Texas Instruments TI-89 Tip List page 63

What made you keep coming back?
The first time I came to the Discussion Groups, I went into the TI-85 area and read a few posts just out
of curiosity about what was there. They were mostly questions of course, and I discovered that I could
answer most of them just by virtue of having thoroughly read the manual. I rather enjoy helping people
out, and it's a shame for students to not get the most out of their TI calculators, so I quickly became a
regular fixture in the Discussion Groups.
How many hours do you spend on the Discussion Groups each week?
An average day's run through the new posts takes about an hour to an hour and a half, so that
probably adds up to nine or ten hours in a week's time. It varies by season; summer tends to be a slow
time, and the first month or two of the school year is very busy.
How much do you like the color orange?
Quite a bit, actually.
So what's your *favorite* color?
Well, uh, orange. Hence the background color of my home page and the color of the lettering of the
FAQ's title graphic.
JUST THE FAQs, MA'AM:
How old is the TI Calculator FAQ?
I first wrote it during the summer of 1997, and it went up on the web a few days after I arrived at
college that fall. Since then the main body has about tripled in size, and it has gained about a half
dozen satellite pages.
How did you come up with the idea to start it?
When I first got a TI GraphLink cable, it took some time and research to get it properly configured on
my computer, and I'm a computer savvy person. Naturally lots of people also have trouble hooking up
their TI GraphLink, and I was regularly writing page-long responses in the TI GraphLink Discussion
Group detailing all the things one might need to check in order to get it running. It got to be quite
bothersome to retype this from scratch every week, and it occurred to me that if I could get the whole
thing put up in some permanent location, I could just send everybody there, and I would never have to
type it again. So the "dirty little secret" is that the main goal of the FAQ is to help me avoid typing when
I respond to calculator questions. However, the system also allows me to deliver detailed and
well-researched answers instead of having to answer things off the top of my head.
How did you get to be so knowledgeable about TI products?
Reading the manuals is most of it, and being naturally good at math helps. After that, it was just a
matter of poking through TI's website and other TI-related websites that I ran across. The information is
all out there; knowing where to find it is the main stumbling block. I also keep my ear to the ground for
new information. Several items in the FAQ began as insights or reports from others in the Discussion
Groups, and two of the math techniques listed are straight from my calculus teachers. There's also a
handful of little tricks I came up with.
Do you call it the "F-A-Q" or the "fak?"
I use "fak."
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