[ale] OT - Portable Drive

[List]

>>
>>
>> My father is an engineer; I got a slide rule (new) when I was in grade
>> school, but I already had calculators. It's packed in a box
>> somewhere... gotta find that thing. I stumbled into an amazing
>> collection of relatively modern HP calcs (all LCD, no LED), and I have
>> a number of cool Sharp and Casio calcs as well. No TIs... mostly
>> through coincidence, I think.
>
> I learned to program on a TI-58 back in 1978 or so, and was
> hooked from then on :-)
>
> -- JK
>

My father (also an engineer) had a TI-55 which he was very fond of.  
I'll never forget coming home one quarter and listening to him grouse 
how he could not write a particular program, because he needed two more 
program steps (the calculator only supported 32 steps).  I told him to 
let me look at it.  I did a little loop optimization and reduced it to 
28 steps total.  He looked at the program (on paper) and said "No way - 
that can't work."  I said "Just type it in and try it."  It worked.  He 
was astonished.  I was pleased.

-Tom