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When I was starting my degree (around 96) I went to the US for a week and bought a HP48Gx since they were cheaper there. This happened a few weeks after a Swiss
by pcardoso 6y ago
When I was starting my degree (around 96) I went to the US for a week and bought a HP48Gx since they were cheaper there. This happened a few weeks after a Swiss jet crashed departing NY and the reasons were not known at the time so the airport staff was very suspicious. When they saw the calculator and tried to do a simple test calculation and failed, I struggled to explain how use it, since it was also so new to me. Luckily I got 2 out of 1 1 + and I was let go... still have and love it.
- macintux 6y agoReminds me of the story of someone who took a Linux laptop through security; they wanted to see it boot, but didn't recognize the command line and were suspicious. The owner set PS1 to resemble a DOS shell prompt and they were satisfied.
- dehrmann 6y agoI remember flying with a bunch of hard drives out of SFO in 2002. I was a little worried security would get 9/11 worried about them. Maybe because it was SFO are are used to seeing tech people flying with odd stuff, they didn't care.
- lozaning 6y agoI worked in Mountain View and lived in Palm Springs for a while and used to commute back and forth through SFO/PSP. Im convinced you could take damn near anything through SFO tech wise, cause they've seen it all. Meanwhile explaining to the TSA people in Palm Springs why I've got 3 laptops, let alone 4 dozen cell phones was always a hassle and a half.
- KineticLensman 6y agoI flew into SFO in approx 1990 with some 3.5 inch floppy disks. The customs guy had to ask me what they were.
- dheera 6y agoHP48GX was the best calculator ever. I used one throughout my middle/high school. The best features, IMO, were (0) the IR emitter and (1) the ability to program it to switch ON at a specified time and run code. This means I could hide my calculator somewhere in a room before class started and program it to turn on halfway through class, turn the classroom TV on, turn the volume to max, and start wildly flipping to random channels. One teacher had all of us students put our hands up and walked around the room looking for who had a remote at their desk, and I remember watching that teacher's face of horror when the TV continued flipping channels as everyone had their hands up.