Sharpie Mini Modification

I've been trying to find a pen to add to my EDC keychain for a little while now.  But I haven't found anything to my liking.  I've tried the mini Bic mod, but I didn't like it since I had to also modify the cap in order to make holes for it (easily done with a hot paperclip, btw) and then a small lanyard through those holes to create a "chain" to attach to the keychain.  It just looked blah.  And those Fisher Space Pens and such were just out of my price range.

I already had a Sharpie Mini hanging on my EDC keychain and I had found another at school the other day.  Too bad it was dried out.  But I decided to take it home with me anyway.  After a thorough cleaning and a restless night, I came up with a mod.  Taking the idea of the Sherpa (I'll explain that at the end!), I went ahead and took apart my Sharpie (using pliers) and dug through my pens box (promotional pens, mostly) and tinkered away.

This is the Sharpie Mini taken apart.  The ink was dried and those ink parts are now useless in this mod, so toss 'em.

Here are a couple of the pens I'd taken apart to see which would fit best.  It turns out that most retractable pens cannot be used in this mod since they lack that little lip at the tip of the pen that would "catch" onto the opening of the Sharpie and keep the ink section snugly in place.  Think Bic Stic and the like.  I happened to use a no-name promotional pen one.  I did, however, find that the refill from the Uniball Signo 207 worked as well, but jutted out a wee bit too far out.  But because of the thick ink barrel, it fits pretty snugly in the Sharpie's body.

The regular ol' ballpoint stick refill fits snug as a bug!

See?  The Uniball sticks out too far.  :(  Actually, when the cap goes on, it will actually push the refill back in up until where that white part of the refill begins.  So if you end up using the Signo refill, know that you'll have to adjust it to that point before snipping the ink barrel.

I was just lining everything up so that I could get an idea of where to snip off the excess ink barrel at.

Slip the refill in, snap everything back together, and we're good to go!

Though I don't particularly like ballpoints, let alone the cheap stick type (though I have quite thoroughly enjoyed writing with the Bic Cristal 1.6mm), this will do in a pinch when I'm pen-less and in need of a writing instrument.  Oh boo, fountain pens, for not being able to handle carbon copies!

With all that said, back to the idea of the Sherpa.  The reason I mention this is because the Sherpa is made to accommodate and house a Sharpie perfectly, as well as some other pens listed on their site.  This means that the tip of the Sharpie and the tips of those other pens that the Sherpa accommodates should be the same size for it to snugly fit in the Sherpa housing.  So by all means, I'm assuming that whatever pens that works with the Sherpa will damn well fit a Sharpie Mod since their tips should be of the same or similar enough size without jutting out.

Have fun.  :)

In Praises of Otterbox Company

Customer service doesn't get much better than this.  Last July or so, I'd bought an Otterbox case via Amazon.  To be more specific, the Commuter series for the Motorola Atrix (first generation).  It was great - the silicon protects against shock and the outer case makes it easy to slide and and out of the pocket.

However, after about 4 or so months of daily use, it developed a crack on the outer shell straight down where the HDMI input is.  I super glued it and it was fine.  About a month later, another crack appeared, right below the super glued one.  NO BUENO!  :(  But it was super glued and all was fine.  A little while after that, the thinner bridge portion by the camera chipped.  I was sad, but it was okay.  I figured at the price of $25.00 (including shipping) and the 6 months or so I had it, it was well worth my money.

The two cracks.  :)  Good thing I super glued them when I did, otherwise I'd be missing a piece of case.

The crack by the camera lens.  I'm not even sure how that happened.

It stayed that way until today.  It never occurred to me to check if there was a warranty on this thing.    Sure enough, there's a 1 year warranty on these babies.  I'd never dropped my phone or anything during the 8 or so months that I've owned this phone, which was I was surprised that the case even developed any cracks or chips.  Though looking at the locations of damage and the design of the case, I wouldn't be surprised if they were just weak spots.  A quick e-mail to the company explaining the damage and 4 hours later, I've got a replacement coming my way (1 - 2 week wait, they said).

All they had asked for was my mailing address, phone model, case model, and some photos to show where the damage was and to ensure that it was indeed a legitimate Otterbox product.  Great, no hassle customer service.  :)  I'm a happy camper.