I'm doing some work at a high school, and the I keep being brought up short by the frame of reference that these kids are using. Like "Star Wars" is roughly "Casablanca" in their time line.
I remember taking a Chem 2 test in college -- printed out on one of the original Macs. I struggled at home with my Commodore 64 and "Bank Street Writer" with my "Gorilla Banana" dot-matrix printer with "no descenders" -- when I saw that test and found out you could actually do superscripts and subscripts I was completely blown away.
...like "grody to the max and back", man.
IIRC I was sitting in that same class when I head about the Shuttle, the instructor told us to 'get out' and go watch the coverage.
I remember taking a Chem 2 test in college -- printed out on one of the original Macs. I struggled at home with my Commodore 64 and "Bank Street Writer" with my "Gorilla Banana" dot-matrix printer with "no descenders" -- when I saw that test and found out you could actually do superscripts and subscripts I was completely blown away.
...like "grody to the max and back", man.
IIRC I was sitting in that same class when I head about the Shuttle, the instructor told us to 'get out' and go watch the coverage.
Ha! When I was in high school I had a friend whose father had started a company to exploit "digital electronics". Basically pressure transducers that would send a voltage to a box where it would be 'digitized" and stored in "memory", to be used as an automated flow monitoring system.
I did some work for them, and "data collection" involved toggling through memory locations with a rocker switch, and writing down hexadecimal values displayed on an LED readout.
Then, someone would laboriously transfer the info to punch cards, which we then took to the local university to be run on the mainframe, all of which resulted in........ a dot matrix graph of flow values over time!
Ha! When I was in high school I had a friend whose father had started a company to exploit "digital electronics". Basically pressure transducers that would send a voltage to a box where it would be 'digitized" and stored in "memory", to be used as an automated flow monitoring system.
I did some work for them, and "data collection" involved toggling through memory locations with a rocker switch, and writing down hexadecimal values displayed on an LED readout.
Then, someone would laboriously transfer the info to punch cards, which we then took to the local university to be run on the mainframe, all of which resulted in........ a dot matrix graph of flow values over time!
I hear you......remember Compuserve? -- when the modems were so slow you could watch the data flow in ASCII across the screen?
Tomorrow (28 January) is the 20th Anniversary of the Challenger explosion. I was 4 years old. Damn.
I remember very well sitting in my living room watching them show that footage, over and over and over and over. It unnerved me, so my mom read me a book, or i read myself a book or something with a book. I was also 4 at the time.
And speaking of reminiscing, i remember sitting in Junior High staring at a CD (or floppies? i don't remember) for some online service that had some sort of game/community system. I can't remember what it was called. I think it ended in an exclamation point. I remember wishing I could somehow call the server in Toledo and not pay long-distance fees (which were ~ $0.20/minute at the time).
I remember the Challenger thing. I also remember the Reagan shooting. This was the first time something of that magnitude was on TV...and boy did they KNOW it. My goodness...for something like 3 days straight we kept seeing the same 5-10 seconds of footage over and over and over again. Whew!
*Is interrupted from playing his Rubix Cube while listening to his Twisted Sister 78 rpm's, drinking a tall cool New Coke and keeping one eye out for the Russkies*
Comments
There are 16 year-olds who never lived in the 80's.
Hard to believe.
I'm doing some work at a high school, and the I keep being brought up short by the frame of reference that these kids are using. Like "Star Wars" is roughly "Casablanca" in their time line.
You are making me feel old.
Oh...wait...well...I am actually getting to be "old".
( ...slinks away to find his walker and Geritol... )
THANK GOD.
Originally posted by ShawnJ
I mostly missed the 80's being born in '83.
THANK GOD.
so was i, but it still strikes me every so often. there are things i did, literally, decades ago. its freaky.
hope i die 'fore i get old.
...like "grody to the max and back", man.
IIRC I was sitting in that same class when I head about the Shuttle, the instructor told us to 'get out' and go watch the coverage.
Originally posted by ShawnJ
I mostly missed the 80's being born in '83.
THANK GOD.
This explains sooo much now.
Originally posted by dmz
I remember taking a Chem 2 test in college -- printed out on one of the original Macs. I struggled at home with my Commodore 64 and "Bank Street Writer" with my "Gorilla Banana" dot-matrix printer with "no descenders" -- when I saw that test and found out you could actually do superscripts and subscripts I was completely blown away.
...like "grody to the max and back", man.
IIRC I was sitting in that same class when I head about the Shuttle, the instructor told us to 'get out' and go watch the coverage.
Ha! When I was in high school I had a friend whose father had started a company to exploit "digital electronics". Basically pressure transducers that would send a voltage to a box where it would be 'digitized" and stored in "memory", to be used as an automated flow monitoring system.
I did some work for them, and "data collection" involved toggling through memory locations with a rocker switch, and writing down hexadecimal values displayed on an LED readout.
Then, someone would laboriously transfer the info to punch cards, which we then took to the local university to be run on the mainframe, all of which resulted in........ a dot matrix graph of flow values over time!
Originally posted by addabox
Ha! When I was in high school I had a friend whose father had started a company to exploit "digital electronics". Basically pressure transducers that would send a voltage to a box where it would be 'digitized" and stored in "memory", to be used as an automated flow monitoring system.
I did some work for them, and "data collection" involved toggling through memory locations with a rocker switch, and writing down hexadecimal values displayed on an LED readout.
Then, someone would laboriously transfer the info to punch cards, which we then took to the local university to be run on the mainframe, all of which resulted in........ a dot matrix graph of flow values over time!
I hear you......remember Compuserve? -- when the modems were so slow you could watch the data flow in ASCII across the screen?
Originally posted by DanMacMan
Tomorrow (28 January) is the 20th Anniversary of the Challenger explosion. I was 4 years old. Damn.
I remember very well sitting in my living room watching them show that footage, over and over and over and over. It unnerved me, so my mom read me a book, or i read myself a book or something with a book. I was also 4 at the time.
And speaking of reminiscing, i remember sitting in Junior High staring at a CD (or floppies? i don't remember) for some online service that had some sort of game/community system. I can't remember what it was called. I think it ended in an exclamation point. I remember wishing I could somehow call the server in Toledo and not pay long-distance fees (which were ~ $0.20/minute at the time).
Originally posted by dmz
I hear you......remember Compuserve? -- when the modems were so slow you could watch the data flow in ASCII across the screen?
Man, CompuServe. I think it cost more for a couple of hours of cruising the forums than a month of DSL.
Still, text only, so that's one way to keep things moving...
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
This explains sooo much now.
Your mother?
Originally posted by ShawnJ
Your mother?
Like I said. Thanks for proving my point.
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
Like I said. Thanks for proving my point.
Well, she was good. What can I say?
Originally posted by ShawnJ
Well, she was good. What can I say?
You've said plenty.
Alright, touché.
But I never liked those "age" comments. So stop?
Damn you, Anders! Damn you!