Back in the Day

remember when? you could scratch every inch of your back yourself without straining anything (or needing anything that you weren't born with to reach it)?

oh i also remember travels with charlie. i don't usually get much into drama stuff, but when stienbeck was kind of semi-retired he moved into a pickup camper and drove around with his dog he named charlie.

 

Last one I saw was basically a cell phone store...

 

there are radio snacks that are cellphone stores and there are radio snacks that are still radio snacks.
borders hasn't gone anywhere either. not the only book store in town, but the biggest (and most expensive) for new books.
bockbluster always was kind of useless i though.
which leaves the toy saurus, which sure i'd bring back,
although there used to be a place called wishing well which was even more better for most of what i went there for.

also hobby lobby was never a real hobby store, is almost completely useless, and wish it would go away and real hobby shops come back.
(they do have a pretty good and resonably priced selection of art supplies, but all the other stuff they were ever any good for seems their supply chain done broke and rotted)

 

there used to be other electronic part franchises that were way better then radio snack.
allied was one, but there used to be a couple of others too, that i forget the names of.

 

lafayette was the other one i was trying to think of besides allied. heathkit was wonderful, but i don't remember them having a store front, just kits for everything that came with instructions that took you by the had through every solder joint.

recently, well last decade, when i lived in roseville cali, we had a fry's, which was really a superstore. and while they had everything to do with any kind of computer stuff, and even refrigerators, office furnature and musical keyboards, oddly enough, or i thought it odd, they didn't have any 3d printers. but every kind of everything else to do with any kind of electronics. like a big box store for electronic stuff. everything you'd find in a jimco catalogue, only a lot more reasonably priced. meters, scopes, everything. even big solar panel kits.

 

The Casio CK-200. Cassette deck boombox with keyboard built in. (1985)

 

had a couple of those mini-keyboards at different times. never knew about that thing though. wouldn't mind having one of those now.

 

i remember string/bead curtains for doorways. also carpet tiles. adhesive backed squares of carpet, in multiple colors and textures. that you could make walls and floors look the same for an effect, combined with bead curtains and of course 'black' (uv) lights and posters the would glow when lighted by them. all of these combined in open mike coffee shops.

 

Equates to $19,000 dollars in 2021

 

I hated the CP/M operating system...

 

i never could afford anything cp/m would run on. and nothing else (affordable) ran any sort of standardized o.s., but everything did come with basic in rom.
dos with a norton shell was ok, but list wasn't very useful without it.
qbasic with case was fun to play with. not that i would ever have wanted to try doing anything for a living with it in those days.

only thing i ever wrote, besides playing with pixels on the screen, were text based character and village generators, for my own rp system based on 8 siders.
all of which long lost and forgotten.

 

older then that. the school i went to had actual movie projectors, 8 and 16 mm. overhead projectors were still something kind of new fangled. and don't forget the mimeographs and spirit duplicators that suplimental classroom notes and even tests were printed on. and if you got the last copy you were lucky to be able to read it at all.

video tape did not exist yet until i was in high school.