Growing Older (For the 30+ crowd)

I had to walk 3 miles to school, if I missed the bus. And wrote my lessons on a slate computer (the small trs-80 one). With NO ethernet connection, only rs-232. And a printer that used silver thermal paper and was only 40 characters wide!

Then in college, we didn't have no internet. We had to visit secure terminals in the math center to logon to the ArpaNet. Where we couldn't play Zork till the MIT students went home at 5pm.

Then we'd wait till 2:00 am till they were free! And it only had 102 nodes, (and no porn sites!). And none of these 'PC's, We had to make due with system 360 mainframes! And we had to live with BASIC in Rom on the IBM minis, and learn REAL languages like Fortran, not this newfangled 'coffee' thing, or that gal Ruby who is on a Train Track Rails for some reason!!

Did you have to walk to school barefooted? :D

I once knew a guy who grew up in the backwoods of backwater West Virginia (or maybe it was western Virginia). He claimed he didn't brush his teeth a single time until he went to college.

Oh, and I wasn't able to interpret that word. You had a typo. You hit the '*' key instead of a real alphabet key. What were you trying to tell me to do? Have a nice day. ;)

Can anyone remember the IBM RAMAC507??? Programming in binary or machine code? Remember COBOL??? A knowledge of FORTRAN made it easier to learn C. Oh yeah, there was also a beast called UNIVAC. Unlike the RAMAC507 which required its own airconditioned room, screw the employees, that sucker required half an airconditioned building but only for the computer. Employees were SOOL.(Sh|t Out Of Luck). Can anybody ever remember spilling a box of punch cards??? Pu$$ies, all of you!!![b]LOL[/b] ;\

[b]Dawg[/b] ]:)

Uh, hello. You there behind the just_chilin image and pseudonym, I maybe 28 years old, going on 29, but I am old school, just like you.

While I certainly cannot deny that we who are born in the late 1970s through middle 1980s are a bunch of spoiled idiots, there are some of us twenty-somethings who would rather do without even a smidgen of technology.

I have the same experience of deprivation of material things, and for that, I am cool with it.

Of course I would have the microwave oven or the XBox or even the newly released Sanyo MM-9000 from Sprint PCS. However, even with a smidge of such I am still like the reclusive Amish people in Pennsylvania and other isolated locations throughout the United States. And I have found out, through my personal experience I can live without that stuff. You know, less is more.

Yes, I understand your angst here regarding us twenty-somethings. But there are other twenty-somethings, like me, who would rather be "paupers", even though making plenty money. ;)

-swg

But a FEW corrections, Atari 2600 was something brought to Earth by aliens, I remember just about peeingmyself when I opened my COLOUR pong game one Christmas! Atari was later on when video games were REALLY advanced!

As for writing a letter, at least we COULD write, look at some of th ehandwriting kids have today and it makes you want to destroy thier keyboards, I taught my kid caligraphy and drafting techniques, he now has 'pleasant' handwriting.

Uphill both ways to school, well actually it was Up a hill and down a hill to and from school, and yes it seemed like 5' of perpetual snow living in Nova Scotia, especially because I was only 4' and change! Dad DRIVE us to school? Gotta be kidding, 'sling yer hook, mate!'

Oh the mixed tapes off the radio, weren't THEY pleasant? But hey, every girlfriend got one, how special.

Ah, the origins of cable, I was SO excited when I could spend 20 minutes tuning in Banana Splits on theUHF dial! That was before the fancy corded clunky box with the three level selector came out so you could CLICK channels from the couch (and we STILL call the remote "the clicker"!).

But there were many things we had that kids today don't have: health, an active lifestyle, social skills.

We played baseball, soccer, football and pretty much any other game you could play outside. We rode bikes for miles and got a suntan in the summer that was so dark you'd stay tanned most of the winter. We found great social activities, went to dances, the skating rink, Scouting, you name it, if it wsa outside we did it.

Now it's actually cool to rarely meet your friends, text messages, email, cell phones who needs to visit a friend across town or meet in the middle after a long bike ride.

I'd take what I had over what they have today any day of the week. We had fun, kids today just seem to fill time.

Fights, flames and unacceptable comments don't matter here.

I still talk to pretty much everyone here, even Max, and we've been through the ringer a few dozen times at least. Sleeping Dawg and I actually find more common ground than not, go figure! And even Garrion and I can share comments nowadays.

It really doesn't matter, when all is said and done. You still have your life and I have mine, it's only the Internet afterall.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Ch?teau de Chasselas, eh?

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: A cup o' cold tea.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:Without milk or sugar.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Or tea.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:In a cracked cup, an' all.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son".

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:Aye, 'e was right.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:Aye, 'e was.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:Cardboard box?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:Aye.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.

