OLDEST AND YOUNGEST TBNers?

dragoneggs · Jan 31, 2014

Mechanized ME said:
I turned 56 last august, and the first time I bought something online was a snowmobile jacket in 1992!

I am so impressed that you have that kind of recall!

Mechanized ME · Jan 31, 2014

dragoneggs said:
I am so impressed that you have that kind of recall!

Who what? I do liken myself to the two old men sitting in the theater booth in the muppets show! Nether one knows what the other is talking about nor are they on the same subject! :- ))) 'drink'

Ken · Jan 31, 2014

crowbar032 said:
Well, the MF150 and TO35 were inherited with the 80 acre plantation when Mom and Dad retired (they had real jobs but not college jobs like me). I bought the 953 Cat and JD5065E with funds made from my real job (accounting/financial analyst....ie not farming). With no wife/girlfriend/significant other and no kids, I can get away with spending more on toys.

I joke with my Dad that it takes one generation to buy the land, one generation to buy the equipment, the third generation might make a little money.

I'm impressed that there are so many "old" guys here that know how to work computers. My Dad will soon be 74 and my Mom just turned 70, and I'd bet they couldn't work a computer to save their life. No offense, but how did you guys learn since I assume you didn't grow up with them?

Mid '50s the tray of tube type anti aircraft guidance systems. then helped install radar traffic light control and tube type computers. Then gas company installing Supervisory control and data systems to operate the main line valves and pressure controllers. started to hear about transistors the telephone co. was using .
Went to a Texas Instrument information meeting and the door prize was a 5400 integrated chip All test equipment was still tubes.
Had a memory system that was a large coil of coax could see the bits going in and bits coming out of coax and on tube type scope see the addition of binary numbers.
computers then had 1 1/2 bit per board hand wired. 6k for a system was large.
Time goes so fast.
Like the snail that got run over by a turtle. Told the Doc. It all happened so fast.
ken

Ken · Jan 31, 2014

oldballs said:
At 81, I know about as much about computers as anything else. To me, "binary" has something to do with "two". Since the 60's I was exposed to the IBM 360 and various "upgrades" until I retired at 74 years old. I hated "upgrades". Luck and genes seem to be the answer to old age, along with some good sense. And with the new tractors and their toys I hope to get into the 90s without too much hassle. My nine grandsons probably won't know what the sledge hammer, pick axe and shovels are for, so maybe they will be new TBN members when I do pass on.

On the updates remember the seven stages of a project.
1 Wild enthusiasm
2 Disillusionment
3 Chaos
4 Search for the guilty
5 Shifting the blame
6 Punishment the the innocent
7 Promotion of the Non-Participant.
ken

V1Rotate · Jan 31, 2014

So far with 52 responses the average age is 50.3

Mechanized ME · Jan 31, 2014

V1Rotate said:
So far with 52 responses the average age is 50.3

Ok, that makes me feel old!

Degolyerent · Jan 31, 2014

I turned 58 at the end of November, time is only getting faster!
John

Jim Shooz · Feb 1, 2014

I'm up to 76 here so that will knock the average up a little.
I worked in the local telco for many years and the engineers were always at the bleeding edge. I started out on a TI 59. A Texas Instruments programmable calculator where you wrote programs on a magnetic strip which you pulled through a slot.

OldMcDonald · Feb 1, 2014

Crowbar, It looks like most of us older folks on here had to work off-farm for cash, or maybe some have never farmed. I had 3000 acres in Australia that took a big hit in a long drought, so became an Accountant in the mid 1980s. I was up to scratch so long as the old DOS system was in operation. I can type, but do not understand modern gadgets. I do not even use a mobile phone, but I am still farming, and that is all I ever wanted to do.