Texas Instruments
I’m so excited. I just accepted a position at Texas Instruments, in the Educational & Productivity Solutions division. They are responsible for development of all the of graphing calculators including the TI-83, TI-84, TI-93, TI-72, and Voyager 200 lines of calculators (if don’t know what they are because you have been hiding under a rock for about 15 years, ask your kids, and most likely they use one everyday in school in their algebra, geometry, calculus, and physics classes). I went on a tour of the facility yesterday, and I have to say I was very impressed. My jaw dropped open when I got to play with the new products (none of which will be do out here in the US anytime soon). Essentially this facility is the R&D lab for those types of products that TI develops.
It brought back a lot of memories. One of my old hobbies in high school was writing games for these TI calculators. It’s how you could look busy in class but really be playing. Just load up your favorite clone of Pac Man or Space Invaders and to the teacher you were graphing out your problems. I even used to sell a pack of assorted games I wrote or downloaded off the web, to all the other kids at lunch for $2-5 each. Just transfer them from my calculator to their calculator over the data cable and take the money. I was one of the only people with a calculator to calculator cable so I had a little monopoly.
I can’t talk about anything specifically I seen there at TI (had to sign a NDA even before the interview), but it’s very exciting because I’m going to be working on some very cutting edge hardware here. Of course I’m not allowed to say if this job will involve mono or not, but I can say my mono experience was a major reason why they chose me. I’m coming on as a software engineer on the desktop integration side of things (specially making sure everything is cross platform). This is almost a dream job for me because I get to use each of my best talents here. It’s also an amazingly short commute (about 3 miles or about 2 stops on the DART rail), and not only that but it just happens to be a Fortune 500 company as well.
I can’t wait!
Tags: Hobbies, Mono & .NET, Personal, Work
July 30th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
I’m unsure you can answer this, but has anything really changed in TI’s calculators in the past 10 years? I have a TI-92 10 years ago and it seems like their current top of the line is just a TI-92 with more ram/flash
July 30th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
a lot is different. the menus and navigation are nearly the same as always, but then a lot of other things underneath are faster, better, and produce better graphics with the new screens. a bunch of new features have been added as well. the ti-8x models are the same and will always be the same just for compatablitly sake, but keep an eye out for the new line…
August 1st, 2006 at 2:25 am
It would be real nice to see TI putting touch-screens to TI-92-like models… you know, kind of like in Nintendo DS. That kind of interface would be quite pop, and would be a bit less boring and more usable (if done carefully) than the current setup. Just a thought…
August 4th, 2006 at 11:53 pm
Mr. Zac Bowling… I didnt know you had a blog! I mistakingly found your blog when searching for port forwarding information on 2wire routers. How are things going?
August 9th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
mono/.net on a cellphone would be nice