ALL:They won't!

Sorry, anytime I hear someone say how kids have it easy, that entire sketch runs through my head. :D

I had a nice big box to program, called PDP11

http://www.sm5sxl.net/~mats/graphics/images/computer/dec/pdp/pdp-11-peripherals-handbook-1976.jpg

It had all the nice stuff I could imagine- a hard drive, all the compilers and even some graphics. I pitied my predcessor, who had to work with teletype & punched tape in assembler on some old HPs 4kb box we then used as a cofee table. His intervention time was hour and a half. Programming cycle went as follows: tape with line editor in, tape with assembler source in, edit source on teletype,

http://www.sm5sxl.net/~mats/graphics/images/computer/teletype/teletypeASR33.jpg

punch source on tape, tape with assembler in, recently punched tape with source in two times for assembling plus one time for listing, punch tape with assembled code, tape with assembled code in. Execute the code, see what doesn't work, find the bug by the means of mental debugging, and repeat the process.

And I could compile everything just by typing the command and pressing enter... WOW! There was even some sort of debugger, clumsy, but still useful in the rare occasions, when mental debugging failed.

Life of a techie was good back then, we could devote at least 10-20 percent of our time for study of professional literature, and personal projects, bosses were techies as well, and salaries were on the management level.

And then, in the 1980s... Bye bye reason! Human resources, motivation, project management, management fads... Guess I could pity the young folks as well, no matter how spoiled them might seem.

Thats not the country, thats wannabes....

I grew up in the country, but not on a farm. Houses were cheaper in the country than the city, and we could have enough land to grow some things. On a once acre lot, we had up to a quarter acre garden and some apple trees. We also raised chickens, ducks and pigs on occasion.

We did have indoor plumbing, but shared one bathroom among 4 brothers and my parents.

I know city kids who had more opportunities for sports and recreation and stuff. But we had a real community. Farmers shared their surplus with their neighbours, or used their tractors to plow out their neighbours' driveways - all without thought for praise or thanks. If someone was sick, their neighbours chipped in to take care of them. When our neighbours had power and we had none, they invited us into their homes.

I left that community to go to high school and married about 10 years after I left. I didn't see many of my neighbours during that time. But they generously held a wedding shower for my wife, someone they had never met. They made the food for my wedding.

You know all these people who mock Hillary's "it takes a village" comments, but while I don't like her tone and attitude, I know my community helped make me.

Oh and while I know some of you were joking about indoor plumbing, I did know some farmers who didn't have it till the 70s.

James

grew up on farm in canada..2 channels on tv..1 being in french..that was fun

now i have over 200...still nothing to watch..
*grumble*

Where did you get Atari? I had a deck of cards, a monopoly game ... hell, the little spinning wheel ont he Game of Life was high tech!!!

Cable? Channels 2, 5 and 11 (11 was a little shakey, as their tower had the worst location). We got channel 34 when I was about 10 or so, but you had to carefully tune it in, as there was no stops on the UHF: It had variable tuning, and when you took you hand away, the tuning changed, so you had to kinda guss which way it was going to go and tune accordingly.

Jiffy Pop? My dad didn't believe in such frivolities. We had a 1950's West Bend popcorn maker. You but some butter (REAL, from the cow butter) in the bottom, put in a quarter cup of kernels you got from a bag, and away you went.

All you wussies would not have lasted a minute in the 1960's.

Green Bay had busses, but only if you were am ile or more from the school. When I was in grade school, the snow could get piled up on the side of the streets so high it would be over your head.

But they DID get the streets cleared in time for traffic in the morning, except that one time we had 15" of snow overnight.

We never had A.D.D.
A terrorist was something from a far away country.
We did not have to wonder if a crazy dude from a far away land, who did not like our way of life was going to come and kill us.
We did not know AIDS
We had no MAD COWS
We were not permanantly traumatized by age 5
The news was about what happen within a 100 miles radius and a little politics
We didn't have to worry much about being kidnapped, raped, killed for no apparent reason
Having a mom and dad at your house was still "the norm"
Not alot of us knew what a gay or lesbien was or the contraversy they would "cause"
We did not have the dreaded "outsourcing" taking our future away to deal with
Your dad did not have a "career", but he still had a job
We could play around at the pool all day, under the sun, without the need for sunblock, UVA and UVB could of been radio channels for all we knew
Lunch came from mom's heart and hands, not from the freezer.
Dad actually came home at 6 and still had energy to play with us.

Need i go on?!?!?

To each his own i guess. We had it tough, they have it tough, just a different kinda of it. Makes me kinda like the innoncence that time gave us.

