Re: Re: PI to 104 Decimal Pla
By: Bob Worm to Mike Powell on Sat Aug 30 2025 04:04 pm

You just gave me a flashback to when I put some fencing up in our garden. I smugly added in one more post than panels because I'd been taught in school that people often mistakenly think you need the same number of posts as panels then end up a post short.

In computer science they talk similarly about border conditions. Or, as one person put it, The "Banana Problem".

"I know how to spell 'Banana', I just don't know how to stop..."
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Re: Re: PI to 104 Decimal Pla
By: Mike Powell to ED VANCE on Fri Aug 29 2025 10:40:02

The other keys... log, sin, cos, and tan... I know what those mean but have no idea why I'd ever need them. :D

Heh, I know the feeling. My Sharp EL-5100 had all that and then some, but I ended up using it mostly for my accounting classes. I didn't care. I had the coolest calc in class.
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When it came to putting the fence up I still found myself one post short because, like a dingbat, I failed to factor in that the fence has a gap in it to access some steps. So instead of n+1 posts I really needed n+2...

When I called up the fencing supplier to order another post mount she said

Di

you forget to add one?'... 'No, but... yes'.

That most certainly sounds like a boo-boo that I would make!

Probably why I try not to have to put up fences. :D

Mike


* SLMR 2.1a * Engineers: often wrong, seldom in doubt.
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Most of what I use the calculator on my desk for it converting decimal
to hex and vice versa. Fidonet technology, when passing files back and
forth, uses the hex representation of the decimal network and node
number for file names, and figuring out which file goes to who can be
tricky.

That has always frustrated me because we dealt with hex at work all the
time, and the hex values I see on an FTN do *not* equal what we used at
work. Granted, ours were *usually* EBCDIC but even the ASCII values are
not "right."

How did you do it on a calculator? That might be handy to know.

Although, Synchronet's echocfg utility, where you define nodes, now
displays the net/node number in hex. Handy!

Yes it does.

Mike

* SLMR 2.1a * I wish Noah had swatted those two mosquitoes.....
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The fx-82B I mentioned in a previous post has one of those, and it
apparently doubles as a squaring key. I probably have used that square
root key some, but not in a long time.

The other keys... log, sin, cos, and tan... I know what those mean but have no idea why I'd ever need them. :D

Mike

* SLMR 2.1a * Forget 0 to 60. It's 95 to 55 that counts!

my favorite calc. is a Sharp EL-501W Scientific Calculator
It has all of those keys on it

I will occasionally grab the TI Math on keys book when I do fancy calculations. Ed
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Mike Powell wrote to KURT WEISKE <=-

That has always frustrated me because we dealt with hex at work all the time, and the hex values I see on an FTN do *not* equal what we used at work. Granted, ours were *usually* EBCDIC but even the ASCII values
are not "right."

"I know what binary is. Jesus Christ! I memorized the hexadecimal
times tables when I was 14 writing machine code, okay? Ask me what 9
times F is. It's fleventy-five. I don't need you telling me what binary
is"

Erlich Bachman, from "Silicon Valley"





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That has always frustrated me because we dealt with hex at work all the time, and the hex values I see on an FTN do *not* equal what we used at work. Granted, ours were *usually* EBCDIC but even the ASCII values
are not "right."

"I know what binary is. Jesus Christ! I memorized the hexadecimal
times tables when I was 14 writing machine code, okay? Ask me what 9
times F is. It's fleventy-five. I don't need you telling me what binary
is"

Erlich Bachman, from "Silicon Valley"

LOL! I have only been able to see the first season of that one. They
aired it on one of the cable networks after it was a season or two old. I
was hoping they'd keep doing it as it is a trip.


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"I know what binary is. Jesus Christ! I memorized the hexadecimal
times tables when I was 14 writing machine code, okay? Ask me what 9
times F is. It's fleventy-five. I don't need you telling me what binary
is"

Erlich Bachman, from "Silicon Valley"

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Ready ng Your post to Mike had me to grab the calc to see what 9 times $F is. &87 or 135 decimal.
.

Back at work there was a Remote Control station that was coded in Octal.
I was just learningabout Hexadecimal and knowing that helped me figure out that 3 Bit Code.
While I still was working, a friend I taked to on the telepone had got hiredas a Electronic Repairman for a Company, and he was telling me about having a problem understandng Octal that the company's Service Manuals used.
I helped him a ittle by telling him about how I adjusted to learnng about Octal.

I like HEX better than OCTAL , but having a calc that has options for them (which I wish was available in the 1970's) makes doing the conversion much much easier.
Yes, I had to use pen and paper learning Octal.

I memorized the Decimal Table on the back of Double Q notebook (12 X 12) in school but You outdid me by learnng the HEX Multiple Table. NO, I ain't gonna try learning that.
Ed
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