QUESTIONS
1. Is it harder for you to eat healthy or get exercise?
2. What makes a good loser, and are you one?
ANSWERS By: Austin Smith
1. Neither are particularly hard for me, and I think I do both, though sometimes the things people call healthy meals are just made to kill some people.
2. Being able to accept that you lost without making excuses, accusing your opponent, or making a nuisance of yourself, and I think I am in general, though not all the time.
The second, and likely the least worn, tier of my EDC is the fanny pack, though the items contained in it are still used quite often as they are moved into my satchel and backpack as I go to larger EDC carry cases. The fanny pack is a problem in some ways. I use a Custom LeatherCraft bag to store the items inside the pack, and there is little room for both those items and the lower tiers of my EDC. My phone, pocket book, and knife generally stay in my pockets. But the items in my belt pouch might be more difficult to store in the pack and may have to stay on my belt or be attached to the belt of the pack. For this reason, and the stigma attached to fanny packs in general, I tend not to use this system very much. It is still very handy, but I find slightly smaller and/or slightly larger containers to be a bit more handy.
FANNY PACK
I really do like the amount of things that can be carried in a fanny pack, and the robustness of some of the larger tools like the Leatherman Juice. But there is something that is just a bit off about carrying them. It never feels like it’s in the right place, and everything feels more like a compromise. I love having these items with me and find uses for them all the time, but I find having them in a different case works out better for me.
Next time I’ll take a look at the satchel, or “man-purse” carry of my EDC. (I don’t like that term, I’d just call it a purse before I called it a man-purse. Oh, well.)
Some things are better small, and the Yafa Poquito, being one of the first pens I got, proved that to me. It was exceptional for my small hands at the time. But how does the set compare now?
The Yafa Poquito pens have metal bodies that come in various colors. The top of the pen is a bit of a rounded-off cone, and the top of the pencil has a small steel button. The clips are tight and almost identical, with the pen’s being pointed, and the pencil’s being round. The bodies of both utensils taper from the middle to each end, with the center band being separate in the pen and attached to the mechanism in the pencil. The metal tip of the pencil is also part of the mechanism, whereas in the pen it is part of the body. The bodies are quite solid, but the paint will wear off with time and a bit of use. Consider getting a silver or brass one to fix that if you mind.
The pencil takes .7mm lead, and what it comes with it fairly standard, sometimes broken in transit. The mechanism is easy to use and quite sturdy. It would stand up to a bit of abuse. There is no play once the lead has been extruded, it doesn’t have “shocks” as it were, but the mechanism is separate from the pen body, and this creates a squeak now and then.
The pen is a smooth-writing fine cartridge. It is a ballpoint so there are occasional globs and hard starts. If left out for some time, the pen will be quite hard to start, but in this case a while is so long a time that one would expect it to. When it does flow, it is very smooth, and has almost no issues. It is not quite black, and waterproof, as most ballpoint blacks are.
The Poquitos pack quite a bit of punch for their size, being less than 4 inches long (and they still manage to fit relatively comfortably in the hand). And while they do have some flaws, they are far from from deal-breaking for having a pen or pencil there when you really need it. They serve best as backups and are miles ahead of small pens that don’t allow one to comfortably hold them or have very little ink. I’d say that in that category, Poquitos are at least worth a look.
QUESTIONS
1. If you had a problems, who could you talk to besides your parents?
2. What makes something art?
ANSWERS By: Austin Smith
1. That would depend on the problem.
2. Apparently someone thinking it’s art, and at the moment I really don’t have a better definition.
QUESTIONS
1. What are the benefits of saving and spending?
2. Which musical instrument would be the coolest to play?
ANSWERS By: Austin Smith
1. I’m not an economic advice column, but you never get anything by saving forever, and you never move up if you don’t save at all.
2. All of them at once.