The Pen Addict 6/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	6
Title:	Multi-Pen, Multi-Tasking
Release Date:	March 22nd, 2012
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 6
Audio File:	Audio Episode 6
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 6
Length:	3636 min <br />0.6 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to The Pen Addict podcast, a show all about pens and paper and all the lovely analogue tools that we covet so much. My name is Michael Hurley, but this show is hosted by primarily the one and only pen addict himself, that is Mr. Brad Dowdy. Hello Brad, how are you?

Brad Dowdy: I'm great Myke, how are you today?

Myke Hurley: I'm fantastic, I thought you'd run away again then.

Brad Dowdy: I know, I know, it's good to be back after a week hiatus, I missed doing the show. Sorry about last week, sometimes real life gets in the way.

Myke Hurley: Believe it or not.

Brad Dowdy: Uncontrollably so, so it's good to be back in the saddle today.

Myke Hurley: And we're back with a bang, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yes, very much so.

Myke Hurley: So tell people what we're going to be talking about today before we get into the things we're currently using.

Multi-Pens

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I've had a few emails and to jog my memory that we haven't covered multi-pens very much. And that's something that I use very, very frequently. And, you know, a few readers wanted to know about some different multi-pen options and things like that. So we'll kind of do a deep dive on multi-pens and what they're all about and what some of my favourites are today.

Myke Hurley: Sweet. Sweet. Before we start as well, I want to give a shout out to listener Eric Malinson, who is at ERIMA, E-R-I-M-A on Twitter, who very kindly sent me some Noodlers ink, the heart of darkness, which is what, you know, a lot of people tell me is a fantastic ink. Yeah. I've used it a little bit because I'm currently waiting on an order from JetPens for some converters to turn my Lamy and my Prera into ink, to take ink, not cartridges. So I'm going to be getting a lot more testing out of that soon, I think.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And that's a good choice. I don't have that ink, but everyone who recommends ink, especially just for like what's the best black solid ink that you can find, the heart of darkness is at the top of so many lists that that's a great choice.

Myke Hurley: It's interesting because like the packaging and stuff is bonkers.

Brad Dowdy: Noodlers does a crazy job with packaging. It's awesome.

Myke Hurley: And obviously I will include links in the show notes to that.

Brad Dowdy: The packaging, not only the packaging, but also the ink names themselves. Heart of Darkness is nothing compared to some of the ink names that they use.

Myke Hurley: So have you got anything special that you've been using this week? I have.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I've probably mentioned it before, but I tend to get on kicks where I'll go for, you know, a week or two at a time using the same pen and don't want to pick up anything else. And for the past, I bet it's been almost two weeks, probably almost since we recorded the last episode. I've just been I have not been able to put down my Zebra Sarasa Clip 0.3 millimeter gel ink pen. I mean, it's one of the simplest, most basic pens out there, but it writes just a killer sharp line, super clean. It actually comes in a bunch of colors. I've been using black, blue, black and orange for different things. But it's an awesome pen. And, you know, I haven't touched the Pilot Hi-Tech C or the Uni Sino DX. You know, when I get in one of these kicks, I don't switch around until one day I'll just say, well, that's enough of the Sarasa. Let's move on to something else. And then I won't touch the Sarasa for weeks. I don't I can't explain that. It's just it's just one of those things with me. So how about you? What are you what have you been using recently?

Myke Hurley: I have been using my Sarasa this week because this is this is the real heartbreaker is my Prera. It came with an ink cartridge and I don't have another ink cartridge. So it's run out. And the Prera takes a very peculiar cartridge. And I was in a stationer today and wasn't able to find anything that fit it. Probably because of its lineage might be in a Japanese pen.

Brad Dowdy: I think so. Probably that it'll be probably a little bit more difficult to just walk in and get a standard size cartridge to fit that.

Myke Hurley: So I'm hoping that maybe in the next episode I will have the converters for that. And also we'll have a Kaweco Sport, I think, was the one I went for. OK. And that looks I mean, I'm really excited about that. You speak very highly of the Kaweco line.

