You Know you're getting older when...

Gasoline was $0.45 per gallon, that's leaded gas.

The evening news was not over until Walter Cronkite said: "That's the way it is."

You remember when all the friends of you high school age older siblings wore Beatle Boots.

You remember Saturday morning cartoons like Tennessee Tuxedo and Underdog.

[Roger Parkinson]

Originally Posted by wodin

When I was writing my resume for my PMP certification my first IT project was upgrading from a PDP-11 with RS-232 VT 52/100 terminals to a Vax with DECnet.

Back in the late '70s when VT100s first came out the IT shop I was working at got one (yes, just one, it was a Big Deal). I insisted it lived on my desk. I was building a system that did (gasp!) direct addressing on the screen, so it built a kind of form for the users to fill in instead of just scrolling up with another prompt. My argument was that I simply could not work without that screen. Up until then we all went to the lineflo terminals (dot matrix printer with a keyboard, for you kids) and did all our coding and testing there. There was about one of those to four programmers so we spent most of the time at our desks 'desk checking' our code.

But that VT100 brought in an whole new era, for me anyway. It only took a few months before everyone else in the office had one.

That was on a PDP-11 running RSTS. When the Vax arrived we could forget about shuffling memory around all the time, the 32 bit memory space felt like infinity. When the 16 bit PCs came out it felt like (and was) a backward step. I avoided them for years 'cos I had a Vax to play with.

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

- You remember when AM radio played mostly music.

...and longer songs (like American Pie) were shortened to fit the standard format. You had to listen on an FM station to hear the full-length song.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

...and longer songs (like American Pie) were shortened to fit the standard format. You had to listen on an FM station to hear the full-length song.

Likewise with 8-track tapes. Often, a song had to be split between two tracks so you ended up with a pause of several seconds during a song.

[bookmeal]

Even a touch tone phone, one still have to remember phone numbers sometimes.
I used to keep phone numbers in a phone book, still keeping, e.g. out of city friends and relatives, coz I wrote down their address too.

I used a Rotary phone when I was very little, in my grandmother house.

[DrDln]

You know you're getting older if you still own a record player and 8-track player...

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Roger Parkinson

Back in the late '70s when VT100s first came out the IT shop I was working at got one (yes, just one, it was a Big Deal). I insisted it lived on my desk. I was building a system that did (gasp!) direct addressing on the screen, so it built a kind of form for the users to fill in instead of just scrolling up with another prompt. My argument was that I simply could not work without that screen. Up until then we all went to the lineflo terminals (dot matrix printer with a keyboard, for you kids) and did all our coding and testing there. There was about one of those to four programmers so we spent most of the time at our desks 'desk checking' our code.

But that VT100 brought in an whole new era, for me anyway. It only took a few months before everyone else in the office had one.

That was on a PDP-11 running RSTS. When the Vax arrived we could forget about shuffling memory around all the time, the 32 bit memory space felt like infinity. When the 16 bit PCs came out it felt like (and was) a backward step. I avoided them for years 'cos I had a Vax to play with.

Yes but just one of those VT 100 dumb terminals cost as much as a whole 16 bit PC including monitor and keyboard, and that's not counting the air conditioned, Halon protected room full of PDP-11/Vax. And the PC had RSTS/VMS/DEC Basic emulators so you could write code on them, and then transfer it to the mini for compile.

Oh yeah, they also had VT-100 emulators so you could log onto the PDP and do your compile from there.

Ain't technology grand?

[wodin]

Originally Posted by bookmeal

Even a touch tone phone, one still have to remember phone numbers sometimes.
I used to keep phone numbers in a phone book, still keeping, e.g. out of city friends and relatives, coz I wrote down their address too.

I used a Rotary phone when I was very little, in my grandmother house.

We had a phone without a dial, either rotary or touch; you would just jiggle the receiver hook and Sandra Brathol would come on line and say “Number Please?” Then you would ask her to connect you to Fred or Jim or Mary or whoever, or if you remembered the three digit number you could ask her to connect to that.

And she WOULD!

Ain’t technology grand?

[Angst]

You know you're getting older if anything under a quarter isn't worth bending over to pick up. (Either that or it's a sign you're getting fat. Or both.)

[DrDln]

You know you're getting old, if you still dial the number from your memory. That's not using auto-dial.

[Roger Parkinson]

Originally Posted by wodin

We had a phone without a dial, either rotary or touch; you would just jiggle the receiver hook and Sandra Brathol would come on line and say “Number Please?” Then you would ask her to connect you to Fred or Jim or Mary or whoever, or if you remembered the three digit number you could ask her to connect to that.

And she WOULD!

Ain’t technology grand?

Yeah, we had those. Except our Sandra Brathol was called Pixie Steptoe (I don't know if that first name was real but everyone called her that). There were others too. Sometimes there were rumours that they would listen in, but of course that would be against their hypocratic oath. They did know everyone in town though and they at least knew who they called and how often, so when I called my girlfriend (now my wife) and talked for hours they knew.

Incoming calls were done by a one letter morse code. A ring would sound on all phones on that line, but you only answer the ring if it was your letter. No, we didn't all know morse code, we only had to know our one letter. I guess they couldn't have more than 26 on a line. Actually they only chose letters that were easy to remember/distinguish I think.

This was rural. In town (a tiny place, actually) they all had their own lines, so no morse code needed. If the phone rang it was always for you. Us country folk thought that was pretty high tech. But the town folk still had to ask Pixie Steptoe to make an outgoing call.

[DrDln]

You know you're getting older, if you need glasses to read these messages.

[JoelArnold]

You know you're getting older if you don't recognize most of the bands on Saturday Night Live.

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by JoelArnold

You know you're getting older if you don't recognize most of the bands on Saturday Night Live.

You know you're getting older if you don't recognize any of the comedians on SNL!

[SneakySnake]

Originally Posted by DrDln

You know you're getting old, if you still dial the number from your memory. That's not using auto-dial.

Oi! I resemble that remark. anyway you know are REALLY REALLY OLD if you can't remember the phone numbers and have to look it up because you don't know how to use the phonebook section of your mobile phone unless your friend's son is there to help.