The Pen Addict 152/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	152
Title:	A Hot Mess of a Pencil
Release Date:	April 27th, 2015
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 152
Audio File:	Audio Episode 152
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 152
Length:	6060 min <br />1 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 152. Today's show is happily brought to you by our friends over at Pen Chalet, where you can get great deals on high quality pens with a 100% satisfaction guarantee, Mass Drop, an online community for enthusiasts of all kinds, and Making Light. Craft a daily ritual to focus on what matters most to you. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined by the one and only Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: What's up, Myke? Hey, buddy. You're tripping out today. You've had a big day, man. You must be on Cloud9. Can you tell the users what has gone on in your world today? I would like for you to do that, please. I will tell the users. The users, also the listeners. Our listeners are users.

Myke Hurley: That's a really good point. Yep, we'll go with that. It's a new name for the listeners of The Pen Addict, the users. Yeah, we have had a huge day at RelayFM. We've welcomed another great show into our midst. It's the fantastic Mac Power Users, which maybe some listeners of this show may not have heard of. It's an absolutely fantastic podcast. It's about technology and Apple products, but in a kind of a different spin, because what Mac Power Users does is it actually tries to teach and help and give advice about how to use technology to its fullest. So it's been going since 2009, and we've now welcomed it gladly to RelayFM. So people should go check it out at relay.fm slash MPU for Mac Power Users. And I'll put a link to Mac Power Users in the show notes. I think that people that listen to this show will get a bit of a kick out of it.

Brad Dowdy: They totally would. I mean, they would love David and Katie do an awesome job. They're like the most down-to-earth people when it comes to talking about tech, and I've learned a lot from them over the years. And David's a big pen fan, so I was happy to see another pen person come on board. He is a Vanishing Point user. Yep, so maybe one of these days we'll get him on.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, we should.

Brad Dowdy: All right. Well, congratulations to you and Steven.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, he's a big proponent of the paperless lifestyle as well, but in getting rid of the bad paper.

Brad Dowdy: That's right. It's like a huge – he's got this huge contrast going, so we'll get him on and pepper him about that one day.

Myke Hurley: Yep, I'd love that.

Brad Dowdy: All right, so I did a little peppering of my own this weekend alongside a few other pen bloggers. And I wanted to mention this just because it kind of became a thing over the weekend, but there's already a resolution, and there's really no more to discuss. But I wanted to bring it up just for clarity's sake in case anyone comes across any posts or things like that referring to the issue that several of us bloggers had with the Fountain Pen Network over the weekend.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I saw you link to the resolution, but I didn't know what the problem was in the first place.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so what Fountain Pen – I don't go to the Fountain Pen Network except I click on their classifieds board about once a week and just browse around and see what's up. I don't go through their other message boards, so I really don't know what's out there. So one of the listeners, Dr. Deans, who writes the great Pen Economics blog, sent me an email and said, hey, did you know FPN is basically importing my full RSS feed and every other blogger – well, not every other blogger, but a lot of other bloggers. It was probably 20, 30, 40 blogs into a message board on their board, just full posts in their entirety, images, everything, and running ads on that page. So they're basically using it for their benefit in my perspective and from a lot of other people's perspective. So Dr. Deans had emailed them, gotten his site taken down from them, and then let me know, and he didn't have the smoothest time getting that done. There was a little minor backlash, which I think can be explained as I go through this, but not really. I mean – so once he told me, I tweeted it out. I tweeted a link to his post and said something like, attention bloggers, go read this. And then I sent an email to myself. The person that runs FPN is named Wim, and so I sent Wim an email saying, hey, would you please take my site off of this? And then he gave me this whole explanation about why they set up what they did and that they don't think they're doing anything wrong. And once you publish your RSS feed, it's out there. I'm getting all these answers back that are like really, really wrong. Like way wrong in their perception and reality on how this should happen. So I replied back, and I could tell that Wim's coming from this kind of old school mentality. Like doesn't really know exactly how the current internet world works. So my response back was, you know, not in anger, but I was like, let me explain to you why this is a problem. So I laid it out like that, and I sent out this long email. And he still kind of was not getting it, but kind of did. And then more people asked Wim to take down their sites from the thing. And then eventually I think it kind of got through to FPN and the moderators and the admins over there that this really wasn't a benefit for them to have, especially if it's going to cause this much consternation and just be kind of creepy that they were doing it in the first place. It's just not a legit way to run your board, especially a board of that size. And so by the end of Saturday, there was actually a really nice, huge apology from Wim on the board and took down the board completely. And, you know, finally got to the point where I think it clicked in his head that, okay, I'm not doing something that I should be doing. And, you know, hopefully my email helped and hopefully everyone else that chimed in helped. And, you know, there was a lot of eyeballs on it all of a sudden. And they'd been doing it for a couple months. That's how infrequently I go over there and even notice those types of things. So it was a weird situation, but I do give credit to FPN for making a swift change to their policy. And they issued a very nice apology. And I really can't argue with how they handled it. They did a good job. So credit to Wim and the FPN admins for doing that. And I appreciate it. And I know a lot of other people do as well. So it was just it was it was very weird once I saw it. I was like, hmm, this doesn't look good. So that board's not even live anymore on their site and it will not be coming back. So it just kind of became a thing all of a sudden. And then there was a fix and now it's gone. But I figured it was worth mentioning since there was some chatter about it over the weekend.

UK Marriage Certificates

Brad Dowdy: Now listen to this. This next topic is right up your alley, Myke. Oh, yeah. This is a this is a UK question.

Myke Hurley: OK, I love you. I have questions.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And especially in lieu of listening to the latest episode of Analog where you talked about getting married.

Myke Hurley: Hmm. Not completely accurate.

Brad Dowdy: That's not how I went. OK, that's I thought that's what I heard. But anyway, this is about marriage certificates in the UK and the requirement to use a. Permanent ink and not just any permanent ink. There seemed to be from what I could find in some paperwork, at least from, you know, one of the Oxford Anglican Church over there who just performs a lot of the ceremonies. There's very strict requirements on using old school iron gall ink because it lends to permanence in a fountain pen to sign your marriage certificate. Have you heard of this? And is this a real thing?

Myke Hurley: Yes.

