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I’ve been looking for the best mechanical pencil for a long while. Turns out, it was hiding right under my nose! Wanna jump right to the money shot? Scroll down!

Most of my mechanical pencils. Top to bottom: Jolt, AI, SumoGrip, ClearPoint, Logo II, Kerry

I tried the Bic AI pencil. Supposedly the lead advances itself automagically. But the mechanism is always scraping its plastic lead advance mechanism against the paper, making it feel odd It has a second advance mechanism (because they knew the auto-advance wasn’t awesome?) where you shake the pencil to advance it. That’s kinda cool except the leads keep slipping backward; you have to shake it a lot to keep the lead extended properly. Worst of all, when you flip the pencil over to erase, the shaking often accidentally advances the lead. And the eraser is tiny, and hidden under a cap. Apparently I have nothing good to say about the Bic AI pencil.

The Pentel Jolt pencil has an interesting mechanism (read: I could never get it to frigging work). Apparently you are supposed to shake it twice quickly to get the lead to advance. This alleviates the problem with other shake pencils (like the Bic AI) where the lead accidentally advances while you are erasing, but it’s simply not reliable. Sometimes 1 shake advances it, sometimes 2, sometimes 2 shakes extends the lead way too much. It is completely frustrating and unusable.

The Paper Mate Clearpoint is a side advance pencil. Kinda neat. And it even has a nice large twist-up eraser, another win. I’ve had a little trouble getting used to pushing the button on the side, I’m sure that’d subside after a while. Much more importantly, the twist-up eraser mechanism twists right back down when you use any reasonable erasing motion! Dumb! Argh!

The Sakura Sumogrip. First the “sumo” part: the barrel is too large, my hand cramps up after just a few minutes of using it and I’ve got large hands. I don’t know, I have friends that like the size, but not me. Second, when you’re erasing, the twist-up mechanism twists right back down, just like the stupid Paper Mate Clearpoint. Third, unless you are careful, pressing the eraser to the paper while erasing causes the lead to advance. Three strikes, you’re out!

The Pentel Sharp Kerry has received a lot of praise as a terrific pencil. I have two of them. At $16 apiece it’s certainly the most expensive pencil I own. It is very pretty, definitely the prettiest writing implement I own. It feels great in your hand, words like “elegance”, “style” and “refinement” come to mind every time I use it. And it is terrific fun uncapping and recapping it, every time is a little flourish!

I wrote with a 0.5mm Pentel Sharp Kerry for a full semester of American History class, I’d write furiously and every now and then pause to marvel at it’s beauty. Yeah, I know, a little distracting, but it put a smile on my face. I’d whisper to myself, “I have the best writing implement in this room.” (yow, I really did that… I should have started calling it “my precious”!)

After a semester of writing madly with it in History class, I can say it writes well. I now think of it as my “executive” pencil. The only things that bother me about the Sharp Kerry: the (tiny!) eraser hides under a little metal cap, and my favorite pencil has a spring mechanism for the lead that helps it write smoother than the Sharp Kerry.

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I tried using a separate eraser for these pencils that write well but have substandard erasers. But a couple things get in the way of me liking this:

First, the obviousness of it all. After 400+ years of trying, Science (capital ‘s’ dammit!) should be able to supply me a good pencil with a good eraser!! I’ve found small block erasers to be hard to use, you’ve got to hold this tiny, irregularly shaped thing in your hands very tightly. They are hard to find in my bag too.

I haven’t found a pencil-shaped eraser I love. The Pentel Clic Eraser has great eraser material and a solid holder, but every time you take it out, you have to fumble with the length of the eraser; then when you put it away, since the advance mechanism and the clip are the same, you have to push it back down. I haven’t tried it but maybe the Staedtler Stick Eraser would be good for me. I tried a Tuff Stuff Eraser but the eraser dust made an awful mess, a million tiny sticky shards of rubber on the desk. Fair warning: I bought the Tuff Stuff on eBay so it’s possible I got a knockoff eraser.

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And then there’s love!  The Paper Mate Logo II is the best pencil I have ever owned.

Paper Mate Logo II mechanical pencil, 0.7mm in black, 0.5mm in maroon.
This is by far the best mechanical pencil I have ever owned.
But read the article for how to fix the one huge problem that held it back from shining.

