disc I - journal for made of these studio

In the interest of doing my bookkeeping and other number-crunching exercises at a slightly more expedited pace, I finally gave in and bought myself a new calculator after years of neither owning nor using one.

The one I bought was the Texas Instruments TI-30X IIS Scientific Calculator (yes, that is its whole name, thank you very much and it’s right from the blister packaging) and…

Well.

NOTE: To the person who now owns the calculator that got stolen from me waaay back when: Can I have my old Casio scientific calculator back, please?

Sounds kind of funny, doesn’t it? But seriously, man! With the advent of all the new calculator ‘technology’? I really do miss my old Casio.

My old Casio was a half-metal and half-plastic hard-bodied scientific calculator with 90-someodd functions that: was thinner than two slimline CD jewel cases put together (and this included its case), had a single-line display, was solar and battery-powered, and had a hardshell sliding case.

It sounds like I’m gloating over what a fine specimen of a calculator that old Casio was and… I am, but the real selling point(s) of that old dinosaur is/are this/these:

Its single-line display delivered every calculation in a more-than-perfectly-readable format and if you just so happened to type in too many zeros at the end of that one number that you too-late realized read 397 MILLION and NOT 3 BILLION 970 MILLION, all you had to do was hit a conveniently placed backspace key that promptly erased that erroneous zero and turned your billions into the millions (boy, don’t I wish we could do that to the national debt!) that it was supposed to be. And the icing on the cake? It was completely affordable - even more affordable than the ones being sold now!

The younger generation probably thinks it’s funny that I mentioned the single-line display bit, but there’s a reason I stated it.

With the advent of new calculator technology and display capabilities, most scientific calculators - all, if you’re counting the ones of a reputable brand for sale in the office supply stores - now have two-line display capability and will - get this! - display fractions and square roots as they are displayed in text books.

I’m from the older generation of calculator users, so permit me a moment here to go, “As if middle school and high school kids can’t figure out that hitting ‘9′ and hitting the ’square root’ key and receiving a ‘3′ for an answer is the answer to ‘What is the square root of 9?’”

The visual designer in me can see how someone might think being able to see everything in all their fractioned and square rooted or cube rooted glory could be a useful thing, but the usability designer in me argues that the old calculator display methods WORKED FINE FOR YEARS and not only saved display space, but saved programming space as well.

It wasn’t broken, so why the hell did [they] go and ‘fix’ it?!

Oh, but of course! Usability reasons, of course! Kids don’t know how to read the single-line non-fraction-compliant screens and adults are apparently too dumb and/or lazy to read that little instruction SHEET that comes conveniently tucked into the case of the calculator!

To all that, I say phooey!

So what if a kid can’t use it? Here’s a newsflash! Scientific calculators - last I checked - were TOOLS NOT TOYS for the high school level students and the adults. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL-AGED KIDS DO NOT NEED CALCULATORS! … Or Blackberrys. Or laptops. … But that’s another rant for another time.

And if an adult can’t bother with taking two minutes to just READ the damned sheet of laminated paper that TELLS YOU just HOW THE FUNCTIONS WORK, then they need to stick with one of those plain and basic calculators! Additionally, if said adult doesn’t understand the ins and outs of doing finance-related calculations, then they need to get someone to teach them! Fiddling around with a calculator when you have no idea what you’re doing isn’t going to help and it might even give you some wrong answers!

Ugh.

Just… UGH.

And now, because some idiot decided that my Casio would be a fine thing to steal, I’m left trying to do bookkeeping and pixel-to-em conversions with a calculator that’s bloated in both ‘functionality’ and looks (and yes, I’m a minimalist; I definitely prefer my old Casio’s looks) and insists - amongst other things - on reassuring me that my fractions will calculate properly because it can display them with horizontal bars.

I. Don’t. WANT. OR NEED. Those. Horizontal. Bars!

Just give me my old punch-and-calculate display back!