I’ve spliced reel-to-reel, and plenty of movie film, but never 8 track.
I still can use my slide rule (<Quick rant about “kids nowadays”>). I KNOW what an order of magnitude is.
We took a taxi to school, for awhile (not uphill). Not sure why, I think the bus was broken. I guess I lose the “I walked uphill both ways” contest. But in Switzerland we @&!!%* FROZE. I do love adequate heating.
I guess my FOGI defining moment was my daughter’s first reference to me as “Grandpa”.
Hah! That’d learn him.
I don’t think I ever snapped a 45 putting the adapter in, but I do recall intense frustration at trying to play a 45 and not being able to find the damned adapter. (Some of my best childhood memories are of playing records at the wrong speeds - I was an easily amused child. 
)
A recent FOGI moment came at Wal-Mart last week, while shopping with three friends. We all have gray or graying hair, worn in the same style (short, side part, a bit of bangs). We were all dressed for the weather and wearing sensible shoes. And we blocked the aisle while we discussed the merits of various deodorants. 
I touched my first i-Pod when my son visited in December. I remembered toting my “portable” record player – it had a lid and looked like a chunky suitcase – to parties.
I’ve snapped plenty of 45 adapters, but not after they came out with the adapter cartridge. Damn, those things didn’t work for beans. Try putting more than two or three 45’s on it and the records would never drop straight.
I’ve been following the thread, but I thought you meant misfiring a Colt .45 1911A when doing something to it.
I reckon that qualifies me in its ownself. 
[QUOTE=chowder]
I wouldn’t recognise a '57 Chevy if it ran over me.
/QUOTE]
How about a '53 Anglia ?
That’s one vote! Yippee!!
I love this thread.
How about NOT having a 45 adapter and having to try and centre the damned record on your own. It was NEVER entirely possible to get it perfect. There was always a certain bow and wow to the slightly mis-centred 45s.
I really miss that “click-click” sound.
OK you have my vote but we need one more before membership of FOGI can be bestowed upon your unworthy head.
Omegaman : Indeed I 'member those, was that the one with the “cut back” rear window?
Not only could I repair an 8 track tape, I remember buying repair kits with a foam pad (to press the tape against the playback head) and rolls of the metallic splicing tape that tripped the automatic track changer.
Oh, and when the recording companies stopped releasing 8 track tapes, I remember buying an adapter that went in the 8 track slot and played cassettes over your 8 track system. Really similar to this one. I didn’t have to go to the expense of switching out my car player and still could listen to newer cassette releases as well as my old 8 tracks.
As for 45 rpm records, I didn’t fool with no damn adapters. I had an RCA changer that only played 45’s.
I also remember when you had to peel the backings off Polaroid prints and apply the liquid coating over them.
How about the Morris 1000 - the one that had the two-piece windscreen? Pop-up indicators?
Dad had a clip-on parking light for his old car. There was an aftermarket fitting to provide it with power, he clipped it on over the driver’s side window when parking the car.
Ha. I once had a really cheap plastic two-lens reflex camera - one lens with the shutter, one for the viewfinder, which you looked down into. It was really hard to see a picture on that, which may have been deliberate; if there wasn’t enough light to see the picture in the viewfinder, there wasn’t enough for the film. It took 127 roll-film, usually 12 exposures. A few years later I did get an Instamatic for Christmas - it was like the latest thing, and came with “Magicube” flashbulbs, no electricity required, drop-in cartridge loading. And there were places that would give you free film, which you mailed off for developing and printing. Good times.
We had a Dansette radiogramme which we mostly used for listening to the radio on - it was a valve radio and took about a minute to warm up. But it also played records on any of four speeds and had an autochanger that could tell a 7" single from a 10" (rare) or 12" LP.
That reminds me of the radio we used to listen to as kids (when not messing around with the speeds on the record player) - it was one of those big, stand-up old wood ones, full of vacuum tubes in the back and about three knobs on the front. I don’t know what happened to it - it would probably be worth some good coin now as a collector’s item.
ETA: Remembered another sign of FOGIdom - putting pennies on the arm of the record player needle to try to get it to quit skipping.
[QUOTE=Malacandra]
How about the Morris 1000 - the one that had the two-piece windscreen? Pop-up indicators?
Ah yes the old semaphore indicators.
My very first old banger had those and they used to stick in the “up” position.
Naturally I’d forget about this and about once every fortnight I’d walk into the buggers and snap one of them off.
That bastard car cost me more in replacement indicators than I like to admit.
Hey!..any Brits remember the “Potters Wheel” intermission thingy?
Me! Me! I filled an 8-track with love songs to give to a girl for Christmas once. (But that’s the beginning of another thread …)
Hah! I have one of those new-fangled phonographs, with the built-in 45 adapter that you can’t lose! And who needs a “disc changer”? My phonograph comes with an attachment so I can stack a half-dozen records up – even albums – and listen for hours without getting off the sofa! Now, where’s that Bob Newhart LP?
Hmm, I’m thinking “old banger” means something different in England than it does in the U.S.
Won’t someone sponsor me? I did my time as family tv channel-changer! I have cooked on a harvest-gold stove! I have done laundry in avocado green washer/dryer! I had my own record player that was really nifty because it had the 45 adapter built in! I used to watch What’s My Line and the Lawrence Welk show with my parents!
I guess I can sponsor you, just don’t you go getting uppity!
Shoot, my mother had a Brownie. Once she accidentally bought a roll of color 620 film. It worked in the old thing!
Ran a mimeo for awhile, but don’t remember the odor being special. Couple years back I got curious and did an Internet search for mimeograph supplies. You can still get the stuff. Og knows who uses it.
There were a couple of different kinds of machines. The mimeograph used “stencils” – you typed on them and the typewriter basically punched the letters through the stencil. The stencil was wrapped around a drum and ink came through and onto the paper as the drum turned around.
The machine with the nice smell was – I think – called a spirit duplicator. It was sorta like using carbon paper. You typed on a white sheet and the letters pressed onto a backing sheet. You couldn’t make as many copies with a spirit duplicator as you could with a mimeograph.
Both of them were messy and inefficient and it was tricky to correct your typos. You used this blue gluey fluid with the mimeo. You had to take the stencil out of the typewriter, brush the fluid over your mistake, wait for it to dry, put it back in the typewriter and line it up right.
With the spirit, you used a razor blade thingie to scrape off the mistake.
I remember typing wills using carbon paper. If you made a typo, you had to start all over again, because you couldn’t have an erasure or cross-out in a will. Gah!
You kids and your Delete keys don’t know how good you have it!
Wait a minute, wait a minute. Did you actually watch it, as in pay attention, “Here’s a little tune from double u double u eye eye” and the whole schmeer?
OK you’re in seeing as Wile E has kindly given you the required 3rd vote.
Now then a few things to remember:
Always, and I mean ALWAYS, shake your cane at kids no matter if they are on your lawn or not.
Our associate members, the Grumpy Old Buggers, or GOBs, will be in contact with you shortly, you are required to swear allegiance to them as well as to FOGIs.
You do not ever help anyone to do anything, instead you mutter under your breath about the utter disregard young whippersnappers have for us FOGIs and GOBs.
This is one of the most important rules: At the supermarket you fill your cart, get to checkout and just leave. Gives those lazy sods something to do.
There are other rules and regs and no doubt other members will tell you of them.