Let me count the ways:

1. 1. Retractable tip: 2 clicks on the eraser and it’s ready for writing. Hold the eraser while pushing the tip gently against any surface and the tip retracts completely (no more pocket stabbings!)
   2. Spring loaded lead: The lead is on a spring mechanism. You don’t actively feel the spring, it doesn’t write mushy or anything but it adds a little special something to make the lead feel less scratchy against the paper than other mechanical pencils. I only discovered the springy tip after having the pencil for a few years of writing. For the longest time, all I knew was that when I put the same lead in 2 different pencils, the Logo II would be less scratchy.
   3. Solid, simple feel: The pencil feels like business when I’m writing and erasing. It fits. I know it doesn’t look ergonomic but it fits my hands very nicely.
   4. Solid good looks: It’s nothing special, and that’s what’s so special about it. It’s not flashy, it looks like it means business, because it does.

Fixing the loose twist-up eraser on the Logo II mechanical pencil, making it my pencil of choice!

1. A really good eraser (with one problem!)
   • The eraser material is excellent. It erases well and then rolls into reasonable sized bits. I’ve had other erasers that make piles of sticky yucky eraser dust.
   • The eraser doesn’t accidentally retract when you are using it (who would design such an eraser anyway?? (to find out, look at my other reviews above!)).
   • There is a lot of eraser in the twist-up, something I need for my classes, and darn it, how many pencils are in your drawer that are hardly used but the eraser is spent?
   • There’s just one huge negative. The twist-up eraser tends to “walk” up or down randomly as I’m writing. As I fidget the pencil in my hand, the extremely loose twist-up mechanism twists. Then when I go to erase, I have to adjust it to the right height before proceeding. Ugh! But I found a fix!. To fix the loose twist-up eraser mechanism, all I did (after quite a bit of experimentation!) was wrap some Scotch tape around the base of the eraser. That puts some pressure on the twist-up mechanism such that it isn’t loose any more! Simple! Wrapping around 1 1/2 times is about right for me.

The nice retractable tip of the Logo II

Now I own both sizes of Logo II pencils. I use my black 0.7mm for “writing”, when I need to write a lot of text, like for my Anatomy class. The tip almost never breaks. I use my maroon 0.5mm when I need a finer line, for Chemistry class; if I am hasty, I might break the tip, but the finer line can be worthwhile.

Curiously, the Paper Mate Logo II mechanical pencil isn’t given much support from the Paper Mate company. Apparently Paper Mate is owned by Sanford, who is owned by NewellRubbermaid. I wrote to Paper Mate looking for a home web page devoted to the pencil and I got a response from someone at Sanford saying “…we apologize that you were unable to find this pencil on our website. It is still available for purchase… through  local stationer and/or office supply stores…” Weird. Minimal corporate support for such a great pencil.

I have bought the Logo II pencil at Dick Blick retail for $4.50 and Amazon. The pencil is available in 0.7mm or 0.5mm, black
or maroon. I bought a box of maroon 0.5mm pencils and a box of 0.7mm black pencils so I’ll never want for pencils again. And I plan on giving a few away, because that’s how I roll.

The craziest thing is that I’ve had this pencil in my pencil box for a long time. The fiddly eraser kept me from loving it. I’m so glad I found/fixed the pencil!

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The Paper Mate Titanium is also a fine pencil with all the same features as the Logo II. It’s been in my pencil box about as long as my Logo II. I don’t like the squishy finger grip but you might. There is also the Paper Mate Logo, the Logo 3 and the Logo 4. I don’t like the styling or feel of these other pencils as much as the Logo II.

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Spikeman asked in the comments what the difference between the different Logo pencils is. Here are photos that show the differences:

Logo 1, plastic clip and tip

Logo 2: metal clip and tip

Logo 3: plastic clip and tip with a cushion grip

Logo 4: metal clip and tip with a cushion grip

Update 7-30-25! I found more Logo II pencils on eBay

Every 6 months never fail a friend tells how sad they are that their hard drive crashed. When your hard drive crashes, what will you lose? Your kid’s pictures for the last ten years? Your taxes? That story you were writing? Your customer database? Your source code?

What if your building burns down? Or if someone steals your computer? What will happen to your data?

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Seriously, it’s not a matter of if your hard drive will die, it is a matter of when. They last only so long and then they die!