Brad Dowdy: I do. All their all their products are really good. And that's that's one product line I want to keep keep getting obtaining more of because I've been very impressed with the quality and the performance of it. But some of the pens, you know, there are not cheap, you know, in the fifty hundred dollar range, hundred twenty five dollar range. So it's not something I will treat myself to too frequently. But those are they really appeal to me because of the design. It's a little different than, say, your traditional fountain pen design. What people would think of as a classic fountain pen design. And so I think that's super appealing to me and in a lot of other people.

Fountain Pens

Myke Hurley: But today, while I was at the stationery store, I did pick up something quite peculiar. Do you remember last week when we were talking about writing in school? Yes. And I mentioned the B-roll or B-roll handwriting pens that Paper Mate make. Yeah. I found a fountain pen version today.

Michael Hurley: Oh, very cool.

Myke Hurley: So I picked that up just because it reminded me of my youth. I've been using that today. But at the same time, I sort of bought some cartridges. I bought some Lamy cartridges because my Lamy's run out of ink too. You can tell how much I write in my day job, right? I'm running out of ink right and center. And I also bought a Parker converter, which has a standard-sized cartridge. So my thought was I would be able to use this converter in most standard pens, like the B-roll handwriting pens. So I've currently got some ink. I couldn't use the – I didn't use the Heart of Darkness on that yet because I want to save that for a better pen. But I have some Montblanc ink, and I've sort of hacked it with that. However, maybe it wasn't the best idea because not only have I got ink all over my hands today, it's kind of leaking a little bit. So – Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: This converter is going to be a tough deal, and I'm by no means an expert on that. But when I get – people ask me, will this converter fit in this pen if it's not the same matching brand? You know, I'm like I'm generally – most of the time I'm not going to flat out say no, but you're running the risk of what you're finding out today. It's that the seal is the most important thing, right? The seal of the converter to the pen, and if there's any – even though you can't see it and it feels tight, you know, the manufacturers differ, right? So I always trust – I generally only trust the same manufacturer's brand converter with that same pen, even though you'll get reports of people saying, you know, this converter fit with that pen, you know, opposite or different manufacturers. I'm not that brave.

Myke Hurley: So, you know, the answer is kind of yes, it does fit, and yes, it works. It's just not perfect. Right. I mean, the pen itself is okay. It's comfortable. It's got a nice medium nib, very smooth to write with. The ink distribution isn't great, but I think that might be my problem as opposed to the pen's problem. Like it is coming out thick and thin in certain places, and it's leaking through a little. Right.

Pen Issues

Brad Dowdy: It's the – it doesn't have the – probably have the proper pressurization.

Myke Hurley: No, because it was a pretty cheap, cheapish pen, and I bought it more for sentimental purposes. My other problem is the cap is – it fixes too hard for a fountain pen. So there's a real click to the cap. Okay.

Myke Hurley: And to try and get it off, you have to really use two hands and pull. And that's not what you want to be doing with a fountain pen, right?

Brad Dowdy: No.

Myke Hurley: This might be why. I've got ink linking all over the place.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, you'll be flinging ink everywhere.

Myke Hurley: This is the problem. However, you know, it's a nice little pen for the price.

Brad Dowdy: Cool. And I also dug up – How much was it? I mean, just for reference.

Myke Hurley: It was five pounds, I think. Okay.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah. Okay. Not bad.

Lamy ABC Pens

Myke Hurley: I also dug up – remember we was talking about the Lamis as well last week? I have one of their ABC writing pens. Yep. Which are like part wooden and part colorful plastic. Yep. And I found that as well. And they're pretty cool. They just look cool. Those are cool. They're obviously meant for kids, but never mind.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I think that goes back to that whole getting the handwriting started young thing. I really enjoyed that topic. That was a good topic.

