Monday, August 14, 2006

If it wasn't for dissapointment...


Today saw the end of my most recent experiment (aka: work-diversion). The experiment's failure to produce the desired results was another blow to the idea of a magical and meaningful universe. (Actually, the experiment might have been successful, but my ability to interperet anything magical or meaningful failed.)

For four (4) weeks I have logged the messages that my TI-30X Solar calculator displayed to me each morning. It seems that, overnight, when the building lights in my office were turned off, the calculator would abandon it's default zero and take on new and indecipherable messages in its monochromatic LED display. For example:

July 27th, 2006:
Functions activated by the TI-30X: M1, 2ND, DEG
Display Text: nF(<-upside down F)110811(<-these 2 ones appeared closer together as the right and left walls of a zero digit).8n0

Some days the calculator would start the day blank as if to pause. The last three days of the test the calculator began the day with zero, so I assume that whatever it was trying to tell me has concluded.

Anyway, I can decipher no patterns from these 20 days of text and, as I said before, fear that this says more about me than my calculator. I poured over my notes this weekend and thought I might come close to Truth, but alas it isn't so.

3 Comments:

Blogger Diptherio said...

First question, did you scour the troubleshooting section of your owners manual to see if this is a common occurance? Did you talk to any techies who might have run into this before and can explain it? In other words, have you verified that this is definately unexplanable phenomena?

If so, it would seem that you need to post your notes (dangerously close to a trademark violation there) so that we can get a few more brains working on this one. Maybe you could scan them in or something so we can see what the message looked like without all the post facto parenthetical addendums.

August 15, 2006 6:14 PM  
Blogger iHabitus said...

Since the calculator is second-hand (from whose hand I know not), there is no manual to speak of. As for techies, anyone who actually calls themselves a techie would probably look down their noses at the crude and antiquated TI-30X. I just can't imagine this phenomena is part of the poor TI's programming.

I'll try to scan the notes and post them. They, like the cracked TI-30X, aren't pretty. I'll need to retranscribe some of them since I made the calculator notes on the same pad of paper that I keep my work notes on.

Remember that awful Jodie Foster movie Contact? Remember when her character figured out that the schematics from the space transmissions were patterns that had to be interpreted in three dimentions? No? Well, that is what I figure that is what I have to do: fold the notes to reveal some hidden pattern.

Anyway, you'll see...

August 16, 2006 1:25 PM  
Blogger Diptherio said...

Um, was maybe a janitor fucking with you or something? I mean, let's cover our bases before we start making origami.

August 17, 2006 4:22 PM  

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