None of the above (Although if I had to come up with something it would be popcorn, c'mon guys... should have had that one) (("The time is 9:04 at the beep"))
@AnnaB Absolutely this. Now, we're all so impatient to communicate that we can't just chill out and drive from point A to point B without being expected to answer calls.
@AnnaB@christtinewas@jaremelz Isn't this a person's own decision? I feel like I'm just as reachable or unreachable as I want to be every hour of the day and every day of the year.
@mehbee I had to the opportunity recently (on a regular phone) to argue with a business that double-charged me. You've reminded me how satisfying it was to slam the phone.
@KDemo I walk my dog and noticed that my neighbors don't even bother bringing in their freshly delivered phone books. At least I bring mine to the garbage can.
Those of you old enough to remember phone books, admit it; you looked up your name in the phone book when it was delivered, didn't you? With cell phones, we're all unlisted!
Korea, 1991. Had a phone in the o-hootch, free calls on base, had to dial some weird code to go out. Christmas, got drunk, called everyone I knew. 2 months later, $1300 phone bill. Worth it, though
@jqubed The Nokia ring: the quintessential annoying cell phone ringtone. Did they finally retire that - I never hear it these days - or did all its users wander onto active railways?
I miss the pranks you could pull before caller id: 1AM "Is Bob there?" "No, you have the wrong number" 1:30AM "Is Bob there?" "NO! You have the wrong number!" 2AM "Is Bob there?" "NO GOD DAMN IT! You have the wrong number!" 2:30AM "Hi...This is Bob...Are there any messages for me?"
@Kyser_Soze Prank calls in general. All this technology ruined prank calling. What's the point in knowing Ben Dover? Anita Butt? Oliver Klozoff? Al Coholic? Seymour Butz? I.P. Freely? Mike Hunt? These were things you need to know and now.... useless.
@medz My first cordless had an extendable antennae. I has hanging the base station on the wall above the stove, laid it on the back burner while adjusting some wires and didn't notice that the wife was broiling something and that back burner was the exhaust tube. Melted the base unit, looked funny but it still worked!
@rockblossom@darksaber99999 my brother's friend recently showed off his flip phone and told us about when he was staying over a relative's place and some of his kid cousins took his phone without telling him because they literally thought it was just a kid's toy phone
Calling time and temperature. There was always a friendly tidbit before it would give the time. "Give your party a chance to answer -- let the phone ring ten times."
I still have my landline. I have an old slimline phone on it. No caller id. just push buttons-- they were pretty high tech in the day. ( There is a switch on the side so you can make it sound like a dial if you needed to for certain dial in systems) It's very handy when there is a blizzard-- landlines still work. Cell towers go out and the electric is gone, so no cable or computer phones work either. And oh those cable lines love to come down w/ all the ice. Must have landline in land of big snow.
But what about that caller ID. What JR. high kid can order there teacher an anchovy pizza and have it delivered ? How can you call a boy and giggle and hang up w/o saying who it was ? A shame.
I used to win things off the radio all the time because I was a master of redial. Now they do some stupid text to win and if you pick yours, we will call you. Lame, where is the skill in that?
I miss the voice quality that my landline has that none of the cell phones have. And I like dial tones and busy signals. And I have a curly cord. And phone books. I've saved a couple of them. Still have a rotary dial in the basement.
@pooflady I agree with you. I had the same landline for 20 years, there is security with landlines. Anyways, we moved, I got the triple play from comcast (phone, Tv, internet) package. I'm so foolish I think it's a real landline, so I end up with a phone line in my home that's just the same as a cell phone. Not the same as a real landline, not the same at all. And now, I don't know for sure, if it's everywhere? But they are phasing out landlines period, in our area. Within 2 years no real landlines for anyone.
@mick I tried asking the person answering calls at a company if their phone service was a landline and the lady had noooo clue what I was talking about. "You plug it in to the phone outlet" yes, thank you but how is the service provided to my house? after asking 3 different ways I gave up and looked online.
@pooflady Love the old Princess phones; they are so hard to kill. Used one as a test phone on my Ooma and it worked fine. The Ooma dialtone is an improvement; after using it a regular dialtone sounds old fashioned now.
I miss having a clear, light-up phone. It even had the clear cord to the wall and curly cord to the base, and it had the greatest ringer. I'd nearly miss calls because I'd be too busy watching the lights in the dark and enjoying the ring-ring-riiiing. Being an 80s kid was great.
