Remember when.......

@harrison

I really enjoyed Yellow for this reason. (Actually, there were numerous other reasons, but this was the biggest one.)

@harrison wait, what? is this re: pokemon go? or old style cards?

/image pokémon red

@Yoda_Daenerys

@harrison @shruggie

The whole thing with Mew being “available” is interesting. (I.e That supposedly nobody at Game Freak knew about it (not sure if I fully believe that), how it helped sales, etc…)

Of course though, the biggest glitch regarding Mew happened when I traded it to someone (so that we could each have one) and it resulted in my getting a lvl 99 magikarp which otherwise should have been lvl 9…

@katylava
Make an extra cup for me.

@katylava Marvin needs to see tea and no tea or he won’t help repair the infinite improbability drive. More tea probably won’t cut it. So no tea for me please.

@duodec
Tea and no tea. Not a prob.

@f00l

Back when kids had more freedom.

@shruggie
The “freedom” wasn’t in quotes. It was pretty real.

They trusted us and trusted the world. Mostly it was right to for so.

@f00l Yeah - we’d take a peanut butter sandwich lunch and go play in the stream that fed the lake in the park (only rule no swimming without an adult present). We’d be gone most of the day. Once we bought, and threw, a bunch of dry ice in the lake to watch it bubble. No one warned us that dry ice could give us frostbite. Or warned us not to lick frozen metal poles or not to slide done the front walk barefoot in the snow trying to make ice. We were allowed to sleep outside in the winter in igloos we created out of snow plow piles in the church parking lot and no one worried be’d be abducted or that we’d freeze. It was presumed that we had some common sense and part of life was also learning some (but certainly not all) lessons the hard way (the adults did cut off the tree the branch that was too high that we’d dare each other to hang and drop from but they left just enough we could still climb the tree. It was also presumed if we managed to climb the tree we’d manage to get down…

We were trusted not to be stupid and if we were then we were punished within an inch of our lives. In our neighborhood they had bells outside the front door and families had different “codes” they’d ring for us to come home. We all knew which belonged to which family and would make sure the appropriate kids knew they had to go home. Since we all played outside it did none of any good if anyone got grounded for not going home at the bell.

@Kidsandliz I remember when you could take a peanut butter sandwich to school.

@sammydog01 @Kidsandliz

Stopped by my former high school. There was a sign requesting that nobody bring anything with nuts into the building.

@shruggie

Really?
Wow.

@Kidsandliz

Exactly.
Good times in many ways. Not perfect. But good.

@f00l

I’ll try to get a picture eventually. Probably on Thursday.

@f00l Our school makes lunches for homeless folks looking for jobs. They include peanut butter sandwiches. One of the kids is highly allergic to peanut butter. Instead of sitting out his mom sent in soy butter. I get wanting everyone to be included but serving soy butter sandwiches to homeless people seems cruel. Now they put in one of those little closed tubs of peanut butter and everyone is happier.

@f00l I remember summer days almost exactly like yours [happy sigh].

@f00l Man, this brings back memories.

@mfladd

The 90s were fun. I had to install something for someone (I dunno, they couldn’t do it because the CD didn’t work. Stuck the CD into the appropriate place, 2 minutes later it was set up with a shortcut). Anyways, the setup said something about registering online, and it mentioned something or other about waiting for the modem to connect.

@mfladd We used to use the cds for aol from burger king as shitty frisbees.

@Pantheist

Honestly, I’m not fully sure how I ended up getting a lot of AOL CDs. I think they were through the mail.

@Pantheist We made Christmas tree ornaments out of cds. Very shiny.

@mfladd

I saw the net on a few uni machines and defense contractor connections and went nuts trying the get it.

Finally bought an early netcom.com account after they started selling access. All command line. No web. All newsgroups and ftp and get and irc and a bunch of other protocols that are barely used or only used in special situations now.

Only, the netcom modems were in CA. So I bought some sort of after-hours Unlimited long distance data thing from Sprint for $30/month and dialed them up all nite long. Except when the person I shared the account with decided to forkbomb them to see what would happen; and my account got cut off, until l called and pleaded and promised them my soul if it happened again.
(Guilty party is still a great friend and a killer coder, and has become a responsible adult capable of actual conversation, which was not the case at the time.)

And the net was straight out of True Names, or it felt that way. A whole new universe.

