We had a “smoking hole” on my HS campus. It was OK to smoke back then. Located outside down some steps between the gym and the cafeteria. The boys and girls were separated. The teachers could see the girls from the cafeteria but we were under the windows too far to be seen. Smoked a lot of left handed cigs there. The girls would watch and when the teachers looked away run over for a hit. When it was clear they would run back. Fun times!
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]Chushin wrote:
When I was in college taking a stats class, we entered our data on punch cards that then got run through a reader.[/quote]
The first computer I ever programmed (in BASIC) had to be booted up from a cassette tape.[/quote]
My first computer was a slide rule.[/quote]
Yes, yes, yes.
And we had real labs and had to make things work BACK IN THE DAY. Came away from it aware of the physical world.
Life was not a spectator sport back then.
Hell, when I was a kid, I made most of my toys. Took things apart, sometimes they went back together. We made go-karts out of lawnmowers, built tree forts.
I stopped taking student interns and faculty in my lab at work many years ago. What I was getting were people with little idea how and a marginal inclination to artfully bring things together to make more complex things that are TRUELY useful. “Useful” as in, for example creating an implantable medical device vs. designing an app that lets you play a game when you should be talking to your date.
They “believe” in their computer simulations, worship the virtual. Its like religion.
The aforementioned seem unable (unwilling?)anymore to innovate, to take risks. Comfort is found through being swaddling in the blanket of the “right answer.” “I didn’t learn that in school.” Neither did Edison.
Without skinning your knuckles a few zillion times, you ain’t getting it.
What ever happened to making it in the physical world?
If you have read to this point, thanks for your endurance. 
For those so inclined: http://aeon.co/magazine/science/why-has-human-progress-ground-to-a-halt/
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]Chushin wrote:
When I was in college taking a stats class, we entered our data on punch cards that then got run through a reader.[/quote]
The first computer I ever programmed (in BASIC) had to be booted up from a cassette tape.[/quote]
My first computer was a slide rule.[/quote]
Shoot, I remember GW basic with the 5.25" floppy boot disc. Slide rulers made for great back scratchers, otherwise I learned 2 functions on them and that was that.
My first calculator I got in 1973… stolen by a friend who worked in a store for $15. Any $10 Casio today beats it. The TI-30 was going for $100 at the time.
Lets see here.
1979 senior year high school. Iran hostage crisis. One of the marine hostages had graduated the year before. Watched a lot of the events on TV, tied a lot of yellow ribbons.
I REALLY miss the drive in - I hear their making a come back.
Those were the days when the cop pulled you over for drinking, he’d make you pour out the rest of the beer one by one in front of him, make you lock up the car, and give you a ride home.
And Pong on my TV with an old Texas Instrument “computer”
[quote]derf wrote:
1979 senior year high school. Iran hostage crisis. One of the marine hostages had graduated the year before. Watched a lot of the events on TV, tied a lot of yellow ribbons.[/quote]
I am pretty sure Jimmy Carter is president again from what is going on in the world.
I’m not sure if the Big Mac actually tasted better in the 70’s McDonald’s, at least for most families I grew up with, was a rarity. As a kid if you only go to McDonald’s once every few months it was something special. Although, the fries were better because they were cooked in animal fat.
First computer I ever worked on was an analog monstrosity for Naval Fire Control for Guns. I don’t remember the Mark and Mod. It was @ 7’ tall, @10’ long, and 3’ thick give or take. We had to replace a gear. It took 3 of us 2 10 hr days to get to it. Had to mark every piece in order as it came out. Also had to put alignment marks on everything as 1 tooth off would screw up everything. Took 3 days to put it back together. We didn’t go very deep into it.
[quote]mapwhap wrote:
I remember our first microwave oven…that thing was ridiculously expensive for the time. And I remember all the experimenting we did as a family to figure out what you could “cook” with it, and what you couldn’t…
Getting cable was a HUGE deal. I grew up in rural New Hampshire. Had a huge, directional antenna on the roof of our house until I was about 15. Got 4 channels…with varying degrees of fuzziness. Cable was, by comparison, quite awesome.
Getting an air conditioner in the house was very nice. I think we got that when I was 12. Hard to believe now that we ever lived without it.