Myke Hurley: Indeed. Right. So, we've spoken – I've rattled on far too much about what I'm using. Let's get into the real meat of the discussion today.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So, I get an email I'll kind of kick off the multi-pin discussion with just to kind of get a general idea. And then I'll also talk about a little multi-pin background for those who aren't familiar. Like we were talking beforehand. You're not familiar with multi-pins. And this – like you said, this is going to be a problem for you because now you might want to go buy a multi-pin. And that's the whole enabler problem I've had ever since I started the pen addict. I tend to cost people money and I apologize for that. Let me get to this email. This is from one of our listeners, Roberto. He was talking about multi-pins and wanted to see if we'd cover this topic. And what he says is, I want to get your thoughts on a particular topic which you may want to use for a podcast episode. I have discovered about myself that when I take notes, I tend to want to add color to highlight different types of information in my notes. For example, I tend to write to-do statements in blue with an open box before it. And he gives an example. And he says, this way I can quickly glance at my notes and visually separate regular notes, which are in black ink, from to-do items, which as he said were in blue. Finished to-do items then have a red check mark through the box. I feel that this definitely helps me find information more quickly when skimming the notebook. As such, I tend to use multi-pins to more easily switch between the different colors as opposed to using different pens. My two main complaints about multi-pins are, one, most tend to look and feel cheap. And two, I dislike the click noise they make when switching between the colors. The click is not a deal breaker, but it's definitely an annoyance. I want to get your thought on multi-pins, what do you think of them, and are there any that you would recommend?

Brad Dowdy: When Roberto sent that email, I realized, just kind of mentally thinking back through the episodes we've done, that I really haven't talked about multi-pins, and that's actually a very regular thing for me to use. So I find it odd how it kind of slipped my mind here recently, but I can relate to Roberto completely. You and I have talked about how we take notes before, right? And how you'll have a list or a group of items, and you might have arrows running over here to a different section and different things like that. And this is kind of what Roberto is talking about. Instead of taking like three, you know, pilot high-tech Cs, a red, a blue, and a black, and having three separate pens sitting there and picking one up for, you know, to write down the note and picking a different color up to write down the to-do and then picking up a different color to mark it off, the multi-pins come in perfect or are perfect for this type of work. And that's exactly how I use them as well. So, you know, multi-pins have gotten to be a really big market because they've really changed the variety and the different types of things you can do with the multi-pins. Everyone knows the old classic Bic four-color multi-pin. Everyone's probably seen that. That's the type of pen I'm talking about when I talk about a multi-pin. It's a single-pin barrel. And in the case of the Bic four-color, it's got four ink cartridges that the classic Bic had black, blue, red, and green. Are you familiar with that pen?

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I mean, just, you know, you can find it in grocery stores. You see them all over the place, and they've been around for decades. And, you know, it's just, that's kind of, that was kind of the, I don't know, who knows if it was ever the first multi-pin, but that's kind of the original, right? And everything's based off that. Well, nowadays you can get, you can go from just to have a two-cartridge multi-pin, three-cartridge. You can have three-cartridge plus a pencil all in one pen. There's four and five ink cartridge pens. There's four cartridge plus one pencil. I mean, there's just.

Myke Hurley: And massive ones as well that have like 12, which I remember having as a kid.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And actually, one of those ones that I had as a kid as well, it was an eight or 10 or 12 different pencil.

Brad Dowdy: That's weird. Multi-pencil. It had eight different, I can't remember the quantities, and it was either Pilot or Pentel made it. I'll have to look it up, but it had eight different colored LEDs or whatever that number was. So it was a big, fat honking, single pencil. And there's even multi-pencils out there where you can, where you'll have a 0.3 millimeter LED, a 0.4 millimeter LED, a 0.5 millimeter LED in one single barrel.

Myke Hurley: Oh, that's pretty useful for artists and stuff.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. For artists, you know, engineers that want to have all those things handy in one single barrel.

Brad Dowdy: You know, it's obviously good for portability. It's good for, you know, using things like Roberto does, using different colors to denote different things when you're writing or taking notes. I think he's generally right about most tend to look and feel cheap. For the most part, that's accurate, but we'll get into a little bit of that a little bit more. What I think is the fatal flaw with multi-pens, which doesn't keep me from using them, but people tend to complain about this more than anything, is that they run out of ink quickly. Well, that's kind of part and parcel to it, right? You can't fit the same amount of ink in a multi-pen as you can in a single cartridge pen, right?