Gosh, I KNEW somebody would come up with "I'm more rural and country than you are!" post. :|

I lived in a small farming town of 1500 people. It was only 20 miles from a large city so I think I had the best of both worlds--small town upbringing with a big city close by for fun when I got into my teenage years. My dad worked in the nearby big city but he owned a 200-acre farm five miles outside of my town where we grew farm crops. My brothers and I worked out there in the evenings (after school during school year and after work in summer) and weekends. During summer breaks in high school, my friends and I did various jobs for the local farmers. It was hot and hard work. Throwing around 60-lb bales of hay all day in 100 degree heat is no picnic. My grandfather farmed over 1000 acres and raised cattle. He lived on 100 acres a few miles from town that was half pasture and half grazing land for the cattle and I helped him when I had time. But my brothers and I spent a LOT of time out there growing up. One of my brothers lives in my grandparents' house now (they passed away) and I am glad it is still in the family. There's lots of great memories of that farm/ranch.

I had similar experiences about sharing and a sense of community. If a neighbor needed help, you just pitched in to help without even thinking why you were doing it. As you said, "it took a village" to survive some of the time. My hometown has changed alot since I left. I don't know if there's many places left like the ones you and I grew up in.

I can relate to that...Where I grew up we did not get electricity until I was 13 y/o and I was the 12th born of 18 kids. TV was 2 channels (on a good day). We had one radio station AM until the time shortly before my high school graduation when they started an FM station and even then it was not even a stereo transmission.

We didn't have video games and such...although there was one family on the road we lived on that had an old Atari system that I played once...Pong was the game if I remember correctly. Fun was riding bikes, sledding in winter, and what ever else you could think of outdoors. Indoor fun was board games and cards. But that was only if you had enough time or energy after doing farm chores and other necessities of living on a rural dairy farm in the early 70's up here in northern Michigan.

My father jokes that for years he had a remote for the TV that never needed batteries...until all of the kids grew up and moved out.

Thanks for the lite blast on new times and a trip to yesterday...

Mike

Grew up a stones throw from the city line in Cheltenham. We had a nice suburban home with a wooded area behind. Kind of a "Leave it to Beaver"/Andy Griffith place to grow up. My grade school was across the street and there were plenty of kids to play with. Never had AC or cable (only 7 channels) and we had a partyline rotary dial phone!

When strapping my kids into car seats I marvel at how my Dad used to stick me on my older brothers lap with no seatbelts and drive a family of 8 down the back roads of Jersey at 90 miles an hour!

We all survived.

grew up in the ?burbs of Miami. elementary school was about half a mile away, jr high I was about 100 yards from minimum bus distance that was 2 miles
the 7-11(about a mile away) was open from 7am to 11pm and was enclosed by heavy bug screens (could have cut your way in with a butter knife but that would be wrong) our doors were locked when we left for more the a few days grocery store was a mile and a half with a movie and a little restaurant we walked every ware (didn?t have a car till i was in my teens. my mom didn?t drive) or took a bus. While there was no snow it was far more interesting to walk in a thunderstorm then snow would ever be
first encounter with a computer was in high school we got to learn programming on a mainframe at the collage(fortunately not on punch cards)we did build a kit computer (came with 1k but we added a 4k kit)and programmed it in machine code (with switches) and watched the pretty lights

We were driving down the road all singing along to a Beatles tune, and when it was over one of my little darlings said: "Gee, I really love these oldies." Hey - I was watching the Ed Sulivan Show when those 4 lads were on it - in black and white, I might add - for the first time.
Now several years later they LOVE my Zappa, Zeplin and AC/DC CDs. Still can't sell them on Billie Holiday, but that's oldies stuff, even for me!

I know where its coming from, and it isn't doctors.....

My kids school asked me to have my son checked out for ADD. He has trouble focusing in school, though none of the "bad" behaviours associated with ADD. He just gets lost in other thoughts - especially with boring teachers, or subjects where he knows the lessons backwards and forwards.

It happens that my family doctor knows a specialist in ADD and he set up an appointment. I took time off work to take my son myself. This specialist is one of the top in the field and is published in Harvard review of medicine.

He acknowledged that my son had a mild case, and urged me not to push for Ritalin despite what the teachers would suggest. He gave us some exercises and suggested some nutritional supplements (Omega 3 fatty acids like Primrose oil/salmon oil/tun oil).

The teacher was dissapointed. They feel they have too many students to deal with, and there are many english as a second language students, so they feel they have trouble coping with an ADD kid in the mix.

Truth is while there are many more ESL kids in the class than when I was a kid, my teachers had challenges too - teaching multiple grades in the same class for example. They sucked it up and did a great job.