Brad Dowdy: So do you know the specifics? I mean, it's it. Do they provide this for you when you go sign a marriage certificate? Do you have to bring your own? It's the email I got. Let me read it real quick. It says, I want to know if there are alternatives to Registrar's ink for filling in UK marriage certificates and licenses. The standard thing to use is iron gall ink and a fountain pen from diamine or ecclesiastical stationary supplies. But iron gall ink is really annoying. It clogs up pens, etc. So I was wondering if I could use Noodler's Bulletproof inks instead or better still a non fountain pen alternative. Are there indelible ink roller balls or gel ink pens? It's a pen question and an ink question and the UK legal question all rolled into one. You might want to bring Myke in on this one.

Myke Hurley: My understanding is they give it to you. Like you are given it to sign, but you do need this special ink, I think.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So I wouldn't I would think that they would provide it. You know, that's kind of a annoyance, I guess, to have the marrying couple to provide their own. I mean, I'm sure some people really get into it. Right. And, you know, have their visionaries inked up with diamine registrars and, you know, storm into the to the to the marriage office and sign their certificates. But. I'd imagine ninety nine point nine percent of other people wouldn't have a clue about this, but I am guessing that the offices there would have that for you. I didn't realize it was such a huge thing as a requirement, not.

Brad Dowdy: Necessarily by law, but more by church, it seems like as best as I can gather.

Myke Hurley: So, yeah, maybe I don't know enough about it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. But anyway, to answer the actual question, iron gall ink, you should not be too scared about. Now, there's some really serious, heavy duty, old school iron galls, which John, who wrote this email, is probably referring to being about being annoying and clogging up pens. But there's inks now where. You can find an iron gall ink that will have the same permanence and lifespan as these hardcore inks, you know, something like Roaring King cleaner. Salix is one of my favorites. It performs so well. It cleans up beautifully. I've never had an issue with clogging, starting anything. It's a really good blue. Looks like the, you know, the old school iron gall inks and.

Brad Dowdy: Diamond Registrars is actually a pretty good ink. It's a little more severe than Salix in that you do need to clean it like after about a month. I clean that one out. It does a little get a little bit clogged in the tines. If you're using an extra fine nib like I use, that's my recent experience. But it's such a good ink. I don't mind that. And it's certainly not a hindrance to clean out. It's just if you're not using it constantly, you need to clean it. I haven't used the ecclesiastical stationary supplies, but that's actually the link that the church sends people to to buy ink. So I don't know anything about that ink. Non-fountain pen alternatives. Any archival pen, which you'll find a lot in art pens like the Secure Pigma Micron that I talk about all the time, that's an archival ink pen. So that ink's not going anywhere. And there's lots of other options. You could even use a Jetstream. They now have archival ink in their ballpoints or hybrid ballpoints. So there's tons of non-fountain pen options. I just don't know if you're going to get the stink eye when you walk in there with a Jetstream and they're expecting a fancy fountain pen with iron gall ink. But you can get iron gall inks that behave really, really well. So don't be scared of them. I used to be scared of them. And now I hunt them down because I love how they look and perform. So that was my spiel on that. And I find that super interesting that it's such a big thing over there. Although I guess not. You know, the UK is steeped in tradition. And things like that. But I don't recall it being – I don't know what I signed my marriage certificate with. I mean we just walked into the court and we probably signed with whatever janky ballpoint pen there. They probably had like one of those plastic daisies taped onto the end of it so you didn't steal it from the thing. So I have no clue what my marriage certificate signed with. Do you call them daisies? Yeah, those little flowers.

Brad Dowdy: What do you think?

Myke Hurley: Oh, I thought you meant like those black – like the things that – like the chains that keep them to the death. Oh, no, no, no, no. Yeah. I thought that had like some name, like a colloquial name that I didn't know.

Brad Dowdy: Have you ever gone to like the grocery store or something and they hand you a pen and it's got like a flower taped on the end of it? Because if you stick it in your pocket or your purse, you're actually going to remember that you're stealing the pen because there's a huge flower taped on the end of it. You've never seen that?

Myke Hurley: No.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's the same thing as the chain. I get it. It's so you don't steal a pen. It's just a little more fun way to do it, I guess. So no one steals your daisy chain pen.

Myke Hurley: Okay, Mr. Dowdy, let me take a quick break and thank our first sponsor for this week. What do you think?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, let's do it. This is a good one.

Pen Chalet Sponsor

Myke Hurley: Our good friends over at Pen Chalet, you know these guys. They sell authentic, amazing rollerballs, fountain bends, ballpines, mechanical pencils and oh so much more. They have the best customer service, super fast, super reliable. And that's the same when it comes to things like their satisfaction guarantee. They want you to feel happy and they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee to make sure that that's going to be the case. Pen Chalet sell all of your favorite brands. Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor, Kaweco, Monteverde, the lot. They sell the whole kit and caboodle and they're of course an authorized dealer of all of them. Pen Chalet are always running special discounts. They have special discounts for pen addict listeners, which we'll get to in a minute. And they've got something super extra cool today that I'm going to talk about. But I just want to let you know, you know, these guys and girls, they do great stuff. They do free shipping on orders of over 50 bucks in the continental United States. They also sell internationally with very reasonable shipping rates as well. And as well as all the brands and products I mentioned earlier, Pen Chalet also do carrying cases for pens. Pen holders, refills, fountain pens, converters and so much more. They have all of the extra bits and bobs that you're going to want to go along with your great new pens. So as always, you can go to PenChalet.com, use the code PenAddict to save yourself 10% off your order. Or click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter PenAddict for some extra special secret savings as well as your 10% off. But we have something extra special this week. So I mentioned on episode 150 that Pen Chalet are doing a great giveaway for National Stationery Week. Well, they're also doing some fantastic sales. They've got a bunch of great stuff running at 40% to 50% off in some cases. Brad, what do you think about some of the things that you can find over on the PenChalet.com? So you can go to PenChalet.com and you'll see a big box that says National Stationery Week. You click that, you can enter into a great prize draw of close to $1,500 in prizes. Five winners can win from this stuff. But they also have a bunch of really great deals as well.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so the giveaway runs six more days. So it runs throughout this week, which is National Stationery Week. And World Stationery Day is on Wednesday of this week. Are you ready for that, Myke? Are you planning a big party?

