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[smirk]

Goddamnit laptop you willOBEY me or Iwillendyou. I will rrrrip your cords from the wall and cast_youwailing into the dark ofthe ^night. I willcoat your boards in gasoline and laugh _loudandterrible intotheflames if youwillnotOBEYME.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Laptops are definitely not made to be worked on at home. Especially a creaky 2005 model. So I'm gonna need to just accept hardware failure (motherboard, I think, and possibly other things) and probably get a new one. Hello, Culture of Disposable Everything! I loathe you.

[Neonivek]

It depends on the Laptop. I prefer the larger laptops over the smaller ones.

[PyroDesu]

There is an initial big booster than I'm thinking of scrapping. Four of them, attached to the next stage, which is four small boosters attached to the center rocket body. Two stages there. The rocket body is the third. Higher up on the rocket is another set of four small boosters, and then another set higher up still. These four sets of boosters get me out into orbit, and the center rocket (Which is in three parts, large engine to get into orbit, 50 engine to get into STABLE orbit aimed at the moon, another 50 engine to land/take off.) gets me to where I need to go. It still needs some refinement. I need a BIT more fuel for the final stage, but then I'd have to completely redesign the booster stages, as they just perfectly get me into orbit now, with no room for error.

Oh, I forgot. I have a set of six Sepratrons on the lander stage that are INTENDED to be used in emergencies to get one nice burn, or to possibly get me into orbit off the moon perhaps. Still purely experimental, as I haven't gotten that far yet. I doubt they provide enough thrust to get me any real benefit anywhere but orbit, but I want to find out.

If that's all in your surface-to-orbit, not counting payload (everything from the 50-engines and up), then you're WAY over-complicating it.

Noting that my game is modded (with some nomenclature overhaul done by me, as well as fixing/tweaking the nuclear engines, I have KW Rocketry and mechJeb (yes, I cheat with an autopilot. Sue me. I like my perfectly circular orbits.)):
My basic surface-to-orbit booster is much simpler: Central column, 2m size. Pair of the largest fuel tanks in that category, and then the most powerful engine for that size category. Hex/Oct-radial-mount, 1m size, 2 or 3 of the largest fuel tanks in that size category, with fuel ducts leading to the central column, and the most powerful engine of that category (and some struts, to prevent wobble). About midway through the lower atmosphere/beginning of the mid atmosphere, the radial-mounts drop away, leaving a fully-fueled central column to boost me the rest of the way and make a proper orbit with.

Hasn't really failed me yet. Oh, and dump the seperatrons. They're not good for much.

[smirk]

I got 20-odd screws in 7 different sizes out of it, and thought I was doing fairly well until I ran into connectors the dis-connecting of which would have required special adhesive to reverse. Ribbon tapes, mostly. Also - It's so alien in there. I know my way around the inside of a desktop, but in this case that's like training for lemur surgery by hacking open hobos in an alleyway. I'll likely set it aside to properly experiment on later, but I need a working laptop yesterday. Ah well.

[BlackFlyme]

Mathematics has become a joke. It's much more like calculator class. We aren't even given equations. We can get the answers, but no-one can state how or why we got them.

Our calculators have special buttons that record things like payments per year, interest rate, and our present/future values. We simply enter in the respective numbers then ask the calculator the value that is missing and it spits out the answer. We aren't learning, and people who don't want to run out and buy the special $50+ calculator get shafted.

My engineering calculator can do infinitely more things than the one required for this class, costs less than half of the one I need, and is basically worthless to me because it lacks the functions of the other one and we aren't given the damned equations! The textbook doesn't even have any equations in it either.

The specialty calculator would be no different than one I could get in a dollar store if it weren't for those extra buttons. It cannot even show more than one number at a time. Every time you press a function key, the current number on the screen vanishes, and it waits for you to enter a new one. My engineering calculator can show me entire complex functions, and can even remember older functions I put in, and allow me to retrieve them!

[Lagslayer]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Mathematics has become a joke. It's much more like calculator class. We aren't even given equations. We can get the answers, but no-one can state how or why we got them.

Our calculators have special buttons that record things like payments per year, interest rate, and our present/future values. We simply enter in the respective numbers then ask the calculator the value that is missing and it spits out the answer. We aren't learning, and people who don't want to run out and buy the special $50+ calculator get shafted.

My engineering calculator can do infinitely more things than the one required for this class, costs less than half of the one I need, and is basically worthless to me because it lacks the functions of the other one and we aren't given the damned equations! The textbook doesn't even have any equations in it either.

