You Know You Are Old When

[WinterDeere]

My 5th grade Sunday school teacher warned us kids to stay away from Catholics, but she clammed up when we asked why.

"...frittering your life away, playing nursemaid to a bunch of garlic eaters". Catholics were not exactly adored, among the protestant-rich demographics of early America. Some of it was religious bias, more of it was probably economic bias, as protestants made up the earlier and wealthier settlers from Great Britain, and Catholics were the later and poorer Irish and Italians.

The Mac IIsi computer I bought from a pawn shop in 1991 is still hooked up and still works, down in my basement. It has the Apple ImageWriter dot matrix printer hooked to it and it works wonderful to make big long colorful banners.

ImageWriter! That was it! Those things were beasts, no surprise it's still running. Ours was a 1986 model, and I'd bet it's still probably printing for someone, somewhere.

I worked for DEC for a couple of years in the early 90s...

"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." -- Ken Olsen, founder of DEC, speaking to the World Future Society in 1977.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

I met my favorite TV cartoon show host Whizzo The Clown (Frank Wiziarde) and got his autograph at local home show.
View attachment 1786610

Apparently got his name because of prostate problems?

 

[Runner]

Apparently got his name because of prostate problems?

Who's always smiling, never sad it's Whizzo. Who makes the boys and girls so glad it's Whizzo....

 

[WinterDeere]

It's sometimes hard to remember the absolute crap you could produce, and still earn viewers, when you had a captive audience and only 3-4 stations available.

 

[Norm W]

I bought a "Franklin" Apple clone with the 80 column card and a wide carriage dot matrix printer. I used it to print report cards for the classes I taught and the "Better Half" used it to print her reports for work. It would print on commercial "5" copy paper and one run would give me five copies so they could go to parents, principal, guidance, department head and I kept a copy. I think this was around 1978. I was the only teacher with a computer in school.

 

[Jstpssng]

It's sometimes hard to remember the absolute crap you could produce, and still earn viewers, when you had a captive audience and only 3-4 stations available.

As opposed to the absolute crap now, when they have 57 channels and nothing on...

 

[BackRoad]

Only The Weather Channel over the last ~7 years...and then only intermittently during actual hurricanes or severe winter storms.

For me, watching TV is a very quick stressor.

 

[ultrarunner]

I’ve turned the TV once this year and it was for the debate…

After being away for a time what I notice is all the advertising which is a turn off.

 

[lman]

I’ve turned the TV once this year and it was for the debate…

After being away for a time what I notice is all the advertising which is a turn off.

If I didn't have a DVR to skip the ads, I wouldn't watch TV either.

 

[WinterDeere]

I’ve turned the TV once this year and it was for the debate…

After being away for a time what I notice is all the advertising which is a turn off.

Verizon disabled our boxes back in June, and sent us new ones. I still haven't bothered hooking them up, but did finally convince my wife to cancel the service, pointing out she hasn't watched any TV since June.

Now I just need to get around to pulling out all the old hardware, and sending everything back.