I remember first using lynx as a browser. And then the day I first installed beta Mozilla, on my rock-solid OS/2 machine and went online. That was a wow.

When we thought the net would save the whole world and make information access and democracy and intelligent reflection and positive creativity be the norm everywhere.

I suppose I was playing the role of Miranda and did not realize it. But we had no Prospero to assist us with perspective:

MIRANDA
      Oh, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in ’t!

PROSPERO
     'Tis new to thee.

@mfladd I remember when I’d be online and my mom would pick up the phone and it would kick me off the internet.

@RiotDemon
I suppose you were young and couldn’t control it.

I had a line for that. Anyone who messed with it got evicted from the premises immediately. 3 strikes and you were banned.

@RiotDemon I lost so many starcraft games because of that…

@mfladd You can still play around with AOL’s remains:

@f00l yeah, young. Eventually she learned to ask before she picked up the phone.

People she knew would complain that they could never get through to our house phone.

@Pantheist ah the good old days. I thought about posting some kind of remember when about Starcraft.

@mfladd lol, good post. I remember excitement when hearing that ‘You got mail’ chime.

@mfladd 300 baud modem. Used to sit with a book in my lap to read while something (everything) down-loaded. Thought I’d gone to heaven when I could afford 1200 baud replacement.

@shruggie In the mail, stuck into the plastic bag the newspaper came in. Stuck onto a tear-out page in some magazines. I still have dozens of them. The Spouse worked at AOL for 10+ years. We met there, in fact. When he moved into my house we had three phone lines: the house’s, my computer’s, his computer’s. Much to his dismay and amusement, I still use AOL; been on it since 1994 and I’m too lazy to change stuff.

@magic_cave wait what? Why?

@magic_cave

I’m sure many of us used one of these.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler

In comparison 14.4 with compression was a speed demon. Bonded isdn was paradise.

@magic_cave Any chance you have old AOL tools/manuals/FDO stuff lying around?

@katylava A little earlier than that; I discovered Usenet while in college. I was still a comic book collector (hoarder/retainer) then, and started printing out rec.arts.comics.* on fanfold greenbar line printer paper and taking it to my favorite shop so they could enjoy it too.

@carl669

@carl669

So… Before the factory created you?

@carl669 I remember when I never swore. It was just before I found you guys.

@carl669 Is this one of those alternative facts I keep hearing about?

@sammydog01

/giphy interest peaked.

For scientific reasons…

@shruggie *piqued

@compunaut

Nope. My interest peaked when I typed that. Now it’s at a plateau.

@shruggie
Was it a twin interest that got pique’d then plateaued?

@dave I didn’t have enough characters in the tweet to get to seven.

@dave

What would 6 and 7 be?

13

@RiotDemon

@RiotDemon omg! i played muds so much that it’s a wonder i passed my freshman year of college!

@RiotDemon Here is a real, live Telnet BBS: telnet://guardian.synchro.net
I’ve kicked around the idea of running one with some games for folks to play.

@dashcloud

Is it Fido? Ah, ye olde daze …

@RiotDemon OMG MUDs I played for years on one Called Avatar. Was senior staff when I finally quit - just last year. There are still a few out there.

@RiotDemon As far as I know Gemstone IV and DragonRealms are still going (in commercial side). My wife and I played them and predecessors for years, but dropped out due to work pressure. She still volunteer GMs on a free to play MUD; it has been great programming practice for her.

@RiotDemon @duodec @Cerridwyn
Never enough time to explore these things

@compunaut I tried to go back and play again as an adult. Not as thrilling compared to when I was around 15-17 years old.

@RiotDemon Maybe I rolled a higher role-play immersion attribute than you: 6+6+6=18, plus bonuses!

@compunaut @RiotDemon @duodec @Cerridwyn

Combat roll 3D20, result 37

Bonus points for knowing the significance.

I was 26 when I started playing Gemstone, and 44 when I stopped playing Dragonrealms due to lack of time.

@duodec nah, i saw the triple 0

@duodec @RiotDemon @Cerridwyn
Had a discussion with the kids (15-16yo) about giving Gemstone or DragonRealms a try; also discussed Sojourn/TorilMUD (we’re big fans of Baldur’s Gate & Forgotten Realms).
Any preferences/recommendations for noobs?

