Older people: amuse me with tales of your hardships in pre-tech days that would seem trivial today

In My Humble Opinion
421

[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:420, topic:581026”]

If we wanted hot chocolate, we had to heat milk in a pan on the stove (careful not to get a “skin” on top)!

When I took my first college programming classes (1976), we had to punch the programs onto cards at keypunch machines (one line per card), arrange the cards carefully in order, and submit the “deck” at the computer room window. Then, we’d go do something else for a couple of hours, and come back to get our printout, which indicated that we had a typo on the third card. Lather, rinse, repeat…

Did anyone else play a computer game called “Nuclear Destruction”? It was played by mail. We all picked a country and signed up for the game. We’d get our starting printout and then mail in our actions for the turn. After everyone’s actions were received (or the time limit expired), they’d run the calculations and mail us each a new printout.

I still count back change to customers in my bookstore, and my kids (who both work there) have been able to do that since they were 13.

I was one of the lucky few that had an 8-track RECORDER. When I wanted to make a tape of an album, I’d sit for ten minutes carefully planning which songs would go on which tracks so there wouldn’t be a “kaCHUNK” in the middle of any of them and the dead space at the end of the track would be minimized. It meant, of course, changing the order of the songs, which drove my friends up the wall.

I remember building a massive spreadsheet in VisiCalc on my Apple /// computer, which I had upgraded to 256K of RAM. I got everything debugged, went to save it, and realized the floppy diskette held only 140K. I had to rebuild the spreadsheet as two separate files and manually copy numbers from one to the other.

I still have my CRC Handbook of Mathematical Tables. I have my 12-inch magnesium Pickett sliderule in its leather belt case, too! Did anyone else learn to use one using a 6-foot or 8-foot long sliderule that hung on the front of the blackboard in class so everyone could watch the teacher? That was in high school in 1975!
[/QUOTE]

Your whole post is pretty awesome, as it predates me by only a few years.

422

When I started my current job in 2004, I was told during orientation that I could pick up my paycheck at the cashier’s window. I thought it was a gag. It wasn’t.

423

I still carry a pager for work. (And a work cellphone; but the cellphone is switched off unless I need to call in.) My team and I have strenuously resisted moving over to using cellphones only.

The reason is simple: if I’m called in the middle of the night (which is when I’m most likely to be called), I’m probably not going to be speak coherently, or take in what I’m being told, for a couple of minutes. Whereas if the pager goes off in the middle of the night, I can get up, use the lavatory while I read the message on the pager, and by the time I call in I probably already have a pretty good idea of what the problem is and what to do about it.

Pagers are great.

424

I would prefer to have a pager, but the company that supplied pagers in Kansas City is also in the cell phone business. They kept raising the monthly charge for the pager until it exceeded the monthly charge for a cell phone. I fucking HATE cell phones, and 99% of my customers know that I have been forced to carry one. The ringer is always off, and I’ll check it every so often to see what text messages have come in.

I’ll carry a cell phone that my clients can have the number to when I can get a 900 number that costs them $50 per call.

425

OK,

So I had a girlfriend (no really, I did!) anyway, her parents were strict and although she had her own phone line she wasn’t allowed to receive calls at night. She worked till 10 and went home and got there about 11. So… because we wanted to talk dirty to each other she wrapped me around her finger, I mean came up with a plan.

She would unplug her phone from the wall when she left work. I would call her at about 5 till 11. She would get home, go to her room, pick up the handset and then plug her phone into the wall. Then she could answer the phone and I would be there.

Of course, sometimes, her parents would stop for ice cream or something or want to talk to her, so I sat there listening to her phone “ring” for, oh, an hour before she could pick up.

Of course with texting and IM this would be much easier today.

426

I still carry a pager for work. Mostly because the office pays for the pager, but not my cell phone. So I like having a number I can give out/put on paperwork that isn’t my home line that I pay for. But the reality is I haven’t used it much in the last 2 years. My teammates got my cell number because of a special priority project, and it’s floating around. I don’t take that many calls, and most people are just using their cell phones.

The downside of people being able to keep their cell numbers when they move? Several people on my team have numbers with area codes from other cities. Which isn’t a problem when calling from my cell phone, but is long distance if I try to use my office phone or other landline. So that’s mildly annoying.

My buddy also keeps his office pager, because he hates carrying his cell phone, and only uses it to make calls. He’ll leave it in his truck, usually off. But he carries the pager everywhere all the time.

427

Things that happen yesterday…are happening farther andfarthern the past…not really a hardship, but it stabsat my heart to learn terminator 2 is TWENTY years old. Man, I just saw that in the theater…well, it feels like YESTERDAY.

One of my security podcast guys was going on about this cool PDP-8 emulator he found, it’s a -single-chip- implementation. Told that to a long time friend and he shuddered…seems he used to use PDP-8 and PDP-10s back in the day…one geek’s nostalgia is another’s rotten memory.

428

Hell, the internet itself still feels new, to me.

429

We didn’t used to have shoe tying robots or anti gravity underpants. Made being fat a bit more inconvenient.

430

I just realized how great it can be to access the internet when getting up to speed on an unfamiliar technical product. Then as now, the manuals and other documentation that came with a product was great about telling you what you could do with it. And of all the things you could do with it, it was even better at telling you the ones they thought most users would want. But they almost never told you, “This product does not support doing X, and was actually designed to make it impossible so don’t even try it”. Much effort was wasted because of it.

Now though, all you have to do is find a forum devoted to the specific product or manufacturer–you almost always can–and ask there.

431

This wasn’t necessarily a hardship, but there was a time when computer games came with paper manuals, maps, charts, and all sorts of cool reference materials that you could lay out or pin to your wall. The best one I can remember right now was the material for Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, which (IIRC) came with a 400-page manual and an additional novella explaining the backstory to the game. I used to enjoy firing up a new game and checking out the manual as needed while I played. I would then go out for a smoke (no smoking in the house) and read the manual outside.

Now everything is a damned PDF on the disk, requiring you to print it out (if you need it). Also I quit smoking, so I wouldn’t have time to read it if I wanted to. :wink:

432

Them damned rotary dial phones. Soooo slow.

I remember men in funny looking suits who ran the elevators downtown, there were no buttons to push.

433

@JohnT - the original Star Trek for the C64 not only had that massive manual you could print out via your dot matrix printer, but it also had a tape together overlay for your keyboard!

434

Exodus: Ultima III came with a cloth map in addition to the manual, weapons chart, etc.

435

Teletype machines were pretty slick. Copy machines used to take up a whole room. IIRC, there was a copy machine person too, to fix/unhang/unblock and run the machine.

436

And the “copy-guy” could raise a family on his salary.

437

[Rob Schneider]

Makin’ copieeeess…

[/RS]

Yeah, in the old days Rob Schneider was considered funny. Talk about hardships…

438

dad took me to the office once. Showed me the telex. Connected back to the mainframe at the main office. The super secret password? TREE

439

You fool! Don’t spread that around.

440

I had to hand-crank my woman’s vibrator.