For example, Google maintains about 100,000 hard drives. They treat them as nicely as possible. Google analysed their drive usage patterns  (local archive).  Every year, there is about a 1 in 14 chance that an individual hard drives will die. It doesn’t matter if it’s a brand new drive or well worn, 1 in 14 chance every year! It’s 50/50 whether a drive has died after 7 years. Maybe you can get the data off it before it dies for good, maybe not. Do you feel lucky, punk?

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Ask yourself: How do you know when a hard drive is about to fail and needs replacing? Answer: You don’t. It just fails! There’s a system called SMART that tried to predict failures but it doesn’t work. From the Google report, “Out of all failed drives, over 56% of them have no  count in any of the four strong SMART signals… in other words,  models based only  on those signals can never predict more than half of the  failed drives…”

No one repairs hard drives. When it breaks, you throw it away, along with your data. You could take it to DriveSavers  to recover the data for about $2,000, but that’s    about it.

These cold truths have been around for decades but people still (inappropriately) blindly trust that their hard drive will keep their data safe. Gawd, I sound like some amateurly written ad copy for hard drive snake oil or something. It sounds hokey but all this is true!

Here’s what I tell my friends when they tell me their hard drive just broke:

• Spinrite might recover the drive for $90 – I sometimes offer them use of my copy.
• Drivesavers probably can recover the drive for $1-3k, you can get a discount with my reseller code: DS14221 – everyone balks at the price, but if you need the data, they are the best.
• Crashplan would have prevented the tragedy and stress completely. I recommend Crashplan because I use it, it’s inexpensive (it can be free even!) and I love you. I don’t work for them or anything, I just don’t want you to lose your beloved photos or taxes or anything!

More about Crashplan:
For $4/month, you can back up any amount of data to their servers. In practice I’ve found that since it takes time to upload stuff, it’s best to limit it to around 400 gigabytes with my DSL connection.

Or, for free you can swap backup space with a friend. How cool is that! No, your friend can’t peep at your data. Heck, call me and I might swap backup space with you. You could backup your work computer with your home computer and vice versa!

I have Crashplan set to back up 400 gig of my “important” data to Crashplan Central and to my aunt’s house in Florida. Another copy of everything (about 750 gig) is backed up to an external hard drive.

Darn it, it’s even HIPAA compliant.

But no matter what happens, know that I love you and desperately want you to make offsite backups!

I tried Fungavir for my persistent toenail fungus yuckiness. It’s “too good to be true” claims are too good to be true. The website offers vaguely worded claims that it has special ingredients that get under the nail where other products fail. It does not.

It works about as well as any other topical antifungal I’ve used, but it’s more expensive and the advertising is shadier. Don’t buy it.

I’ve written a lot over the years about anti-fungals, take a look. Short form: Most topicals keep the infection at bay but none get under the nail to the root of the problem. Prescription orals sometimes work, sometimes don’t. There’s no reliable cure for nail fungus, this is especially true for topicals. Oral medicines work from the inside-out so you’ve got a better shot at a cure but they aren’t reliable either.

Fungavir’s website is filled with weasel words and hot air. Read some of their ad copy with that in mind:

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There are many discussions about nail fungus going on on my blog. Search my blog for the word “fungus” for more.

I’ve found a couple really great apartment hunting tools:

Craigslist.org. It is the go-to.

Housingmaps.com – an aggragator of Google Maps and Craigslist

Padmapper.com – a great aggragator of several sites (including Craigslist) with a good map and good selection criterion! Charlotte used this November 2011 to great effect in Seattle.

I just had a hard drive go bad on me so I had to buy a new drive and reinstall Windows. Here’s the software I put back on my computer immediately, the essential software that makes Windows XP useable for me:

WizMouse – lets you scroll a window without you having to give it focus. Brilliantly simple and useful.

Crashplan – I would have lost data if not for this online backup tool.

EditPad Pro – my text editor of choice. It also comes in a free version that’s fine.

Autohotkey – giving me keyboard controls like Ctrl-Alt-C for Calculator and “..4” to automatically type my phone number.

Google Chrome  – the best, fastest, easiest to use, prettiest browser.

• Google Voice Extension  – Along with my Google Voice account, it’s easier to dial a call with this than picking up my phone
• Screen Capture Extension  – an excellent browser screen capture tool
• Speed Dial Extension  – the best homepage for a browser ever

CCCP – the Combined Community Codec Pack lets Windows Media Player play most every video format automatically

Freecalc – by Moffsoft, a better calculator than the built-in Windows one. Easy, clean.