Myke Hurley: Otherwise, they'd be even bigger than they already are. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, you'll be, you know, it's like you'll be writing with a banana or something, just a big old block writing around the paper. Yeah. I mean, it just, it's not functionally possible. But it kind of bugs me when people complain, oh, I love this multi-pen, but the ink runs out so fast. I'm like, well, that's kind of the deal, you know? And rightfully so, it can get expensive to constantly buy refills if you find one you like. So, excuse me, that's kind of the, you know, the intro on multi-pens. But to talk about what Roberto was looking for and some that I would recommend, let me go through some of my favorites, and then we can kind of talk about recommendations later. My go-to multi-pen, and I think a lot of people that read The Pen Addict and listen to this podcast probably already know the answer to this, and it's the Pilot Hi-Tech C Colito. So, I love the Pilot Hi-Tech C ink, so having that available in a three, four, or five cartridge barrel at one shot is just really perfect for me.

Brad Dowdy: We've talked about, I've referred to in my past career, I worked as a Unix engineer in a data center. So, I was always writing all kinds of notes about, you know, either just, you know, file system notes or networking notes or things like that. And the multi-pen came in so handy for that because I would just break down my notes. I'd take, you know, my three-color Hi-Tech C Colito. I tend to use, I tended to not use blue, black, and red in my multi-pens because I would use that in my standard pens. I would go for like, if I was using a three cartridge, I'd use a blue-black ink cartridge, a light blue ink cartridge, and a yellow ink cartridge or something like that. Just some different colors because...

Myke Hurley: So, would you swap these out?

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, one, I would swap them out, and two, I'd have about four or five different barrels loaded.

Myke Hurley: So, like, so I can make sure I'm following. So, you would maybe buy the Hi-Tech C as it came and then buy other Hi-Tech Cs and, like, in different colors and use those inks because you probably, I mean, it'd be awesome. It'd be good, but you probably can't customize the, like, from, you probably can't customize straight from Pilot what colors you want. You actually can. Oh, wow. That's awesome, then.

Coleto Pen

Brad Dowdy: So, that's, yeah, that, for the Coleto, that's why it's probably number one because it's fully customizable. You buy an empty barrel, okay? So, you decide whether you want a three cartridge, a four cartridge, or a five cartridge barrel. Oh, man. And not only that. That's just going to happen. Yeah. So, and it's got, you know, these barrels are lightweight plastic, most of them. They have started to upgrade their barrel. So, there's probably four or five different barrel styles for the Coleto, ranging from just a base kind of cheap-feeling plastic up to kind of a higher-grade thick plastic with a nice rubber grip and some things like that. But what you do is you buy the barrel, okay? And then you say, I want this color cartridge, this color cartridge, this color cartridge, and this color cartridge. And it's at least ten base colors you can choose from, and then I think there might be a few more than that. I haven't counted recently. So, your basics are there, black, blue, and red. And then you can, there's blue, black, purple, lime green, light blue, golden yellow, orange, pink. I mean, just the list goes on and on and on. So, yeah, that's why the Coleto is so popular because it's fully customizable. It's not coming off the store shelf like the Bic 4 color where you buy the Bic and it comes with the four basic ballpoint colors.

Myke Hurley: So, where can you get, I mean, because I assume you can't just pick this up everywhere.

Brad Dowdy: No, no, I mean, honestly, I've, you know, jet pins, obviously. And then, you know, local people that are lucky enough to live in big cities. A lot of the Japanese bookstores will carry this.

Brad Dowdy: Like I said, the real, people love the high-tech C so much. The Coleto is kind of a no-brainer for multi-pins for them. And the kicker is the full customization. It's not coming preloaded with ink. You get to pick that out.

