Well, this doesn’t entirely qualify but, just this past weekend my friends and I traveled to neighboring Las Cruces, NM, for a comic book event. To make sure we wouldn’t get lost, I bought a shiny new GPS system. To make a long story short we traveled from college campus to convention enter in Las Cruces, loking for the event, only to find out that it was cancelled. My friends and I agreed though that we were fortunate to have the GPS, otherwise we’d just be plain lost and angry with one another.
Does anyone remember the touch tone phones you could make ring by themselves to annoy your parents?? It was possible due to repairmen’s codes or something.
You’d dial your own number then hit pound 1 or star 1 and hang up a few times quickly. If it didn’t ring back, you’d do the same thing except with #2, then 3 and so on.
I think it had something to do with checking to see if the line was “live”.
When I was young, I had the ambition of being rich enough to have cordless phones in my house. I have achieved my dream. It feels good.
2006 you say? I was on the verge of studying journalism after high school graduation in 1990, and wouldn’t have put up with that crap. Look above for my keylining job that I thought was archaic! 
You have my deepest condolences.
I’m old enough to remember when it seemed like newspapers might be able to ride the lightning and take advantage of the Internet instead of getting fried by it.
Even as recently as the late 1990s getting news was a different experience than it is now: In general, the kind of ‘side-channel’ news and commentary provided by the Internet now just barely existed. There were sites like Slashdot going into things the mainstream media either didn’t touch at all or got horribly, stupidly wrong when it did, but there wasn’t the same international perspective and there wasn’t the same multi-disciplinary perspective. The idea of watching cell phone videos and live Twitter streams coming out of a city in the middle of a revolt would have sounded a lot like Transmetropolitan (and if you don’t know what that is you’re in for a treat); if CNN didn’t have it you, by and large, didn’t know it.
Getting the news seemed easier back then if you didn’t know what you were missing, and that was the worst part.
I still have mine – bought it in 1992 for $1100, a Sony. There’s one in mom’s house from the 70’s that has an 8-track attachment – it’s all in one cabinet though, no separate speakers.
The thing I appreciate most is being able to watch a movie, any movie, any time I want. When I was growing up, my small town theater showed two movies a week. If you missed it, you missed it.
But a positive difference is that the old small town theater showed all kinds of movies, not just the PG and G-rated blockbusters it’s showing now. And there were double features, with featurettes and cartoons. Also that I’d go with a quarter and have a dime left over for popcorn.
When you called someone, you were supposed to let the phone ring seven to nine times before hanging up to let them get to the phone since they might be across the house or outside. I got distracted when calling someone a few weeks ago and let the phone ring seven times, and they answered with a “WHAT!?”
it is, they still use it, the original cabinet is long gone, but the have these built in cabinets that it fills a 1/4 of. still can’t get past the awesomeness of the autoreverse for the cassette deck…
to Auntie Pam, yep, sony, purchased in '85 and wow the inflation
before that we had an RCA integrated stereo with 8-track turntable and radio and cassette was an auxillary unit
not having been in the home stereo market for the last 25 yrs, they still make systems like that, with all the functions broke out into separate components?
do people even call them stereos or use that word anymore?
Something else that comes to mind, coal heat. we had a coal furnace that I inherited responsibility for when my older brother joined the military. on colder winter night it could be a serious pain to have to get up in the middle of the night, clear out the clinkers, refill the stoker and if i was negligent before bed time, relight the fire. coal clinkers (ashes) were the best thing in the world though if your car got stuck in the snow, better than sand, studs or chains, hell on tires though if you had to use them too much.
We only had one megabyte to get to the moon, dammit!!!
::Shakes Cane::
My first computer was a Macintosh, Mark 1.
No hard drive. Only floppy.
128K total to work with. K, I tell you.
Luxury!
I knew someone who had a ZX80. Only a meagre 1k!
My mom would give me a note and some money and I would ride my bike to the corner store to buy her her Canadian Club Whiskey. I’d put it in my basket on my handle bars and merrily ride home.
(She was not an alkie.)
I wish my mom still had the Bang & Olufsen turntable I bought her in 1979. That thing was fantastic!
Fads would take far far longer to develop and they would stick around forever. The Monkees were a fad that lasted about 2-3 years, while the Rebecca Black thing was largely over in a month. Now I read that Glee has done a cover of Miss Black’s Friday and the first thing in my mind was “Way to come late to the party, guys.”
TV shows were given much longer to find their audience. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes bad shows stuck around more than they really should have.
Anyone remember Nintendo Power? That magazine was the ONLY way to get cheats and codes for any video game, unless your friends had figured some out and shared. I remember waiting every month to see if there were any easy tips for Ninja Gaiden (I will always loathe that game WHY DID THEY MAKE IT SO DIFFICULT) but no. The Legend of Zelda map made me popular with the nerd herd set.
Nowadays a quick google search will find any tip, cheat, easter egg or trick you need.
As for answering machines, I remember one time my brother and I found out that when we turned on our mini-bullhorn next to the radio it made a tone just like how an answering machine sounded. So, one time when my parents weren’t home I answered the phone as if I’d recorded it into an answering machine, made the tone, then wrote down the message. I was pretty proud of myself.
I’m giggling at everyone talking about how you had to call a number and listen forever to get movie listing info. I remember doing that, but that started when I was in high school.
Pre-high-school, we only had 2 or 3 theaters in town, each with one screen. There was a 7pm and 9pm show. Very occasionally a movie would be longer than 2 hours, so it was a 7 pm or a 9:30 (or whenever) show, and that was a hassle, because you just automatically showed up at 9 assuming that’s when the movie started.
You didn’t have to call to find out what was playing, because it was printed in the newspaper and on a big marquee on the theater which was in the center of town (later on they opened the third theater in the mall), and it only changed every couple weeks. So you pretty much knew what 2 or 3 movies were playing and you just remembered it.
Me!
Nintendo was notorious for the difficulty of their games.
Having to find a trash basket that had enough space available to empty the chip box into, because if it was too full, they’d go all over the floor and they were a bitch to clean up.
Air conditioners. I realize they were invented before 1970 but central air conditioners were a novelty when I was a kid. I suffered from migraine headaches and it would absolutely suck in the heat of summer. I’d get the use of the only fan in the house but all it did was blow the hot air around.
When we finally got air conditioning I had a Scarlett O’Hara moment where I swore I would never go without it again. I absolutely hate being hot. I would rather drive a complete rust bucket with air conditioning than drive a new car without it.
I’d never had a car with air conditioning until we bought the Corolla in 2005. I imagine we’ll never have a car without it again. I catch myself turning the AC on when it gets a smidge warm in the car now, when I would have just rolled down the windows before.