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah. You should say I've got a street party going on. I've got entertainers. It's going to be crazy. Yeah, totally.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. So we'll periscope it for everyone else. But yeah, this is really cool. He's got a ton. And I mean a ton of deals. I can't even talk about them all. But tons of stuff from Delta, Monteverdi, Conklin. There's a sweet Porsche fountain pen that I've actually been looking at. It's on sale for half off. It's this Porsche slimline design that's really crazy cool.

Myke Hurley: There's some pelicans in here as well.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. So lots of good stuff. And I actually want to go off script a little bit, Myke, if you'll let me.

Myke Hurley: I will permit.

Brad Dowdy: I've gotten, I want to say, at least two emails in the past month or so thanking me and you indirectly for telling them about Pinch LA because they've gotten exceptional customer service from Ron. And they mentioned Ron specifically, you know, if they had a problem with the order or, you know, a nib wasn't working right or something came up as things always do. I've gotten the emails, not them thanking Ron, which I'm sure they did and the team at Pinch LA. They've sent me an email saying, hey, by the way, you know, I made this purchase from Ron. You know, something got goofed up and he handled it really quickly, really effectively, got right back to me, made it right. And it was a great experience. So I keep meaning to mention that to you every time we talk about Pinch LA now. So they do it right over there. So don't hesitate to head over to Pinch LA, get in on this National Stationery Week giveaway, check out all the hot deals they have going on. And yeah, take a look. We love Pinch LA. Thanks, Ron.

Myke Hurley: They are the best. And we're really, really happy that we get to be sponsored by the fantastic company that is Pinch LA. So head on over to Pinch LA.com right now. You can check out their fantastic deals and giveaways at the International Stationery Week. Thank you so much to Pinch LA for continuing to be a great supporter of the Pen Addict Podcast.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So you made some purchases this week?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So do you remember that I screwed up and forgot to get a converter for my sailor? Yeah. I was like, this is taking way too long, this Amazon thing. I looked at it and it was going to be shipping sometime in like middle of May. And I was like, no way. I'm not doing that. This is crazy. This is crazy town. So I decided that I was just going to go to the writing desk, which is a great UK distributor because they do sailors and stuff. And I thought I'll get it quick if I just do it for them. And then I was there. I was like, hmm, while I'm here, I mean, you know, I'm already getting an order. Why don't I get some ink? I don't know why I decided I wanted ink. I think it's because I thought I want to get something and I've got enough pens at the moment. So I bought two bottles of ink, actually.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, look at you.

Pelican M205 Duo

Myke Hurley: Something I've wanted for a very, very, very long time. The Pelican M205 Duo ink. The highlighter ink.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, cool. That's nice.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, the green highlighter ink.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: And I bought something that I think is going to surprise you. Ooh. I bought the J. Hermann Stormy Gray. Oh, look at you. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: That totally surprises me. Wow. Wow. What's your thinking behind that?

Myke Hurley: Um, people love it so much. And when we were at the pen show.

Brad Dowdy: Aside from the fact that they fixed the formulation.

Myke Hurley: This is what I was going to say to you. People love it so much. And you and Anna both told me, and I trust you both, that apparently they fixed the formula and it doesn't kill pens anymore. So I'm going to give it a go. Yeah. Nice. I'm already eyedropped. What's the worst that can happen?

Brad Dowdy: That's right. I mean, it's really cool. I mean, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that ink as long as you can clean it out good. And, um, I think G. Herbon has made, uh, strides in making that, uh, they, they definitely heard the feedback it seems and have made changes to make it easier. And the word on the street is that it's a legitimately good change. So yeah, I, I, I'm anxious to, uh, I want to get a review of that, uh, on the show by you once you get time to play with it. I'm really anxious to hear what you think.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: And honestly, I think you will enjoy it.

Myke Hurley: I'm excited. I'm excited about it. So for anyone that doesn't know, this is the gray with like the little gold flex in it. Right. Yeah. So, uh, I mean, I seen it, I seen some people use it now and it's like, Hmm. Yeah. Okay. Maybe, maybe I'm just going to give it a go.

Brad Dowdy: So the sailor converter that I told you I was buying for you last week, I can just keep it when it gets here. You're good with that.

Myke Hurley: Um, yeah. Okay. Whatever.

Brad Dowdy: I had that on my list. Uh, I buy you micro mesh and sailor, uh, converter. Yeah. I'm just sure the chat room will back me up on that, but, uh, so wait, did you buy me

Myke Hurley: a sailor converter? Yeah. Oh, I thought you said that you weren't going to, well, I could still, it doesn't matter.

Brad Dowdy: I'll still take it. Yeah. If you want it, I'll send it to you. If I got to send you the micro mesh anyway, so I'll just send it to you.

Myke Hurley: If you haven't sent me stuff yet, you can send me some relay stickers as well. Cause. Okay. I don't, I need some, I need like Mac power user sticker and then I need a bunch of other stickers. So we should talk about that.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. I'll work on that. And, um, you know, when I was buying your accessories, I also, uh, threw in a bottle of ink on my order. I did the exact same thing you did. It's like, well, I need these ticky tack little things and Oh, look pretty ink. And, um, I didn't get the Mont Blanc toffee Brown ink at the pen show. I heard you mentioned that actually. Yeah. Cause I was really wanting it and I need some more, um, non blue black inks that I enjoy. And everyone seems to love the Mont Blanc toffee Brown and it's really different from anything I have. So I have a bottle of that, uh, on order. So, uh, we will do some ink reviews soon of these new inks that we got because they're both kind of a stretch for what we both use on a daily basis.

Myke Hurley: So with the converter that you buy me, I'm going to have to buy another sailor or this can be the converter that I use after stormy gray destroys everything. Yep.

Brad Dowdy: So do you have a, do you have a plan for the stormy gray? Do you have a pen picked out already? It's an important choice for that ink.

Myke Hurley: No, I don't. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have any suggestions?

Brad Dowdy: No. Whiter the nib, the better, which that's not a problem for you. You usually go with medium or, or wider. So yeah, you're good.

