Ah, yes. My old Casio calculator.
I was always a Texas Instruments man, since I was about ten years old and bought my first scientific calculator. That trusty original-version TI-34 lasted right through high school, university and my first job.
Unfortunately, I had to buy a Casio because my TI finally started malfunctioning and I literally couldn’t find anything else. I had the Casio for a decent length of time, but just couldn’t come to terms with the way it did things, or the tiny little buttons. I kept making mistakes.
One night, I was working late on a rush assignment for a demo we were going to do a couple of days later, and tried to calculate some performance estimates. Mistakes all the way. Again.
I hurled that little sod of a machine straight out my open office door and quietly smiled to myself as I listened to the three bounces and assorted smashing noises. Then I fired up a spreadsheet for the calculations, finished the job and went home to shave and eat breakfast before coming back to help my project manager integrate my code into the demo.
In the meantime, my colleagues found the remnants of the Casio - and the dent in the wall - as they came into work. Yep: I hadn’t cleaned up the wreckage and the office had a new Phlogiston story.
A few days later, I was the proud owner of some new TI calculators from EBay. I have never been so much as tempted to hurl a calculator since
I still bought spares, though, to keep Casio out of my life for as long as possible. Lesson learned.
That said, I hope my TI stash lasts a long time, because I really don’t like their modern product lines. I just want a sensible, single-line, solar-powered LCD scientific calculator with some engineering extras. No multi-line displays, no equations, no graphics, no fancy frippery. Yet no one seems to do that anymore.
Meh.
…
Darn it, those kids are on my lawn again!