Picasa – the best home picture viewer

Teracopy – replaces windows file copy… the best feature being if a copy fails, I see what happened and can recover, unlike Windows copy

Rename-It! – lets me rename files en-mass

PureText – strips text formatting when pasting.

Put  Windows Explorer in the Quicklaunch toolbar and change the startup options target to “%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /e,c:\aaa”. More examples.

Set Gmail to be the default email client in Chrome

Disable Windows Search When Searching Windows Explorer

Truecrypt – keeps my passwords safe on my computer.

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The second round of essential software

KFC – Kill Flash Cookies
Filezilla
UltraVNC

The Sysinternals tools are amazing. Filemon to see what is slowing down my hard drive, Pagedefrag to defrag your pagefile.sys. Several tools to help find malware

DVD Decrypter (local archive)

Cleartype – absolutely essential for good text quality on Windows XP! You’ll have to run the page using Internet Explorer to install it.

The Clipper Card website wants to be useful and good… but it isn’t. It has lots of ridiculous text like this which is in alarmingly red print:

When you first set up Autoload, change your Autoload setup or update your Autoload funding source using a credit card, it may take up to 3-5 days for your new Autoload order to take effect. If you use a bank account, it may take 5 to 10 business days.

That could have been said far clearer with 60% fewer words:

Any changes to Autoload may take up to 5 days for credit cards and 10 days for bank accounts to complete.

Despite there being very few functions, it is hard to find what you’re looking for. For example, to turn Autoload on, you go to, straightforwardly enough “Set up Autoload” off the main menu. But to disable Autoload, you go to… ugh, I forget, I wandered the site for 5 minutes looking for the button before finding it. I think it was under “Check card value”

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Ah, but the reason I’m writing. Here is a tidbit I got from Customer Service that isn’t on their website anywhere:

My query:

I have autoload on the card and I have some Clipper Cash. I have noticed that the Clipper Cash never gets used, instead, the card autoloads from my credit card when it gets low. How can I used the Clipper Cash on my card?

And the response:

my paraphrasing:

Autoload supersedes Clipper Cash. You need to disable Autoload to use any Clipper Cash on your card.

Their overly wordy response:

In order to use the Clipper cash on your account, you will need to temporarily disable the BART HVD on your account. BART will not deduct from your e-cash balance as long as your autoload is available on the account. If you disable your HVD, BART will continue to deduct from that until the HVD balance is depleted, and then they will begin deducting from the e-cash balance. Once the e-cash balance on your account has been reduced, you may re-activate the BART HVD autoload.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Clipper Card Customer Service Center at 1-877-878-8883 (TDD/TTY 711 or 1-800-735-2929).

Update 2-15-12: Read my full review of Fungavir.

Text in bold italics below are updates.

I had written a scathing post about Fungavir, calling it a scam. I’ve removed this post. I now think I was a little too aggressive in my wording. I spoke with one of the owners of Fungavir a couple days ago and they  have begun rewording their web site and changing some of their practices to be more realistic. made a couple tiny changes to their site but the vast majority of the weasel words and scammer language remain. The ingredients in Fungavir are somewhat effective at fighting toenail and fingernail fungus, but there is absolutely nothing special about it. They charge 10 times the price for ingredients you can already find at your local pharmacy.

I was introduced to Fungavir by a comment spam that appeared on my site, which is not an auspicious start.

The wording on their site had some is full of scammer language:
* testimonials that seem too good to be true
* lies. For example, “Fungavir has double the amount of Undecylenic Acid than any other nail fungus treatment”. It does not. 25% is the legal limit for non-prescription strength and they have 10%.
* vague promises with meaningless copy like “double action” and “killing the fungus while working to heal the affected area” and… well, most of the words on the site.
* product images such that look like product only exists in Photoshop
* Site icons with no substantiation like “Green Certified Site”, “GMP”, “Made in an FDA Registered Facility”, and “Google Checkout” (they don’t use Google Checkout)

The ingredients appear to be just a collection of all the topical anti-fungals mixed into one bottle. Yeah, that might work, but I’m guessing it’ll work as well as well as any other topical, which is to say, “It might work but don’t hold your breath.”

The guy at Fungavir has said he is going to change their website. I’m going to give him the chance. But if he doesn’t since he didn’t come up with more realistic language on his site in a month or so, I’ll be reposting my original article and then some.