@compunaut the only two MUDs I got into were AVPmud and StrangeMUD. Strange was the first one I played. Not sure how long I stayed, maybe a few months. I remember my favorite area was this insane asylum.

It looks like it’s still up and running… At least what I can tell from the website.

AVP… I spent (maybe?) a year there. I was maxed out on my synthetic character and was working on a predator. They decided to fix the gap between all the different classes, so it reset everyone, and a bunch of people quit. I tried to stick around, but at that point I was pretty upset that I had spent so much time and was one of only a few maxed out synthetics, and it was yanked away. I spent more time playing regular video games at that point so I gave up shortly after.

I’m not sure if that mud still exists. It was terrible for beginners because it was a player killer mud. I remember a lot of the high level aliens would just go in and wipe out all the beginners even though it hardly gave them any XP. It really sucked when you didn’t know your way around because you had to go find your corpse to get your shit.

@compunaut The free to play MUD my wife likes and works on is called Kingdoms of the Lost . I believe it is run fairly tightly to prevent abuse and griefers, but I’ve never been in it.

I’ve been out of Dragonrealms for more than 10 years. You will want an appropriate client (probably can get recommendations from their site at play.net) but to just feel around an old fashioned chat terminal program might still work (that is what I used for a lot of the time). The forums were free to read too so you can get a feel for the other players. Don’t know how much it costs but probably has a free startup period.

@RiotDemon @duodec @Cerridwyn @duodec The one I played the most was RetroMUD. I did do some Gemstone III as well.

@dashcloud @RiotDemon @duodec @duodec

Only ever played two. The first was an old BBS mud and it was after it folded that I started playing Avatar.

@RiotDemon Probably won’t be trying a (primarily) player v player MUD…

@dashcloud older people in my area think 7 digit phone numbers are still a thing.

@dashcloud I remember when if the number was 473-2335, all we had to dial was 3-2335.

I also remember operators.

@dashcloud all numbers here are in the 207 area code, so most people here still leave it off. I have a NJ cell number still, and I almost always have to read it twice because they think 862 comes after 207 then get confused when there are too many digits

@dashcloud I’m my area, most of the local people still only say the 7 digits. I say my area code out of habit because of sharing numbers with former classmates or coworkers from other areas.

@mfladd I ran a PBX machine at my first job. I was a fill in for the regular operator when she went on break or lunch.

It was pretty cool.

@dashcloud I still have my Majora’s Mask VHS around somewhere for preordering it

@somf69 my sister and I were doing something online all afternoon one time, to the point where my dad actually called my neighbor to tell us to get off. I forget what he needed, but it must have been important.

@ninjaemilee

That was back when people had some clue who lived next door. And what their names might be. And what their phone number might be.

@somf69 My parents soon got a second line.

@f00l that’s definitely true. I know my neighbors as old lady across the street, dude with the barking dog, old couple next door, and couple with 2 little ones…

@ninjaemilee

Yeah. Which is sad. People are almost afraid to know their neighboring families. Like they might get dragged into something dark.

All too commonly, no trust even for the quiet people next door.

@f00l We’ve been here for thirty years. The guy across the street is a bigot. And he spreads rumors about us (“did you hear they might be losing their house?”).

The woman next door lost her shit over our pine trees, demands they be cut down. Everytime we talked, she started in on the trees. I told her “tell Brian about it, leave me out of it” but she wouldn’t. Fifteen or so years later, we still don’t talk.

The woman on the other side didn’t watch the cats one evening when she said she would. It would have taken all of fifteen minutes. When they had their back garage built and the retaining wall put in between our properties, we kept their dog at our house. Four of five months. They visited her twice. And when they brought her over, they brought a small bag of food. That was it. We had dogs, so feeding her wasn’t an issue, but still. And she couldn’t check on the cats. I tried talking with her a few years ago, after I’d rolled my car down an embankment and she told me “she fell off of a curb and sprained her ankle”. Okay, you win. I don’t speak to her anymore. Well, we do have the nodding hi, how are ya.

Don’t much care for our neighbors.

@lisaviolet
Those sorts of neighbors, i agree.

Some things aren’t worth the emotional energy it takes to the fend off garbage and manipulation.

@capguncowboy I you.

@capguncowboy
@Barney

It will calm down I think. Feelings are a bit high right now. I can’t imagine it will continue this way for long.