Myke Hurley: Maybe I'll put it in the, the, the custom made Edison.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, nice. Yeah. That would be good. Do you know what?

Myke Hurley: I feel like that would go pretty well together.

Brad Dowdy: That would go well together. So it's got that gray, that gray color.

Brad Dowdy: So we have, we have a lot more to get to today. I planned a whole show and, uh, on, uh, a certain topic. Um, and we hadn't even started yet. You ready to dig into that? You bet I am. All right. So I've been asked more than once to do a deeper dive into drum roll, please. Mechanical pencils.

Myke Hurley: Wait, wait, say that again. Say that again.

Brad Dowdy: Drum roll, please.

Mechanical Pencils

Brad Dowdy: Mechanical pencils.

Brad Dowdy: So it's, uh, this is, um, you know, out of, out of the norm for our show and kind of what we used to do way back in the day, about 140 episodes ago, I'd talk about these products as they came and went through my hands. And, um, I've been asked more recently to talk about what I like in a mechanical pencil. Why I like mechanical pencils. If there's any particulars that I love, if there's any particulars I hate. Um, but first I want to give a little bit of background. I actually have a huge fondness for mechanical pencils going way, way, way back till I was just a wee pen addict. And more specifically engineering pencils. And those of you who know my story know that I used to shop in the engineering section of the LSU campus bookstore, because that's the only place you could get the cool pens like in the late seventies, early eighties. Well, the pen selection was generally pretty weak, but man, could you get some serious drafting pencils at the engineering department in the bookstore? You know, and when I'm a kid and all I want to do is draw small and pens aren't cutting it, mechanical pencils did. Because even if the smallest you could get was the 0.5 millimeter lead, that was finer than any other pen you could get at the time. So I always, always had mechanical pencils. I probably use mechanical pencils more than pens at the time, just because of how small I could write with them. So that love for mechanical pencils has carried on to this day. Even though I don't use them regularly, I am fascinated by their design, especially the drafting style ones, which we'll talk about the difference here in a minute. And every time I put one in my hand, I love using it. It feels like I feel at home when I'm using a really nice mechanical pencil. They're really, really good.

Brad Dowdy: The one pencil I'll start off with that you and I talk about the most and everyone assumes will be my favorite. I know it's your favorite is the Uniball Kuro Toga.

Myke Hurley: It's just, I mean, this is whenever we talk about mechanical pencils, I'm like, why do we even continue to carry on past this point?

Brad Dowdy: But here's why, because that's not my favorite mechanical pencil.

Myke Hurley: What? When did this happen?

Brad Dowdy: Recently.

Myke Hurley: You keep all these secrets from me these days.

Brad Dowdy: Like probably in the past six months. It's not that traditional drafting engineering style that I like. I don't need this. I love everything about the Kuro Toga. That's my number one recommended mechanical pencil. But if I, Brad Dowdy, was grabbing a mechanical pencil from my collection or purchasing a mechanical pencil. I would go with at least two other pencils before that one, if not more. Just because of the style of the pencil. The Uniball Kuro Toga, it's really nice. It's really well made. I like the roulette model, personally, because it's got a nice knurled grip. But it still looks like a standard school mechanical pencil. Especially the low-end ones, the plastic barrel ones. It just looks like what you grab at the grocery store. And there's nothing wrong with that. And it's an amazing pen. And I will tell everyone to buy a Kuro Toga. For me, what I like to use, I go straight to the Rotring 600. That's the ultimate in mechanical pencils. It has a nice heft to it. It has a perfect balance. It has knurling that's not too soft and not too rough. It's very comfortable to hold. It will last you. People use these literally for decades. They actually sell tip replacements because people love the barrels so much. They don't want to get rid of their 600. It's like a pass-down-from-generation engineering mechanical pencil. And when I say engineering, the primary difference in an engineering mechanical pencil and a standard mechanical pencil is you'll see more of a needle tip design. There's lots of clearance from the edge of the grip section to the lead pipe. You're not going to see that conical shape like you'll see in a lot of pencils down to the tip. You're going to see that long pipe, and that's for clearance so you can see when you're writing, right? If you're looking down at the paper and you're drawing a very detailed item, you need to see better what you're doing. So you'll see that drafting-style mechanical pencils have a very common theme in that they have that large clearance from the edge of the grip to the paper. However, the next one that I like...

Myke Hurley: I have to say, that Rotring 600, though, it's a stunner, right? It's an absolute stunner. I wish I could get something like that, but with... Because the only thing about the Kiritoga that I like is the mechanism.

Brad Dowdy: Sure.

Rotring Color

Myke Hurley: You know, that's what I love.

Brad Dowdy: So if you could pick a Rotring color, it comes in two colors. It's not like you have a lot of choice. Which one are you picking? Black. Yeah, that's the wrong choice. It's amazing how good-looking the silver is. And I would have thought black, too, because I have a black 800, which we're going to talk about later. The silver is so much better looking. It's crazy. Maybe it's because I've had it the longest.

Myke Hurley: Because I would go black because it's classic, right? I mean, that's kind of the classic look is the black with the red writing on it, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so they're reminding me in the chat room. It is actually for the clearance in the tip. Collective put it in there. It's for using it to straight edge, which I was kind of alluding to and I wasn't very clear. So when you're using it on the – Explain that to me. So like when you're on a drafting table and you're looking at plans and you're moving a ruler around to draw lines and shapes. Yeah. As you're pushing the ruler around, you're marking with your other hand so that pipe hits on the straight edge ruler without getting into the lead and gets it close enough to where you can have an accurate mark. So yes, thank you for that clarification, chat room. Good job. All right. All right. All right. So my other one that I like and it's not – it's more similar in build to the Kuru Toga and it's not a full metal body like the Rotring 600 is a full brass pin. The Uni Shift Pipe Lock is a pin I really, really enjoy just for its design. It's lighter than the 600. It's similar to the Kuru Toga in that it has a knurled grip, knurled metal grip at the bottom, but then the upper of the barrel is plastic. But the Shift Pipe Lock, what it does is it allows you to retract the lead pipe into the barrel when it's not in use. So you just pull away and twist and it's like the tip of the pencil recedes. That way you can put it in your pocket and not poke yourself or put it in a backpack bag, poke yourself, do any of that type of stuff. And they're really cool looking. It's one of the reasons. You know, I'll admit I'll go for cool over function sometimes. I love how the Shift Pipe Lock looks. They do like an alternate color in the middle. It's a really sick looking pencil.

