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Tuesday, January 17, 2006 9:54 AM

Phone number and wife haven't changed in 11 years

There’s a sporting goods store that I’ve visited on occasion over the last 11 years. It’s a membership cooperative, which mails a percentage rebate check back to customers annually. I signed up as a member 11 years ago, which meant yet another card to
Posted by Calvin_Hsia | 10 Comments
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Wednesday, December 07, 2005 5:58 PM

What's the greatest invention of all time?

I read this from Raymond , which prompted this post. To qualify for greatness, an invention would have to affect the most people and benefit humankind in a big way When pondering this question, I’ve heard things like: Wheel Transistor Computer Printing
Posted by Calvin_Hsia | 29 Comments
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Monday, October 24, 2005 10:02 AM

Do you know everything about Factorials?

When I was in 7 th grade at Amity Junior High School in Orange Connecticut , I gave a presentation on Factorial numbers. Here’s some interesting code: FOR i = 1 TO 80 ?i,Factorial(i), SQRT ( 2 * PI ()*i)*(i/ EXP ( 1 ))^i ENDFOR PROCEDURE Factorial(n)
Posted by Calvin_Hsia | 3 Comments
Thursday, April 14, 2005 3:32 PM

Very Old Program

I was doing some spring cleaning and came across a computer printout of a program I wrote in August 1974, or about 31 years ago! That brings back a lot of memories. Coincidentally, a couple coworkers were discussing the CaSing of computer languages. What
Posted by Calvin_Hsia | 6 Comments
Friday, April 01, 2005 11:30 AM

April Fool's Pranks

In the spirit of April Fool’s Day, I was talking to my daughter about some pranks that took place in my college days. I mentioned the abundance of liquid nitrogen and what happens to a flower immersed in it for a few seconds: it becomes very brittle and
Posted by Calvin_Hsia | 5 Comments
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Tuesday, October 12, 2004 12:54 PM

The Plane Man

A couple years ago, despite the airspace security implications just after 9/11, an airplane flew over Microsoft campus for about an hour towing an advertising banner that said “Thanks to Microsoft © 10 years of FoxPro!”. . Last week at DevCon, I was privileged
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Thursday, August 26, 2004 2:32 PM

Anachronisms

My 7 year old daughter was playing with a toy Fisher Price dial telephone. She asked “How does this work?” I had to explain how we had to “dial” a phone. Remember slide rules? (I still use a slide rule: they’re great when you want to have a custom lookup
Posted by Calvin_Hsia | 17 Comments
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Thursday, August 12, 2004 2:21 PM

Why was the original IBM PC 4.77 Megahertz?

In 1979, I had a summer job on Long Island , NY designing a circuit board for the front panel of a satellite control system. That was the time Apple II and Radio Shack were top selling computers. We were designing a circuit board that had an embedded
Posted by Calvin_Hsia | 28 Comments
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Monday, June 28, 2004 2:30 PM

Thirty years ago, computers were quite different

In the old days, we had to use a typewriter. I asked if I could use the ASR-33 teletype machine which connected to our high school PDP-8 computer, but it only printed in UPPER CASE on rolls of yellow paper. Did you ever wonder the origin of the term Carriage
Posted by Calvin_Hsia | 6 Comments
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Tuesday, June 15, 2004 5:42 PM

Independence Day for blogging

Since July 4 th is nearing, I thought it would be appropriate to start my independent blog. In this first entry, I’ll add a few pointers to prior entries that I made to our VSData team blog. Solving a customer problem is my blog narrative describing an
Posted by Calvin_Hsia | 2 Comments
 
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