Hey everyone. In case you don't know, Eric is gone on hiatus during his newsletter-making time. What a slacker. At any rate, I'm here to rap at you for a little bit. My name is Nick Disabato. You may know me as the weird computer/calculator/math/science/reading Atlas Shrugged/whatever dork who did something stupid for a year and a half: being the news editor at ticalc.org. I'm done with that now, and my job consists of pretty much doing whatever needs to be done whenever it warrants. The screenshot staff, too. Yeah. That. (Note to self: send email out to them soon.) Eric bugged me last night (what a slacker) to do this, and I was pretty groggy and not paying attention at the time, so this may go out weeks later than expected. It's not due to my ineptitude, it's just due to the fact that I was really tired and not paying attention last night and... wait, no. It was my ineptitude. Sorry. :)

We've got a really cool - dare I say abnormally cool? - issue set up for you guys. It being the beginning of the school year, ticalc.org is getting record traffic again. I simply hate it when that happens! To this end, there's probably a lot of new subscribers and such. I just have this to say to all you new folks: though I'm writing this issue, the next one will be a lot better when someone who's actually USED THE NEWSLETTER PROGRAM BEFORE takes the reins again. This will be such a hilarious catastrophe. At any rate, I think we've got a lot of weird and crazy news for you. POTM voting and results have come out, so go to the site and click on some links to get there. It should be in a news item. Resident Math Deity(TM) Andy Selle is back to give you math tips, as well as an interview. I like the interview. It's pretty neat. Also, Andy, thanks a ton for helping me on my math homework last Sunday. (smile)

Nick Disabato

Lots of neat news, mostly bundled towards the end of the month. Aside from, uh, me quitting as news editor (heh), there were some really cool programs released. First off, TI gave out a bunch of free FLASH programs for their TI-83+ line to new buyers. Nothing that I would be really flabbergasted over, but there are some people out there who use organizers on their calculators. WORMHOLE, one of the most influential TI-89 programmers in the past few months, passed away in a car crash. TI released another few FLASH apps for the TI-89 and TI-92+, mostly intended for mechanical and electrical engineers. Phoenix got ported to just about every single platform in existence. Sonic MisAdventures, SuperCarII, Baseball89, TIMM, and fastAVRLink were all released upon an unsuspecting world: check the ticalc.org news archives for more on that. David Critch was welcomed aboard by the staff as our new file archiver, to help Steve in his archiving efforts. They are now both currently working together on making our file archives the most complete of any TI site out there. Finally, TI announced a release date for the TI-89/92+ SDK. It will most likely be pushed back several times. So it goes.

Nick Disabato

At ticalc.org, we often receive many of the same questions. In this column, we hope to address some of these questions for a broader audience. If you'd like to submit a question, please email it to ask@ticalc.org.

Q: I'm having trouble with my calculator. Who do I turn to?

A: At the beginning of the school year, we get a lot of questions from newbies who are having problems with getting various programs to run on whatever calculator model they have. To this end, we have set up an email alias where we can answer the questions and allay the fears of our collective userbase. This has been an institution of ticalc.org for a few years now, and we're pretty adept at solving peoples' problems. If you have a grievance with your calculator, email help@ticalc.org.

Eric Sun