it a bit oddball, personally. Like if I want replaceable ink, this is just my own opinions. If I want replaceable ink, I'm going to use a fountain pen anyway. That's just because I prefer them to rollerballs anyway. We've spoken about this a bunch of times. But I don't, I've never really come into contact with many rollerballs that I would, you know, the barrel's so great that I would feel like I would need to have replaceable ink like that. I don't know. It just seems weird. Like, why not just get a refill? Like a rollable refill.

Myke Hurley: Right, right. Does that make sense? Yeah, because he can't use, he can't customize the ink. Like, I mean, it's a pretty specialized type of question, right? I mean, he wants a level of customization in his pen, right? And there's very few things that are going to allow for that except a fountain pen or, you know, if there's some other, you know, rollerball with cartridge options, which are very few and far between.

Myke Hurley: So, anyway, so hopefully we'll see if any listeners know of anything. Y'all can shoot me, send me an email. You can get me at penaddict.com forward slash contact. Or you can tweet it to me at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. And, you know, that's probably a good place to leave it today, Myke, unless you've got anything else.

Brad Dowdy: I totally agree. I'm on Twitter as well. I'm I-M-Y-K-E. But Brad is always, of course, the man that you should get in touch with these things.

Brad Dowdy: Until next time, Brad, we will speak to our listeners later.

Myke Hurley: Absolutely.

Brad Dowdy: Enjoyed it as always. Thank you very much for listening. Keep writing. Bye-bye. Bye.