What makes you feel old?

[Red Shirt]

5 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Eight-track! Hearing that cluck-clunk of the tape switching directions right in the middle of your song.

So, were you a match book or table knife guy? 

1 hour ago, sarbian said:

Yeah, we (slightly) old people had such high quality car stereo ! Tape players and bargains speaker could reproduce the high fidelity of our best of Queen tape mix we copied on our best friend boombox.

Often true. Not bragging but my Queen was copied on a system that cost more than my first car. A friend of mine had a nice enough system in his car that the dashboard distorted long before the speakers. We rocked! Now we are old fat guys that can't half hear. I still crank it on Tie Your Mother Down. 

[TheSaint]

Just now, sarbian said:

No one mentioned punched tape yet

Funny you should mention that. My father-in-law worked as a programmer for Rockwell International for many years. He would bring home reels of mylar punch tape that was surplus from work and they would use it as ribbon to wrap their Christmas presents with. As they were wrapping, he would pull a length of tape off of the reel, run his fingers over the dots, and tell them what functions that particular portion of the tape contained. 

4 minutes ago, Red Shirt said:

So, were you a match book or table knife guy? 

I never edited any of our eight-track tapes. By the time I got to the age where that became a thing we had bought a nice component stereo system with a linear-tracking turntable and a dual cassette deck, so that was where all of my mixing got done.

[Red Shirt]

45 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

I never edited any of our eight-track tapes.

Sorry, I was referring to the practice I saw every 8-track user do where either a match book or a knife was poked into the player under the tape to get it to play correctly. I skipped 8-track for this reason and went straight to cassette. 

[TheSaint]

23 minutes ago, Red Shirt said:

Sorry, I was referring to the practice I saw every 8-track user do where either a match book or a knife was poked into the player under the tape to get it to play correctly. I skipped 8-track for this reason and went straight to cassette. 

Oh, never saw that. Ours played flawlessly. I thought you were talking about pulling the tapes out and cutting them up to make mix tapes, which I do know some folks tried doing.

[legoclone09]

3 hours ago, Red Shirt said:

I was just reading some of the thread to my wife. Got to pong and she added, "Remember if you left it on too long it would burn the image into your screen?" 

I think I burned the Battlefield 3 HUD into a TV because I played it so much. I don't know the exact TV but it was 720i resolution.

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, sarbian said:

No one mentioned punched tape yet

I've used it, but only in school to show how it worked. But it was in the 90s. The early 90s.

[ZooNamedGames]

This thread makes me feel old.

[Superfluous J]

10 hours ago, daniel l. said:

That said... Modern cartoons are utter crap, Especially the Japanese animé. Poor animation (Do you ever even see their mouths moving? They don't! One second they are closed, And the next: INHUMANLY WIDE OPEN!)

That is the one thing that stood out the most when I tried to rewatch Star Blazers. It was created in the 1970s.

[SinBad]

I saw ET at the drive-in sitting in the back of my parents station wagon.

I remember when my best friend came to school bragging that he had 'round blood'. Just installed a brand new 3dfx Voodoo card. Before that, the blood spatter in quake was square.

A few years back i wanted to get my kid a tonka truck. I was shocked to see that they are no longer all metal haulpacs, but instead poly-carbon stylised curvey fisher price looking things. Shame on you tonka.

Had another shock when i decided to show the kids the original transformers cartoons. That animation quality was horrific, scale and geometry were flexible, and sometimes the animaters would skip the detailed colors and just bulk fill a single color. Oh, and the casual racism...

I remember when thomas the tank engine was filmed using model trains.

I remember when an automatic transmision was the optional luxury extra, at extra cost. Now its the manual.

Yeah. Ive felt old for a while now...

 

 

 

 

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, SinBad said:

I remember when an automatic transmision was the optional luxury extra, at extra cost. Now its the manual.

No manual is still cheaper, but you do have to ask for it. At least, it was 3 years ago when I bought my last car.

[TheSaint]

1 hour ago, SinBad said:

I saw ET at the drive-in sitting in the back of my parents station wagon.

ET was filmed all over my old stomping grounds. I remember just after it came out one of my friends found out where Elliot's house (or, the house that stood in for the external shots of Elliot's house) was. So we piled all thirteen of us into my brother's 1966 Mustang and drove over to see it. Driving 70 MPH down the 210 freeway at 10:00 at night with three people in the passenger seat, five people in the rear seat, and four people sitting in the open trunk. Oh to be young and stupid again....

24 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

No manual is still cheaper, but you do have to ask for it. At least, it was 3 years ago when I bought my last car.

Not sure about where you folks live, but here in the States most cars don't even come with manual as an option anymore. Which is pathetic, if you ask me.

[lajoswinkler]

13 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Do yourself a favor and never, ever go back and watch those great Saturday Morning cartoons you're remembering right now.

They were just as bad as the stuff today. Sometimes worse.

*sniff* Star Blazers *sniff*

My childhood was spend watching classical cartoons. Tom and Jerry, Blue Racer,  Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner, Tijuana Toads, etc.

[Superfluous J]

12 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Not sure about where you folks live, but here in the States most cars don't even come with manual as an option anymore. Which is pathetic, if you ask me.