Air conditioning as a standard option in a car…also very nice.
Being able to shoot guns in the backyard without worrying about hitting anyone…and not drawing an immediate police response.
We heated our entire house with a wood stove in the winter…which meant summer was spent cutting, splitting and stacking wood for the upcoming winter. I didn’t realize then how much physical labor was going to prepare me for the rest of my life. I see people doing sets of 10-12 reps with a sledge hammer on a tire and laugh. Try swinging one to split wood for 8 or 9 hours straight. Then come see me. (Some of you have done this…and you know exactly what I’m talking about.)
I’m not complaining though. I don’t look back on all of my youth fondly…but I’m glad life is easier now.
[/quote]
I love splitting wood, however being an office jockey these days damn my back hurts!!!
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
How about buying a ticket for a movie, then either seeing it multiple times (Star Wars, f’rinstance), or else just waltzing into another (R) movie when your first movie (PG) was done?
I went door to door in a 120-unit apartment complex, selling potted plants, yarn weavings, and shoeshines. I also operated a frozen kool-ade business from my apartment, which was the most lucrative of all of my entrepreneurial ventures. A fifty-cent investment in Kool-ade powder and sugar netted two dollars in profit at a dime per Dixie Cup pop. And it was all tax free! Muahahahaha!
Later on, in Junior High, I would do odd jobs, like eradicating a yard of thistles. The owner of the yard offered me five cents for every thistle I removed, clearly having no idea how many thistles his yard contained, nor how tenacious I could be when cash money was involved. He ended up paying me fifty dollars.
I would also work at the local Renaissance Festival. Our school required athletes to work as trash-picker-uppers at the Festival, to offset the cost of uniforms and other expenses. But they also had the option of paying a surrogate to do the job for them. The going rate was twenty dollars for a full day’s labor, and I did it every weekend until I was 16. It was hard, dirty work, picking up after a bunch of fat Midwestern drunken slobs, but I got to enjoy the Festival at the same time, and before my sixteenth birthday I had saved 520 dollars, enough to buy a Colt Combat Government .45 pistol.
Yup, it was a different country then.[/quote]
That’s awesome, do you still have the .45?
I got my first BB gun at age 4, not ammo till age 5.
My grandpaw showed me how shoot his .22LR snub nose, chew plug tobacco and how run a chainsaw about 10.
Some great nostalgia here. When I was growing up we had a neighbourhood “gang” of sorts. We’d play cricket in the street, touch football in the back yard, climb trees, wander the bush. When I was about ten I got a little Honda XR-80 dirtbike and I’d ride everywhere on it. That would never happen today. The police would be called if you rode a dirtbike in the streets. Heck, you can’t even buy fireworks anymore. We used to love Guy Fawkes’ night each year; amassing an arsenal of fireworks, lighting a huge bonfire in the vacant block next door. Of course, lighting fires is now illegal here. You can’t even light an incinerator in your own back yard.
Another thing I remember was catching and collecting cicadas. There was a huge range of colours. The most common were green grocers and black princes. The rarest were blue moons.
Edited
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
[quote]derf wrote:
1979 senior year high school. Iran hostage crisis. One of the marine hostages had graduated the year before. Watched a lot of the events on TV, tied a lot of yellow ribbons.[/quote]
I am pretty sure Jimmy Carter is president again from what is going on in the world.
[/quote]
Ain’t that the truth.
I was in 3rd grade when 9/11 happened… so I can’t really add anything here.
It’s actually really cool to hear this stuff, my parents never talked about their childhood, so hearing this stuff is a first for me.
[quote]IamMarqaos wrote:
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
All I remember about the Gulf War was seeing green night vision of scuds on the TV when we were on holidays at a beach house up the coast.[/quote]
My unit’s task was to prepare and defend Patriot missile batteries operated by the Dutch (who were there to defend my country - thank you Holland!) and Israeli crews.
[/quote]
As a Dutchman…my heart swelled reading this. Thank you.[/quote]
No, thank you. The little countries of the world need to stick together.
As an aside, your country is at it again. They’ve been manning Patriot batteries in/around Turkey to protect innocents against the crap that spews out of Syria/ISIS periodically for several years now.
It’s a particularly thankless and scary job.