I Am So Old ...

I'm so old I remember when we would've laughed at the very idea of texting while operating a motor vehicle. It would be considered as crazy and as almost as much of a joke as if someone said they read the newspaper while driving to work in the morning.

I recall a time when we would have laughed at the sight of some young woman walking around in public as if the cell phone were surgically attached to her empty little head. Where, the act of taking a call on a cell and conversing while already speaking with someone in person would have been considered an act of blatant and callous rudeness.

When the thought of young women fake talking on cell phones while walking alone in public so as to avoid the horror of eye contact or personal interaction or to just look cool would make us laugh like it was a Saturday Night Live skit.


BTW...I still laugh at people who do this things. But I'm in the minority. Most of the Sheeple tolerate it now.

 

Mom bought the solid colors and one of my grandma's always had that beautiful floral.

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i was in high school when kennidy was shot, in the air force when that first step landed on the moon. and 30 before a computer became something an average person could buy in a store. 40 by the time the internet went public. yah, i'm damd near 70. another year and a week and a half. in high school science we had to use slide rules. the only calculators were mechanical adding machines, about the size of a manual typewriter, and test papers were printed on a mimeograph machine. and no, i wouldn't go back to the 50s for all the tea in china, except to ride the trains and live in a shack in the woods that wouldn't meet code and was built on public land.

30 years ago azamov, hienline, and lafferty were all very much alive. when i was born, einstine and tolkin still were.
i think i remember having already said all that and i'm not sure why i'm repeating it now, except maybe this thread itself is that old, and it was several years ago when i did.

 

Same cars, same wipers - SNAP. My Dad used to complain saying why can't they have electric wipers like British cars. The problem with British cars though was that electric wipers were about the only thing (with some sports car exceptions) that the rattletraps had going for them. It wasn't till ront wheel drive came in the 1960s (mini, Austin 1100) that they became sprightly (though with front wheel drive when you lost it you stayed lost (I have a rough stone wall as my witness - goodbye paint job.

I went back and forth twixt Canada and the UK over the years and I remember the Fort Cortina, with both its GT and Lotus versions as god tn-up motors (ton-up meant capable of more than 100mph/the ton).

Running from Belfast to Dublin in the dead of night was the place to do it - the Gardai Siochana (Irish civil guards) had very limited resources to stop speeders

but yeah the good old 57 chev - wish we'd kept it

 

I still have a slide rail - I remember one day in the Royal Canaadian Navy, during nav traning the XO saying "there's no satnav in the lifeboat, Mister" stressing the importance of retaining the ability to chart a course via dead reckoning using pencil and notebook. As to calculators, I remember BURROUGHS for addng machines and FRIDEN for sophisticated machines that could calculate more complicated maths (used by insurance actuaries as one example).

Kilroy: Don't forget the IBM Selectric

 

When pocket calculators came out my parents "didn't trust" them.

I remember mom doing the calculation manually and being amazed that the calculator got it right every time!

 

i don't remember if it was a friden or not, but the freight agent's office had this thing called a billing machine. it was basically just a mechanical adding machine 'on steroids'.
i think it had a hundred thousands column, maybe more, each digit column had a key for all the values from 0 to 9, plus a repeat key. basically the repeat key let you multiply by however many times you pulled down then crank (without having to hold down the other keys individually, like in case you ran out of fingers, which you would). this was before the selectric by at least ten years. there may have been a way you could divide on it, but it was something totally rube goldberg i never learned if there was. it had a printout as well as a mechanical readout and i think it was able to print on forms as well as its own paper role that was as wide as regular typing paper.

train orders were typed on a manual with no lower case, usually a venerable underwood or the like, most of which were form y's (to c&e{train number, usually x for extra} do not exiceed {restricted/etc} speed of {xx} mlies per hour, between mile post {mp xxx.x} and mile post {mp xxx.x} account {men working on track/stray cattle/other unsafe or hazardous condition/et.c} signed {intials of the chief train dispatcher} (whom i remember being t.f.c.; thomas fredric custer on the sacramento division of the souther pacific, the line over donner summit, as far east as sparks, as well as the east valley as far north as dunsmure)

 

Saturday Night Fever will be 40 years old this November


I was 6


I dont think I got to see the movie until ten years later, but one of the early things I remember with clarity is getting bombarded with the soundtrack like everywhere, all over the radio, my mom brought the LP


This one in particular I still love, one of the "prettiest" songs ever recorded

http://youtu.be/fy0rYUvn7To

 

Remember when Shale wore jorts?

 

Your mom was not alone in her mistrust of the then-new technology like the calculator and the computer.

I have an old Navy friend--actually an ex-CO--that told me the NASA scientists and engineers who worked on, first the Mercury and then the Apollo projects used the fairly-new (only a bit over a decade old) super-computers to help with their various calculations. But very few of them really trusted them. So almost every calculation or algorithm or number-crunch that those room-sized computers did was then double-checked with their trusty slide rules.

So....despite what some people say, it wasn't the computer that enabled us to get to the moon. It was the good old school slide rule. (which, btw, we still had to learn to use when I attended Navy Basic Flight school.) Mostly in our Aerodynamics classes.)

Cheers.

 

I got caught in the eastern sector one night a few days before the wall came down. It was very spooky for awhile but worked out fine. When I got to my final interview at checkpoint Charlie, and being a little vodka'ed. I was tempted to say "You're all going to be shot next week so back off," but refrained. I DID say "Ich will ein offiizier sehen, thinking he was an NCO. "Ich BIN ein offiizier" he said, ending the argument. I still have a snapshot of him covering his face when I took his picture (my passport in his hand). The Lord protects drunks - no question. The only positives I can imagine if one gets gulaged is - you lose a lot of weight - you learn a new language - you get a book out of it.

 

That Statement Is An Undisputed Fact..............



Cheers Glen.

 

You all talk about being SO OLD, I'm old enough to remember the smell of Napalm blowing across a valley in the morning. Old enough to remember being spit on when I returned home, to the real world. Old enough to have been labeled "A BABY KILLER!" But don't thank me for my sacrifice because I don't deserve it. Show your thanks to those who never came home and to those who died doing what we thought was right! May God Bless all my fallen brothers, Semper Fi.

 

im old enough to know that washing anything below my knees in the shower is more of a slip and fall risk than its worth

 

Far out! I had been released from active duty about 3 weeks before the wall came down. While watching on TV I remember worrying about the possibility of hostilities breaking out and being returned to active status. Hindsight being what it is I now wish I had been there to witness it. Cool story btw.

 

I was just a kid @ the time, but remember seeing the stuff on the news. The protests, etc. Thank you for your brave service, even though you feel the way you do. I understand, know others who were there.

 

The first Harry Potter book is already 20 years old this year.

That makes me feel old

 

John F Kennedy would have been 100 this year, born May 29, 1917

 

I'm turning 30 in like a month. I dunno how to feel about it.

 

30 onwards, you are basically just old