I remember the first time I saw a graphic that showed that the computer was thinking. It was the little moving clock on a little mac. Considering how often computers could hang up completely, it was a relief to know that there was something still going on. Before the clocks and progress bars, you just had to sit there wondering if you were wasting your time and should have rebooted two minutes ago.
I went to college with a slide rule and discovered that hand calculators were a thing that was happening. They were wildly expensive and couldn’t do much, and the professors wouldn’t let you use them on tests, but they would let you you use your slide rule.
Beats doing it by hand. Although if you’re doing anything complicated you’d better do a simplified version by hand first, so that you know where to put the decimal point.
I remember the Y2K-esque kerfuffle when gas prices went to a whole dollar. Neither the advertising signs nor the pumps were designed for the extra digit.
I remember computers being added to two math classrooms, in high school. The in-class computers used Basic. There were actually two machines in each class. You used the first to create a ticker tape of your program and then you ran the ticker tape on the second. For Fortran, we still had to fill out the cards and send them out to be run. I wasn’t driving much at the time, but I think a lot of stations set their pumps to half the price per gallon and then doubled the amount shown.
Ah, Pong. You have to be exactly the right age to have fully experienced it. I was a freshman in college and they put one in the school bowling alley. For a brief time, there was only Pong.
And you’re an old woman if you remember not being allowed to wear pants to school no matter how cold it was.
A few years ago I was on an expedition in the mountains of Panama. My companions were all experienced hikers in their 30s. They were astonished when I pulled out my paper topo maps of the area. They said “Wow! Old school!” Actually, it was much easier to orient using them than on the tiny maps on their phones.
Think of this: for present high-school kids, the Vietnam War is almost as far in the past as WWI was for us when we were in high school.
I think the lowest price I ever saw was 15 cents a gallon someplace in the South in the late 1960s.
Pants? When I was in high school, one of the assistant principals made girls get on their knees, and if their skirt wasn’t long enough to touch the floor, they got sent home. And I got sent home once for wearing pants that didn’t have belt loops.
I had my hip replaced due to wear and tear in November. Pretty much recovered. Mostly.
But my 90 year old mother fell and broke her hip January 3rd 2020. Some change of plans ensue as I live 100 miles away.
I tell ya, I feel like a young buck cause I can walk when I go to my moms skilled nursing center. I have a place for her to go though. That should be nice.
Hey, this thread has given me ideas… I used to be one hell of a dirt bike rider, and have friends that are only 15 years younger that are into it. hmmmm… Can’t take it with you.
The Yamaha IT 490 is… well… you’d have to ride one to know. I may like to find out what these big 4 stroke dirt bikes are like.
O god, yes. My regular co-worker Friday lunch (a quick pasta and a glass of wine), where we debated (and solved) most of the world’s problems,has now become
a) Much longer, as more and more of us either retire, or get sacked and can’t be arsed looking for another job
b) More than one glass of wine
and
c) Subjects for discussion tend to be much more medical
For years and years my cousins and I used to hear our parents talking about their diseases, surgeries and medications. Now the parents are gone, and we talk about the same things. Passing of the torch.
Well, I was an adult in the mid-90’s, and I work with people who were barely born by the end of the decade. Plenty of legit situations to “show one’s age” or “date oneself”.
The i.d.e.a. Museum where I volunteer swaps out its exhibit about three times a year. The one just opened earlier this month is The Art of the Story. It has props and set where you can do a literal puppet theater, displays about Character, Setting, and Plot, and on a pedestal, a somewhat worn Remington Quiet Riter with a few sheets of paper you can roll in. They had to look to find a fresh ribbon.
The kids are fascinated by it. They recognize the keyboard but don’t press them anywhere near hard enough for a manual typewriter.
I was talking with a friend yesterday and he related a story to me about an encounter with a young co-worker who didn’t get some pop culture reference he made. During the course of telling me this story about how old he was becoming, he mentioned he was born in 1981. I told him I was in college in 1981.
I actually feel sorry for people who didn’t experience the 1960’s. It was such a unique time in human history. Things got totally different in such a short time, and there’s no easy answer for what caused it.
Compare that to 40 years later, when you can pinpoint the exact second every thing changed.
A college friend of mine was cleaning out some of his personal papers last week and found several letters I had written him right after I graduated. They were typed and it reminded me that I was a better typist on a manual machine than a lot of people. But what really struck me was that I talked about building my own stereo to save money over purchasing one. Yes, back then you could buy preamplifier kits (both tube and transistorized) and amplifier kits from Dynaco and assemble them yourself. The preamps and amps were actually pretty highly regarded. Saving $60 or so by doing it yourself was a big deal.
You can still find the units on eBay and through other third-party suppliers, but they are usually modified or otherwise updated.
Actually, it was much easier to orient using them than on the tiny maps on their phones.