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igenlodeMy current (I think I am now on my second or third replacement) Parker 25 pen broke in the most unexpected way this afternoon.
I was holding it between finger and thumb on my left hand after coming in from my latest walking trip (during which I had achieved the grand total of half a sentence of Roland de Céligny in the space of about ten minutes) while I fumbled to get out and use the door-key with my other hand, and it just went weirdly wobbly. I don't think I was putting all that much pressure on it, but when I managed to get indoors and put down my bag, violin, etc. and take a proper look I found that the plastic nib unit had snapped right through at the point where it screws into the metal barrel. In fact I had some difficulty in extracting the remaining stub, which was still firmly screwed in and flush with the end of the barrel!
In forty years I've never seen a pen fail like *that* -- I'm afraid I think it must have fractured at some point when dropped on an earlier occasion (I do remember dropping it fairly recently, although it was firmly capped at the time and has always been fine when that happened before).
I still have the old nib from the previous pen, so have switched back to that for the moment (I now have quite a graveyard of barrels and caps in varying states of batteredness), but it is pretty scratchy :(
And the end cap of the battery in my camera has come off; so far as I can tell, not because the battery is rotten, but simply because the glue attaching it has worn out, but it is obviously on its last legs like the rest of the camera. I managed to reattach it with Copydex, but since every time I take the SD card out the end of the battery gets pushed in too I have been using the camera's USB cable to transfer pictures instead, which requires the camera to be powered up all the time it is connected to the computer and of course uses up the battery faster as well as being slower to transfer. So I am having to recharge it more often and get the impression that it isn't holding charge very well in any case, which may or may not be because the end is loose.... It needs a new battery, but then the whole camera is on the way out and it seems silly to spend any more money on it when I could probably get a decent second-hand replacement for little more cost...
I also had to replace the battery in the cycle computer sensor/transmitter *again*, which I was not impressed by since it was less than a year since the last time and I really hadn't done all that much cycling! When I got the battery cover off I found that there was rust all down the seam of the battery, which may explain why it was failing but also demonstrates that that transmitter unit is *not* as waterproof as it ought to be, especially when it has to live permanently outside. Unfortunately I can't really do anything to seal it, because then I won't be able to get the cover off when I need to replace the battery. (It's bad enough that my alarm clock has the back held on with Sellotape... and the batteries in *that*, which have to power constant physical motion and actively ring the mechanical bell, last for years and years!)
The sole comfort was that I discovered that the batteries came in packs of two, so at least I still had the second one from last time I was forced to purchase a replacement; I'm not sure the wireless concept is cost-effective, though!
I was holding it between finger and thumb on my left hand after coming in from my latest walking trip (during which I had achieved the grand total of half a sentence of Roland de Céligny in the space of about ten minutes) while I fumbled to get out and use the door-key with my other hand, and it just went weirdly wobbly. I don't think I was putting all that much pressure on it, but when I managed to get indoors and put down my bag, violin, etc. and take a proper look I found that the plastic nib unit had snapped right through at the point where it screws into the metal barrel. In fact I had some difficulty in extracting the remaining stub, which was still firmly screwed in and flush with the end of the barrel!
In forty years I've never seen a pen fail like *that* -- I'm afraid I think it must have fractured at some point when dropped on an earlier occasion (I do remember dropping it fairly recently, although it was firmly capped at the time and has always been fine when that happened before).
I still have the old nib from the previous pen, so have switched back to that for the moment (I now have quite a graveyard of barrels and caps in varying states of batteredness), but it is pretty scratchy :(
And the end cap of the battery in my camera has come off; so far as I can tell, not because the battery is rotten, but simply because the glue attaching it has worn out, but it is obviously on its last legs like the rest of the camera. I managed to reattach it with Copydex, but since every time I take the SD card out the end of the battery gets pushed in too I have been using the camera's USB cable to transfer pictures instead, which requires the camera to be powered up all the time it is connected to the computer and of course uses up the battery faster as well as being slower to transfer. So I am having to recharge it more often and get the impression that it isn't holding charge very well in any case, which may or may not be because the end is loose.... It needs a new battery, but then the whole camera is on the way out and it seems silly to spend any more money on it when I could probably get a decent second-hand replacement for little more cost...
I also had to replace the battery in the cycle computer sensor/transmitter *again*, which I was not impressed by since it was less than a year since the last time and I really hadn't done all that much cycling! When I got the battery cover off I found that there was rust all down the seam of the battery, which may explain why it was failing but also demonstrates that that transmitter unit is *not* as waterproof as it ought to be, especially when it has to live permanently outside. Unfortunately I can't really do anything to seal it, because then I won't be able to get the cover off when I need to replace the battery. (It's bad enough that my alarm clock has the back held on with Sellotape... and the batteries in *that*, which have to power constant physical motion and actively ring the mechanical bell, last for years and years!)
The sole comfort was that I discovered that the batteries came in packs of two, so at least I still had the second one from last time I was forced to purchase a replacement; I'm not sure the wireless concept is cost-effective, though!