For more info on nail fungus, read the several posts and followup comments on my blog about nail fungus.

Here is the Fungavir homepage on 10-9-11:

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There are many discussions about nail fungus going on on my blog. Search my blog for the word “fungus” for more.

I recently got a washing machine for my apartment, a Haier HLP021-WM. It’s! So! Awesome! I got it used on Craigslist for $100, you can get them new from Walmart and other places for under $250. It is a 0.97 cubic feet washer.

I had been looking at more well known brands like Kenmore but with a retail price of $760 for their portable machine and favorable but mixed reviews, I had all but given up. I thought, “If an established brand can’t make a unit that is fairly similarly priced, the cheap one is probably junk.” Wrong was I, young Skywalker!

I just did yet another a load of laundry this morning and it was so easy. I dread going to a laundromat. I dread running out of clothes, having stinky clothes in the closet, letting stains set for weeks on end, spending 3 hours doing a stupid task, but most of all I dread hauling 40 pounds of laundry out of the house and into the car just so I can bring it back a few hours later. Those days are gone. It’s such a simple thing but it makes me so happy.

Oh, and the other essential thing I got with the washing machine from the lady on Craigslist was a small dryer, a Hamilton Beach Quick Dry Garment Drying Station. It works like a champ. It takes 2-8 hours to dry a load of clothes but it’s small, cheap to run (it’s just a fan), convenient and I don’t have piles of drying clothes hanging all over the apartment. She threw it in for $20.

I don’t like smelly laundry soap. I absolutely hate Tide laundry soap. Tide burns my nose in a way not unlike ammonia. I’ve had clothes washed in Tide that after a few hours I had to take off, they were so awful and distracting and headache inducing. There is a guy at a previous job that used Tide (hi Matt Gr!) and if he approached my desk slow enough, I my nose would burn that characteristic Matt Gr smell before I could see him.

I’ve found 2 soaps that I like. Trader Joe’s powdered laundry detergent and All Small & Mighty Free Clear. The liquid soap works better in the Haier washing machine because if the powdered soap has clumped, some of the clumps stay on the clothes. I fixed this problem by straining the powered soap (which I often leave in my clump-inducing humid garage), but I’d rather not have to do that.

(Subject line hat-tip to Scarlett O’hara)

I went to the “Foodia is Chocolate” event Friday night with Erika. We tried chocolate from Fearless Chocolate, Madecasse, Vice Chocolates, and TCHO. The clear winner: Fearless Chocolate’s Cherry Bomb gnosh (ugh, how do you spell that?). The taste experience was like watching Macho Man Randy Savage and Hulkamania duke it out on a terrific roller coaster… on the moon… in 3-D… In. My. Mouth! Awesome.

And their basic chocolate bars all had a vivid, sharp taste that had us wanting more!

Madecasse: too much of a heavy cream action in all their samples
Vice Chocolates: I don’t recall, there was something not perfect… (sorry)
TCHO: a solid stand-by

I wrote and sent this off today:

Mystic Pizza Food Company
PO Box 427
Mystic CT 06355

Dear Pizzapeople,

Fantasy

I bought a Mystic Pizza 3 Pack Mediterranean Style from Costco in San Francisco on about May 1st, 2011. It reads “Best if used by Dec 24 11 12:40”
I wanted to enjoy your pizza, but I’m sad to say it was very disappointing.

The directions say to bake for 10-12 minutes at 450. Clearly a pie this thick won’t be done in 10 minutes. We were further surprised that the pie still wasn’t cooked through after 24 minutes. After all that time, the bottom still wasn’t brown or crisp, and the center of the pie was still gummy and underdone. My oven is well calibrated, it was cooked on the middle rack with no cookie sheet under it.

Reality

The toppings were spread very poorly. The comments from my roommate say it well, “The vegetables are all lumped in a frozen pile in the middle. Who wants lumps of soggy spinach on their pizza?” One slice had a pile of peppers, another slice had a pile of olives that should have been chopped more. None of the toppings were mixed in with the pizza, they sat on top in great heaps. My roommate and I differed about the feta cheese; she enjoyed it but I thought it tasted and had the mouth feel of cream cheese, which does not belong on a pizza.

Maybe it was just the poor toppings, but after a few bites, I wanted to go out and buy some real pizza to wash the taste out of my mouth.

Keep trying!
Lee Sonko
San Francisco, CA 94110