Myke Hurley: See, I know, I can see in the notes that you, I mean, because you always share notes for me, like, prior to us recording. I don't even know why we're going to bother talking about anything of it. You need to really sell me on these ones.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Well, there's at least two more I want to cover. So, well, I'll do the important ones because the Coleto, I think, is number one in usability and price, you know, because some of these can get expensive. And these refills, you know, you can buy just the barrel itself, the cheapest barrel for like $3 or $4. Then once you start getting, you know, $2 a refill, you're talking, it's a $10 outlay for a pen if you think about it at minimum. Well, if you are a heavy user of this, the refills can get expensive because you can run through them pretty quickly. Gel link, you know, it's the Pilot High-Tech C gel link pen. And gel link pens, just their refills just don't last as long by nature. And that's across all gel links, not just the Pilot High-Tech C.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So, along those lines of the High-Tech C is that, I think that product did so well and got so popular and Uniball didn't have anything like that. So, they came out with a product called the Uni Style Fit. And it has taken a lot of the good things about the Pilot High-Tech C in that there's lots of different barrel options. Some would say the barrels are nicer, the base level barrels, you know, a little higher quality. Then they also have upgraded barrels. I think there's even a metal barrel now. I'll have to double check if it's aluminum or what the exact construction is of that one. But it's also fully customizable to where you just buy an empty barrel and you buy your ink cartridges separately. What's cool about the Style Fit and the Colito is that you're also not stuck with like the 0.5 millimeter cartridges. Okay. You can buy 0.3, 0.4, 0.5 cartridges for the High-Tech C and you can mix and match in the same barrel. For the Uni Style Fit, you can buy their 0.28, 0.38 and 0.5 cartridges. What the Uni Style Fit has also done is created a Jetstream cartridge that you can put in there. So you can have a gel ink cartridge, a Jetstream ballpoint cartridge, and a pencil cartridge in there if you want. So they've kind of...

Myke Hurley: Can you put pencil cartridges in that... Do they come with the Colito on the...

Brad Dowdy: Yes, they just started carrying them or manufacturing them in the past year or so. And that's one I do not... I don't have a pencil cartridge for either the Colito or the Style Fit.

Myke Hurley: It's a shame you can't get a Kuru Togar in there.

Brad Dowdy: I know. That would be cool. That would be cool. That would be back to one of the super wide bodies if they try to jam that mechanism in there. But yeah, that would be cool. But it was great that they thought enough of the Jetstream to say, hey, we're going to make a separate ink cartridge for that. So that is really neat. So those, the Colito and the Uni Style Fit are similar. Just that's kind of a personal preference thing. You know, some people love the Hitec C and are not a big fan of the Uni Signo ink and vice versa. You know, one's a needle tip in the Colito. The Style Fit uses the Signo conical tips. So it gets down to a personal preference. They're really... Those are the two direct competitors.

Brad Dowdy: Now, this is where you're going to get in trouble.

Michael Hurley: Okay.

Multi-Pin Pens

Brad Dowdy: Because this is where I got in trouble a lot in the pocketbook area. If you want to take your multi-pin experience up a notch, and Roberto, you should listen to this. The Zebra Charbo X is probably one of my favorite pins that has ever been made.

Myke Hurley: Okay, here we go.

Brad Dowdy: So let's talk about downside first. One, it's expensive.

Myke Hurley: How expensive?

Brad Dowdy: The base level Charbo X plus refills is going to cost you about $60, I think. Whoa! Okay. Yeah, it's a high-end barrel. The barrels are what make this pin, and the ink cartridges. The second downside is their ink refills last even shorter than the Hitec C Colitos.

Myke Hurley: The downsides that you're listing, pretty big downsides.

Brad Dowdy: They are, and that's why I mention it. People need to know... You know, I talk about all kinds of pins, and I said it in some review last week on the Pin Attic blog, is you need to know what you're getting into before you decide whether this purchase is going to be right for you. The Zebra Charbo X is not for everyone. But when I put it in my hands, it felt like no other pin I have ever felt, and even to this day. It is really, really unique in its design. It does not use... I didn't mention, like, the Colito and the Uni Style Fit use, you know, the plunger mechanism or the knock mechanism, right? You know, you fill in the cartridge, and you click it down, and then when you want to use another cartridge, you click a different cartridge, and one pops up. Yeah, so everyone's kind of familiar with that technology. The Zebra Charbo X uses, like, a twist technology in the middle of the barrel that's... I don't know how to explain it. It's so smooth, you don't even know what's going on. There's just kind of a little thump you feel when the cartridge goes into place. And it's got... The three cartridge ones have three stations, if you will, right? So you move the top... You rotate the top of the pin around from station to station to station, and you can keep going in the same direction infinitely, right? It's not like one, two, three, three, two, one, if you will. Does that make sense?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I feel like I've seen multi-tool pens like this before, where... Like, especially where they have a pencil involved, that you would turn it instead of clicking it.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Yeah, it's not uncommon. There's definitely other pens with that same type of mechanism. There's not a lot that allow you to go continuously in one direction, though. So that's a little bit unique about the Charbo X.

