I had a huge reference bookshelf in my office. Mostly electronics data books. McMaster-Carr for mechanical bits. Thomas Register. CRC-Handbook. 2-3 phone books. Vendor reps would drop by with new data-books and hawk the newest chips. There was one vendor, Dick Brown, who was a walking encyclopedia on AMP connectors. Would still be drowning on in his monotone as he walked out the door. Some of the vendors would hire cheesecake as reps, 'cause the engineers would always make time for a pretty young lady.
I was in a distant town for my aunt’s funeral and we went to the cemetery to visit my grandparents’ graves. While there I asked the sexton where my uncle’s 2nd wife’s grave was. He disappeared into his office and came back out with an index card from his record system. It gave the area and row for the plot. I then asked if my uncle’s first wife was buried there. He got another card and said her ashes had been sent somewhere else a few months after her cremation in 1987, or whenever it was.
The funeral was earlier this year! I guess some smaller cities can’t afford to change to computerised databases for things like that.
As for the gas cap in the OP, it was common for them to be push on one side to open before the days of locking covers or remote release from inside. If I saw one like the OP’s that’s what I would try.
I also remember fat reference books for things like transistors, vacuum tubes, and other electronic componentry filling shelves in the workshop I used to work at in the 80’s.
OTOH, I find it incredible that printed phone books are still delivered, in copious piles, to my door or mailbox. Most end up in the recycler.
Night before last: a plastic bottle cap got eaten by the in-sink disposal, causing some indigestion. I had no idea how to do a Heimlich on an Insinkerator, so I Googled. Several minutes later (mostly spent looking for the set of Allen wrenches,) I had unjammed it, cleaned the sink, and mopped up the dishwasher overflow. (The Kid decided he’d finish the dishes and start the load before telling me about the clog. D’oh!)
This is the big thing for me. Google was in full swing by the time I started living alone, but I can’t imagine how I’d be able to do any basic home repair without spending hours digging through reference books, if any were even available, or else paying an expert a good deal of money to handle something I could do myself if I only knew how.
The most significant thing that comes to mind is my AC. I had a serious problem with it leaking; the indoor unit is ceiling-mounted, so it would constantly drip rusty water onto the carpet. Some googling and checking how-to guides confirmed that it was the condensate line and all I had to do was suck it clean with a wet vac. Took me less than an hour and less than $20 to fix.
Yes, I have a Honda Fit! Two years old, blue (I don’t know about raspberries, though.) I adore my car.
As for phone books, I don’t even think we have one in the house.
What constantly amazes me is that I can look up anything, and someone has put it out there. Who are these people? I’ve been futzing around for years just trying to get a basic family tree ready for upload.
My pool filter is a bizarre antique thing that actually causes pool professionals to laugh. A few years ago it started spewing sand into the pool. Thanks to Google, I was able to find a schematic of the damned thing, figure out what the problem was, and find the part I needed.
Order books online. Myself. Correctly. I have ordered “The Meaning of Life” or who knows what, via bookstores, way back when. As late as the mid 90s. So, I’d get the meaning of life by Oprah, instead of Bertrand Russell. That is, if Oprah’s version was even still in print. You get the drift. Google is OK.
Ah yes. Hotbot, Altavista, Mindspring and 28.8 dial-up. Those were the days.
I have a very nice unabridged dictionary and atlas at home that I haven’t opened in a long time.
I used to pester the local library’s reference desk. I’d use it to settle bets. I was spoiled in that the town where I grew up had an excellent library.
I used to buy reference books, too. I particularly liked the New York Times Desk Reference. But also almanacs, specialized dictionaries, single-volume encyclopedias, and historical atlases. I still have a few, like there’s a couple Excel how-to books on my desk at work.
Hey, I just rented a VW Golf a couple of weeks back. I friggin’ searched for about 10 minutes without finding out how to open the gas cap door. Luckily it was in a parking lot, and not at the pump itself. I decided to continue on to my destination because the trip computer told me I had enough gas to make it before stopping.
When I got to my hotel I looked in the manual and it didn’t tell me how to open the gas cap door! I guess they figured it was intuitive, but it really wasn’t. Finally I decided to slip my hotel key card behind the door and pry it open. Then I discovered how the damned thing was supposed to work. :smack:
I was pawing through Netflix recently and discovered they had a load of old Charlie Chaplin comedies on their streaming service. After idly watching through a few of them, I went, ‘I wonder what he looks like without all the makeup on?’
In the slow old days, I would have had to trek down to the library, go through their catalog (I’m young enough that it’s always been on “computers”, although the early ones for me were dumb terminals) to see what they had, figure out which books were likely to have photos, order one on loan if it wasn’t on the premises, wait for it, go back to pick it up when it arrived, and hope I chose well. Today, I plug his name into Google, and a fraction of a second later, I have a listing of things on YouTube – not just photos, but videos of the man in motion, both staged and candid, in and out of costume. Some of the later ones even have sound.
I have no idea what I’d do without this. Probably go bats.
I’m old enough that, when I took a couple of classes in Library Science, I learned how to look things up in a card catalog, how to find stuff on microfiche, how to use the damned microfiche, how to use the various magazine indexes (and yes, I know I’m supposed to spell that ces, but I speak English, not Latin), and other outdated tech. I also remember huge reference books…anyone else have fond memories of the Whole Earth Catalog? I could sit and browse in that thing for hours.
I remember going to the college library and spending hours and hours and hours researching stupid crap I could find in seconds on the internet today.
It’s gotten to the point I feel angry if I can’t find something on the internet. I’m so used to being able to find out how to rebuild something because somebody else has figured it out already and posted it. I don’t know how many times I’ve walked somebody through something on the phone while “googling” it in real time on the computer. It’s so easy to find a manual for a product now.
Heck, I once pulled a friend’s butt out of the fire by creating the base of a term paper. She had written herself into a corner by choosing a topic that couldn’t be directly researched down the line. I literally took some diagrams and guestimated some numbers and threw together a bit of analytical fluff that looked nice on a spreadsheet. I don’t think any amount of time in the library would have given me the tidbits I found on the net.
nm
I remember using the old Books in Print books. Huge volumes, with different colors for books by subject, books alpha by author and alpha by title. I loved browsing through them. I sort of miss that now - I can find whatever I’m googling (usually), but finding stuff accidentally isn’t as easy.
StG
You can get sort of the same effect by Wiki walking, and many sites like About.com tend to have ‘Articles You Might Also Like’ sidebars. It’s definitely less random than flipping through an encyclopedia, though.
Your salesman, -woman, or -bot let you down.
A few years ago my aunt had a rental car and couldn’t figure out how to open the gas door. I went out and looked at, couldn’t figure it out either. I just grabbed the manual from the glove compartment.