OT: Aw s....

There are many HP clones for PCs out there, including 11C and 12Cs.

I bought a 45 my Senior year in college ('73). It still works, sorta, but I later replaced it with an 11C, which I liked even better. I've used an 11C clone on my Android phones for five years, or so. I just bought a used 11C from Amazon, too (shipped today). We'll see if its condition warranted the $100. ;-)

I've used a 35S for ten years. It's just OK. It's the best calculator made today but that's not saying much.

I bought a Post Versalog, my Freshman year ('70) and replaced it with the HP45 my senior year. By '78, I highly doubt that anyone there still had a slipstick. It was just too limiting.

Call us that again and you won't be able to take a shit or wash your hands.

LOL

Mexicans immigrants have taked over things like painting and construction. The painters used to be Irish, and now one Irish guy has a crew of Mexican painters. Except on Chinese projects, where most of the workers are Chinese.

Housework, gardening, kid-care, and such are largely Mexican immigrants too. Next-gen Mexicans, the immigrants kids, are just like any other kids, speak standard English and get engineering degrees, whatever. Unlike certain minorities that I shouldn't name.

Official HP emulators

Cheers

Framing and roofing carpentry is largely Mexican but finish carpenters rarely are. It's a much higher skilled job.

That's probably true with legals not so much, that I've seen anyway, with illegals. The legals tend to be more skilled to start with.

Bought a TI58 in 1977 for undergrad but by 1981 I was tired of the size and weight and bad TI buttons so I tried a Sharp EL512 because the bookstore had one, and loved it, fits a shirt pocket and got me through grad school. Has the hyperbolic functions and inverses you want, is programmable, and there are three on ebay, one for $9 (all used, of course):

----- Regards, Carl Ijames

Of course.

Mine was K&E ...

Log Log Deci-Trig

Unfortunately, sitting on a shelf for 40+ years the leather case stained the rule and disintegrated the cursor :-(

This one is still functional...

and was my favorite... you can't "run off the end" ;-)

Before I bought my first PC (386+387, for $6K) I had this...

...Jim Thompson

I remember before '80 pocket calcs were forbidden during exams in my high school here in France. Years later I bought the only one calc I've never had. HP11C, a rock solid, always serving me today.

My Sharp EL-515s got me thru my first 2 years of college. Its beat up, bad solar connection. But generally works for stuff in the home shop. Gee, its 30+ yrs old.

Cheers

I use the Casio fx-300MS, sometimes available at Staples, etc., or buy online for $8 to $10. It has a hyp button giving access to your functions.

Thanks, Win! ...Jim Thompson

A Mexican took my job. Seriously but not...

I had already left, with me and another top tech switching jobs. I saved ov er 30 miles of driving a day and he saved even more. I HATE driving, which is a damn shame because I used to really enjoy it.

But the guy is here legally. The guy who replaced me somehow got a gig as g eneral manager of a pretty busy hardware store. When he quit I went back a little bit, splitting my time between the old job and new.

The Mexican came from Tennessee and is a fairly decent tech. Not quite top notch but by the time he got there it was flat screens and replacing boards for the most part. But none of them could do audio like me. And that next job I traded into, they couldn't do high end audio either, i fact I bought my Phase linear there dirt cheap because they couldn't fix it, and I was no t an audio guy there, they wanted me strictly for the bigscreens. I found m ismatched outputs, which is not good when there are three sets of them in p arallel per channel. Song and a dance, $40 and then $60 worth of silicon la ter I got me a $500 amp, and a matching preamp to boot.

I love incompetence. I also got a little bit of business from the far place I used to work because they could not do audio. I did audio there toward t he end but they got in too many of those frack (fake rack/all in one) syste ms. I can't stand those things. In fact I want everything separate.

Enough ramblement, I just happened to have some spare time...

I did some finish carpentry. I learned by watching a guy with 51 years expe rience. Most people have a hard time grasping the the concept of measure on ce, cut twice. That is the opposite of most other things but there are many times you do it that way to get the fit more perfect.

I also usually did it when it was to be stained, not painted. That means I hand picked the lumber. And then another thing people do not get is that yo u stain it before it gets cut. That way you can match it.

I have actually made the moulding as well. Nothing really fancy, but there was nothing at the lumberyard the customer wanted. So I got some one by wha tevers, pulled out the router and said "How about this". That one time it g ot painted because it was outdoors. Wish I had pictures of that.

With Mexicans and a few others, you get a one trick pony. I can do many dif ferent things. Except for the roofing and the foundation I can completely b uild you a house. I used to flip cars. Of course there's the electronics, a nd I do know (very) basic machining.

But if you talk about Polish, Germans, Swedes and a few others, all this is like it comes natural to them. Fix their own cars, even TV sets in the old days when it was not board swapping. Home repairs. I bet there aren't many "handymen" in those countries. Here, people pay Rotorooter $100 for fiftee n minutes work to change the thingie in the toilet. (love those technical t erms)

I had a couple of Russian guys visit me once, guys I met in Moscow, and they wound up staying with us a couple of years. One went home eventually, one is still in the USA.

One day they were driving around in my car and saw an auto junkyard. They were amazed... there are no junkyards in Russia, apparently. They bargained with the guy for an old Peugeot and convinved him to let them fix it in the junkyard. They did, and stole a bunch of radios and batteries too. They sold the Peugeot for twice what they paid for it, and kept doing that, buying junkers and fixing and selling them. They made a bunch of money.

They fixed everything that we had, stuff we would have tossed.

I do some woodworking and always finish the wood before I assemble the widget. Glue is easier to clean off finished wood than unfinished wood. Glue is also a finish (once you get glue on it, you're finished).

I've done roofing. I'd never even think about doing it again. What a PITA!

Many of them were highly skilled before they came here. We don't want skilled immigrants any more. They might vote the wrong way.

While I haven't hired a plumber to fix a toilet, though I absolutely hate any plumbing. Things never come apart like they're supposed to and disasters aren't unheard of. When I discovered Dremels and cutoff wheels, toilet repair became a possibility. ;) We just hired a plumber to replace the kitchen faucet and four bathroom faucets.

I can understand grade schools banning calculators (but they don't). I don't understand high schools and colleges. The EE department embraced calculators immediately. Some of the more mechanical departments didn't and AIUI the Dean had to referee a big fight between departments. $400 was a lot of money in '73 but so was college.

The 11C is my favorite, too. I just ordered one. ;-)

to 17 years old) "Bacalaureat" before University. I remember pocket calcs were strictly forbidden during exams in maths and physics because as profs were saying us, better to be familiar with magnitude of numbers before entering anything in a calculator ...

During the courses obviously we do as we want ... I have purchased my HP11C the first year at the University.

Habib.

There is a lot to be said for that attitude. I used to be very good at estimating pretty complicated formulas, but lost that ability not long after I started using a calculator. It's not a huge deal because I always have a calculator with me but it's hard to know when I've really fumbled the keyboard.

As I said elsewhere, I bought one in the '80s but evidently someone liked it better than I did. I've used an 11C emulator on my phone for five years and I just ordered a used one from Amazon. Great calculator.

My HP11C has cost me an arm ! At this time I have had borrow my Father the money. From then NOBODY on the Earth is allowed to use it (even my children when they were small even my wife to do some sort of ... 26 +

NOBODY i said ;-)

Habib.

PS: Surprisingly I caught myself as a sentimental ...