Myke Hurley: Instead of... So it isn't like that each has got a position, you can just keep moving.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right. I mean, each has a defined position, like slot one, slot two, slot three is always going to be the same pin, right? But I can go in any direction to get out of it. What's really impressive of it is the feel, and that's impossible to explain, to talk about. The build quality, I think it's a... The entry-level one is called the ST3 and the LT3. There's two different entry-level ones. And they're a brass body, so they have some weight to it. You know, it's not a plastic barrel. You know, it's kind of a... I don't want to say heavy, but it's a heavyweight pin. You feel it in your hand when you have it.

Brad Dowdy: And, you know, one of the things with it, it requires a pencil cartridge, right? I honestly would prefer that it didn't. But one of the mechanisms on the inside is defined for pencil cartridge only, okay? Okay. So, like, I use two gel inks and an 0.3-millimeter pencil in mine. But it also has a ballpoint ink refill, so you can mix and match that, too.

Brad Dowdy: And it... And just like the Coleto and the Style Fit, how they have upgraded barrels, the Charbo X has them, too. They go up to a... I don't know. There's several different, you know, aluminum barrels, leather-covered barrels. There's a carbon fiber inlaid barrel. You know, that one's like $130, $140. I haven't... I have no intention of ever going there. I have two of the entry-level models that I actually bought used from a Penatic reader who... There's different models. He liked a narrower barrel model called the LT3. I prefer the wider ST3, so he sold me his ST3. So, yeah, that's how I got a hold of my Charbos. And there's something to behold. If you can ever try one before you buy one, you'd be hooked. I know it's hard to, you know, jump in blindly for that amount of money. But I'm a huge fan. Some people flat out hate them, you know, just because they are expensive and the ink runs out very fast. There's no getting around that. It just does. It's an expensive pen. And if you use it a lot, it's going to cost you even more because you've got to keep buying refills for it. So, those are probably my three favorites. Now, there's a couple others that I'll talk about real quickly that are more of your fixed multi-pens, right? There's no real cartridge customization. And that's the Jetstream 4 plus 1. And when you see a multi-stream that's with a number plus 1, it's 4 inks plus 1 pencil. Yeah. So, you can, you know, just assume that that's got a pencil, 4 inks and a pencil cartridge in it. And that's been one of – everyone who tries that pen out loves it. I'm not a huge fan of it because it's a little bit wide body for me. At some point, there's kind of diminishing returns. And I don't like too wide of a pen. So, I'm not going to jam. I'm not a huge fan of four and five cartridge barrels because the barrels get too wide for me to write comfortably with. For my style of writing, which is very small and tiny, wide barrel does not compute well. It makes my writing get a little skewed and a little bit more messy and I don't like it. But everyone who tries the Jetstream 4 plus 1 swears by it. That's extremely popular. Then another one that caught me by surprise is the Pentel Vicuna. It's one of those hybrid ballpoint ink pens that we talked about just like the Jetstream. Right. And I use the single cartridge Vicuna a lot. But I was not crazy about it. Then I got the – for some reason with the multi-pin, the ink cartridges are smooth as can be. It's actually a 2 plus 1. It's black ink, red ink, and a 0.7 millimeter pencil. I don't think I've ever used the pencil. But I like the barrel design and the quality of the ink enough that I actually use that pen a lot. So those are some of my favorites. You know, the high-tech C is the granddaddy of them all, I think. That's what a lot of people use. But, you know, like I said, there's downsides to them all. Like, you know, Roberto mentioned there's – you know, sometimes the barrel feels cheap. And that's true. The ink runs out fast. You know, that's true. So there's inherent downsides to multi-pens. But if you're looking for something where you want those multicolors handy and you don't have to carry three or four or five pens around, you ought to check one out and see if it's something that's useful for you. Like, they're not useful for everyone, but people who use them tend to stick with them and use them pretty heavily.

Pen Knowledge

Myke Hurley: You know, when you think of a topic like this, do these pens just pop into your head or do you have to look them up?

Brad Dowdy: No, no, they just pop into my head.