Myke Hurley: I've never seen this before. This is awesome looking. Yeah. I really like this, Brad. Like I like the way that the 600 looks, but I love how this looks. Is it small? It looks small.

Brad Dowdy: No, it's standard size. Okay. The Rotaring 600 is actually a small mechanical pencil compared to most. Once you compare them side by side, it's just heavier than most because it's a full metal barrel.

Myke Hurley: This design, right? Like the Uni design. Are they borrowing from Rotaring? Is that where this design idea comes from? Because it's similar looking, right? You could tell me it was a Rotaring and I would probably believe you.

Brad Dowdy: It's such a standard design and that's kind of what I was alluding to with engineering pencils. They all share similar design elements. You know, they have a long pipe and they have knurling. So you can grip it because you're using that pen constantly like all day long. You know, it's supposed to be used all day long if that's your job. So it's made all around these general design elements and which is why I like them so much. I mean, it's my style. So when I pick up a mechanical pencil to use, it's either the Rotaring 600 in silver or the shift pipe lock. And I have the silver one with like the blue, the 0.5. I think, yeah, some of them, sometimes the colors are just by size, but I think this one you can get them in any color and any size. So those are my two favorite mechanical pencils. And the Kuru Toga's maybe third. And actually, there's other ones that we're going to talk about in a few minutes that I would still use before the Kuru Toga just for looks. I really like certain mechanical pencils for how they look and how they feel and what they do and how they perform and the memories they bring back, to be quite honest. I mean, there's one pencil we're going to talk about next that people are going to know exactly what I'm talking about. But we have a new sponsor that I'm pretty excited to talk about, too. So let's get to that before I keep drooling over all these pencils I have in this show document.

Myke Hurley: I think this is going to be a sponsor that really fits of our audience. This episode of The Pen Addict is brought to you by Making Light. I'm really excited about this sponsor because I've been trying them out for about a month or so, and I'm happy that we get to talk about them now. So this is something to help with distractions, like to try and keep focus in our lives, especially for people that do creative work. It can be difficult because, you know, you kind of have to make sure that you're maintaining your focus to do your best at all times. And to do that, I think people tend to find their own way of engaging their senses. So they may throw some headphones on so they're keeping their ears locked in, you know, so they've got some great music on. They've got their favorite playlist. Maybe you set up your computer in such a way that it's pleasing to you. You know, you use your window arrangement in a certain way, that kind of thing. You get your great coffee for taste. Maybe you have a lovely clicky keyboard for touch. But there's nothing that we really use for scent. And this is where Making Light comes in. Making Light is about helping you leverage the power of scent with also that little bit of added sight as well, because this is a subscription service that will send high quality candles right to your door. Allowing you to create a new daily ritual to help you focus on what matters most to you. Once you light your candle, it's time to write, meditate, code, or whatever it is. Maybe it's time you just want to fill up your, maybe you want to clean all your pens out so you light a candle, you know, to get into the zone. Whatever deserves your focus. That's what Making Light can help you with. You just allow the fragrance and the flickering flame to be a constant subtle reminder that this is a sacred time and space. Making Light candles are premium quality and very reasonably priced. As pen addicts, we love tactile things that are made with love and care. And that's what Making Light is. Making Light, you know, they help us think about the way that we want to really focus. And like we are always writing in these things, like in our handmade notebooks instead of on our phones and laptops, because we understand and appreciate real things that are crafted by people because it helps us. It makes us feel like I know for me anyway, it makes me feel like in touch with stuff. And I think that this is where these kinds of things can come into that. All the candles are made from 100% botanical soy wax fragrances that are infused with essential oils. And they use reusable and recyclable tins. Every single candle is made by a small Indiana family. And they include a handwritten note with every box, which is nice. You know, the guys behind Making Light, they are actually, they're big pen addicts. They're big, big fans of the show. Brad, you have a box with you, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I want to read my note first because the pen acts will like this. And this is from Dan, who runs Making Light. He says, hi, Brad. This comes to you from a modern circa 2003 Parker Duofold M nib with Aurora Blue Black ink. My dad has a huge vintage collection and I've chased him around antique shops for 40 years. Hope to get to next year's show. All the best. So he's not just a cool guy for writing my note in a cool fountain pen. He also listens to the podcast and wants to come to the pen show next year because we made it sound awesome. But yeah, did you like my audio? What's that called? You know, the little sound effect that I had there. Could you hear that?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I heard the rustling of the crepe paper.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And then that was the lighting of the match so I could light my cherry blossom candle. So the way I see it is you're either a candle person or you're not. Me and my wife, we're big time candle people. We love how they smell. We have them all around the house. So when I found out that Making Light was sponsoring us and I was going to get to try these out, I was kind of giddy. Like this is my thing. And because it's not just any candle, it's, you know, it's made in very small batches by a family. The coolest thing on these 10s, Myke, they have the batch number on there. It's partially handwritten, which you think it's like a little thing. I find that so endearing when you see products like this, that it has just those cool little touches of what they've made and how they're tracking it. And to see the little pin marks on here and the batch number is pretty cool. So I lit up the cherry blossom while we're here talking, which is perfect for making. Macon's known for their cherry blossoms. They have a big cherry blossom festival. I have several cherry trees in my yard. So cherry blossom is now burning while we're podcasting and I'm feeling calmer.

Myke Hurley: It's saying about the handwritten stuff. It's nice because Making Light, I'll be talking to Dan, the guy who runs it. It's like a family business. Like his wife helps out, his daughters help out. Like they do it all together. And there's something about it, like just talking to him, I've really enjoyed it because he's just a really nice guy. And I can tell that it's a really nice company. And I think that you should really help them out. Making Light costs just $24 a month. We have free shipping anywhere in the USA. And for that, what you're going to get is you're going to get two candles, a box of wooden matches, and a preview sample of next month's featured fragrance in every box. Each month, you will receive enough for around 22-hour rituals of focus. So maybe 20 days for two hours, you could use it. And once you blow out the candle as well, the scent stays in the room for a while. It's really fantastic. They also ship to Canada and the UK for an extra $5 and $10 respectively a month, which once you factor in exchange rates, makes it totally worth it. And of course, listeners at this show can get $5 off for their first order. And this is going to prove that Dan is a pen addict with the code GOLDENWEB.