My wife chairs the parent council, and while there are some great teachers, there are also some whiners. ADD is just another example of "lazy thinking" in terms of leaning on drugs to solve the problem.

James

I can't believe that I just read an article from someone just over 30 complaining about how good the youngsters of today have over his generation. I am nearing twice 30 and still work in this crazy, fast paced world of computer technology. The first IBM PCs hit the general market when I was in "The 30 Something crowd". They did not have multi-gigabyte drives or memory but did cost thousands of dollars for a very bare bones system. If you could afford a hard drive, it was 10 MB or less. There were only a handful of applications and many of these did not run very well. Networking and the Internet? Networking was communications over modems at speeds often below 300 baud. Imagine getting any work done at that speed.

He references the Atari 2600 -- I'm talking about Pong with two giant squares being bounced back and forth by two vertical lines. And, people acutally spent time playing these games. They did not have many other electronic game options. Home entertainment? There were no DVD movies (or even VHS)or cable. You received nothing but a few local channels with very limited viewing options and often needed to become part of the antennae system to get a viewable picture.

But, people played board games face-to-face instead of with some never-met stranger throw wires and switches. People talked on the telephone when they wanted to and not whenever some device in their pocket rang. People could drive and think or listen to the radio, instead of participate in a conference or support call while narrowly avoiding collisions on a very crowded highway.

Would I give up today's technology for a return to a simpler world. You bet.

I have seen on television and read about hard-working people who made some measure of monetary means, just not enough to afford rent and/or mortgage (especially during the housing/real estate bubble here!) yet somehow these people made do with whatever they had.

Also brushes with homelessness just goes to show you that housing is temporary and transitional, as I had posted on an earlier thread.

Regardless of whether people made next to nothing(or nothing at all in the case of some) or chronically unemployed (or not) or even making $30,000.00+ annually for a household of one, somebody will have to go through a period of housing transition.

Trust me, I been through that transition, and wished I had a motor recreational vehicle to live in.

-swg :)

The post-script: I read in the New York Times Magazine in late 2001 about a man who had built for himself portable modular rooms, for he knew housing for him was temporarily. (something like the situation with the four Yorkshiremen) Also in 2004 in the New York Times Magazine, David Laurible of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus fame, travels with the circus. Mr. Laurible was technically homeless for he was traveling and working with the circus. He could not fathom anyone staying in one stationary place to dwell.

I was a kid in the 50's and we had one small black and white TV console, maybe like 13", that the whole family watched together. There were only 3 or 4 channels I think.

On Friday nights we all sat outside and listened to radio programs like The Shadow, honestly I can't remember the names (senility). We played board games, like Monopoly and Candyland (my favorite).

Damn I'm old.

For the first 20 or so years we had National TV in Iceland (late 60s to late 80s) there was no TV on Thursdays and they all took their summer holiday in July and closed the station!

The programme started with news at 8 PM on weekdays and was finished by 11 PM and perhaps 1 am Fridays and Saturdays. Saturdays we had a sports show in the afternoon and Sundays at 6 PM there was a children's program (in fact we still have that).

I now live out in the country where we get 2 terrestrial channels; the state TV and a subscription-based "Channel 2" (which I don't subscribe to). Those living in bigger towns now have the opportunity to watch a number of TV channels over their ADSL.

Try remembering back to when TV was black and white, the screen was only 13"".
The library was too far to walk to so you had to wait for your parents to take you and bring you back. AND they waited for you right there in the library.

Video games???? Computers????? I remember when I was in high school that my dad took a course at the U and had punchcards. When mom went back to school, homework was done on a Sinclar with the programs/memory on cassettes programmed.

No I did not have to walk thru snow (being in Tucdon we ask our parents what snow was) nor was I deprived of indoor plumbing. But the telephone was a party line and you had to make sure you answered on the correct set of rings. TV had three stations and the wide outdoors was our playground.

Oh, to be able to go back to the simple life of yesteryear.

The hardships of my youth do not translate directly to the issues young people face today. Kids and teens these days have their own set of pressures and hardships, such as:

1. Which songs to download for their iPod,
2. Getting to the next level of Grand Theft Auto,
3. Which meal to order at McDonald's,
4. Which shows to TiVo,
5. ...well... I guess that's about it.

Yep, kids of today are spoiled. I teach at a local community college and I have a class of high school juniors and seniors. They never bring their books, pens, or paper. They only want the 'net and some site called "Myplace". I'm in the electronic and computer maintenance department and we received around 30 IBM Selectrics as a donation. I had the students use them for a couple of assignments. I never heard so much crying and whining in my life. They used so much Liquid Paper it was funny. I had to teach them how to center and align the paper. I had to explain that their are no justification icons either. They had to do it on their own. Boy did I have fun those few days.

Abe