I think I'll never get caught up on all these posts <sigh>...<br><br>I am brutally hard on watches for some reason and have destroyed every mechanical watch I've ever owned, including some spendy ones. I have been unable to kill a Casio G-Shock so far, though, and it's still using the original battery from early 1993... the beep is disabled on mine as well. Ugly watch and the watch bands of this sort don't hold up all that well - especially the attachment pins. I've gone through a lot of pins and several bands.<br><br>EDC pen is a Mont Blanc ballpoint for a variety of reasons.<br><br>"Woods" pen is a Diplomat Grip pressurized ballpoint ("space pen") plus an unsharpened #2 pencil (no paint or oil on the wood). Check out the Grip if you haven't seen one. Tough anodized aluminum barrel 3.3" OAL retracted and about 0.4" diameter. Small, tough, and writes very well on about anything. Seems to me that they run around $10 US. There is a bulkier (slightly more expensive) version that has an ergnomic rubberlike outsert around the body, but the one I carry is plain.<br><br>I consider my Palm M500 essential EDC that lies in another plane in-between the watch and the Mont Blanc. I won't consider a more bulky Palm device after getting spoilt by the M500 size. (Actually, the Palm goes in the woods as well, but I don't consider it critical - I just like it. Data is synched at least daily on two computers - work and home.)<br><br>Regards,<br><br>Tom<br><br>