Comments on: Geezer Time

By: mkilby

mkilby — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:23:25 +0000

@ Everyone (1-47) … For those of you who have been following the saga, the CIDU Wizard waved his magic wand, and we all lived happily every after. Jim’s program is (or was) a nifty little gadget, although the awkwardness of launching a DOS box would make it difficult to use on a regular basis for a current system (I tested it on my archival OS/2 system, since Jim already indicated that Windows would handle it without problems).

By: Jeff S.

Jeff S. — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:00:44 +0000

I remember those $100 calculators. I took mine apart and lost some of the springs that went under the buttons (which made an electrical connection and made the calculator WORK). My parents were not pleased at all.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:56:04 +0000

@Nicole #44 — Thanks Nicole, that would work but CIDU Bill has solved the problem. mkilby, I’m on the case.

By: Chakolate

Chakolate — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:59:27 +0000

FeelinOld #41 - Wonderful! Whenever I see that, it just gives me a warm feeling for the rest of the week.

By: Nicole

Nicole — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:17:29 +0000

Jim #42/ mkilby #36

A very simple solution to your dillema would be for mkilby to set up a throw away address on gmail/hotmail or any of the other free email providers. mkilby posts the email address, Jim sends the file to the throw away address. mkilby downloads the file and deletes the throw away address. Voila

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:38:24 +0000

We bought six bottles of wine at the supermarket recently to get a 10% discount. We put the wine at the front of everything so the total would be easy to get and the cashier appreciated that and reached for a printed table so he could get the discount amount. It took him a while to find it too.

I used to program an IBM 1401 that had 4 tape drives, no disk at all and 8,000 6-bit BCD characters (not bytes) of core memory. Real core memory too. Big honkin’ donuts that you could see by opening the cover.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:34:03 +0000

@mkilby (36) - That would work (to have CIDU Bill send me your email address, then I’ll send you the program. Since we haven’t heard from CIDI Bill yet maybe there’s a “contact me” button around here somewhere . . . there it is. Gee, it goes to FAQ’s and “Don’t’s” and I don’t see how to contact him. Over to you mkilby, hope you’re smarter than me.

By: FeelinOld

FeelinOld — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:16:38 +0000

Chakolate #38
Occasionally however you do get a surprise, I was in a small store a while ago when a teenage girl who appeared to fit the typical stereotype (Sullen, pierced etc.) took over at the till when the power failed and proceeded to check people out hand writing receipts and never even seemed to slow down when she put in the totals and tax (admittedly our tax is a pretty easy 5%) when she got to me I’d already done the math in my head for the 11 items I had and she was bang on in a fraction of the time. I think we actually got through faster then we normally would have because people couldn’t use their fricken debit cards…

Of course that brings up another sore point, whatever happened to counting change back. So what if the machine told you the change was 11.47, that doesn’t mean the handful of bills and coins you just dumped on me is actually 11.47. (This wasn’t the case above, she did count back my change)

By: Chakolate

Chakolate — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:43:07 +0000

Nicole - you’re absolutely right. A couple of years ago a math professor and I went to the campus coffee shop, and the electronic cash register conked out just as we reached it. He and I both did the adding in our heads, including the tax, and told her what the amount was, and she just kept trying to push buttons. She finally called over the manager, who got paper and pencil and struggled with it for a while, and finally decided to believe us, since he couldn’t figure it out properly.

5th grade math. It’s 5th grade math, people. ARGH!

By: Nicole

Nicole — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:30:46 +0000

Chakolate #38

Some people have trouble doing simple math WITH a calculator. I was at a dance a few years ago, and they had set up a small cafeteria, sandwiches and the like. My partner and I grabbed a sandwich each, a can of soda and maybe a cookie. Ringing people out was a 17 year old … with a calculator. After she took three tries at adding up our purchases with the calculator, I finally held up each item asking how much each was, adding the cost in my head. When I told her the total she looked as though I had just made an elephant appear. I find this story frightening.