Myke Hurley: Nice. Or one word, G-O-L-D-E-N-W-E-B. Go with all lowercase on that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I bet his dad has one of those.

Myke Hurley: Maybe. Do you know what? Maybe.

Brad Dowdy: I'm going to have to get in Dan's dad's will or something. I'm going to have to talk to him about this.

Myke Hurley: So go find out for yourself about Making Light over at makinglight.us. Thank you so much to Making Light for supporting this show and all of RelayFM. I don't went a bit long on that one, but they're a great company. And I want to make sure you hear all about it because I hope that we have them back again in the future.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And, you know, it's the first time and, you know, it's a new product and it's something we've been playing around with. And, you know, we kind of want to tell our experience, you know, a little bit more than just a, you know, just a stock ad read. And, you know, I think that that works for us and our listeners. So hopefully they enjoyed it and will enjoy Making Light.

Myke Hurley: Adina loves these things, man. Yeah. She's always lighting them up. I've been doing it as well myself. Like it was funny when I was writing the scripts, I had one burning and it was really nice. And it kind of all worked. I was editing all the scripts up and getting them ready and stuff. It was good.

Mechanical Pencils

Brad Dowdy: All right. So the next three pencils I want to talk about could take the number one spot on any given day. And they're all by one company and they're all by Pentel. And Pentel makes some of the best mechanical pencils on the market.

Brad Dowdy: The ones I like and the one that really kind of got me started when I was a kid is the Pentel Sharp P Series. Now, if you take a look at this, you know, you may not know the name, but I guarantee you recognize this pencil and the barrel and the barrel colors and the shape and design. It hasn't changed in 30 or 40 years. And it's still really, really high, high quality. And what Pentel has done is they've kept the design exactly the same. So like the 05 comes in this blue and the 07 comes in black and the 09 comes in this mustard yellow. The green, I forget what size that one's in. And then recently in the past few years, what they've done is, well, all those stock items are exactly the same. They added in some really neat additional barrel colors like a metallic blue that I picked up a couple years ago from JetPens and a carbon fiber style. It's still a plastic barrel, but a carbon fiber. Look, they make some really, really cool designs and they're still really inexpensive. Like the stock ones are about five bucks. The special color ones are about eight bucks. I can't help but pick those up every time I see the special one. And every time I do always think about George at my supply room. You're familiar with him, right? Myke, he's the guy that supplies Mad Men, all the old school pens. Yeah, yeah. George is like a collector extraordinaire. When I see like a new Pentel Sharp in new colors, I would like pick one out like in the blue. He has to have everything of every style ever. It's hilarious. He collects them all in a serious manner. You want to talk about Pen Addict? He might be the cult leader. If we ever could get into his garage or his supply room, as you will, I think we'd all be kind of blown away. So that's the classic of the Pentel line. The Graph Gear 1000 is the engineering workhorse. It's the full metal pencil. It's got a knurled barrel with like these little cushions on the grip.

Brad Dowdy: It's got a really stern knock and retractable mechanism. It's just when people talk about their favorite mechanical pencils like that are in the engineering, drafting, architecture field, it's usually Rotring 600 and then this Graph Gear 1000 in some way, shape or form. They're just built to last, built to take a beating, built to be durable and really good looking on top of it. So it's a really, really cool pencil. The third one is the outlier in the Pentel group. And it doesn't get enough love. And I've praised it before. And I actually gave mine away and I got to get another one. It's the Pentel Sharp Carry.

Myke Hurley: This is a weird looking one.

Brad Dowdy: It's an amazing mechanical pencil. What it is, it's a capped mechanical pencil. So you carry it around like a capped pen. You uncap it, put the cap on the back end of the barrel, and then that's your knock. And it just, it clicks out from there. It's so comfortable. It's so well made. It's one of those pens or pencils, excuse me, that you get and you just fidget with it. You just, you're trying to figure out, okay, how does this work? And it shouldn't be this simple. And this design shouldn't work the way it does. And it really, really does. It's compact. You know, it's definitely pocketable when you're not using it. You know, that's a great thing about this pencil. You know, a lot of mechanical pencils that don't have the retractable pipe, they're going to poke you or stab you when you least expect it. This one's capped when you're not using it. So that's a great feature to just throw in your pocket and go. So the Pentel Sharp Carry is a way, way, way underrated mechanical pencil and something you guys should look at if you haven't been. So that's kind of where I draw the line as the most popular pencils for me personally. The Rotring, Uni makes great stuff, and Pentel.

Brad Dowdy: Then you start getting into other pencils that are really good, but they're either not standard in their designer style or just don't have a lot of foothold in the usage of customers, things like that. But are still good and kind of go under the radar. Like, for example, the Retro 51 Hexomatic. Like if Myke Dudek was on here, he'd be all about this pencil because it's made to look just like the Rotring 600. The thing is, it's almost the exact same price, and I'd just go ahead and get a Rotring 600. It doesn't mean this Retro 51's not good. It's great. It's great looking. It's great feeling. But for the same price as the Rotring 600, I'd just get to that.

Brad Dowdy: One I do like a lot, Tombow makes some really nice low-end pencils, like $5 and less. They have one called the Olno Body Knot. It's this really...

Brad Dowdy: You'll have to pull up the picture. I don't even know if I can explain it, but you put it in your hand. It's got this really thick rubber grip, and in the middle of the barrel, you just kind of like put pressure on it from... Like you're gripping the pencil, and then you just kind of bump it in your hand while you're writing, and it ejects the lead or lengthens the lead. It's really well done, and it's a really neat pencil, but it's kind of gimmicky, and it uses these bright colors, you know, that might not be for everybody. You know, it's certainly not a classic, typical engineering pencil. Then they do one called the Tombow Mono Graph Shaker, which I was actually really surprised how well it did, because it was so inexpensive. I think it's only like $4 or something like that. It's just a high-quality, everyday-use mechanical pencil, and you'll see a lot of these that I'm talking about all have that one extra thing. They're not just a standard mechanical pencil. The Tombow Olno Body Knot has an interesting knock mechanism. The Graph Shaker has a shaker mechanism to advance the lead. And then the next one on the list, do you want to say something?