@f00l it’s been this way since November. Your idea of not long and mine differ dramatically.

@jbartus
It mostly died out for a bit. And then got re-triiggered on Friday.

I think the levels will drop soonish.

@f00l you must be visiting different forums than I am.

@jbartus
K

@lisaviolet I get an eery feeling that I would not want to be locked in whatever room this was taken in.

@lisaviolet

My first “rock” concert - and first concert with no parents - was Herman’s Hermits.

@elimanningface it’s our family room, only door goes out to the garage. Opens into the entry way and dining room. Nothing to lock.

@f00l I started collecting when my dd was stationed in Athens, Greece. Our house overlooked the international airport. 65 to 68.

@elimanningface I know how you feel, there’s something a bit Dexter or Hannibal Lecter-esque about the plastic covering on the keyboard and the dark and gloomy background.

@jbartus Cats. Keyboard cover because cats. And water bottles.

@jbartus

I know how you feel, there’s something a bit Dexter or Hannibal Lecter-esque about the plastic covering on the keyboard and the dark and gloomy background.

Just keep that in mind when dealing with me.

@lisaviolet the 1st photo vs the 2nd photo is literally night and day. Very lovely room…in the day, lol (kidding!).

Cats. Keyboard cover because cats.

http://shirt.woot.com/offers/computer-work

@Shrdlu I’m glad when I can feel like a youngin in my 30s.

@Shrdlu
At least I’m way young compared to someone.

<Ducks fast>

@Shrdlu I remember when computers weren’t a thing. At least that most people ever encountered. Although I think our high school had a Trash-80.

@sammydog01
My first Trash-80 cost something like $2k. But it had - count them - !!! 2 !!! floppy drives!

@sammydog01 Don’t know where you went to school, but if the HS had a TRS-80 for student use, I’m pretty sure there was some sort of mini-computer or other mainframe running the district’s payroll, HR admin, etc.
Computers were a thing, but (as you said) few people actually encountered them and could grasp what they might be used for.

@Shrdlu I posted in rec.pets.cats on USENET.

@f00l Fancy!

@compunaut we had a mimeograph machine in my high school.

@compunaut Interesting fact- we have a Blackbird SR-71 at our science museum, designed around 1960. It was done with sliderules and no computers. Sure by high school main frames were around but I was designed around the same time as the SR-71.

@f00l talking about ducks, I remember the game, ‘duck…duck…goose!’

@Shrdlu usenet is where i got my fanfic

@Shrdlu Have you read Hackers by Steven Levy or Where Wizards Stay Up Late? Both seem like books you’d really enjoy.

@dashcloud

Another one on the same universe

Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer
Third Edition

Paperback – October 30, 2014
by Michael Swaine (Author), Paul Freiberger (Author)

Bet @shrdlu’s read these and many more.

https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Valley-Birth-Personal-Computer/dp/1937785769/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1485315108&sr=1-2

Also available for Kindle and Audible.

@heartny
Coded on these. And paper fucking tape. 360 and 370. No monitors we had access to at the time. Huge printouts of codes and dumps and results.

Fucking machines and those fucking operators I usually wanted to either kill or get stoned with, or discuss film and philosophy with, depending on the person.
There were a lot on stoned lunches in Central Park. If food was missing no one cared much.

@heartny Your mom brought you home used punch cards for bookmarks? Young’n, I learned to program in FORTRAN using those spawn of the devil!

@f00l Yep, IBM 360. And UNIVAC 1108. Greenbar. Lots of it.

@compunaut When I grew up I used them too. FORTRAN, Algol, Cobol, Snobol (my favorite), Assembler and some random languages probably nobody ever heard of. The glory days when you could touch and feel your programming

@heartny Do you know how old punch card ‘technology’ really is. It’s fascinating how old that tech is.

@Cerridwyn
Hollerith.

@Cerridwyn I found out while I was looking for a punch card picture and the correct spelling of Hollerith. Very interesting, indeed.

@heartny
@compunaut

Do you remember the IBM 360 and 370 manual sets? I think they had to brace the floors before they put in the shelves when a new manual set got put into a previously unused room.
And trying to find stuff from in the manuals, which was a giant index and volume chase?
Same for he PDP’s and CDC’s but they weren’t quite as bad. IBM specialized in overkill.