The specialty calculator would be no different than one I could get in a dollar store if it weren't for those extra buttons. It cannot even show more than one number at a time. Every time you press a function key, the current number on the screen vanishes, and it waits for you to enter a new one. My engineering calculator can show me entire complex functions, and can even remember older functions I put in, and allow me to retrieve them!

It's all downhill from here.

[Descan]

Bluh.

On the other hand, I need a new calculator. What Eng. Calc. did you buy? :3

[lemon10]

Was checking through mods because I had a question about one of them (namley: WHERE DID ALL MY DAMN ITEMS GO). While searching through the installers to see which component of which mod it was from, I accidently pressed 'y' for something. It installed halfway before I could stop it. Since it was such a big mod, I now have to spend half a hour waiting for it to reinstall properly.

[BlackFlyme]

Bluh.

On the other hand, I need a new calculator. What Eng. Calc. did you buy? :3

It's a bit late to go rifling through my stuff right now, but I know it's a Casio, and that it is pretty big. Solar powered, too. Though most calculators are.

[Descan]

Mine isn't.

Edit: If you can get back to me (via PMs) when you do have time, I will create love letters out of robots and explosives to you.

[Kadzar]

Mathematics has become a joke. It's much more like calculator class. We aren't even given equations. We can get the answers, but no-one can state how or why we got them.

Our calculators have special buttons that record things like payments per year, interest rate, and our present/future values. We simply enter in the respective numbers then ask the calculator the value that is missing and it spits out the answer. We aren't learning, and people who don't want to run out and buy the special $50+ calculator get shafted.

My engineering calculator can do infinitely more things than the one required for this class, costs less than half of the one I need, and is basically worthless to me because it lacks the functions of the other one and we aren't given the damned equations! The textbook doesn't even have any equations in it either.

The specialty calculator would be no different than one I could get in a dollar store if it weren't for those extra buttons. It cannot even show more than one number at a time. Every time you press a function key, the current number on the screen vanishes, and it waits for you to enter a new one. My engineering calculator can show me entire complex functions, and can even remember older functions I put in, and allow me to retrieve them!

What do you mean when you say the textbook doesn't have equations? Is it word problems, or what the hell is even in the textbook?

[Flying Dice]

Presumably lots of flowcharts explaining how to use the calculator.

[BlackFlyme]

-snip-

What do you mean when you say the textbook doesn't have equations? Is it word problems, or what the hell is even in the textbook?

Why the hell am I still awake?

The text tells you to use the fancy buttons on the calculator, while giving you sample problems. No proper equations like
F=P(1+i)ⁿ, just "Press P/Y, then N, then etc. etc. here's the answer you learned nothing."

Without the specialty calculator no-one would be able to do the work. We are not progressing so much as pushing buttons. I would much prefer being able to do it longhand if necessary, because relying on a calculator to pull answers out of our asses will just hurt us in the long run.

Pre-edit: Yeah, what Dice said.

[MagmaMcFry]

Mathematics has become a joke. It's much more like calculator class. We aren't even given equations. We can get the answers, but no-one can state how or why we got them.

Our calculators have special buttons that record things like payments per year, interest rate, and our present/future values. We simply enter in the respective numbers then ask the calculator the value that is missing and it spits out the answer. We aren't learning, and people who don't want to run out and buy the special $50+ calculator get shafted.

My engineering calculator can do infinitely more things than the one required for this class, costs less than half of the one I need, and is basically worthless to me because it lacks the functions of the other one and we aren't given the damned equations! The textbook doesn't even have any equations in it either.

The specialty calculator would be no different than one I could get in a dollar store if it weren't for those extra buttons. It cannot even show more than one number at a time. Every time you press a function key, the current number on the screen vanishes, and it waits for you to enter a new one. My engineering calculator can show me entire complex functions, and can even remember older functions I put in, and allow me to retrieve them!

If I were you I'd file a formal complaint against your teacher. You really should be given at least the damn formulas.*

*Note: That's still not maths, but at least you'd learn something.

[da_nang]

Yeah, that's not a maths textbook. It's a bloody manual for the calculator. A proper maths textbook should be independent of the technology used to do calculations.

EDIT: I mean, really, the most dependent maths textbook I've ever seen was when said textbook described the numerical methods used in calculators (e.g. TI ones) when e.g. integrating a function. It gave the formula, the drawbacks and pitfalls and it was at the real back of the book to boot.