Time Passes

[swestrup]

The End of an Era: I just threw out the remains of a Fischer-Porter mechanical pencil. It was a promotional item of no great intrinsic value, but it had sentimental value. Many years ago, when I was still living at home, my Dad was an instrumentation specialist and Fischer-Porter was trying to get him to buy some PIDs (Proportional-Integrator/Derivators). He gave my Dad one to take home to play with to see what he thought of it. That evening, me and a friend (I think it was PGM, but my memory is unclear) started playing with it. We never did manage to figure out how to get it to do an Integral or a Derivative, but we managed to deduce the form of the assembly language from a promotional still in the accompanying salesman's bumf, and from that worked out how to control the front-panel lights. So, when the salesman came to pick it up the next day, it was making strange light patterns on the front face. When the guy asked what had happened to it, my Dad proudly proclaimed that I had reprogrammed the thing. The Salesman then gravely handed me the promotional mechanical pencil, and said that that was quite a feat without any of the technical docs.

I used that pencil for many, many years as my main writing implementl and wore all of the promotional ink off of the thing. At some point it ended up in a pencil case that I always carry around, but seldom seem to need any more. When I went to open up the case to prepare for this trip (as its coming with me) I found the pencil had gotten broken sometime over the years of banging around in there.

I kind sad about that, but it is the way of time. One thing ends and another begins, and one can never know in advance where the road will ultimately take you.

Comments

[galialuna.livejournal.com]

Awww I know how you feel. I've had the same staedtler-mars eraser since 1997(I don't erase much) and I don't know what I'll do when it's finally gone. I even made a drawing with pen on one of the sides.