I live in the US too, and I've not owned an automatic car since the 90s. I even leased a manual once. They had to order it and have it trucked in

Granted I've only bought 1 car in the years that start with a "2" but I bought that car less than 3 years ago, right off the dealer lot.

[daniel l.]

11 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

My childhood was spend watching classical cartoons. Tom and Jerry, Blue Racer,  Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner, Tijuana Toads, etc.

So did I!  My parents for some reason have a hatred of every single contemporary item and forced me to spend my childhood watching ancient material. Not that some of the old stuff wasn't really good. After all one of my favorite childhood movies was Swiss Family Robinson (1960 film). But it still gets annoying how every female character wore a dress, And violin music played every time they spoke. 

[TheSaint]

17 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

My childhood was spend watching classical cartoons. Tom and Jerry, Blue Racer,  Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner, Tijuana Toads, etc.

Some of my favorite childhood memories are of getting up early on Sunday morning, having my dad make me and my brother bacon and eggs for breakfast, and then watching The Bugs Bunny Road Runner show. Dad laughed louder than both of us put together. And now on the weekends when my wife works, I get up early and make my kids breakfast, and we watch the old cartoons on DVD.

[Red Iron Crown]

Had to explain to a twentysomething coworker who Dire Straits was today. He'd never heard of them and he didn't recognize any of the songs I gave as examples. 

Edited November 23, 2016 by Red Iron Crown
Tenses are important.

[Dafni]

12 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Have to explain to a twentysomething coworker who Dire Straits was today. He'd never heard of them and he didn't recognize any of the songs I gave as examples. 

That is just sad. How can you spend twentysomething years on this planet, in the vicinity of radios and TV, and not feel the unbelievable drive and smooth power of Sultans of Swing even just once??? I mean, even if you dont recognize the name, everybody I know would at least say yeah right, I heard that one, its nice indeed.

[lajoswinkler]

11 hours ago, daniel l. said:

So did I!  My parents for some reason have a hatred of every single contemporary item and forced me to spend my childhood watching ancient material. Not that some of the old stuff wasn't really good. After all one of my favorite childhood movies was Swiss Family Robinson (1960 film). But it still gets annoying how every female character wore a dress, And violin music played every time they spoke. 

I just watched cartoon classics and I regret nothing.

 

1 hour ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Had to explain to a twentysomething coworker who Dire Straits was today. He'd never heard of them and he didn't recognize any of the songs I gave as examples. 

That's really sad. At least recognizing ("Yeah, I've heard that one!") belongs to the basic knowledge of the modern culture. One can listen to completely different music, but there are some staples of our culture that are universal and part of the globalization. I guess he lived under a rock all these years.

[HebaruSan]

3 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Had to explain to a twentysomething coworker who Dire Straits was today. He'd never heard of them and he didn't recognize any of the songs I gave as examples. 

But I thought millennials appreciated state of the art computer animation??

 

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

On 11/22/2016 at 10:57 AM, kerbiloid said:

Being frightened by the 2029 year approaching. The default threshold year of century recognition in operating systems and programs. 15 years ago this looked funny.

I just remembered... Having May 5th, 2000 marked on the digital assistant. May 5th was at some point considered the "true" date for the end of the world, because several planets would align that day.... That's what I remember at least.

Yes, boys and girls, there was a time when the end of the world was the year 2000.

Also, getting excited for having a digital assistant... QWERTY keyboard and all! Looks like a computer!

Edited November 23, 2016 by Rosco P. Coltrane

[Randazzo]

19 minutes ago, Rosco P. Coltrane said:

I just remembered... Having May 5th, 2000 marked on the digital assistant. May 5th was at some point considered the "true" date for the end of the world, because several planets would align that day.... That's what I remember at least.

Yes, boys and girls, there was a time when the end of the world was the year 2000.

Also, getting excited for having a digital assistant... QWERTY keyboard and all! Looks like a computer!

I got one of these bad boys for Christmas in 1995 and thought it was the most amazing thing ever: http://segaretro.org/IR_7000_Communicator

 

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Mine was even older (my cousin gave it to me because he upgraded to a "modern" one). It had a character screen with two rows and say 20 columns...  Can't remember the brand, but it was the size of one of those thin pocket calculators...

Speaking of which... we called them Chinese calculators... to differentiate them from things that... weren't made in China? I guess. Well, that also makes me feel old. Electronic gadgets NOT made in China. 

[diomedea]

I watched this vid live, was already grown enough to get most of the technical details about the mission.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

On 11/22/2016 at 8:46 AM, sarbian said:

Being born before any of the Star Wars movies.

Knowing how save those 10 more kB of memory you need to launch Wing Commander 2.

Edit : or was it WC1 ? Soooo long ago...

I remember trying to do 3D (Raydream Studio, ancient version of Blender, Maya, and Animation Master were all tried) on a G3 Mac running 8.6 and having a special boot setup with many extensions disabled (I think that's what they were called back then) just to free up more of my awesome 256MB RAM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_G3_(Blue_%26_White)

 

 

[cubinator]

My first Rubik's cube solve was 9 years ago as of yesterday. Only next year and it'll be a whole decade! It's still only been 224 days since The Future started, though. Some people may have to look back at that date using a 669 sol calendar when it's been a decade, and they'll have to figure out how to celebrate yearly holidays on different planets.