118 Time and temperature, back in Las Vegas. Somewhere I have a news article about the system being taken offline because it could no longer be maintained but can't find an online copy.
Christmas morning when we kids were up and unable to sleep at 4:30AM we turned on KVVU InstantNews because all the other stations were still off the air (though the one year their sound player was broken and repeated Jose Feliciano 'Feliz Navidad' about a thousand times we turned down the volume), and kept calling 118 over and over until it said 7:00 AM, the earliest we were allowed to even think about making enough noise to wake up our parents ;)
When I was very young we still had a party line to the house. I don't miss that at all.
Oh also when my Uncle Joe worked in the Panama Canal Zone; when he called we always had to listen for 'over', and say 'over' when we were finished talking because there was a radio link involved. Awesome stuff for an ~ 8 year old ;) Over and out!
@kadagan Of course, but its not like atomic-clock-timed clocks were available back then, and waking up the parents before the allowed time on Christmas morning was not a good thing.
But when the phone lady said it was 7AM, then it was by God 7AM and time to wake up the parents so the serious business of Christmas could commence!
Sneaking the phone with the ridiculously long cord into the bathroom to listen in on my big sister's calls. For a 12 year old, that was the ultimate in living dangerously.
Plug-in earpiece for cordless landline phones (which we still use, but now without the 2mm jack or whatever size it was) -- got you hands-free talking without the sound-quality and privacy issues of speakerphone.
Party lines. Of course, they were annoying when you really needed to call out and a neighbor was hogging the line. But then, you could cut in on the conversation, insult both parties until they hung up, then proceed with your call while the other neighbors listening in snickered and complemented you on your ability to get Mrs Loquacious off the phone. You could also make "innocent" remarks about the neighbor who always picked up the phone and listened in whenever anyone got a call, whether it was for him/her or not. Then listen for the click as they slammed down the phone. Or you called the Doctor (medical, not the one in the Tardis) about a kid with a sore throat, and three neighbors would show up with chicken soup. Good times. Good times.
Turning the crank, knowing that everyone else's phone rang with each turn. When your "number" was 2 longs and a short, everybody had a custom "ringtone."
Oh and I also miss 1A2 key systems. Flashing lighted buttons, a true "hold" button, and built like it would last 100 years. It never slid off your desk, because it weighed a ton. Just like in "Mad Men." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1A2_Key_Telephone_System
Being tied to a land line and you want to end the conversation. All you have to say is, "Someone's at the door. I have to go. Buh-bye." Can't use that excuse with a cell phone.
Hate people who continue to talk on their phone while getting a package, answering a neighbors question, or standing in a check out line, etc..
Hang the heck up. If the call is THAT important, focus on the call. You are not so important you can make other people listen to your conversations while you attempt to "multi task"
Back in the old days: Answering machine message: "I called you but you must have been out. I'll try again later/tomorrow." Today: Voice mail message: "OMG!!!! Where are you???? Why didn't you answer when I called you a minute ago??? WTF? Aren't I still your friend??? Call me! Call me! Call me!"
When I was a kid my hometown was small enough that we only had to dial 4 digits to reach anybody in our town. It caused a lot of trauma for my parents when they had to start using 7 digits. By that time I was in a big city and had to dial 10 digits to reach my next door neighbor, so I probably wasn’t as sympathetic as I should have been.
For those who are nostalgic about BBSes, and dial-up modems, be sure to check out the BBS Documentary- amazing work on BBSes, the culture, and their impact.
@mick Bulletin Board System- systems you would dial-up to with your modem (which tied up whatever phone line it was attached to), and let you talk with people (usually a forum similar to this one), play some games (either solo ones or against other people- turn-based ones). You could also download the latest shareware games and demos, and post your own files if you had any to share.
I have zero recollection of what I used "Goog 411" for, but I remember using it a ton.
@Moose I miss the "biddy-biddy-boop" noise it made when it was processing.
@Moose there was a nice loophole for a while for both goog 411 and bing 411 where you could call from a payphone and get free phone calls
*69
Enough said.
@bakeyoural this
@bakeyoural I'm pretty sure that still works.
@bakeyoural You have to earn the star.
None of the above (Although if I had to come up with something it would be popcorn, c'mon guys... should have had that one) (("The time is 9:04 at the beep"))
Oh and Moviephone so I could get calls late at night using call-waiting and my parents wouldn't know.
