rlfj: Blog

Several readers found errors in my statement about the availability of hand-held calculators and memory in computers. Here’s both my memory & the history.

Calculators: Hand-held calculators may have been available in 1973, but they were still ludicrously expensive. Simple four function calculators cost over $100 in 1973 dollars and would have been useless at a tech school. An HP 35, with math and trig functions very useful at a school like RPI, ran $395. Considering that tuition at RPI in 1973 was about $3,500, that was over 10% of tuition! Nowadays that would be over $6,000 for a calculator! Back then, very few students had that kind of cash. Most of us waited for a couple of years before the price dropped enough we could actually afford one. My first few years I used a slide rule, and most teachers would not allow calculators during tests for another 2-3 years.

One of the major topics of conversation of the day was which was better, the Hewlett Packard calculators or the Texas Instruments models. The HP systems had a “reverse Polish notation” method compared to the normal arithmetic “infix notation” used by the TI systems. I could afford only a TI calculator (the TI 30 model became available in 1976 for only $25!) but lusted for the HP. I ended up learning Assembly language programming their descendants.

BTW, that cost of $3,500 a year for tuition (not including room, board, & books) is correct. Tuition rose to just over $4,000 my senior year and it was an absolute scandal! How times have changed!

Core memory: RPI had an IBM 360 in ‘73 and had just upgraded the memory with the core memory I described in the year before. By the time I graduated, they had upgraded the whole system to a 370 model. Such core memory was still sold as late as ’75. I even checked Wikipedia to make sure my memory wasn’t playing tricks.

I remember in high school taking classes in how to use a slide rule! We actually had a gigantic 10’ long slide rule hanging over the blackboard. I remember my father had a beautiful Keuffel & Esser duplex slide rule that I hankered for. By the time I got old enough to need it professionally, we had calculators.

So many people out there connected Mrs. Berzinski with Mrs. Robinson! I swear, when I started writing this portion of the story, I had completely forgotten the movie. She never even crossed my mind. I figured it was just an interesting way to get Carl laid. So, here’s to you, Mrs. Berzinski!

I have had several emails from fellow RPI students telling of their time at the college. Feel free to let me know.

Welcome back to the adventures of Carl Buckman! Good news for all you fans - Book Three is almost as long as the rest of the story so far.

As always, let me know when you find any errors or anachronisms. I’m not as smart as Carl, so these things can slip through. Thanks.

One comment that was made was: ‘Thank heavens you don’t have Carl going the Delta House route!’ Oh, if you only knew the truth! Delta House was mild compared to what I saw when I was in a frat! No crap, but I saw about 90% of the antics in that story.

And so our journey together ends. This story has been just as enjoyable to write as AFS was, and without the heavy political tones that some readers objected to. Like AFS, it ended up going places I never quite expected, but I think it concludes satisfactorily. If there was one overall theme to what people wanted to read, it was Grim vs. Candy Pants at the end; that was always my intention, and I think I did it properly.

Many readers wanted Grim to keep going from 2010, but I always wanted to end in a current time frame, taking down the villain. I had a wide range of suggestions of what Grim could do in the future – many chapters on Reaper babies, including lots of girls, and catching grief from the men in the family, with Grim delivering babies during a hurricane/snowstorm/shootout; Al Qaeda/ISIS/Mexican drug lords coming after Grim and/or his family; Grim as a guest lecturer/instructor at the Georgia Police Academy and/or the FBI Academy in Quantico; Grim and Kelly meeting/hosting/rescuing Tolley Hunter during a visit to Georgia; Grim’s life being made into a book and/or movie, like Audie Murphy’s; Grim and Candy Pants in a gigantic showdown. Those were just some of the suggestions. Many of these ideas had merit, but at some point a character becomes a caricature and, ultimately, a cartoon.

Still, Grim has been one of my most popular characters. He’ll be back for a couple of sequels. Just be patient. I’m returning to AFS for a bit.

A couple of readers pointed out that Atheringdon would almost certainly have been through Fort Benning at some point in the past. The point was that as an officer his experience would have been significantly different than from the enlisted trainees.

A few readers pointed out that Armor is actually at Fort Knox. Sorry folks, but Armor was at Fort Knox. In 2010, as part of the BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) program, The Armor School was moved to Benning.