Jim, the Corvette chose to give me a little followup job. The speedometer connection only works after everything warms up. At first it tells me I'm not moving and then tells me I'm driving erratically, going from 0 to 20 in a split second when the tach says I'm doing a flat 30mph. Eventually it settles down and gives a real reading. I was willing to live with that issue but when I parked the Vette in the driveway for an hour or so, it peed transmission fluid on the driveway. Not exactly lemonade from lemons but I'm going to drain the transmission, replace the ordinary pan with a shiny new aluminum one and refill it with old school B&M Trick Shift.
Sorry to hear the **** outlet didn't deliver. I limit my visits to the soft core Habitat for Humanity ReStore outlets. The closest one attracts mostly women but the one a dozen miles away has a large ******** guy section.
Andy, thanks for stopping by. My brother **** cast a huge shadow when it came to mathematics. He could do square roots in his head and felt bad that I couldn't. He didn't need to use the slide rule my father gifted him when he was 5 or 6 so he gave it to me as a crutch. It was the little one that didn't have a line in glass thing. He thought showing me how to use in once would imprint it in my mind. I was able to admire the joinery in the wooden "toy."Good reading as always, Bob.
I started engineering school totally clueless. My wife, a math major, had a one sided plastic slide rule she got in high school physics class. The cursor was about 1/8" wide. Nonetheless it got me through engineering school. She bought me a Post Versalog (it's around here someplace) my senior year but really too late to use it much. The toy rule carried the day.
I too lusted after an HP 35 but could never come up with $35 much less $350. I did manage an HP 49, 49 step programmable my first year out of college. You could do a lot with just 49 steps. I eventually bought an HP41C, with thermal printer and extra memory. Like the Versalog, too late to be of much use as I was mainly using programs on the company's minicomputer. We did take our gas hydraulics program for pipeline design to Tehran in 1977. It took a full box of cards. Our computer guy went along and the Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) managed to get us use of the twin 360's at the University of Tehran. We could start about 6:00PM and the operators left and told us to turn out the lights and lock up when we left.
Past that I'm lost around computers.
My first electronic calculator was a gift from IBM. I saved IBM money by reformatting the Corporate Security manual so it used a fourth of the paper in each copy (30,000 copies each year) so I was given an "Excellence" award. The calculator could do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division with a memory function I was able to conquer in a matter of weeks.
I had an aha moment in an MBA Finance course. Accounting discrepancies divisible by 9 point to a transposition error. The vast majority of my math errors turned out to be from transposition and that problem lingers to this day. Phones with digital displays have all but eliminated my wrong number calls. My remaining fat **** mis-dials may be fixed with diet.
I don't want to mislead anyone about my computer knowledge. In 1981 I worked in the same off-site building as the core PC development team. I prepared a cost estimate for the documentation and it was rejected (actual cost turned out to be an order of magnitude more than my estimate). Four years later they put me in charge of the software side of the documentation. IBM didn't offer PCs in the Employee Purchase program for the first five years and I was unwilling to spend more for a PC than I paid for my '72 Corvette big block. Instead I bought a smart typewriter. The Quietwriter 7, with an adapter card to enable spell check and an adapter for the optional display head cost me $1,240.17 with a 0% interest loan to be paid back through a paycheck deduction. I know what I paid because I save receipts for my worst purchase decisions. The motherboard went belly up two decades later and a used replacement would cost more than a new laser printer.
Rian, taking care of stuff is a side-effect of poverty. Paying to replace stuff you didn't take care of really hurts.
That isn't a photo of mine but mine was in at least that good shape when I gifted it to my son-in-law when he graduated from college with a PhD.
Michael, we returned from a fishing trip with three large Barracuda, thinking we would have a feast. A very kind friend told us they were not great eating and might have high levels of ciguatoxin from eating parrotfish. Told my son to bury them in the sand between the boat parking runways in the side yard. Woke the next morning to a complete blackout of the master bedroom window on that side of the house. Went outside to discover a billion black flies relaxing on every surface near what had to be the shallowest grave in history.
Early in my tech writing career we had a support staff that was supposed to do all our final draft typing. These editorial assistants had to give up their IBM Executive typewriters and use Magnetic Tape Selectric typewriters. They showed their displeasure with the new machines by slowing down. The second time I missed a key schedule I started using their machines after they left for the day. I didn't get paid for overtime so no one complained and I never missed another milestone. Eventually they gave me my own machine to use. Turned out the editorial assistants were paid more than me because of my failure to meet deadlines. That machine helped double my salary in three years.
Mark, it's funny how my financial pain threshold has changed over the years. When it cost $2.50 to fill the car with gas, $5 was my threshold (didn't think twice spending that on something I wanted). When a similar fill-up started costing $50, my threshold became $100. Pretty sure I would still cringe a little buying that calculator.
Gilr, if you ever worry you are keeping too many relics, dig around in your garage. If you have a dwell meter in a closet or drawer, you might be a relic hoarder. I was pretty proud of myself for throwing out my second, backup, dwell meter. My 1968 GTO was my first new car and unlike it's beater predecessors, required a dwell meter to set the points (OK, the points could be set with a feeler gauge but I failed to mention that to my wife). The Styrofoam box is a little beat up...
...but the meter, cables and accessories are still in good shape.
Tapio, nothing very cool going on. Citibank still requires phone calls so I can: "Press 4 to be ignored."Hi Bob! And Happy New Year! How have you been? Any cool projects?
I saw this and thought of you, there's a new challenger for a Florida man
Have a great week and stay safe
My father told me not to use that nutcracker while he was in the room.
Cody, every time I looked at one of those calculators that cartoon balloon with swirling mathematical symbols formed at the back of my eyes. If I owned one it would be in a drawer with its alkaline batteries slowly destroying it.
JB, I do feel like I missed out on a fun career but I doubt I would have gotten to travel the world for IBM and AOL. I would have been the mediocre engineer among superstars. Instead I was the technical writer with a burning desire to learn about the newest stuff. You can't afford to let the people who make it work wander off. Writers are on the tiny totem poles.
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