I miss the days when you could actually be unreachable
@AnnaB Yes! And not perceived as somehow failing or letting people down, simply because you're living your life.
@AnnaB Absolutely this. Now, we're all so impatient to communicate that we can't just chill out and drive from point A to point B without being expected to answer calls.
@AnnaB Power off. Done.
@AnnaB @christtinewas @jaremelz Isn't this a person's own decision? I feel like I'm just as reachable or unreachable as I want to be every hour of the day and every day of the year.
@editorkid I thinkthe issue is more or less with the expectation of immediate and constant availability.
@jaremelz that's pretty much my point. If people know I have a cell phone, and of course I do, there is an expectation of availability.
I miss the ability to slam the phone down when hanging up on someone. Angrily stabbing the end call button is just not the same.
What @mehbee said!
@mehbee Oh, there was nothing better! And the residual little ring from the slam? Magic.
@bakeyoural Oh that ring, I forgot the ring...good times
@bakeyoural And picking the handset up and slamming it down again. It doesn't do anything but it made me feel better!
@mehbee I had to the opportunity recently (on a regular phone) to argue with a business that double-charged me. You've reminded me how satisfying it was to slam the phone.
Dialup BulletinBoardServices and the also dialup Fidonet... I really enjoyed those.
@KDemo Love that movie and that's one of my favorite scenes.
@KDemo I walk my dog and noticed that my neighbors don't even bother bringing in their freshly delivered phone books. At least I bring mine to the garbage can.
Those of you old enough to remember phone books, admit it; you looked up your name in the phone book when it was delivered, didn't you? With cell phones, we're all unlisted!
@mehbee - Agreed, there are so many great scenes.
@Kyser_Soze - Yeah, finding fax numbers can be tricky as well.
@Kyser_Soze You mean recycle can not garbage can, right ?
@KDemo On Facebook one night there was a post and we just quoted from our favorite scenes, the post went on forever!
@mehbee We had a thread like that here, too last year - do you think it needs resurrection?
@KDemo I think it would be fun!
@mehbee - Just pop in there and add a comment, it will bump the thread to the top of the list.
I miss actually knowing people's phone numbers because I was actually dialing them so much.
I'm not nostalgic since I'm too young, but I never miss a Meh poll, so
I miss my $17/month phone bill. Long distance was not included and very expensive but my $85/month phone bill sucks.
Korea, 1991. Had a phone in the o-hootch, free calls on base, had to dial some weird code to go out. Christmas, got drunk, called everyone I knew. 2 months later, $1300 phone bill. Worth it, though
I miss not hearing phones ring in restaurants, etc.
@nadroj Or the obnoxious patrons talking on their phones at the next table.
@nadroj @Kyser_Soze Skip to about 1:00 in if in a hurry.
@jqubed The Nokia ring: the quintessential annoying cell phone ringtone. Did they finally retire that - I never hear it these days - or did all its users wander onto active railways?
I miss having real speed dial buttons programmed with radio station numbers so I could be callers number 7, 8, 9, and 10.
Payphones!!! I fucking HATE cellphones.
@WINTERMUTE Me too...and many new phones are worse than stringing a couple of cans together!
@WINTERMUTE @Kyser_Soze
A lady on the other end who says "one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy …"
@saodell - "This is the party to whom you are speaking snort"
@saodell
@mfladd Ooh, I had a rotary phone because it was cool - but because I'm old enough to have actually had one. eh-hem.
I miss the pranks you could pull before caller id:
1AM "Is Bob there?" "No, you have the wrong number"
1:30AM "Is Bob there?" "NO! You have the wrong number!"
2AM "Is Bob there?" "NO GOD DAMN IT! You have the wrong number!"
2:30AM "Hi...This is Bob...Are there any messages for me?"
@Kyser_Soze Prank calls in general. All this technology ruined prank calling. What's the point in knowing Ben Dover? Anita Butt? Oliver Klozoff? Al Coholic? Seymour Butz? I.P. Freely? Mike Hunt? These were things you need to know and now.... useless.
Two words:
Extendable Antenna
@medz My first cordless had an extendable antennae. I has hanging the base station on the wall above the stove, laid it on the back burner while adjusting some wires and didn't notice that the wife was broiling something and that back burner was the exhaust tube. Melted the base unit, looked funny but it still worked!
I miss flip phones :(
@Lotsofgoats Scotty, beam us up!
@Lotsofgoats I still have one. I refuse to give it up for a brick.
