Just found out that my favorite pen store in Asheville, Origami Ink, was completely destroyed in the flood. I assumed that was the case because they were located in Biltmore Village, but the owners posted an update today confirming the sad news. Such nice people. I’m devastated for them.
It’s funny to see how a post shows up when crossposting. In Micro.Blog, it’s a link with some tiny thumbnails. In Bluesky, a link with all four images. In Threads, a link with a preview, but the featured image is my Micro.Blog fish avatar.
Parker 25B: My first vintage fountain pen
My dad texted me one afternoon that he’d found some fountain pens at a local auction and asked if I wanted to bid on them. He’s shared links in the past and I’ve never seen anything that looked interesting. From the look of the pictures, most of the listings looked well worn. But one of the pens was actually in the original packaging — a Parker 25B. It was impossible to tell what condition the pen was in, but I decided to take a shot on it. Dad placed a $7 bid. And won.1
When I got the pen, it was in great shape. The package contained two dried up ink cartridges and a squeeze converter.2 The pen had been used — there was dried up black ink in the feed — but I was able to clean it up fairly easily. I...
In general, I avoid Twitter and Facebook. But Twitter is still useful for live sports. And Facebook is useful for checking on people after natural disasters.
Really enjoyed The Armageddon Protocol by Dan Moren. 📚
Then: 9.29.24
Posts in the “Then” category were originally shared on my “Now” page.
Hurricane Helene hit us in Columbia, South Carolina this week. Early Friday morning, we lost power with 60+ mph wind gusts. Trees down everywhere. In Columbia, we weren’t prepared for a storm of this magnitude. We got power back 12 hours later, but many people in the area are still without power.
As bad as it was here, it was much, much worse two hours north in Asheville. Western North Carolina is devastated. Asheville is in many ways a second home and it’s heartbreaking to see the devastation and flooding.
Feels
- Grateful that our family is fine, our house is undamaged, and we have power.
- Heartbroken for communities devastated by Hurricane Helene.
- Thankful for the linemen who are working to restore power. (There were five trucks in the front of our neighborhood earlier.)
Health
- I wasn’t particularly rigid with my diet while...
Expected Helene to be bad, but we don’t normally get hit this hard in Columbia. Lots of trees down and power outages across South Carolina.
For several reasons, I decided to work from home today. I know that many (most?) people love it, but I really, really don’t enjoy working from home.
The NY Times on the White Sox' historically bad season:
Baseball is a cruel game. Other sports cap your suffering at a reasonable number. In the N.F.L., the most games you could ever lose in a season is 17. In the N.B.A., you could theoretically lose 82. (The record is 73.) But baseball’s season is relentless: 162 games long… If you lose your grip, as the White Sox did immediately… you can fall through an eternal void of losing. And every day, in the middle of that falling, reporters will stick microphones in your face to ask you how it feels to be plunging through the eternal void.
Academics: A CV and resume are completely different things.
On their websites: “Click here to view my CV/Resume.”