Blue and Black

I’ve switched all my pens to blue ink. Sure, it might seem like a trivial change… but it’s made a great difference here in my working world of Mechanical Engineering.

You see, I work quite a bit with detailed drawings which are all printed on giant black and white plotters. When you’re making small revisions in a vast sea of black and white lines and text, the blue stands out a lot better than black. In fact, a good black pen will blend in perfectly with the ink drawings.

Some might make the argument for mechanical pencils, but, like rock and grain in a Catan without cities, those pencils are a hot commodity in our supply cabinets. Others use red or highlighters, but those colors aren’t as welcomed by the business community for official documents. Blue is the best of both worlds; it meets the standards of the corporate environment and provides a nice color differentiation on printed draft files.

Rock on blue ink.

10 thoughts on “Blue and Black

  • 2/27/2008 at 10:54 am
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    I use exclusively black ink when completing application review. No particular reason other than having started with black and keeping consistent. Maybe next year I will use blue.

    Also, no ball points.

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  • 2/27/2008 at 12:36 pm
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    I disagree…..Rock and Grain aren’t as great a commodity as Trees and Brick are.

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  • 2/27/2008 at 1:27 pm
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    Ahh, you’ll note I wrote in a “Catan without cities”

    For regular townships, I would agree. Tree and Brick are way better.

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  • 2/27/2008 at 1:31 pm
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    I haven’t played the game in years. I really miss board games, but I have no one to play them with until the kids are older.

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  • 2/27/2008 at 2:15 pm
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    I really like the “Blue/Black” Uni-ball Vision pens. Awesome color, although now I’ve switched to black.

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  • 2/27/2008 at 2:15 pm
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    I didn’t know you play Settlers!?! I LOVE that game!! We need to get together and play sometime!! :)

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  • 2/27/2008 at 8:40 pm
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    Suddenly I find myself thinking the only thing geekier than the post was the comments section, but I’m helpless to resist continuing the trend.
    I prefer black, it’s a better contrast to plain white paper. Marking up drawings I use red.
    While I don’t like to use nice pens at work, it’s kinda like Mitch Hedberg said – ” bought a seven dollar pen because I always lose pens and I got sick of not caring.”

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  • 2/28/2008 at 4:17 pm
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    R.I.P. Mitch…

    “I was in a casino, I was standing by the door, and a security guard came over and said “You’re gonna have to move. You’re blocking the fire exit.” As though if there was a fire, I wasn’t gonna run. If you’re flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit. Unless you are a table.”

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  • 3/3/2008 at 10:52 pm
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    When marking up drawings I like to use purple pencils.

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