QUESTIONS
1. What do you say when someone gives you a gift you already have?
2. If you could speak another language, which one would you choose?
ANSWERS By: Austin Smith
1. Usually “Thank you! I can always use another one” if I they know I already have it for some reason: if not I just say “thank you”.
2. I would like to speak French, Spanish, or German in addition to English. Likely Spanish as it would be useful in Texas.
Sometimes people ask me if it’s really necessary to carry a pocket knife like I do. This is rare, though, as most of the people I know either carry, are going to carry, or know why to carry a “pocket” knife (one carries a Marine fighting knife). They all have various reasons. The one that comes to everyone’s mind for some reason is self defense. Why, I don’t know, as you’re carrying something every day for something that’ll hopefully never happen. Not that I would say carrying something for self defense is a bad idea (pepper spray, gun, etc), it’s just that with something as useful as a knife to say “It’s for self defense” seems cheap to me, like, I have no other way to justify carrying a “weapon”. A knife isn’t a weapon, it’s a tool, and a great tool, if a slightly scary one (that’s what my mom thinks).
Yeah, that’s kinda scary
I carry a knife for the same reason I carry a multi-tool (which has another knife): because it’s super useful for opening boxes, letters, cutting tape to fix things, removing splinters (yes, you can still get those in the modern age), cutting things to fix things, untying things (as long as you don’t want the twine), and scaring people who don’t understand why you want a 3.5inch piece of sharp metal in your pocket and think that no one is responsible enough to carry anything that may at any point be possibly used to harm someone.
I’ve been carrying a knife now for years, ever since I left school, because for some reason they won’t let you have pen knives in school. And it’s been super handy. Now I haven’t needed it every day. Sometime I don’t even use it in a week. But just like the fact that you’ll sometimes need a bottle opener to open a bottle, sometimes you’ll need to open a package, and I’ll have my knife to do it. (And I’ll have it to stab the guy assaulting me).
QUESTIONS
1. If you were showing a foreigner around you town where would you take them?
2. What’s your favorite family tradition?
ANSWERS By: Austin Smith
1. I would just take them around town, it’s fairly small, so I’d be able to show theme everything in a few hours.
2. We don’t really have any family traditions, and I like that.
Have you ever been using a mechanical pencil and thought it was too much of a hassle to push the button before writing more? If so (Dixon) Ticonderoga claims to have you covered, with the Ticonderoga Sensematic self-advancing pencil.
The body of the pencil looks like a standard pencil, but is a bit shorter. It has hexagonal sides, and a standard eraser with a metal attachment point, which screws out and contains extra lead to refill the pencil with. The tip is conical, and contains the self-advancing mechanism, from which the lead sticks out a bit.
The lead is a standard HB (#2) and is nothing really special, so I won’t say much more other than it works. The real thing to talk about is the mechanism, which the box says one can simply “just write” with and the lead will advance automatically. And, in my experience so far, this is true. I haven’t had to change anything in my writing to make it work: it just does, making it quite a handy little thing. Now it doesn’t have a very long advance, so there isn’t much lead to work with, but for writing and some sketching that isn’t a problem at all. The mechanism works by having what is essentially a click-advance near the top of the exposed lead, and when it is pushed back more lead is exposed and then locked into place. This means that there could be instances where writing stops, but this could be easily solved by rotating the pencil.
Overall, this is a great idea with good execution. I quite like it but since the erasers aren’t replaceable and the mechanism feels a bit plastic-y I’d say they won’t last forever. But they will last at least as long as a regular pencil, with much less of a hassle, so I’d say it’s a win.
QUESTIONS
1. Who is one of your heroes and why do they inspire you?
2. Would you keep a secret if you knew someone would get hurt if you did?
ANSWERS By: Austin Smith
1. I don’t really have any “heroes” per say, so I just won’t answer that question.
2. It would depend on the type of hurt: physically, no I wouldn’t, emotionally, maybe depending on the person and the severity of the hurt.