Myke Hurley: Sorry, I was going to say, do you think that a lot of these companies do this because stuff like the Kuru Toga exists? Like, you can't do that because that's their thing, so why don't we do our own thing that makes ours a little bit different?

Brad Dowdy: Almost all of these were ahead of the Kuru Toga.

Myke Hurley: Okay, cool.

Brad Dowdy: There's maybe one or two on this list that aren't. Certainly, like all the Pentels, the Rotrings, and the Unis, the other Unis besides the Kuru Toga, were before the Kuru Toga. The Olno Body Knock and Graph Shaker were after, but Shakers have been around for a while. That's a pretty standard.

Myke Hurley: I've clearly got some Toga buyers.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. No, that's good. And the Pilot Delphil, which is another one, which Pilot doesn't have a really strong mechanical pencil game, if you've noticed in this list, the Japanese companies, Pentels kind of, aside from Uniball, the Kuru Toga, Pentels kind of got the market in mechanical pencils. They have it covered from the very, very expensive models to the high-end mechanical pencil models.

Brad Dowdy: But Pilot doesn't have very much action in this space, and I don't even know what drafting-style pencils they have. Certainly, if they do, it's nothing that's grabbing me. But the Delphil is one I like because it has a fully retractable lead pipe. It's not just the pipe that comes back in. It's like the whole tip of the pen retracts into the pencil.

Myke Hurley: I just noticed that. I was going to say that I like that. That's a nice addition. Because you don't end up with that little metal bit sticking out, which, like, stabs you in the leg or something.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So a lot of pencils will allow you to just retract the pipe, but this retracts that whole front-end section into the barrel, and it works really well. It's a real strong, you know, feeling when you do it. It doesn't feel janky when you do it. It's a real strong click, and it gets back up in there. So that's kind of the primary shopping list. So you've got my favorites, you know, some of the unis, Rotring, Pentel, some in the middle market that do some things that you may or may not like but I found pretty functional. Then we've got some that I'm not a fan of at all, and we're going to talk about those, and I'm going to make some people mad. But first, we've got one more sponsor we want to get to, don't we?

Myke Hurley: This week's episode of The Pen Addict is also brought to you by MassDrop. MassDrop is an online community for enthusiasts of all kinds, from audio and electronics to quilting and cooking. It's a place for you to connect with people like you to discuss your favorite products and activities and buy them together. MassDrop represents a new type of online experience that combines community, content, and commerce. MassDrop is not a flash sales website. It's not a deal site. It is a place where enthusiasts can meet and connect over the products that they love. It is a forum where people can vote on and discuss the products that they're passionate about and then connect directly with manufacturers to buy products together and get bulk pricing. The thing that is most important to MassDrop is that they want to build communities around things that their users love because that's what they're passionate about doing themselves. Ultimately, they are here to help you by making the products you care about more affordable and accessible and provide you with a platform to connect with other like-minded enthusiasts. I know that group buys is something that's really important to the pen community. Some of the stuff that we buy can be expensive and MassDrop can help with this. Buying in bulk can bring those costs down. I mean, I've checked them out myself and I've seen some great deals in the past. I looked on the website earlier today, Brad, and I saw that they're currently a couple of two deals that interested me. 15% off a Retro 51 fountain pen and up to 42% off a Lamy Studio fountain pen. So people should go and check those out because they're going to be ending soon so you want to go and check them out. So you can do that by going to dro.ps slash thepenaddict That's dro.ps slash thepenaddict and sign up right now. Thank you so much to MassDrop for supporting this show and all of RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: Awesome. Thank you, MassDrop. That's a seriously good community over there and they do good stuff. They are the best. Yep, yep. All right, so let's get negative here and tell you about all the pencils that I don't like. You know, I talk about the good. You got to cover it on the flip side with the bad stuff too. So let's see how many people I can make mad on this list with the dog and their favorites. Number one, which I think I'll actually get the confirmation of is the Rotring 800. It's a poor excuse for a fountain pen to cost that much just to add in the retractable, the fully retractable tip. The 600 is a fixed tip fountain pen. The 800 was...

Myke Hurley: Do you mean to say mechanical pencil when you keep saying that?

Brad Dowdy: Pencil. Yeah, sorry. It is the pen addict, you know. Cut me some slack.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I know. We don't make no second-rate pencil podcast, huh?

Brad Dowdy: That's right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Killed a man with a trident.

Myke Hurley: In all fairness, though, if you are somebody who actually wants to hear people that know about pencils talk about pencils, you should check out the Erasable podcast.

Brad Dowdy: Wood case pencils, not mechanical pencils. They will cut a man if they bring up mechanical pencils. That's a persona non grata over there.

Myke Hurley: But then I retract my statement. Statement retracted.

Rotring 800

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they're a first-rate pencil podcast. We love those guys. So the Rotring 800 was made as a complement to the 600, but had the retractable tip, and it cost at least twice as much, if not more. And that was the design for ages and ages and ages. And then Rotring's got a long, sorted past with buyouts and sales. And I don't even, I won't pretend to know the history, but it's currently owned by Sanford, an American-made company. And an American company. They're made, I don't even know where they make these pencils now. But they decided the newest design of the Rotring 800 should have a stylus tip, also down where the tip retracts from the pen. And it's just not a good design. It's just really not functional. And it's certainly not worth the price. Yeah. It's a hot mess of a pencil. So I just avoid that and go straight for the 600. I mean, it's fine, but it's, the price doesn't make it really worth it. If it was like $50, it'd be better, but it's around 80. And you don't get that extra value that you get over like the $33, 600. So the next one is the Oto Super Promecha or Promecha, but I think it's Promecha. This one I might get some pushback on. It's the Transformers of the mechanical pencil world. This pencil has so many bells and whistles. It's just too much. You can adjust literally every single thing about this, which it's cool to play with once, but I just end up fidgeting with it and it would just end up annoying me because it wouldn't do the things that I wanted it to do. But you can like adjust the length of the lead pipe. It moves in and out of the barrel, then adjust the length of how far each click pushes out the lead. And it's got all these knobs and things, and it's actually just not a very comfortable pencil to write with. But a lot of people, that's their one and only drafting pencil is the Promecha.