@rockblossom I still have a brick phone I snagged from the grandparents as a party joke in college. Curly charging cord attached!
@Lotsofgoats My flip phone is still going strong. I love only having to charge it about once a month.
@rockblossom @darksaber99999 my brother's friend recently showed off his flip phone and told us about when he was staying over a relative's place and some of his kid cousins took his phone without telling him because they literally thought it was just a kid's toy phone
Physical keypad/board and flipping open your phone like a badS, then slamming it shut with an audible, I-mean-business slap.
@DonberKon It was the smooth antenna-pull-up-with-your-molars move I was so into.
For cell phones, old flip phones with the snake game. I miss that from Windows 95, too.
A physical slide-out keyboard. Screen based keyboards are not sausage fingers friendly. Sausage finger people's lives matter.
@elimanningface Aren't there a few that still have a keyboard?
@juststephen Yeah, but they're all Blackberries. :-6
@juststephen yeah, what @pocketbrain said. None have the latest OS. I liked the DROID 4 but alas, I think its now 2 years old.
@elimanningface - Touch keyboards can also be a problem with longer nails. That's why I still use a BB.
Calling time and temperature. There was always a friendly tidbit before it would give the time. "Give your party a chance to answer -- let the phone ring ten times."
The $13 phone bill!
@katbyter My Ooma bill is only like $4.40. My cellphone on the other hand...but that's the data plan you're paying for, I suppose.
I still have my landline. I have an old slimline phone on it. No caller id. just push buttons-- they were pretty high tech in the day. ( There is a switch on the side so you can make it sound like a dial if you needed to for certain dial in systems)
It's very handy when there is a blizzard-- landlines still work. Cell towers go out and the electric is gone, so no cable or computer phones work either. And oh those cable lines love to come down w/ all the ice. Must have landline in land of big snow.
But what about that caller ID. What JR. high kid can order there teacher an anchovy pizza and have it delivered ? How can you call a boy and giggle and hang up w/o saying who it was ? A shame.
@ceagee there ? make that their. oops
I used to win things off the radio all the time because I was a master of redial. Now they do some stupid text to win and if you pick yours, we will call you. Lame, where is the skill in that?
@mxyzsptlk Skill. It WAS a skill. I won a few tickets in my day.
I miss the voice quality that my landline has that none of the cell phones have. And I like dial tones and busy signals. And I have a curly cord. And phone books. I've saved a couple of them. Still have a rotary dial in the basement.
@pooflady I agree with you. I had the same landline for 20 years, there is security with landlines. Anyways, we moved, I got the triple play from comcast (phone, Tv, internet) package. I'm so foolish I think it's a real landline, so I end up with a phone line in my home that's just the same as a cell phone. Not the same as a real landline, not the same at all. And now, I don't know for sure, if it's everywhere? But they are phasing out landlines period, in our area. Within 2 years no real landlines for anyone.
@mick I tried asking the person answering calls at a company if their phone service was a landline and the lady had noooo clue what I was talking about. "You plug it in to the phone outlet" yes, thank you but how is the service provided to my house? after asking 3 different ways I gave up and looked online.
@pooflady Love the old Princess phones; they are so hard to kill. Used one as a test phone on my Ooma and it worked fine. The Ooma dialtone is an improvement; after using it a regular dialtone sounds old fashioned now.
@chellemonkey So, did you get a real landline?
I miss having a clear, light-up phone. It even had the clear cord to the wall and curly cord to the base, and it had the greatest ringer. I'd nearly miss calls because I'd be too busy watching the lights in the dark and enjoying the ring-ring-riiiing. Being an 80s kid was great.
@jbrookebarrow
ebay is calling you...
@thismyusername Bah. I know and I'm so tempted. I would have to get a landline and call it nonstop just to watch it light up.
118 Time and temperature, back in Las Vegas. Somewhere I have a news article about the system being taken offline because it could no longer be maintained but can't find an online copy.
Christmas morning when we kids were up and unable to sleep at 4:30AM we turned on KVVU InstantNews because all the other stations were still off the air (though the one year their sound player was broken and repeated Jose Feliciano 'Feliz Navidad' about a thousand times we turned down the volume), and kept calling 118 over and over until it said 7:00 AM, the earliest we were allowed to even think about making enough noise to wake up our parents ;)
When I was very young we still had a party line to the house. I don't miss that at all.
Oh also when my Uncle Joe worked in the Panama Canal Zone; when he called we always had to listen for 'over', and say 'over' when we were finished talking because there was a radio link involved. Awesome stuff for an ~ 8 year old ;) Over and out!