@f00l @heartny @compunaut while i was at IBM i saw a skit with bob newhart, talking on the phone to herman hollerith, and conjecturing about computers that could do what? i haven’t been able to find it on the interwebs tho

i am listening to lady gaga

oh yea, i am not sober

@Yoda_Daenerys
I would love to see that skit.

@f00l found it

Hollerith

@jbartus And I remember when MTV only played music videos.

@heartny

/youtube video killed the radio star

@jbartus I remember 3 stations. VHF. And an antenna. And knobs on the TV for VHF, UHF and volume/on-off. And the late night sign off.

@f00l I rocked out to that while doing the FML updates. Thanks for the soundtrack!

@f00l I think quite the opposite - youtube brought back the video star and other stars who shouldn’t be stars too.

@elimanningface
YouTube has become our visual and music memory depository. Which is prob better than not having one.

But I think the range of music you heard esp in the radio or from friends was often better when it, not the “look”, was the focus.

@f00l We are far better off not knowing what our favorite musicians (and other non-acting/dancing artists) look like. Just experience the output

@compunaut

Pre-MTV-launch well-known pop and rock average quality
Vs
Post-MTV- launch well-known pop and rock average quality.

Yep.

@f00l what is a radio?

@Yoda_Daenerys it’s how your smart phone talks to the towers.

@Yoda_Daenerys
A radio was a (sometimes portable) audio play device that went well with dinosaurs.

/giphy dinosaur

@compunaut @f001 @fool @fOOl @f00I i saw my (now) favorite artist live in my junior year of HS. on my birthday of my senior year of HS he was on TV (pre-cable) on some show like the 25th anniversary of Rock and Roll (that doesn’t sound quite right).

this was before DVDs, and before MTV, and before the VHS/Beta debate and before YouTube - basically beside seeing this artist live, this was it! i was so excited!

on this basis i have to disagree that the visual detracts from the audio (my words, not yours). i saw the same artist on No Nukes at the Theater during my Fresh or Soph year of college. There was still no way to record it, or rent it - you got one shot!

we’ve come a long way baby

bruce

@f00l @jbartus Internet Killed The Video Star

@2many2no I had high hopes but… it’s not nearly as catchy.

@jbartus Yeah, I know. There’s another version, but I couldn’t find it.

@Yoda_Daenerys

Yeah the visuals matter enormously in life performance. Of course.

But the reason the artist got big, the reason you wanted to see the artist, was the sound you got off the record or tape or off the radio.

After MTV, the record company’s PR budget for new artists starting going to really attractive musicians who looked great in videos. For the first decade, the effect wasn’t as bad as it is now.

Think of how much bigger glossy eye-candy pop is than most other music now. And so many pop artists are huge because since they are really visually attractive, the producers throw huge money into incredibly produced videos where they look fabulous, and then they do incredibly produced stage shows to match.

How many hugely popular performers would have never gotten big if they hadn’t had huge production videos and major sound processing tech to help them not be horrible?

Think what the most listened-to and played-on-the-radio recent release music would sound like if the way you got the visual was to go to a concert or get a recorded live performance, esp one with the singer not singing over a pre-recorded track, and zero autotune.

Think what kind of music would be on the radio if no one had a clue what the performers looked like.

@jbartus Why would anyone be saving those things?

@compunaut you mean you don’t want one for your man cave?

@jbartus I shed no tears for Blockbuster; I remember how they killed off the local mom-and-pop stores and established a monopoly. They grew fat and were slaughtered in their complacency.

@jqubed where do you live that they had a monopoly (pre-Netflix era)? Before the rental scene got untenable we had all manner of shops around where I live including smaller chains like West Coast Video or Video Horizons and little single-store mom and pop operations.

At any rate I meant the image more to represent rental outfits in general rather than Blockbuster specifically

@jbartus

I think the older, more concentrated metro area retain their localized commercial diversity longer and more easily. The newer, strip-mall, suburbanized metro areas just seem to roll over and kill off the local small stores when a big chain starts putting stores everywhere.

Perhaps there’s more localized loyalty to traditional stores in these older, concentrated metro areas. Or perhaps when a lot of resident travel isn’t in in a car, and the density is higher, it’s more difficult for a chain to grab excellent locations and invade every neighborhood.

@jbartus in MI Blockbuster became so big and priced to put mom and pops out of business. we do have some family video around, but i have no idea what they rent, i just stream now.

@RiotDemon These were the best days in elementary school!

@RiotDemon

@RiotDemon My kid played that at school two years ago. Still fun.

@sammydog01 wow, i thought you were older than that based on past posts, now i have to re-think my whole image of sammydog01, or Meh.be of myself and self image…

@Yoda_Daenerys I was old when I had kids. Really old.

@heartny hey, 45s are still cool. You take that back!

@jbartus I wanted to see if anyone noticed

@heartny

my allowance was for books. Until the Beatles. Then I got odd jobs so I could get both books and 45s. Had stacks of them and a changer.

The place you bought them was so packed on Sat afternoon you could barely move.

/youtube red rubber ball

@f00l Remember these bad boyz that allowed you to stack your 45 collection? An old-fashioned playlist.

@heartny
How many times did people listen to

/youtube inna gadda da vida

@heartny @jbartus I’m missing something here

Fancy!

@jqubed the yellow thing in the picture is a spacer for playing 45s on a standard platter.

@heartny

@narfcake
So how many 45’s did you own?

@narfcake Love it, oh master of shirts!

@f00l Much fewer than shirts.

@mfladd Credit goes to @fishbiscuit for designing it in the first place.

@heartny low fidelity, right?

@f00l

@heartny My first 45 was Stevie Wonder’s Fingertips (parts 1 and 2).

@RiotDemon ❤️

@RiotDemon I forget what the game with those was…

@jbartus fortune teller. Pick a color, then count out the letters in the name of the color, then pick a number, count out the number, then pick another number that you open.

@jbartus If memory serves me correctly, you either put a message or a boys name number the flap. You asked a person to pick a color on the outside and then a number on the inside. Under the number you would reveal the message or the name of a boy they would date (or marry?).

@jbartus in grammar school it was used to tell your fortune. In middle school it was used to determine your girlfriend or boyfriend.

@heartny that was definitely not the game we played with it… given that I was a boy.

@jbartus mine had random fortunes in them.
Or you could do questions that the person had to answer.

@jbartus Then maybe you went with the message format rather than the boy format?

@RiotDemon My son just made me make one of those for him. I had to look rhe damn instructions up online. He wanted one cause my daughter is into them right now.

@mfladd easy enough to fold though,eh?

@RiotDemon

@carl669
/image paper football

@carl669 I still remember how to make those, and I’m sure I have a little container full of them somewhere at one of my relatives’ houses.

@Pantheist yep, same here. it will be knowledge i will pass on to my son.

@jqubed
A staple of elementary school.

I was ok at field goals.

@elimanningface

holds out his pencil

@Shawn @katylava @harrison why is /me still not a thing?

@jbartus honestly, i think you get the best effect by letting the /me show… so there is nothing for us to do.

out of curiosity… what would you expect to see if you posted a /me message?

@katylava

Re /me

Be creative. Come up with something wild or funny.

@f00l mehdown is not my preferred creative outlet.

@katylava Is it crocheting?

@sammydog01 currently yes!

@katylava probably italics wrapped in asterisks. I’d create the same effect myself but someone decided italics were useful for markdown at some point. I commonly see actions wrapped in asterisks on forums and the italics would further emphasize that it’s not normal text. You could also give it its own class and have it be like 80% opacity or something to stand out from normal text.

@jbartus or make it purple text.

RiotDemon cracks a big smile.

But in purple!

@RiotDemon I love purple.

Wow, perfect image result to illustrate what I meant!

@jqubed ah… When we used to type in random capitalization.

RioTdEMoN was how I did my username, but everyone started to call me Rio, and that was annoying.

@RiotDemon

Rio T. Demon? I’m f00l.
How do you do?

@f00l according to Irk, my name is Rashomon now.

@RiotDemon
That’s a pretty good name you got there.

Hey, is that movie about you? Wow, I know a celebrity! When did you live in Japan?

Tell me: what’s the real story behind all those different movie stories? Dying to know.

But - hey - I promise - I won’t tell anyone ever! Cross my heart!

@f00l lol, I never thought to look it up to see if that word meant anything.

@RiotDemon
You gotta see that movie.

It’s one of the truly great films. Saw it decades ago and it still resonates in my head.

@jqubed When I was back in high school, in history, one of the desks had messed up formica (it was peeling off) and we could lift up one corner of it and slide notes under it. Never knew who sat in the desk in other classes, but we all wrote notes to one another.

@jqubed @riotdemon Have you played Emily is Away? (Or watched a Let’s Play of it?)
It nicely captures the AOL environment and the vibe from that era. It tells a short but poignant story guided by your choices.
Free on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/417860
(The sequel is coming out sometime soon apparently as well).

@jqubed Those chat rooms were so creepy.

@dashcloud I’ve watched a Let’s play a while back. I’ll have to try it myself, thanks!

/image SimCity 2000 Windows

@jqubed such great memories!

@jqubed @jbartus
/image scorched earth

@Pantheist I used to love playing that game! On DOS though!!

@jbartus I think it only ran on DOS.

@f00l David Niven’s comment when a guy streaked across a stage behind him: “Some men just like to show off their short-comings” Or something close to that expression, anyway.

@f00l Thank you. That was lovely and inspiring.

@magic_cave

I saw that photo in some kind of “best photos of Life Magazine” compilation once - sometime in the '70’s I think. And the photo just hit me.

I found the photo for this thread by googling “best photographs Life Magazine” or similar, and just going thru them.

Until I tried to find that photo for this thread, I had no idea about the more poignant story behind it. In memory I just knew it was done by a professional photographer taking a pix of his children. When I read the story of the photographer and his recovery, I knew I had to post that here also.

@Moose Thanks for the memories. I pulled it up on Youtube.

@Moose ba de ya

@sligett Last year or two I picked up a few late '50s through 1969 MIs at yard sales and an antique store. Its been a blast reading McCahill’s Q&A and columns. Got his take on the then brand new 1970 Challenger R/T with the 440 engine, and also earlier comments on the release of new quad headlight systems being approved by DOT, among other things.

@daveinwarsh And when Larson invented The Far Side…

@daveinwarsh I was at a carnival last summer and had a few extra tickets. I gave them to a kid, but he was so suspicious he almost didn’t take them. He also didn’t say “thank you”. When I was a kid I would have been so fucking excited for free tickets.

@daveinwarsh We kept our tickets because they were supposed to be good forever…

@RiotDemon
Considering that before those, portable wearable audio was a transistor radio, I loved my Walkmans and diskmans.

@narfcake! You erased your post! About portable reel-to-reels!

“Yeah and boomboxen. But you know what I meant.” Was my reply to your
post.

@nardcake’s portable reel-to-tell pix
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Vintage_Cambridge_Portable_Transistor_Reel-To-Reel_Tape_Recorder,_3_Transistor_Amplifier_Circuit,_Battery_Power_Only,_Model_IM-501,_Made_in_Japan,_Distributed_by_Omscolite_Corp.,_Philadelphia,PA(12075058186).jpg

I blame @jbartus.

And I celebrate the invention of the transistor.

/image transistor

Speaking of which: how many here were in classrooms where some of the kids snuck in transistor radios so that classmates could keep up with World Series daytime weekday games?

/image “transistor radio”

@f00l Sorry! It wasn’t showing up on my end … so blame @jbartus and try, try again?

/image portable reel to reel

@narfcake

Thx.

Portable can mean take it to a party or picnic. Or can mean put it in a pocket. Was more interested in the latter.

@f00l Cubs fan. So never needed to listen to World Series until 2016

@f00l Didja ever build one of these?

@2many2no I played with a crystal radio once! I attached it to a copper pipe in the basement and managed to get a small amount of static.

@Pantheist You need a lot of antenna because the radio signal powers the set. Ours was about 50 feet of wire strung around the back of the house and ground was the cold water pipe in the kitchen. The coil was a toilet paper roll wound with copper wire and coated with canning wax. We usually “cheated” and used a germanium diode instead of a galena crystal with a cat’s whisker.

It was kinda steampunk before we knew what that was. It was also more fun than running around with a broomstick “gun” playing cops & robbers because nobody ended up being poked with the stick.

You can still buy kits on Amazon.

@2many2no
Didn’t built stuff so much as a kid. Although my much-older-than-me cousin was stationed in Korea and he sent me a weird Korean radio kit with Korean instructions I did built. (There were diagrams.) The “antenna” was connected by clamping the radio to my iron bedframe.

I’m not exactly handy. Like I’m the opposite of handy. If there is a thumb somewhere in this universe, I will find a hammer to hit it with.

Tho I did build a few doghouses before the composite ones hit the market.

And I once assembled a Trash-80 that was just a motherboard and parts hung on a piece of plywood. It didn’t need much of a fan.

@compunaut

The Rangers didn’t exist when I was young. One brother was a Tigers fan, one a Yankees fan, so when I paid attention to baseball, I rooted for those.

And it was the time of Mantle and Maris. So even if you hated the Yankees, you listened to the World Series.

Or the people in the back of class who had the radios hidden in their laps listened, and passed the word.

@2many2no Yes! I built a tiny little crystal radio. I hooked it to an aluminum window frame & it worked! Mine was mostly clear plastic, maybe a Heathkit.

@daveinwarsh Heathkits were da bomb! They had everything from the simplest toy projects up to top-of-the-line home hi-fi, even the test equipment you might need. Their catalog was electric porn.
(Bender would have spazzed out.)

@Pixy Timmy’s donuts aren’t fresh?!

@compunaut Frozen, then just flash-baked in store. They used to be made from scratch at each store which is how you got some marvellous variations like long johns filled with real chocolate whipped cream, not that abomination topping used now. It was how I learned of the sublime decadence that is chocolate whipped cream.

To go along with this… I also remember the electricity kit where you built simple little circuits.
/image children science electricity kit

@RiotDemon lol…I do. My sister had this one. I use to poke around it when I was little. Surprised I am still alive.

@mfladd just look at how happy that boy is. I wonder what he’s cooking up.

@RiotDemon probably something that will melt his sister’s troll collection.

@mfladd now that’s another remember when.

@RiotDemon
I know nothing about chemistry. But I had good friends who messed with it - used to make explosives. Not for any nefarious reasons, just for fun. Their parents knew the basics of what they were doing, and it wasn’t seen as anti-social. No one ever even got a slight injury that I know of.

So when we were supposedly hunting or camping on someone else’s ranch, often we were setting off explosives. A few students had family members who worked on drill rigs. So never any shortage of M-80’s. I was a lab know-nothing, so I sometimes took pix, which vanished along with all my other pix.

The was some chemical powder - I have no clue what - that would spark a bit under friction at near room temp or something? So some of it mysteriously got sprinkled on the stage at my friends’ HS graduation. And there were some tiny sparks as people got their diplomas, if you knew to watch for them. The effect was so small it was nothing but an in-joke for the perps and friends.

@f00l Nitrogen triodide maybe- made from ammonia and iodine. A kid in my lab class accidentally blew some up that a kid in another lab class made. Cool.

@f00l Never did the real Estes rockets, but when the boys were younger had quite a bit of fun with water rockets
/youtube Aquapod rocket

I think we still have some sort of inflatable water rocket packed up in the garage as well.
Using a small air compressor w/ tank eliminated the manual pumping otherwise reqd.

@f00l yup. I remember my grandfather climbing trees at the edges of fields to retrieve em.

@f00l The kid across the street blew three of his fingers off. Does that count?

@sammydog01
I guess it counts. I hate hearing about stuff like that, and it’s an obvious risk.

The guy I know who did homemade rockets did it with his dad, who was pretty competent.

@lisaviolet
Sleeping in the back of a stationwagon.

@f00l Getting sick in the back of a station wagon because of exhaust fumes.

@lisaviolet You mean your mom’s arm was the seat-belt. Like that was going to help anything.

@mfladd haha, my mom had that habit for a long time after seatbelts existed. She even admitted that she knew it wouldn’t do anything, but it was so ingrained in her. She probably still had that reflex into the late 90s.

@f00l riding in the backwards facing seat clear in the back of the wagon, making faces at the cars behind you.

@earlyre

Trying to talk to them or insult them in sign language

@mfladd TSA PreCheck makes the pre-flight suck less, but there’s no way to make the flight suck less without spending more money. If you’re lucky, your ticket will get marked for the PreCheck line (it happened to me on a vacation once).

@dashcloud I was have to fly with 2 airports. One, a prop job in the styx. Plus, most of the time I have to connect in Philly. Philly is the absolute worst.

@mfladd My first business trip I spent the night in the Philly airport. Good times.

@sammydog01 Yea, they are famous for that. And god forbid there is a snowflake or a drop of rain.

@mfladd Actually there was lightning and the lights went completely off for a while. Cool. They gave me a pillow.