Brad Dowdy: Zebra, for all the other good things that these other Japanese companies do and their competitors, Zebra does not make good drafting pencils. I guess they're along there with Pilot. But they look good. And the one I particularly use that I did not enjoy was the Zebra Tekt 2-Way 1000, which I'm guessing they're trying to mimic some of the Graph Gear 1000's name. It's a super uncomfortable pencil. They have these ridges in the grip that are not soft. They're these hard plastic rings around the grip. It looks really, really nice. It's really, really uncomfortable to write with. So that kind of defeats the looks right there.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: It's kind of crummy. And here comes, I think, maybe the one that I've seen been flying in the chat room, the Statler 925. The 25, the metal barrel drafting pencil that Statler does. It's kind of a staple around...

Brad Dowdy: this field, this arena of pencils. It's just very plain and bland. And it just kind of didn't do anything for me. It's fairly priced. Like, it's cheaper than, like, the 600. It's around $20, where the Rotring 600 is around $33.

Brad Dowdy: But it just doesn't really... It wasn't anything special. I didn't feel great about using it. The looks are average. I didn't like the grip. It was a little... The knurling was a little bit slick. For me, if you will. And I just didn't really enjoy using that pencil. It's never one that I've reached for. So I don't really like that one. And so that's my don't love list on the mechanical drafting pencil arena. There's some good stuff here. And I actually had longer lists than I thought I did. Myke, when I started putting this together, realizing how many of these mechanical pencils I like and how often I forget to use them, especially the ones that I like a lot. And one I just got in this past week or something like that, that I wanted to mention, which doesn't... It's not anything like any of these other pencils on here, but it surprised me. The Pilot G2 Mini Pencil. It's small. It's pocketable. It's about $3 for a three-pack. And the tip's retractable on the Mini Pencil, which I thought was really neat. That's not something you usually get for a disposable pencil. So I wanted to point that out and I'll have a review of them soon. I just got them, you know, recently. So I haven't had time to play with them. But when I was writing up these show notes, I started clicking that one around and saw that the tip retracted. Well, that's pretty impressive for a dollar mechanical pencil. So I will take that and good job, Pilot G2 Mini Pencil. So...

Myke Hurley: I've never liked the G2 Mini design.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. Oh, I do. They made a model. I'll have to go back and look at the name. They, Pilot in Japan, redid the Mini G2 in the same barrel shape, called it something else as they normally do, and gave it a 0.5mm refill. I was all over those things. But that's been like six years now and they don't even make them anymore. They were huge. They were really, really good pens. And they're just vanished.

Myke Hurley: Because what I don't like about the G2 Mini is it looks like they just took the middle out of the G2. Yeah. The grip's the same size, the clip's the same size, so they're basically touching. It just looks really super weird to me.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, but just think about it. This isn't a pencil you're going to your desk and writing all day with. I mean, this is a pencil you throw in your beach bag and go to a crossword puzzle and you don't worry about your nice rotary getting sand in it, things like that. So it's a different market.

Myke Hurley: What? I'm superficial.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, I am too. I mean, I already admitted I'll pick a pen or a pencil for how it looks oftentimes.

Myke Hurley: I'm all about the curves and the looks on these things.

Brad Dowdy: There's such a negative attitude towards all things G2 and I can't really argue with that. So I don't blame you.

Myke Hurley: But I mean, the G2, the pen, it's a great pen. It's a great pen. It's a really good entry pen. It's an entry pen for me. It's for many people.

Brad Dowdy: It's a good pen. It's not a great pen.

Myke Hurley: It's a great starter pen. I'll get on a plane. Come on. You like that dumb Jetstream thing.

Myke Hurley: Can't abide. Cannot abide by that pen.

Brad Dowdy: All right. Before we get into a brawl over pens, let's wrap this baby up. G2 is so much better on Jetstream. I'll let you have the last word.

Myke Hurley: This feels like we're going back to episode four or something.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, we might have to

Brad Dowdy: have a throwdown. Um,

Myke Hurley: I just need to get someone to roll back the tape to where you said you hate fountain pens and then I will.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, no. I know. I'm done. As long as we do this show, I will never outlive that one. So, yep. And I'll take it. I enjoy it. Good. All right. Wrap us up, mate.

Pen Chalet

Myke Hurley: Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of The Pen Addict. Thanks to our sponsors again, Mass Drop, Making Light, and Pen Chalet. Go check them out. They do great stuff. If you want to find us online, there's a couple of ways you can do that. You can find Brad. He is at Dowdyism on Twitter, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. He is Pen Addict on Instagram. And you can find his great site over at PenAddict.com. Of course, it's not just Brad anymore, but, you know, we've got, you know, the great writing team. The staff.

Brad Dowdy: Jeff and Susan, they are so good. They put me to shame, but they're awesome.

Myke Hurley: They are great. They are really great. What I love about Jeff and Susan's work is I can just be reading a post and it doesn't feel like it's you.

Myke Hurley: Because you see a lot of these blogs and like I start reading it and I'm like, this isn't Brad. It's not, it's in a bad way. It's just this has its own voice. Right. And I find, you know, some blogs that I read that do that kind of stuff, it can be difficult to actually tell people apart. But you guys, you've got your own style, your own voice over there and I really like it.

Brad Dowdy: Well, that's exactly how I wanted and, you know, not to get too behind the scenes here as we're closing out, but like when I brought Susan on here recently, she was like quizzing me how I wanted, you know, the post to look, to feel, the structure. I said, however you want to do it. I said, I don't want you to do anything that looks like me. If you don't want to do it, don't use anything as I do as a guideline. You do what Susan wants to do and that's what we're going to go with. So, there you have it.

Myke Hurley: Awesome. And you can find me online at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E and don't forget to check out the great shows that we have at Relay.fm for many more of our fantastic podcasts. Until next time, say goodbye, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad.