Is this true?????

[Fred in Skirts]

Is this true or not???????

old guy.jpg

[denimini]

Could be true but the young could laugh at some older people who are not up with modern technology.
Years ago two elderly ladies from my town went to Sydney, went for a walk and got lost. They went to ring their host at a public phone and couldn't work it because it had a dial with numbers. At that time we had a manual exchange where you would wind a little handle and the operator would say "Hello, what number?". The numbers for anyone in town were just two digits and one day I asked for 21. The operator said "Karin is not at home because I saw her walk past, I think I know where she was going so I will put you through to there". Smart phones today don't have that sort of pre-emptive capability.
There was no such thing as a private call as the operator could listen in and Sue did like a bit of gossip; it was an early form of social media.

[moonshadow]

The meme says "frighten", which is probably not true... "confuse" is likely a better word.

They could probably figure out a rotary phone, maybe even the T.V., but I bet they don't know what that little dial behind the dial is for...

Hell, I really don't know what it does, I just know you could turn it to help the picture come in better.

And denimini, my set isn't "ancient"... it's "vintage"... that's the proper millennial term!

On the other hand, us kids brought back vinyl records, and cooking from home. Whereas the boomer generation was known for their TV dinners, these kids today get on pinterest, download a recipe and churn out some pretty cool dishes!

We're also pretty good at working on our own vehicles for the most part...

And best of all, my generation planted the seed of freedom of expression in the 1990's, and these kids today continue to water the sapling that grew from that....

Simply put, you couldn't wear a skirt in public if not for us!

So there...!

[crfriend]

They could probably figure out a rotary phone, maybe even the T.V., but I bet they don't know what that little dial behind the dial is for...

Hell, I really don't know what it does, I just know you could turn it to help the picture come in better.

That's the fine-tuning knob. The "dial" in front turns a whacking big multi-stage rotary switch which has capacitors, resistors, and inductors on it that get the local oscillator's frequency close to what's needed to pick out a channel, and then the fine-tuning pulls it in as close as possible. Better radios -- especially shortwave sets -- had these as well, although as two different knobs.

And denimini, my set isn't "ancient"... it's "vintage"... that's the proper millennial term!

The same goes for computers. Just yesterday I made another chap very happy by giving him a computer he offered to buy and that I had an extra that was knocking about. He was absolutely delighted. He was also the project manager for the team that designed and brought the machine to life in 1980 and is in the process of assembling part of the old team to restore it to running order and has promised to keep me in the loop as far as progress goes.

What did I gain from this? Several things: Knowledge that the machine will be well taken care of and restored, the simple joy of seeing his expression when I got the little machine out of my car, and the knowledge that this will get some of the information about the history of these little machines out farther into the general population. I also got pointers to scanned copies of the logic diagrams, so now I have vastly more understanding of how my remaining example works -- and a little bit of a drive to get an RGB -> NTSC-composite encoder working so I can actually play with mine.

And best of all, my generation planted the seed of freedom of expression in the 1990's, and these kids today continue to water the sapling that grew from that....

Simply put, you couldn't wear a skirt in public if not for us!

Looks like somebody forgot the more progressive of the Boomer generation who drove the 1960s and '70s -- and also the Gen-Xers who could be pretty daring as well. Recall that my first encounter with a guy in a skirt -- in the wild -- was in 1985 or thereabouts, and certainly not a Boomer.

[PatJ]

Around the year 2005, I was writing on the chalk board in cursive. One of my
students raised her hand and said she couldn't read what I had written. I told
her my hand writing wasn't that bad. She said that she could not read cursive.

That was 15 years ago - and the student was post-high school in a technical
college where I taught.

Cursive has been on the decline for many years so part of the the above is
real and probably worse than what most people would believe.

[moonshadow]

My daughter told me to send her some of my handwriting the other day... apparently she wanted to pass it around where she worked and see if anyone could read it.

...to be fair, my handwriting is not very neat....

I've kept a log of every service call I've worked since 2013... here's a snippet from the archives...

Screenshot_20201205-212832_Gallery_resize_86.jpg

And if you think that's bad... you should see my print!

Just call me "Dr. Moon"...

[moonshadow]

Shoot.... I remember my early teenage years with Dad in that old beat up trailer in Thaxton, we had an older floor model TV in the living room that you had to let it warm up for about 30 minutes (it had a really bad red tint, and was VERY blurry until then)...

A wire clothes hanger wired to the antenna jack to pull in channel 21 and 13. Once we got a proper set of rabbit ears we could pull in 7 and 10! Man we were livin' big time then!

Kids today... they don't even know!

[moonshadow]

In the spring of 2010, Dad, Jenn, Amber and I made our way to the end of the gravel road where we lived during those years.

We found it, though it was posted private property, so I this is the only photo of the home, taken from the edge of the road. Back when we lived there, there was a little gravel driveway leading to the trailer. Those barns to the left belonged to the landlord.

Good times... I wouldn't trade that childhood for the world...

Screenshot_20201205-214922_Gallery_resize_54_compress44.jpg

Jenn and I made another pilgrimage last year... sadly the trailer has been removed, and all that remains is an open field... a sadness came over me, but I suppose time does march on...

[Faldaguy]

by denimini » Sat Dec 05, 2020 1:22 am

At that time we had a manual exchange where you would wind a little handle and the operator would say "Hello, what number?". The numbers for anyone in town were just two digits and one day I asked for 21. The operator said "Karin is not at home because I saw her walk past, I think I know where she was going so I will put you through to there". Smart phones today don't have that sort of pre-emptive capability.
There was no such thing as a private call as the operator could listen in and Sue did like a bit of gossip; it was an early form of social media.

This community installed its own 'private' phone system since no other service existed, I think in the early 60's -- it too was a party line system with a distinctive ring pattern for each person (two shorts, a long, short, long -- etc). One of the parties, Stella like to listen in so much, that folks who had something 'private' to say, would ask Stella to hang up (I doubt she did) and the system was known as the Stellaphone!

[Faldaguy]

by crfriend » Sat Dec 05, 2020 9:30 am

The same goes for computers. Just yesterday I made another chap very happy by giving him a computer he offered to buy and that I had an extra that was knocking about. He was absolutely delighted. He was also the project manager for the team that designed and brought the machine to life in 1980 and is in the process of assembling part of the old team to restore it to running order and has promised to keep me in the loop as far as progress goes.

Sounds about like the era I computerized my Hawaii office with the latest and greatest: An Osborne, 5" CRT screen and hear this; not one, but two 64K floppy drives. Ran CPM in the days when programming was still 'elegant'. Given we were headhunting from the islands, getting resumes, CV's and such from the mainland was a challenge, but we had what the sales engineer told us was the ultimate modem -- as fast as it could ever technically be built-- at 1200 baud! Time does move on -- faster than I do!

[Kirbstone]

Absolutely.

Up until the early '60s we had only an operator-connected telephone with a two-digit number....Monasterevin 10, or 'one-oh' as one would say. My eldest brother rang home late one Winters afternoon to say that he had just arrived in Dublin from England by boat and was getting the bus home. My mother said she was delighted of course, but had no food in the house &c, whereupon Mrs. Purcell, (postmistress) butted in and offered to pop next door to Joe McCabe's (grocers) and get a few things for Mam before they closed!

Being ever helpful!

Tom

[6ft3Aussie]

There's times that I think it would be great to be able to go back to the 1970s, for the simplicity of life aspect.

No mobile phones.
No internet.
Black and white TV that took a couple of minutes to warm up and had that odour as the dust baked on the hot valves.
Only one TV channel.
One car per household.
Mum did not have to work to make ends meet and help the household budget.
Fixed phone (only one phone in each home) with the aforementioned rotary dial. (phone number back then was 5 digits)
Payphones that you could tap (millennials would most likely not have a clue what I mean).
Milk delivery every evening.
Fresh bread delivery.
Ice cream cost 5c from the mobile ice cream van.
1c sweets at the local dairy (convenience shop).
No such thing as airconditioning in the home.
Saturday was spent with the family having a picnic (lunch made and packed at home) at the river or somewhere equally as scenic.

Many of those things would have the latest generations scratching their heads.
My friend's 13 year old daughter just rolls her eyes and tells us how we must be really old and how we must have grown up in the dark ages....
She can't appreciate it when we have a few beers together while listening to 70s and 80s music all evening....