Myke Hurley: That's crazy, man. They soak – like, the amount that you know about this stuff. You really are the pen addict, aren't you? Like, you can't deny that.

Brad Dowdy: So just to give everyone a behind-the-scenes look, Myke and I, we talk about how we share notes beforehand. So, you know, what we do – so my show prep is to just kind of lay out the topics of what we're going to talk about. And I told Myke, you know, what, maybe two days ago, I said, hey, I think I want to talk about multi-pens. I've had some questions about that and things like that. He's like, okay, yeah, that sounds like a good topic. Like, so today, you know, a few hours ago, I said, hey, I'm going to type up some notes. So, you know, we have something to look at, just kind of a framework to go by for this show. I mean, two minutes worth of work and no research, I guess, would be what I came up with for today's plan. I didn't have to – I knew which pens I wanted to talk about and I didn't need to look up anything about them because I know it already.

Myke Hurley: It's crazy, man. It's just madness.

Brad Dowdy: It's just a matter of – I'm in a fortunate situation to where I've been able to at least try a lot of these pens. Yeah. You know, and then on top of that, all the readers give me their feedback, you know, on, you know, something that I may like, they may dislike. And so, you know, just kind of – I can kind of keep all that information in the forefront on a lot of pens and I'm able to just, you know, talk about it. So, yeah, no – zero prep. Sorry.

Myke Hurley: This is why you're the only man for the job.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I guess so. I guess so.

Michael Hurley: So, have we got anything else that we want to cover this week? I don't think so. I think we're pretty good. I think we've covered it today, I think.

Listener Feedback

Myke Hurley: So, I mean, a lot of our show ideas and stuff do come from the listeners. We have a very, very active listener base for this show, maybe even more than any other show. I just want to say, as always, that we really do appreciate – thanks, R2 – we really do appreciate every piece of feedback that we get. We love it when we hear from you, especially when you have excellent suggestions for us. You can find both me and Brad on Twitter. I am imike, I-M-Y-K-E, and Brad is dowdyism, which is D-O-W-Y-I-S-M. Or you can go to 70decibels.com forward slash contact, and you can send us an email there. Or you can hit brad at thepenaddict at gmail.com. Pretty much email – go to the 70decibels if you just want to submit a topic. If you actually want some advice, email Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Yep, yep, that works for me. And actually, I've been getting a ton of show topics from email as well. So, yeah, please give us your feedback. Let us know what you'd like to hear us talk about. This is a show where we can cover anything you guys want to hear us talk about. It's not like we're covering news or current events or anything like that. So we want to help you guys make informed decisions or learn more about certain topics. And if you have ideas or suggestions, hit us up. We'd love to hear you.

Myke Hurley: That's what we're here for. So where can people find you online, Brad?

Brad Dowdy: Everywhere you just covered.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, so also thepenadict.com. Penaddict.com.

Brad Dowdy: Penaddict.com. Know the unit. Just penaddict.com. Boy, I did a bad job today, Myke. I didn't turn off anything that I normally turn off. Everything's going crazy. Yeah. Sorry. Hang on.

Myke Hurley: He's an international man of mystery is Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: You know, I try to – okay, let's put the phone on vibrate. Let's put the house phone on mute. And I did zero of it. And of course, in the 30 minutes that we talk, everything blows up.

Myke Hurley: I just like that R2 got involved. I think that's my favorite moment. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: That was a little text going. So R2 says hi. But yeah, I'm online at penaddict.com. And like Myke said, I'm on Twitter at Dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. And yeah, we'd love to hear from you guys. So fire away with any ideas, show topics, you know, anything, any tips you have for us. And we'd love to hear from you.

Myke Hurley: Indeed. You know, we said you can get me on Twitter. I'm imike, I-M-Y-K-E. And you can also read my brand new blog at mikehurley.net, which is M-Y-K-E-H-U-R-L-E-Y. So until next week, thank you very much for listening as always. And I'm sorry that we made you miss a week, but we've given you a bumper episode to make up for it. So until next time, see you later, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: All right. See you, Myke. Have a good one. You too. Bye-bye.

Myke Hurley: The Pen Addict Podcast is a 70 decibels production in conjunction with Brad Dowdy. Brad is an employee of JetPens.com who do not have any affiliation with this podcast.