You Know You're Old/Young If ... 1

[Ashereng]

I have been reading various comments in the fora which seems to date the poster as "old" or "young" sometimes.

I though maybe there is sufficient interest to compile a list to help the old identify with the young, and the young to identify with the old.

If you are in between, I guess pick a side?

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[ziggi]

I'm in my mid twenties too and I remember the tape drive, my buddy and I played 'Montezuma's Revenge' on it until we could barely hold anything from all the blisters on our hands. I think that game had something like 400 levels, we made it to 218.

As for the Ipod thing, I guess I am getting old, b/c it took me forever to figure out the whole spin control thingie ie. what that big circle up front is for. My 10 year old niece does it all in seconds.

 

[SomptingGuy]

I lusted after Pong. It was too expensive for mere mortals.

I do still own my 1982 Casio fx-180P, which I got when I was 14. Nobody takes that away from me and lives!

 

[Guest0527211403]

I had another one of those "young" moments today...

A couple of the older engineers were just talking at lunch time about their weekends, and one mentioned that he didn't have such a great one because there was a rave in the forest a few kilometers away, and they could hear it all night & day (it lasted about 3 days).

I made sure to just shut up and keep eating, since I was at that same party...

 

[IRstuff]

Oh yeah, more oldies...

LED watches -- Fairchild sunk literal truckloads of the red bezels in the Arizona desert, after having bought them for their watch line, only to see the LCD watches take over the market.

Channel F -- Fairchild's abortive attempt to compete with the likes of Atari. Cartridges for the game are buried in another hole in the Arizona desert.

I've still got an Osborne 1, one of the first "transportable" computers. Dang thing weighed like 35 lbs and worked very well as a boat anchor. Came with dual 86K(!!!) floppies!! Try getting that thing under an airliner seat ;-) It still booted the last time I checked it about 5 yrs ago.

Daisy-wheel printers. Got one of those in my garage as well.

Oddly, dot-matrix printers are still available; my doctor's office uses them for multi-copy forms.





TTFN

 

[HgTX]

"you hang on to the 5 1/4" diskettes you've had for 20 years in case you ever find something that'll read them again"

Yup.

"You know you're old when you remember thinking a 50mb Zip Drive was the next best thing to sliced bread (and that wasn't long ago)."

Check.

Other evidence for being old:

I learned to type on a manual typewriter.
I've used BITNET and Gopher.
Few of my co-workers recognize the Bill Cosby lines I quote.

Hg

Eng-Tips policies: faq731-376

 

[KENAT]

Hah, at least I learnt to type on an electric typewriter. (I think it was electric not electronic, I can't remember the distinction now).

Dot matrix, I miss the sound of machine gun fire in the background!

I started feeling old when the people serving me in a pub or bar were older than I was.

 

[sreid]

Primarily for Electrical Engineers;

You know that you're old if you know what a "Jones Strip" is.

 

[kenvlach]

If the following either interests or bores you (seen them enough), you're 'babyboomer' -- young & old won't care(?):
The Rolling Stones Return to North America with 'A Bigger Bang' Tour -- Kicks Off September 20th in Boston

http://www.keyt.com/entertainment/3422036.html

You're old if
-- your first calculator cost more than a few of your cars,
-- high-tech was SEM software loaded from a cassette tape,
-- "Gasoline price" & "war" was a combination devoutly to be wish'd,

Middle-aged if you remember
--- "Disco sucks"
--- "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"
and if you've added a USB card & CD drive to an old computer having both 5.25" & 3.5" drives 'just in case you ever need to transfer something.'

 

[Ashereng]

I learned to type on a mechanical/manual typewriter.

We did have white-out strips - you back space, insert the strip over the boo-boo, and hit the key to imprint the white-out over the black ink. Repeat as necessary until the black is all covered.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[mog69]

You're old if......the first video you took of the kids was on full size VHS tape, side loaded into a camera that came with its' own shoulder pad (it was way too heavy to hand hold) and your balance was maintained by a battery pack in a separate holdall on the opposite shoulder - total weight iro 40lbs ! (Battery life all of 90 mins if you were lucky!)

 

[FrenchCAD]

you're old if you played Pong.

you're young if you can name all and every of those Pokemon things.

We can barely notice that age reference is easily enough measured from a technology point of view

Cyril Guichard
Mechanical Engineer Consultant
France

 

[Quantum50]

Ashereng, thanks for the reminder about the whiteout strips. I had forgotten about the whiteout reels that you could load into the selectric typewriters (IBM). I use to have entire sentences written backwards on the strips when I decided not to say what I had emotionally inserted into a memo. ;-)

 

[ziggi]

I remember when you would dress up in the stupidest clothes to go to a rave, it was like halloween....with bright lights.....I remember one person coming to one in scuba gear sans tank, I was dressed up as a giant frog.....ahh the good old stupid days.

You know you're old when you remember socialising with your friends on the jungle gym...now kids just mostly type, or SMS text or whatever.

I still remember the scheduled school yard fights, it was quite satisfying to see the local load mouth get his 'painful' just desserts.
I think that sort of stuff is banned nowadays, something about emotional problems. Although back then anti-social behaviour was stamped out very quickly, or at least as fast as the fist would go

 

[KENAT]

FrenchCAD, you're dating yourself. Pokemon is so early 2000s! (unless France only just got them).

When I learnt to type our machines had the white out tape in them but we still had to use regular correction fluid for when we did carbon copies, using separate carbon paper of course not self carbonated.

 

[mog69]

Ziggi
Would that also be when you just got on with life and took the knocks without becoming a "victim" who needs counselling and/or protecting from themselves and everyone else under health and safety legislation! I may be looking through the old rose tinted, but I'm sure it was a healthier attitude to life back then.

 

[macmet]

I once saw a typewriter....I didn't know they could come in manual or electric though...

 

[IRstuff]

White out STRIPS? Oh so modern...
try sniffinf the original Wite-out with methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) as the solvent ;-)

TTFN

 

[Quantum50]

I remember they use to sell the solvent for Whiteout so you could squeeze every last dried-out drop from the bottle. I thought it was so stupid to waste the money because the bottle of solvent cost the same as a bottle of whiteout. Came with a little tiny siphon tube which didn't help much because the bottle hole was so small and surface tension equaled more solvent on the desk dissolving your other documents than into the bottle.

 

[ewh]

Who remembers eradicating fluid?

 

[KENAT]

Ziggi, the chants of “Fight, Fight, Fight, Fight, Fight, Fight,” echoing across the school yard, good times.

I’d like to think I don’t count as that old but how about.

Playgrounds at school & parks which didn’t have any kind of protective flooring. If you fell off the monkey bars or round-about you hit concrete or asphalt.

Or maybe receiving corporal punishment at school.