@duodec didn't you have a clock in your house growing up? Just wondering.. lol
@kadagan Of course, but its not like atomic-clock-timed clocks were available back then, and waking up the parents before the allowed time on Christmas morning was not a good thing.
But when the phone lady said it was 7AM, then it was by God 7AM and time to wake up the parents so the serious business of Christmas could commence!
Keyboard.
Sneaking the phone with the ridiculously long cord into the bathroom to listen in on my big sister's calls. For a 12 year old, that was the ultimate in living dangerously.
The sound the modem made with dial-up internet!
I miss memorized 7 digit phone numbers!!!
Plug-in earpiece for cordless landline phones (which we still use, but now without the 2mm jack or whatever size it was) -- got you hands-free talking without the sound-quality and privacy issues of speakerphone.
Rotary Cell Phone! Ya gotta roll your own, though.
@PocketBrain Wow. Much too complicated for me and iffy results. May. NAY I say!
@PocketBrain I have one in the bedroom. It's lasted reliably while my sisters and daughters have gone through multiple "smart" phones.
Knowing where the phone is, %100 of the time.
@caffeine_dude Another good thing about landlines. You can use the landline phone to call your cell and listen for the ring.
@rockblossom I use my Google number for that.
Party lines. Of course, they were annoying when you really needed to call out and a neighbor was hogging the line. But then, you could cut in on the conversation, insult both parties until they hung up, then proceed with your call while the other neighbors listening in snickered and complemented you on your ability to get Mrs Loquacious off the phone. You could also make "innocent" remarks about the neighbor who always picked up the phone and listened in whenever anyone got a call, whether it was for him/her or not. Then listen for the click as they slammed down the phone. Or you called the Doctor (medical, not the one in the Tardis) about a kid with a sore throat, and three neighbors would show up with chicken soup. Good times. Good times.
Turning the crank, knowing that everyone else's phone rang with each turn. When your "number" was 2 longs and a short, everybody had a custom "ringtone."
Slamming down the receiver when you're mad and want to hang up on someone!
555-1212
While not a old phone thing, I would kill for a smartphone with a decent keyboard.
Not having to ask, "where are you?" When you called a number, you knew where the other person was. Home, office, whatever.
Oh and I also miss 1A2 key systems. Flashing lighted buttons, a true "hold" button, and built like it would last 100 years. It never slid off your desk, because it weighed a ton. Just like in "Mad Men." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1A2_Key_Telephone_System
Being tied to a land line and you want to end the conversation. All you have to say is, "Someone's at the door. I have to go. Buh-bye."
Can't use that excuse with a cell phone.
@Teripie Yes you can and yes you should.
Hate people who continue to talk on their phone while getting a package, answering a neighbors question, or standing in a check out line, etc..
Hang the heck up. If the call is THAT important, focus on the call. You are not so important you can make other people listen to your conversations while you attempt to "multi task"
@Teripie Just stop talking and hang up. People will assume the call was dropped.
Back in the old days:
Answering machine message:
"I called you but you must have been out. I'll try again later/tomorrow."
Today:
Voice mail message:
"OMG!!!! Where are you???? Why didn't you answer when I called you a minute ago??? WTF? Aren't I still your friend??? Call me! Call me! Call me!"
I miss desk top rotary dial phones with a row of buttons at the bottom. Those were the days.
When I was a kid my hometown was small enough that we only had to dial 4 digits to reach anybody in our town. It caused a lot of trauma for my parents when they had to start using 7 digits. By that time I was in a big city and had to dial 10 digits to reach my next door neighbor, so I probably wasn’t as sympathetic as I should have been.
For those who are nostalgic about BBSes, and dial-up modems, be sure to check out the BBS Documentary- amazing work on BBSes, the culture, and their impact.
@dashcloud What are BBSes?
@mick The BBS broadcasts a variety of programming. Among the better known series are Doctor Why, Full Monty Anaconda, and Downtown Abby Brown.
@mick Bulletin Board System- systems you would dial-up to with your modem (which tied up whatever phone line it was attached to), and let you talk with people (usually a forum similar to this one), play some games (either solo ones or against other people- turn-based ones). You could also download the latest shareware games and demos, and post your own files if you had any to share.
Odd. Just got my phone bill and they're claiming I didn't pay last month's bill. I just called them. Got a busy signal. LOL