My calculator failed me
Yesterday I needed to figure out what 1000 divided by 12 is. Sounds dead simple, right? So I grabbed my phone calculator, punched in 1000 ÷ 12, and it spat out 83.3333333. Just a messy decimal. That ain’t cutting it for my actual problem – I’m counting physical stuff!
No fraction button? Seriously?
I poked around the calculator app like crazy trying to find a fraction mode. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Just that endless chain of threes mocking me. Even tried the old desktop calculator near my coffee machine – same useless decimal mess.
Got me genuinely annoyed. How do people divide things without decimals? Can’t wrap my head around counting pills or splitting printed photos like this. What if I have 1000 pills and need to pack 12 per bottle? Decimal points ain’t helping me fill bottles!
Breaking out the pen like a caveman
Last night, gave up on tech completely. Found scratch paper and dug up long division from the dark corners of my brain. Remember doing this in 4th grade? Worked it out step by step:
- 12 into 100 goes 8 times (96)
- Pull down the next zero, gives you 40
- 12 into 40 goes 3 times (36)
- Left with 4 remaining
There it was blinking at me in terrible handwriting: 83 with remainder 4. But that remainder still felt messy.
The actual real-life test
This morning I literally grabbed 1000 paperclips from my desk drawer. Split them into piles of 12. Counted 83 full piles, and yep – 4 stubborn paperclips left over. Exactly what my chicken scratch math showed.
Then it hit me like my cold coffee: those tech guys programming calculators probably never needed to count physical stuff ever. They saw numbers as abstract decimals floating in cyberspace. But out here in meatspace? We deal with leftovers. Real things that won’t split into thirds.
So yeah. When your calculator tells you 83.333333, it’s actually lying through its teeth. Real answer is 83 bottles full and 4 lonely pills rattling around loose. Or 4 paperclips you gotta shove in your pocket. Tools failing basic realities – what a joke.